Organize IT

I read an interesting point in a book called Dejunk Your Life by Helen Foster which makes an interesting point about how working full time can actually be more expensive. In theory doing more hours means more money, especially if you get paid by the hour. However, 40+ hours a week is a lot regardless of any other factors and it means you have to give more consideration to such things as travel, food and especially childcare. Helen Foster claims the average worker spends around £3000 a year on actively going to work and that can seriously make a dent in all that money you would otherwise make from long hours/overtime.

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.

David Allen of GTD fame says that one of the key reasons we get bogged down with a project is because we don’t have our next actions worked out properly. In GTD a next action is literally the next step you need to take to move a project forward. Because next actions are so critical (I personally find them to be the top bit of advice I’ve gathered from GTD) and can be used in all aspects of your life, regardless of what systems you use, I thought I would collate the four key rules you should follow to make defining next actions a breeze.

This always happens to me. Those magazines show up everywhere. On my table, in my filing cabinet, under my bed… it’s like they have a life of their own!

Most people when they are young will often go for a fun and unique email address. For instance, I used to choose email addresses based on song titles. It was fine at the time but nowadays when people ask me for it, it’s actually quite inconvenient. Plus there is the perception it can give off. Have you ever looked at someone’s resume or business card and noticed their email address was something quirky like crazychickxxx@genericmail.us? Has it altered your perception of that person? While I’m sure most people wouldn’t use an email address like xxxhardcore@ubermail.com to publicize themselves, in your opinion does having a sensible email like peterparker@hotmail.com over a more imaginative one have much influence? What about if you’re in a creative field?