The System I Actually Use.

Most productivity systems fail because they pretend the problem is information architecture. It isn't. The problem is having one place where everything lands, and a routine that drains that place into the right surface fast.

I use five surfaces: capture (iA Writer), daily (Things), projects (Linear), reference (Bear), archive (DEVONthink). Each has one job, named on the diagram. The inbox is the bus station; the surfaces are the buses.

The thing that makes it actually work is the weekly review — Friday afternoon, 45 minutes, prune everything older than two weeks, re-rank what's left, close the loops that closed themselves. Without the review, the system rots in three weeks.