To Do or Too Due? Getting the Most out of Personal Productivity Tools

by Joseph Feller

In my article in the July 2009 Cutter Benchmark Review (see "Looking at Personal Productivity Tools and Systems,"Vol. 9, No. 7), I wanted to identify some of the tools, techniques, attitudes, and environmental factors that could use a tune-up so that people could continue to get the job done but in a way that lets them go home at the end of the day without work lurking behind them. Specifically, I wanted to examine the extent to which practices and attitudes, revealed in the CBR survey on which that article was based, support or inhibit externalizing memory, making information actionable, and executing actions in a situated and agile fashion. Based on my analysis of the survey data, I offer a few pieces of advice.