Productivity

From Slate:

The challenge for presidential candidates, as Merlin Mann puts it, is "to know when to stop scanning your campground for bears long enough to make S'mores."

Isn't that the challenge for all of us?

The Slate article examines how presidential candidates schedule their lives, how they make productivity work for them. I'm a big 43 Folders fan. It's eye candy for the time-starved, offering hope for just half an hour to spare. There's more where this came from -- productivity classes, forums, books and podcasts (because who can read a book these days?). Half an hour would make me do a somersault; I'm sure Barack or John would do a round off and five cartwheels.

But do productivity strategies really make a difference? There wouldn't be an industry centered around checking off our to-do lists if the strategies didn't help us, would there? So why do we keep going back to these resources, keep trying to find what works? Why do we keep looking for a band-aid that will cover our open wound?