Every system or tool you have setup to organize your life, whether it be the filing cabinet at work, the drawer in the kitchen or your home cleaning schedule, will ultimately flourish or fall apart depending on how easily it functions in three key areas: inputting, tracking and deleting.

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When I originally started Organize IT, one of the main things I focused was on my collection of productivity templates that I had designed. One of the problems I had with tools like Filofax was that the sheets and refills did not fit my vision of an ideal GTD system or suit my specific needs. Thus, the logical step was to design my own sheets. I wanted them to be as low maintenance as possible to save on printing costs and I wanted enough variety to cover all circumstances. For too long I’ve left them lying around on my computer which is a waste quite frankly, so from today I am going to start putting them all up on the site for everyone to use. For all the latest updates and download links you can go to this specially created page. The first batch of templates I am putting up are listed below. If you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions then please get in touch, and be sure to let me know if you find them useful :)

• Contacts list A4 A5
• Next actions list A4 A5
• Phone numbers A4 A5
• Roles & responsibilities A4 A5
• Vertical map A4 A5
• Weekly planner A4 A5
• Priority matrix A4 A5

Last week a reader asked if he could see a filled in example of my weekly planner so he could understand it better. I am more than happy to do that. You can view an example of a completed planner here, complete with a carefully chosen handwritten font for that authentic, filled in look :) I’ve only filled in Monday to emphasize my new habit of only planning out one day at a time. If you have any other questions about the example sheet or the planner in general, leave a comment and I will gladly answer it.

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Over at Lifehack.org they have an article discussing why plans fail and provides several ideas on how to more effectively and flexibly plan so as to avoid those bumps in the road. This has come at a convenient time for me as over the last month I have noticed how despite planning everything out on my weekly planner it got to the point where I ended up not actually working on much of it.

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A little over a week ago Lifehack.org had a very interesting article looking at five productivity ideas the author, Dustin Wax, was not yet buying into. I found it to be a very well written, intriguing read that encouraged a lot of thought. Here’s my opinions on the five ideas.

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