Is your system worth its upkeep?
Enter what each part costs you per week and what it saves. Get back a total, a verdict, and the specific parts to halve, drop, or hand off.
The short version
- Every list, tracker and calendar has an upkeep cost, and the cost is usually invisible. This tool makes you add it up, one part at a time.
- For each part you enter the minutes it costs you a week and what it saved you. The tool returns a total upkeep cost and a verdict on each part, keep it, halve it, drop it, or hand it off.
- Asking how long it takes you is not giving up. It is the only way to find out if it is working. Nothing here is saved or scored about you; it adds up your own numbers and hands them back.
Every system has two sides: what it gives back, and what it takes to run. The giving-back side gets all the attention. The upkeep side, entering things, tidying, deciding which category, the low background sense of being behind, gets almost none. So a system can quietly cost more than it saves for months, and the conclusion drawn is usually about the person. This tool counts the side nobody counts.
Before you begin
Think of the parts your system is made of, the daily tidy-up, the Sunday review, the labels, a shared tracker, an app you fill in. You will enter them one at a time. For each one, be honest about the minutes: include the tidying, the review, and the time spent thinking about being behind on it. Nothing you type is saved.
Add a part of your system
Part 1
Your upkeep, added up
Part by part
Copy it somewhere it will survive
Select the text below and copy it into whatever you already use. This page keeps nothing.
One thing to try before you change anything
Detail pays when the load is genuinely high, and it costs when arranging the system has quietly become the work. Both are true, on different weeks of the same life. So before you tear anything out: take the one part flagged halve and cut it in half for one week, fewer categories, no labels, the review shortened to five minutes, and see what actually goes wrong. It is usually less than expected. Anything flagged drop that nobody reads can simply stop, and anything flagged hand off is a conversation, not a personal failing.
Worth knowing. This tool has no research behind its exact thresholds, they are rules of thumb, not findings, and the honest position from the article stands: the size of the system that fits you one month is not the size that fits you the next. What the tool does is force the one question almost nobody asks: how long did this take me this week? Few people have ever sat down and added it up, and those who do tend to find something they did not expect, in both directions. Time yourself for one real week before trusting any number here.
Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you type exists only while this page is open.
Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.