Organize IT

Bit of a quiet month at Organize IT because I was on honeymoon but big thanks to my guest posters for keeping things ticking along. Below as ever, are the most popular posts from over the last month. Please check out my updated trigger list and the review of Making It All Work if you haven’t already. I’d be keen to hear your own thoughts on David Allen’s new book. Thanks!

A trigger list contains a large selection of keywords. Whenever you are doing a weekly review or just want to clear your head, the trigger list is there to do exactly as its name implies and trigger those thoughts and ideas floating around in your mind. GTD fans will understand the significance of this as it strongly encourages you to capture pretty much everything in your head into a trusted system.

Over the last few days I’ve been reading through Making It All Work, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Getting Things Done. For somebody who writes a lot about productivity and personal growth here at Organize IT, I often have a hard time reading such books. Most advice you get from them can be distilled down considerably, but of course a fifteen page book wouldn’t sell so well. However, I found MIAW a comparative joy to read. It not only discusses how GTD works but how the mind works when it comes to doing stuff. It’s so full of common-sense discussion. Rather than thinking, “That’s a great idea but personally I’d do it differently,” like I get with most books, I find myself nodding along in agreement at what Allen has written. It’s difficult, after all, to argue with common-sense.

Organize IT recap for 20th February 2009.

• The productivity backlash seems to be continuing, with Jonathan at Illuminated Mind taking an excellent look at why it’s a huge waste of time. This is probably one of the best reads on the issue in a long while, though it brings up an interesting point about the definition of productivity in general. I’ve long since moved away from the more business-y perspective of productivity (measuring my performance based on how much I get done, for instance), even though I still use the term to describe what I do now. What is your definition of (personal) productivity?
• The more people I talk to the more I find that they are  increasingly turning to good old pen and paper to get organized. As if to emphasize the point Kevin Brune shared his GTD evolution from cellphones and Blackberries to a totally paper based setup. Of particular note is how he says he prefers being able to physically cross out a completed task, which is in my opinion should be a key motivational element of any setup.
• Making It All Work is a couple of months old by now but if you’ve yet to check the book out Bnet has an entire feature including a video of Allen personally explaining it. Be sure to check out my own review on Monday!
• I like Muji stationary and storage devices. Don’t know how popular they are because I’ve not heard anyone else mention them before but I recently found out that they had released something called the Chronotebook. It’s basically a blank notebook but each page has a analog clock print in the middle. As the article says, it’s the simplest manifestation of what a day planner is all about: time on paper. I want one!

I recently read Making It All Work, the followup to Getting Things Done. I’ll be writing up my thoughts about in next week but in the meantime I want to take a look at an aspect of GTD that I don’t think has really been discussed before. As I was working my way through MIAW, Allen discussed the process of filing and organizing projects and how you shouldn’t be afraid to use plenty of folders, letter trays and other stationary to get sorted… but how  much does that cost? Consider the video of him showing us around his office for some idea of what I mean.