[...]Academic Productivity » Rethinking life hacks[...]…

I agree with you, and would like to invite you to my blog to see the little progress I have made in that direction.

In retrospect, I used my industrial engineering background without really knowing it.

On the other hand, I can understand why many people love GTD: it works for them. In that case, I can’t blame them for following a method that is not scientifically proven.

“average number of mail items in an email inbox /voice-mailbox / paper inbox.” in a time where a lot of people argue that spending a lot of time on emails, quantity of accomplished tasks means very little as a measure for productivity. You would need to measure quality somehow.

I think we need to make a clear difference between lifehacking and productivity systems. I don’t think you can apply a scientific evidence based approach to lifehacks, as by their definition they are isolated time savers and neat tricks. But I think applying evidence based thinking to more comprehensive approaches to productivity has value. By a comprehensive approach, I am thinking of the systems of productivity expounded by people like Covey, Allen, Ferris, Forster and the like. Most of these guys are essentially salesmen, who are also life coaches. They are selling a product. Their evidence is based on what worked with their clients, and hence they cite individual case studies.Which is better than just having an n=1, since most other productivity gurus (like Steve P or Zen Habits) are just working with themselves as evidence.

However, in calling for “academic productivity”, then you might disregarding the fact that many people do research productivity and publish articles on it. But like much in academic life, it doesn’t filter to the mainstream, and instead the public gets the hook up from pop psychology people who work mostly from common sense and the odd tidbit they picked up from introductory psychology courses (“we only use 10% of our brains!!!” etc…).

Perhaps the biggest problem in evaluating productivity systems is different strokes for different folks. Any system might work for some people, some may work better than others for some people, and for some people no system would work, no matter how good, I think the most progress would be made by fitting productivity systems and techniques to personalities, but then I can’t say the “learning styles” movement has been a particular success…

I agree that someone who gives advice can really only share from their experience.

I have tired to come up with a way of helping a user to describe and improve their time management system according to 11 “inescapable” fundamentals.

I am always on the lookout for new fundamentals… if you have any ideas.