Most busy professionals approach tool migrations like they’re moving houses, trying to pack and transport everything.
It’s the wrong strategy, and it’s killing your productivity.
I’ve been dealing with migrations since I started coding at 8 years old.
By 15, I was a professional programmer facing significant and complex system transitions.
Later, I navigated migrations in big corporations as a consultant in companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture.
The most recent challenge is still happening, as I’ve just moved the ERP of my main company (I run four), and I’m still suffering the pain and costs of it.
Here’s what decades of migration pain have taught me: beware of migrations.
First, question if they’re actually necessary. If they are, be smart about how you execute them.
The truth?
In many cases, you don’t need to migrate any data at all.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” — Michael Porter
What you do need to migrate requires a completely different approach than what most productivity gurus recommend.
In my personal life, I’ve navigated migrations from OmniFocus to Notion, from Notion to Obsidian, from Obsidian to Tana, from Tana to Todoist, from Todoist to Linear, from Evernote to Craft, from Craft to Notion, just to mention a few.
Each time, I’ve refined a framework that eliminates migration paralysis while protecting what actually drives results.
To simplify the understanding of the concepts, I’ll just focus on solving your problem. This means I’ll only focus on personal migrations.
In ICOR®, the methodology we’ve created at the Paperless Movement® to help busy professionals design, build, and implement a productivity system end to end with any tools, personal refers to the individual (you) whereas business refers to the team.
This is something you’ll understand better by reading the next section, where I explain what the ICOR® Framework is.
The moment you understand the individual approach, it’d be quite simple to apply it to the business area.
The Framework that Reveals Why Your Last Migration Failed (and Prevents the Next One)
Every busy professional shares the same dream: a productivity system that drives you toward your goals with maximum efficiency while using the best tools without draining your time, energy, or money.
Yet the pursuit of the perfect tool stack often leads to analysis paralysis. You spend endless hours on tools that promise everything but deliver confusion. Sound familiar?
This challenge drove us at the Paperless Movement® to develop a real solution.
After years of research and testing, we cracked the code: the ICOR® Framework.
The ICOR® Framework divides your productivity system into four distinct areas.
The first distinction is between Personal and Business.
Personal refers to your individual work, the systems you use alone.
Business involves team collaboration and shared workflows.
The second critical distinction is between Information and Action.
Information encompasses everything related to knowledge management: storing, organizing, and retrieving data.
Action covers task management, project execution, and getting things done.
This distinction matters because the migration strategy for each is completely different.
These four areas create the foundation for understanding tool migrations:
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Personal Information.
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Personal Action.
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Business Information.
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Business Action.
Once you approach the world of productivity with the ICOR® Framework approach, it’s the moment to understand how the ICOR® Framework also transforms your migration approach, as it categorizes every tool into three types, each with vastly different migration implications:
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Core Apps are your foundation. They store your essential information and actions, serving as your Single Source of Truth. You cannot remove these without a replacement because they hold crucial data. Switching Core Apps is painful, expensive, and risky.
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Satellite Apps enhance your Core Apps by reducing friction or addressing specific weaknesses. Unlike Core Apps, you can easily swap these when you find something better with minimal system impact.
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Utility Apps boost productivity but aren’t essential. Your productivity system survives without them.
Once you understand these distinctions, you know exactly what impact a migration will have.
Core Apps demand the most careful strategy, which is why we’ll focus on them in the next sections.
But here’s the key insight: your migration approach must be completely different for Information versus Action, even when dealing with Core Apps.
Let me show you why.
Why 99% of Your Information Doesn’t Need Migrating (and What to Do Instead)
Here’s the hard truth about information migrations: we dramatically overestimate what matters.
You think your stored information is crucial, but I can tell you from decades of experience that 99% of it doesn’t impact your actual business outcomes.
Most professionals make a critical error: they treat all information the same way.
They approach migrating their active project files with the same strategy as their archived reference materials. This fundamental misunderstanding is why information migrations become overwhelming nightmares.
The solution lies in understanding a distinction that most productivity experts completely miss: Personal Information Systems versus Personal Knowledge Management Systems.
Your Personal Information System (PIS) contains your active documents, current project files, templates you use regularly, and information that directly supports ongoing work.
Think client contracts, project specifications, financial records, active correspondence.
This information has operational value: it’s connected to current business activities, deadlines, and deliverables.
Your PIS is mission-critical because it contains information that drives immediate business outcomes.
Your Personal Knowledge Management System (PKM) serves a completely different function.
It stores articles you’ve bookmarked, meeting notes from six months ago, research materials for someday projects, interesting quotes, and reference content.
This information has potential value: it might be useful someday, but it doesn’t drive current business activities. Your PKM is your intellectual repository to store ideas and insights.
“Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.” — Aubrey de Grey
Here’s where the migration implications become crystal clear: PIS requires complete migration, PKM rarely requires any migration at all.
Why?
Because PIS information is actively referenced.
You need that client contract next week, that project specification tomorrow, that financial template next quarter. Break the connection to this information, and you break your operational effectiveness.
PKM information, however, is passively stored.
That article about productivity trends? You might never look at it again. Those meeting notes from last year’s conference? They’ve already served their purpose of shaping your thinking. That research on competitor analysis? The market has probably shifted anyway.
The information you think you’ll need someday rarely gets accessed, while the information you need right now demands immediate availability.
Through decades of migrations from Evernote to Craft, from Craft to Notion, from Notion to Obsidian, from Obsidian to Mem, from Mem to Tana, I’ve learned something counterintuitive: migrating PKM content is almost always a waste of time.
Instead, I start fresh in the new tool, keeping the old system as an archive. When I need something from the old system, I move it on demand.
This approach eliminates migration paralysis while keeping me focused on what matters most: completing actions, finishing projects, achieving goals.
“Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time and more tranquility.” — Marcus Aurelius
Here’s another remarkable truth: I’ve never gone back to retrieve something from an archived PKM system. Not once.
This pattern holds true for most busy professionals I’ve coached. The information we think is crucial rarely gets accessed after the initial migration panic.
But what about truly critical PKM information? The 1% that actually matters?
I apply one simple rule for truly critical PKM information: anything genuinely essential goes into a Google Doc stored in Google Drive.
Since I’ll never migrate away from Google Drive, this creates an insurance layer that gives me the freedom to experiment with any PKM tool without risk.
This approach transforms PKM migrations from complex data transfer projects into simple tool switches. You’re not moving a knowledge library; you’re just changing your note-taking/PKM tool.
The difference is crucial: your PIS still requires complete, careful migration because it contains operational information with immediate business impact. Your PKM doesn’t.
When you switch from Obsidian to Tana or Notion to Craft for knowledge management, you’re simply adopting a new interface for future thinking and note-taking.
Your past intellectual work stays safely archived, your future work gets a fresh start, and your operational work continues uninterrupted in your properly migrated PIS.
Why Your Tasks Can’t Be Archived (and the Strategy that Actually Works)
Here’s why you can’t use the same “start fresh” strategy for your action system: missing a deadline destroys your reputation, while forgetting an old article doesn’t.
Your action system isn’t just storing data. It’s managing commitments with real consequences.
That client proposal due Friday, the board presentation next week, the product launch timeline you promised your CEO. These aren’t reference materials you might need someday. These are professional obligations that define your credibility.
Action systems operate by completely different rules than information systems because they manage interconnected workflows.
A task isn’t isolated data. It connects to deadlines, dependencies, team members, and project outcomes. Break those connections during migration, and you risk catastrophic failures.
Unlike your PKM system where old content rarely gets accessed, your action system contains items that will destroy your business if ignored. Every incomplete task represents a promise you made to someone who’s counting on you.
This reality demands a fundamentally different migration strategy: complete transfer, but executed intelligently.
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” — Hans Hofmann
Most professionals reach for automated migration tools, thinking they’ll save time. This is exactly backwards.
Automated tools transfer everything indiscriminately. Active projects alongside abandoned initiatives from two years ago, current deadlines mixed with outdated commitments.
Manual migration forces conscious decisions about what deserves your attention.
Yes, it takes longer initially. But you emerge with a productivity system that reflects reality, not historical wishful thinking.
Here’s your migration hierarchy:
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Start with genuinely active projects. Initiatives with imminent deadlines, ongoing momentum, or immediate business impact. Migrate these completely: tasks, subtasks, notes, deadlines, dependencies, everything. Your active projects must function seamlessly in the new productivity system from day one.
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Then tackle secondary projects. Important but not urgent work. This is where migration becomes strategic cleanup.
Here’s where the magic happens: you’ll discover that many projects and tasks no longer make sense.
Market conditions changed, priorities shifted, or initiatives naturally concluded without formal closure. Migration becomes a forcing function for strategic clarity.
This cleanup isn’t a side benefit. It’s the most valuable aspect of action system migration. You emerge with a productivity system that perfectly represents current reality, not outdated assumptions.
The psychological impact is immediate and profound:
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Motivation returns when your productivity system shows only relevant work.
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Mental clarity increases when outdated obligations disappear.
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Focus sharpens when your daily view reflects actual priorities.
This is how you reclaim peak performance by aligning your productivity system with current reality rather than historical clutter.
The 3-Week Migration Protocol That Eliminates Paralysis Forever
Most professionals spend weeks planning their migration and never start. Others dive in randomly and create chaos. Neither approach works.
After guiding thousands of professionals through successful migrations, I’ve distilled the process into a proven 3-week protocol.
This isn’t theory; it’s the exact sequence that eliminates paralysis while protecting your business operations.
Week 1: Strategic Assessment and Critical Migration
Before touching any data, map your current tools using the ICOR® Framework. This exercise prevents weeks of wasted effort.
List every productivity tool you use.
Categorize each as Core App (Single Source of Truth), Satellite App (enhancer), or Utility App (nice-to-have).
Identify each one in the right area of the ICOR® Framework.
Focus your migration energy exclusively on Core Apps. Switching Utility Apps requires zero migration, just start using the new tool tomorrow.
For Core Apps, identify whether they’re PIS (operational information) or PKM (knowledge repository). This determines your entire migration strategy.
Execute your first migrations this week:
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PKM Systems: Start fresh in your new tool. Archive the old system. Move only genuinely critical reference materials to Google Drive as your insurance layer. Resist the migration urge: remember that 99% of old content will never be accessed.
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Action Systems: Begin with projects that have deadlines in the next 30 days. Migrate these completely: tasks, subtasks, notes, deadlines, dependencies. Your active commitments must function flawlessly from day one.
Week 2: Strategic Cleanup and Secondary Migration
Now tackle secondary projects: important but not urgent work. This is where migration becomes strategic gold.
You’ll discover projects that no longer make sense, commitments that became irrelevant, and initiatives that naturally concluded without formal closure. Don’t migrate these. Let them die naturally.
For PIS systems, migrate active operational documents: current contracts, project specifications, templates you use monthly. Archive everything else in place.
Week 3: System Optimization and Safety Protocols
Archive old systems only after confirming your new setup handles everything essential. Always test critical workflows under real conditions before cutting ties with old systems.
Document your new system architecture. Create backup protocols for genuinely critical information. Set quarterly calendar reminders to review and clean your productivity system, as migration discipline prevents future migration paralysis.
The key insight: treat migration as system optimization, not data transfer. You’re not just changing tools: you’re upgrading your entire approach to productivity.
Most professionals emerge from this protocol with cleaner productivity systems, sharper focus, and zero migration anxiety.
They’ve learned that strategic migration isn’t about preserving the past: it’s about optimizing for the future.
