The vertical map, otherwise known as the horizons of focus, is a key element of GTD yet it is very often neglected, probably because the GTD book does not go into any great detail about it. As such, much of it is open to interpretation and you will find people using it in different ways. Below I’ve tried to condense some of these interpretations with my own personal thoughts on the matter to hopefully give you all a more clear idea of how it can be used. It is quite possible that a lot of you may have alternative approaches to what I have described, so I would be interested in reading your comments on this.

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Organize IT recap for 1st April 2007.

• My Clutter 101 series has been by far the most popular content here and as it is quite clearly a big issue for many of you I am going to continue expanding it and covering more tips on how to get organized. In the future I hope to compile them all together in one handy package. Keep an eye out for it. UPDATE: You can now view my Clutter 101 ebook.
• Did you know there is another GTD book out there? It’s true. It was published in 1976, was written by Edwin Bliss and is all about the ABC’s of time management. LifeClever has four pieces of advice from it and it’s really fascinating to see that such productivity concepts like Parkinson’s Law were being actively discussed over two decades ago. Goes to show that this whole productivity games isn’t as new as we like to think!
• If you ever have trouble getting into GTD then maybe you need a GTD-lite approach so you can learn the basic principles. Or better yet, give WSD (otherwise known as Writing S**t Down) a try! I like the idea of this even if it is slightly tongue in cheek. It’s all paper based. You just carry around index cards and a pen and jot down thoughts as they occur to you. GTD isn’t quite so simple, but is there a reason for that?

It seems that mind mapping is a hot topic at the moment with a lot of sites discussing it. In contrast to this, having covered my own experiences of mind mapping recently I have now hit a brick wall. Beyond doing rough scribbled mind maps in my notepads for brainstorming purposes I have not had any other practical use for it. My hope was to implement mind maps in my GTD system. For instance, I would have a sheet of paper for each project with a mind map of all relevant next actions. However, I found that nothing beats a simple to-do list.

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Welcome to the second part of my Clutter 101 series. In the introductory post I covered why we actually clutter and what thought processes go through our head to justify being so unorganized. In this post I will now look at the actual process of de-cluttering, whether it be a mini project to get back on top of it all, or whether it is the first time you are de-cluttering and you are going to be jumping in at the deep end. I will cover the preparatory work you can do so you don’t get overwhelmed by it all and then look at the physical process of disposing of your junk and organizing what remains.

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Yes, it may well be an advert for margarine (we’ll ignore that fact) but it’s a very amusing advert and it makes some really pertinent points about being proactive and taking responsibility… OK, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s still funny!