Return on time investment: Productivity resources

Abstract

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my favorite book was Cheaper by the Dozen, the semi‐autobiographical novel by two of the dozen children raised by their efficiency expert parents. The authors tell hilarious tales of being raised in a household that served as a sort of laboratory to test their parent's educational and efficiency ideas. Of course, the stories must have entertained me, but their ideas of efficiency made a major impression on my young brain. As a result, to this day I will eagerly turn my attention to any method, device, or app that promises to help me do a job better. Let us admit it—we all wish we had more hours in a day, but we don't! The fact remains that in this day of amazing digital resources that are designed to help us save and manage time more efficiently, we still need to learn how to use them. Following on the previous two articles in this series you need to consider your personal “return on time investment” (ROTI) to decide if any of the myriad productivity tools that are on the market are going to work for you. While many of these programs are intuitive—a digital calendar looks like a paper calendar, for example—they all have quirks and a learning curve. So the question remains: what is the ROTI and is it worth your time and energy to learn to use one or more of these applications? The sections that follow describe three categories of productivity apps (with specific examples) to consider. You may want to refer back to the decision‐making algorithm presented in Return on Time Investment: Research Resources to help you think through the pros and cons and why you might, or might not, consider adopting one or more of these for your writing and scholarly life.