The ability and intention to discard and change individual parts of a system as needed as soon as it becomes obvious what’s working and what isn’t is absolutely critical to the “good try”. Keep what works, send everything else back.
Something I’ve learned from listening to many, many episodes of Productivity Alchemy: An important feature of a “good try” plan is the freedom to change the system you’re testing in certain ways. For any given “solution”, the exact method as presented may not be the best for your particular situation, but could certainly hold a gem of goodness for your life if integrated with something else (maybe even something else you’re already doing). A good “good try” must include the power to iterate and fail relatively quickly on partial systems.
For example, Bullet Journaling is often presented as an artform. Just search for “bullet journal ideas” for literally thousands of examples of this. And there’s something to that approach, even! Increasing the aesthetic value of your organizational system can decrease the friction of actually using it. Of course, you could easily find that you’re spending more time prettying up your journal than actually getting stuff done. If you happen to find the “aesthetic cult” of Bullet Journal first, you might think that’s the point of the system, and you may discard the whole system on those merits. But the core of the Bullet Journal system isn’t the stickers and washi tape, it’s the running to-do list with easy-to-read indicators on each item. If you didn’t give yourself the freedom to explore and iterate on the system, you are likely to give Bullet Journaling (as stated) a “good try” (as stated) without ever discovering that fact. If that happens, you have not successfully evaluated the system, only one part of the broader culture that has developed as a result of that system.
The ability and intention to discard and change individual parts of a system as needed as soon as it becomes obvious what’s working and what isn’t is absolutely critical to the “good try”. Keep what works, send everything else back.
Something I’ve learned from listening to many, many episodes of Productivity Alchemy: An important feature of a “good try” plan is the freedom to change the system you’re testing in certain ways. For any given “solution”, the exact method as presented may not be the best for your particular situation, but could certainly hold a gem of goodness for your life if integrated with something else (maybe even something else you’re already doing). A good “good try” must include the power to iterate and fail relatively quickly on partial systems.
For example, Bullet Journaling is often presented as an artform. Just search for “bullet journal ideas” for literally thousands of examples of this. And there’s something to that approach, even! Increasing the aesthetic value of your organizational system can decrease the friction of actually using it. Of course, you could easily find that you’re spending more time prettying up your journal than actually getting stuff done. If you happen to find the “aesthetic cult” of Bullet Journal first, you might think that’s the point of the system, and you may discard the whole system on those merits. But the core of the Bullet Journal system isn’t the stickers and washi tape, it’s the running to-do list with easy-to-read indicators on each item. If you didn’t give yourself the freedom to explore and iterate on the system, you are likely to give Bullet Journaling (as stated) a “good try” (as stated) without ever discovering that fact. If that happens, you have not successfully evaluated the system, only one part of the broader culture that has developed as a result of that system.