Organize IT

Focus right now is a big issue for me. Mind like water? Yeah, whatever. The golden oldie – getting in the zone – is still where it’s at. There is nothing quite like being so focused on what you’re doing that tasks just fly off your to-do list. There is a lot written about getting focused (check out my own tips), but I’ve found the most effective strategy involves cutting out distractions. While typing up this post for instance, it took me twice as long to do because I let the following three distractions break my focus:

Whatever methodology you are a fan of – whether it be Getting Things Done, Do It Tomorrow, The Four Hour Work Week or even The Power Of Less – the one bit of advice that always gets repeated by bloggers and productivity fans alike is to tailor these systems to suit your needs. Perhaps, one of the big reasons GTD is so popular and has so much written about it is because you can tweak and modify it so much.

I’m very much a pen and paper type of person. I much prefer being able to scribble a bunch of ideas down, then having to fiddle about with a laptop or PDA. That being said, there are a great many people out there who prefer the high-tech approach. This is very apparent by the number of productivity apps out there. They all claim to do many different things, some better than others, but there is yet to be any one productivity software to rule them all! Ahem…

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.

We all have habits and behaviors that get in the way of being productive. Earlier in the week I wrote about getting back to GTD basics though to achieve that involves facing up to some of the hurdles in your path that caused you to neglect those basics in the first place. On Wednesday I revisited the vertical map. One of the reasons I dropped the ball with it in the past was because I got overly fussy about making sure everything connected up. I sometimes have to overcome the need to over-analyze everything and make it all just right.