Once upon a time, there was a man who wanted to build a hut.

He had seen many huts in his village, small huts, big huts, beautiful huts. He wanted his hut to be the most beautiful one in the whole village.

But he had never built a hut before.

He didn’t let that little detail stop him from building one. After all, he had seen many huts being built. He was sure he knew enough to build one by himself. If others can build it, so can he.

So he got on to work. He diligently cut the grass and dried it, erected the bamboo poles, and tied the dried grass to it. And then put on a thatch roof. But he didn’t know how to tie the thatch properly.

The very first time the storm came, it blew the roof away.

The man was devastated, but he didn’t give up. He put on another roof.

But sadly, the same thing happened again.

He tried one more time, this time tying the thatch harder than before.

But it, too, didn’t last until the next storm. By this time, the grass walls had started deteriorating too.

Disheartened, he went to the village elders and asked them what was he doing wrong.

Elders told him that half the knowledge is worse than ignorance.

One elder, who had built many huts before, sat with the man and made a plan for the hut on the dirt ground.

He then went through all the steps the man needed to take to build the hut that can stand the storm.

The elder also taught the man how to make different kinds of knots.

When the man started building the hut from scratch, the elder checked his work at each step and corrected it if needed.

Within days, and with much less effort, the man erected the hut.

And it was the most beautiful hut in the village.

Why?

Because it was built with the heart and the brain.

The man’s heart and the elder’s knowledge.

Both are essential for any project to be successful.

My # 1 problem too was lack of a plan.

I was pouring my heart into my writing, but didn’t have a plan for where I wanted to take it.

Once I figured that out, I could address all other obstacles.

Do you have a plan for your writing?

Have you figured out where you want to take it?

Do you know what is your # 1 productivity problem?

When I was in paid employment, productivity was never an issue for me.

I finished my daily tasks easily, never missed a deadline and my projects were delivered on time and sometimes even before time.

But when I became an online writer, I started lagging behind.

Didn’t matter how much I did and how many hours I put in, I wasn’t meeting my daily commitments.

I tried all the productivity hacks I knew at the time.

– I made To-Do Lists.
– I scheduled time in my calendar.
– I removed distractions as much as I could.

But the struggle to come on top of my commitments continued.

Until one day, quite recently, I decided to stop doing everything.

– I stopped writing on Medium.
– I stopped posting on LinkedIn.
– I put on hold the book I was writing.

I took the time to identify the things that were stopping me from being productive.

The list was very long.

But they all boiled down to one thing.

I had to figure out what was my # 1 problem that was stopping me from being productive.

Once I figured out the root cause, I could address everything else.

I will reveal my # 1 productivity problem tomorrow.

Today I want to know what is your # 1 problem as an online writer.

Here is a list to choose from:

1. Self-doubt
2. Distractions
3. Lack of Ideas
4. Perfectionism
5. Writer’s Block
6. Procrastination
7. Lack of System
8. Poor Organisation
9. Lack of Motivation
10. Lack of Feedback
11. Lack of Structure
12. Overcommitment
13. Insufficient Breaks
14. Technical Difficulties
15. Information Overload
16. Lack of Accountability
17. Lack of Self-discipline
18. Not having a clear niche.
19. Not knowing what you are doing.

Or

20. Something not listed here.

To be productive, you need to develop the ability to focus and concentrate.

Focus and concentration are two different things.

Focus can only occur when we say ‘yes’ to one option and ‘no’ to all other options.

Concentration is when we can eliminate distractions to do what we need to do.

Both focus and concentration can be difficult to master.

We live in a noisy world, and constant distractions can make focus difficult.

Elimination is a prerequisite for focus.

Three things you can do to increase focus and eliminate distractions.

1️⃣ Stop Multitasking

Multitasking forces your brain
to switch your focus back and forth
from one task to another.

Each time you interrupt one task and jump to another, you pay a mental price for it.

In psychological terms, this mental price is called the ‘switching cost.’

On average, it takes 15 minutes to resume the previous task when you stop to check emails, leave a comment on social media, or answer a phone call.

2️⃣ Make 2 Lists

A list of ‘To-Do’ things and a list of ‘Not To Do’ things.

Make sure you don’t do things you have listed in the ‘Not To Do’ list

What you don’t do will determine what you can do.

3️⃣ Measure Your Results

Focus often fades away, not knowing where we stand and how far we have come.

Our brain has a natural desire to know whether we are making progress toward our goals.

It is impossible to know that without measuring progress.

Unfortunately, we often avoid measuring because we are fearful of what the numbers will tell us about ourselves.

The trick is to realize that measuring is not a judgment about who you are, it’s just feedback on where you are.

Back in September 2021, my writing life turned a corner.

I was writing online for almost three years. I had published a book, written over 300 articles, and experienced burnout.

What was killing me, ironically, was not the writing, or the vast amount of reading but keeping notes.

I was saving everything that I found even remotely interesting thinking I will use it in my next article or book. But as soon as I saved it, I forget about it.

I had become a digital hoarder.

The crunch came when I moved from Windows to Mac. Took me days to transfer my files, and the process left me bewildered.

That got me thinking why am I keeping all these notes if I can’t find them when I need them?

I tried to organize them for easy findability first in Microsoft files then in One Note Finally in Evernote.

But none of the methods worked.

Then something happened.

In September 2021, I found a tool called Roam Research. I was immediately hooked.

It could store notes as atomic units complete on their own and yet be able to interact with each other, forming unexpected connections.

I started using it straight away. A year later, I had a massive knowledge bank which has become the backbone of my writing.

Six months ago, I moved to another tool even better It’s called Obsidian. My writing has more depth and substance now. I couldn’t have done it without my knowledge bank.

A right notetaking tool has the power to lift your writing much beyond your imagination.

Yesterday, I wrote about notetaking archetypes. Today I am going to share which apps are suitable for which archetypes.

Check out which one is for you:

Architect Archetype

The app for the Architect archetype is Notion.

Notion allows you to create personal dashboards, just-in-time indexes of notes and information that can be tagged, categorized, sorted, and updated dynamically updated as it changes.

Gardener Archetype

The apps for the Gardener archetype are Roam Research and Obsidian.

These apps are very different in how they organize knowledge. Both of them are fundamentally about creating new connections between disparate pieces of knowledge.

A visual map of content that organically grows as your knowledge bank grows and surprises you even with new insights you didn’t plan for yourself.

Librarian Archetype

Librarian archetypes love Evernote.

Evernote kicked off the modern note-taking phenomenon and has specialized over the years to be the best in class.

With Evernote, you can collect information from any number of different sources. It’s quick, it’s accessible across all your devices, and it’s a highly dependable platform for modern knowledge workers.

Student Archetype

The Student archetype’s needs are different. Their notes are likely a mix of documentation, practical notes, to-dos, and even word-for-word transcripts.

The apps suitable for them are:

• Apple Notes,
• Google Keep,
• Notability
• Simple Notes

These apps are simpler. They’re pared down in their features than the apps mentioned earlier. They’re practical, quick, flexible notetaking.

I am a gardener cum librarian.

Confused?

These are two of the four archetypes of note-takers.

Before deciding which note-taking app you should choose, you need to know what is your note-taking style.

Anne-Laure Le coffee, the founder of Ness Lab, gave a very useful model to find out your note-taking style.

According to her, note-takers fall into three archetypes.

1. Architects

Are you looking for structure in your note-taking?

Do you need a simple system to organize every facet of your life?

Do you need customization in the note-taking app that blends practicality, function, and aesthetics?

Then, you are an architect.

An architect note-taker approaches everything about their note-taking with a systems mindset of architecting their knowledge.

2. Gardeners

Is your primary feeling about note-taking one of wandering, dreaming, imagining, and making spontaneous creative leaps?

Do you want to cultivate new ideas, cross-pollinate concepts, and sprout lots of creative possibilities?

Are you looking to blend your existing concepts, maybe create something new? You’re probably not necessarily trying to create a system that knows where it’s headed.

Then, you’re probably a gardener.

The gardener approaches everything about note-taking with a nurturing exploratory approach of reimagining the relationship to information and making novel connections.

3. Librarians

Do you have a deep desire to find the most useful or interesting things that exist in the world, capture them, keep them, and then study them?

Are you always collecting new bits of information, categorizing your learnings, retrieving your insights, combining old and new information into a new understanding, and especially sharing your favorite learnings with others?

You are likely a librarian.

Librarians often have a project orientation, like architects, but instead of architecting their entire life, their research supports specific projects and learning obsessions.

The librarian approaches everything about note-taking with a fundamentally practical relationship to information.

———-

Don’t fit in any of the three archetypes so far?

Or do you resonate with several of them and find the whole decision really confusing and kind of unnecessary?

If that’s you, then you are a student.

Tiago Forte, of Building A Second Brain, added the fourth archetype to these.

4. Students

Students use note-taking to manage many aspects of their lives but do not necessarily go too deep into any one of them.

As a student, you desire ease of use in your notetaking. Something quick, something easy, something accessible.

The student archetype is actually the most common type of note-taking archetype. It is something we default to when we don’t have extra time.

—–

Take a look at these archetype definitions in the carousel and find out which one you are.

Usually, not that hard to figure out which one you are.

Note-taking is a highly personal process, and for that reason, it’s based on intuition and feeling.

You will immediately resonate with one archetype or the other.

Or, like me, a blend of two.

Tomorrow, I will tell you which app is suitable for which archetype.