Alright, so today I wanted to chat a bit about my little adventure with this “Will McIntire” productivity system I kept hearing about. Everywhere I looked, someone was raving about how it changed their life, organized their chaos, probably even made their coffee for them. So, naturally, I thought, “Hey, why not give it a whirl?” I’ve got this side project, you know, trying to finally sort through the ten thousand photos of my cat, Mittens. Seemed like a perfect test case.
Getting Started with the “McIntire Method”
So, I dived in. First, I had to find his stuff. Turns out, Will McIntire has this whole ecosystem – books, webinars, special notepads that probably cost more than my monthly grocery bill. I skipped the notepad, figured my trusty old yellow pad would do. I sat through a couple of his free introductory videos. He seemed genuine enough, very polished, talking about “synergy” and “flow states” and “actionable paradigms.” Sounded fancy.
The core idea, as far as I could tell, was about breaking everything down into micro-tasks and then assigning them “energy values.” And then you’re supposed to track everything on these elaborate charts. He made it sound so easy, so revolutionary.
The Glorious Attempt (and Subsequent Faceplant)
So, there I was, Sunday morning, armed with coffee and a fresh page on my yellow pad. Project: Operation Mittens Photo Liberation. I started trying to apply the McIntire Method.
- Micro-tasks: Okay, “Sort photos by ‘Mittens sleeping’.” “Sort photos by ‘Mittens looking judgy’.” “Sort photos by ‘Mittens attacking the Christmas tree’.” This part actually wasn’t too bad, though it felt a bit like I was overthinking how to look at cat pictures.
- Energy Values: This is where it got weird. I had to assign an “energy value” from 1 to 10. How much energy does it take to decide if a photo of Mittens yawning is “cute” or “very cute”? I spent more time figuring out the energy values than actually sorting.
- The Charts: Oh, the charts. He had templates for daily progress, weekly reviews, “emotional state alignment” – I swear, I needed a PhD in McIntire-ology just to fill them out. My cat photo project suddenly felt like launching a space shuttle.
I spent a whole day meticulously planning and charting, just like Will McIntire said. By the end of it, I had sorted exactly zero photos. But boy, did I have some impressive-looking (and utterly useless) charts detailing my intent to sort photos.
What Actually Happened
The next weekend, I looked at my elaborate McIntire charts, sighed, and then just opened my photo folder. I made a few simple folders: “Sleeping,” “Playing,” “Being a Little Menace.” Took me about two hours. Done. No energy values, no paradigms, just good old-fashioned common sense.
And you know what? It felt great.
I think this Will McIntire guy, and a lot of these productivity gurus, maybe they’re talking to people managing huge teams or complex corporate projects. For my cat photos? Total overkill. It actually made me less productive because I was so bogged down in the “system” that I forgot the actual goal.
It reminds me of this one time I tried to follow a super complicated recipe for a “gourmet” grilled cheese sandwich. Twenty ingredients, three different kinds of artisanal bread. After an hour of prep, I just slapped some cheddar between two slices of regular bread and called it a day. Sometimes, simple is just better.
So, my takeaway from the whole Will McIntire experiment? Don’t get sucked in by fancy jargon and complicated systems if a simpler way works. Sometimes, you just gotta trust your gut and, you know, actually do the thing instead of planning to do the thing in seventeen color-coded steps. Just my two cents from the trenches.
