Productivity tools and their Effectiveness

Throughout human history, we have been building various tools to make our lives easier, from the wheel to the computer. Productivity tools are of great importance in the modern world when we are dealing with complex tasks and projects and they have become an essential part of our careers in fields like software engineering.

In this article, I will talk about some productivity tools I use as well as some pitfalls I experienced with them.

Context

I'm a student and a software developer, so naturally I need tools to write code as well as to take notes. For note-taking, I have been using Obsidian to write notes in markdown files. Obsidian's live preview feature is a great feature that renders markdown files as you type, and it also has a plugin ecosystem if you need additional features.

For code, I was using Visual Studio Code for the longest time, but recently I have been transitioning into Neovim as a code editor, mainly because of its extensibility with its plugin ecosystem as well as its speed. Vim keybindings are also really good for writing code and makes the experience a lot more efficient.

Too much customization

Both Obsidian and Neovim enable really flexible customization through their plugin ecosystems, but this is a double-edged sword. In the beginning, it seemed like a great idea to customize everything to one's preferences, but I have realized that when you have too much power in terms of what to do with the tool, the process of setting up and customization itself ends up eating up a large portion of my time.

Seeing the amount of plugins might tempt one to set it all up so that you can have all these ultra-fast and ultra-productive keybindings and features, but I found myself spending more time setting up and customizating these tools than actually using them for real, productive work.

This was especially true for Neovim, what with setting up keybindings as well as various cryptic code segments that you had to copy-paste into its configuration files just to make certain plugins work. I was spending more time debugging how to get a plugin to set up and work rather than using them.

Not to mention, installing too many plugins can lead to conflicts between plugins and also impact speed, which is counterintuitive to what these tools are supposed to do. We shouldn't be getting distracted or getting frustrated by the tools.

Cooler != Better

One of my difficulties with Neovim was with file management; despite having plugins like NERDTree to view directories and facilitate file access, it was still a hassle to do certain things like file movement/copying especially if I wanted to bring in external files (images) into my code directory.

While it was possible (by a combination of changing directories and using NERDTree commands), I've come to accept that it was not time efficient (paths can be really long to write!) and it was simply a much faster job to use Windows Explorer GUI to do the same thing in about 5 seconds.

Not everything has to be done in a terminal-like environment where we're typing away commands and looking at cryptic output and coming off as wizards to the uninformed passerby. Sometimes, using the GUI is just a lot better. Use the right tools for the job.

Striking a Balance

Of course, this was a 'me' problem, and I acknowledge that in retrospect; there is nothing stopping us from using the product stock out of the box.

I am not saying that we should forgo customization or not use superuser/power tools; the most important thing here is to strike a balance between customization and productivity, and recognizing that ultimately, these are just tools that I'm using to get my work done and the priority should be the actual work that I want to do.

Conclusion

I still use Neovim and Obsidian, but I have learnt to be more mindful of why I am using them, and ensuring that my time is respected.

If something seems like it's taking too long, it's time to find an alternative that can still get the job done. I'm no longer a fan of 'tinkering' with the tools just to get them to behave properly.