The most effective productivity hack is the one you least want to do

The human brain wasn’t built for all this — all of the information, screens, meetings, scheduling, thinking.

The problem is the brain hasn’t changed much since the days of hunter-gatherers, but the demands we put on it have, says Kayla Stajkovic, a lecturer in organizational behavior at the University of California, Davis. In the past, humans did a fair amount of strategizing and planning to survive, but now, we’re bombarded with emails and messages all day, we juggle calendars, attempt to multitask, and pull out our phones when we can’t think of anything better to do.

Into the breach has stepped an enormous number of productivity hacks, as well as influencers and productivity evangelists peddling easy-fix solutions. A to-do list no longer suffices when you can intricately track habits,