Over at Productivity501 I was invited to participate in a group email interview. It was a great privilege to be involved in this as there were a lot of popular productivity blogs included in it, such as Zen Habits and Pick The Brain. The various responses to the questions are very interesting and I highly suggest you check them out. In this post I thought I would go over my answers and share my thinking behind them.
The first question in the interview was, “What is the single biggest way people waste time without even realizing it?” You can see my answer below, and the full collection of everybody’s answers is here.
Not de-cluttering and simplifying their lives. Knowing where everything is saves on time and stress, compared to having to dig around in a drawer, cupboard or even something as small as your wallet (stuffed with receipts) to find what you are after.
I had to pick this as my example because I see first hand how much more effective a de-cluttered home and office can be (which is all covered in my ongoing Clutter 101 series). My partner unfortunately does not take much interest in this side of organization and she leaves it up to me to keep the home de-cluttered. I like to feel that I justify my obsession with this whenever she struggles to find any of her stuff and I am able to immediately know where everything is!
The second question was, “What change has made the most difference in making you effective in life?” Again, you can view the answers from other bloggers here and a copy of my response is below.
Starting something and finishing it. I used to start lots of projects without concentrating on finishing, hence I would end up with loads of projects on the go at once. Now, if I start a next action I will make sure as much as possible to get it done in one session. That way I can get it off my mind and stop worrying about it.
As Mark, the owner of Productivity501, says in response, a lot of this is down to creating the right sized project or sub-project. It’s all about scale. If you have a big project that involves building a house, you can’t spend two months endlessly working on it just so you can get it off your mind. But in contrast you can’t break down projects to such an extent that all your next actions take less than minutes to do. You can read my next actions guide to help in defining them better.
June 19, 2007 News & Updates
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