I am not good at dealing with large blocks of unstructured time. It is not that I end up doing nothing, rather that I wander off down thousands of side alleys that are not strictly relevant. That's why as a fresh-faced PhD candidate, I wanted to devote that ‘ocean of time’ first of all to developing a good productivity system. Automated Google Calendars, fancy apps for to-do lists and project notes, and the like. You know the kind of thing, a notebook, but with bells and whistles.

During an afternoon spent googling, I fell into a bottomless black hole of systems of this kind, all with hip names like ‘A second brain’, ‘Getting things done’ and ‘Atomic Habits’. Each and every one the invention of business entrepreneurs and brimming with a stew of mind-numbing jargon and acronyms. Now, I'm only too keen to utilize the knowledge held in these systems, but I am held back by the quantity (‘Which one do I need?’) and the sheer size (‘Where on earth do I start?’).

Some people take it too far and the ‘system’ becomes a goal in itself; they have fallen under the spell of 'productivity porn'. Now they are moving into something that seems like a cross between an addiction and a cult: there is always another new app to download, podcasts with productivity gurus to listen to (in truth, the leader of the cult).

Observing these addicts from a distance is helpful for your own sense of perspective. In fact, the sum total of the message these business entrepreneurs and gurus are offering is how you should organize your notebook, or how to use a calendar - something that the average person can work out for themselves. Ultimately, the most productive people are not busy improving their system, but are simply getting on with their work. They appear to accept that they are not perfect and that their systems will not make them perfect.

During my search for productivity systems I came across a nugget of truth on Twitter that brought me face to face with myself and encapsulates all this: 'You don’t need to try a new to-do app, you just procrastinate'. I'm going to hang this slogan over my bed.