Sometimes a reboot is the best option.

Sometimes things just get too much to keep up with, and the best option is knocking it down and trying again.

Could have been an issue with taking on too much. Could have been lack of good systems for managing the challenges that would arise. Could have been something completely unforeseeable and beyond our control.

But regardless, there comes a time where resetting is all-around a better option than trying to push forward on something that’s not working.


I experienced a microcosm of that this week. For a couple years now, I’d been using a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system like Obsidian (with GTD) for managing my tasks, projects, goals, and life. It was awesome and I loved it. But, a series of crazy months, coupled with not keeping up with my system during the craziness, as well as several new commitments that I couldn’t figure out how to integrate into my system without refactoring the whole thing, left me in a lurch. I could spend a bunch of time and energy that I didn’t have to clean up my system… or I could declare “Personal Knowledge Management bankruptcy,” and reboot.

After trying and failing at the former, I decided on the latter.

I bought a blank notebook, worked through the Bullet Journal tutorial again, and switched back to paper for life management, after several years of having been almost exclusively digital.

The change has been helpful and welcome!

I’ll probably reincorperate a digital PKM in the future again, learning lessons from this experience. But, in the meantime, the limitations of a paper-first system have been helpful to keep me cognizant of my limits.


All that to say, if you have forward momentum doing what you’re doing, keep doing it!

But if you’re stuck and what you’re doing isn’t working, sometimes it’s worth seeing if you can’t reboot.

Works well for both computers and people.