Organize IT recap for 15th April 2007

• It has been quite an eventful week for Organize IT. Zen Habits listed me under his top 50 productivity blogs and I got an incredible review from A Higher Level.
• If you havn’t read my roles & responsibilities post yet then may I suggest you do. I consider it a big accompaniment to the GTD vertical map. I’ve created printable templates to accompany both posts. I’ve not had any feedback regarding these templates so if anyone has looked at them/tried them then I would love to hear your thoughts. I have quite a lot of other templates I use and I would like to put them up if there is interest for them.
• If you like Getting Things Done, they you will no doubt like Getting Finances Done. In this post he goes over how to apply GTD principles to managing your finances. Excellent read.
• Gas prices are high and they will only get more expensive as time goes by. The Free Geek has 12 good points on how you can cut back and make good savings.

Organize IT recap for 08th April 2007.

• If your computer is on the way out and you want to get rid of it, then you should give careful thought to properly wiping your hard-drive because a format simply won’t cut it. In case you didn’t know, when you delete a file it’s not really deleted. You are simply removing any link to it so that your computer can install something else over it in the future. With the right software it’s possible to view these files. The Washington Post has a detailed guide to make sure you really protect your privacy.
• In the near future offline software will become defunct and you will do everything online, from saving your files to doing office work. While we are some way off having a online app with the depth of Microsoft Word, there are plenty of options out there for creating a basic setup. Lifehack.org has a great guide on how to create an operating system within a browser (Firefox OS?) using Google apps to do all your work online.

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?

Organize IT recap for March 24th 2007.

• Ever spend half your night stuck waiting at the bar to order your drinks? I am sure all you readers from the UK can vouch for how bad Friday and Saturday nights in particular are, so these little tips on how to get served quickly should come in quite handy. I personally find just trying to make eye contact with the barperson to be very effective.
• Lifehacker has some good suggestions on how to make MS Word less annoying. My personal suggestion? Just download OpenOffice instead! It certainly feels a lot less bloated and obtrusive.
• Scott Young has written a post giving suggestions on how to read more quickly and includes such ideas as using a pointer and removing distractions. Having recently joined a library and doubled the amount of books I’m reading this is useful advice. However, isn’t it a shame that we feel to the need to speed up our reading. Can’t we just take our time and enjoy a book anymore?
• I came across an interesting tool the other day called Thinking Rock. I’m not normally interested in hi-fi tools for managing my system and has such I may be going over old news. Either way I just feel it needs a mention because it looks much more simple and effective compared to most other productivity software, and I may just have to give it a go. Anybody out there tried it and have thoughts to share?

Organize IT recap for 17th March 2007.

• The book Your Best Year Yet that I mentioned in my post on the productivity cycle also threw up some interesting stuff on roles and how to define them. I have been trying to work this thinking into the GTD vertical map and seeing as I have been meaning to write about these different levels (50,000ft, 40,000ft etc) expect a few posts in the near future on this area. If you have any experiences/thoughts on the vertical map (otherwise known as horizons of focus) then please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear about it.
• I’ve recently joined the Getting Things Done feed which you can subscribe to here. It is a pretty large feed incorporating all the other feeds from the many GTD, productivity related blogs out there. This is where I make a little plea for readers to subscribe to both the GTD feed and Organize ITs individual feed because its very encouraging to see the subscription stats increasing everyday.
• Daily PlanIt had some nice words to say about Organize IT recently so I feel its only fair to return the favour and suggest you go check her blog out. The Discover U series is especially worth checking out.
• I found this post about scheduling play first rather interesting, especially because recently I have been writing a lot about making sure you create and schedule rewards for your work. I’ve bought the first two series of House M.D. recently and I’m struggling to do anything else other than watch that so maybe I should try scheduling a ‘playtime’ for it instead.