My Argument Against Batching Your Work

November 19th 2008   Productivity   12 comments

Batching your work is one of the most common productivity tips out there. However, I’ve always had a little problem with it. Batching turns small, individual tasks into big, time consuming projects. Whenever I do any work I look to break it down so that I can do one individual element at a time, which makes it both comparatively easy and quick to do. Batching achieves the opposite.

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8 Simple Ways To Get On Track And Keep Your Focus

November 17th 2008   Personal Development   2 comments

For all the tips and advice on being productive that are out there, it’s all useless if you cant focus on what you’re doing. To be productive is to do your work as efficiently and in as stress-free a way as possible but you can’t do any of that if your mind keeps flicking to other things every five minutes. Having had my own struggles with focus recently (more on that later in the article) I thought I’d share my own tips on how I got back on track.

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A Year Ago On Organize IT: Trim Your To-Do List, Key Rules For Organizing Systems And Should You Simplify Your Life?

November 14th 2008   Featured Content   0 comments

A year ago on Organize IT you were reading:

The Three Key Rules For Any Organizing System
“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.”

Simplifying Our Lives: Is It A Lost Cause?
“One thing that has always niggled away at the back of my mind when focusing on a simplified life is that all the practices seem to run contrary to the way society is evolving. If you think we have demands on our time or are overwhelmed with information and choice now, it will only get worse in the future. Rather than trying to fight (an arguably losing war) with this inevitability by simplifying everything, should we not be learning to deal with?”

10 Ways To A Slim And Trim To-Do List
“Your to-do list is not the place for putting general reminders, even if you do phrase it into the form of a next action. For instance, don’t put down ‘go to dentists at 9AM’ or ‘buy milk from the supermarket.’ That’s what calendars and shoppings lists are for.”

GTD Dictionary: Someday/Maybe

November 12th 2008   GTD Dictionary   0 comments

Someday/maybe:

• At an indefinite time in the future.
• A possibility or uncertainty.

Someday/maybe covers a list of tasks that you intend to reassess in the future, but have no immediate intentions to act on them because they are currently outside the scope of your day-to-day life. They include interests like learning a new language, buying a particular book, building a new extension on your home or even taking a hiking trip across Europe… basically all those ideas and plans that you don’t have the time, information, inclination or capability to pursue today. For instance, the hiking trip would first rely on you building up some savings. You can’t fly over to Europe immediately but someday, maybe you’ll be able to do it.

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5 Ways To Make Christmas Shopping Easy This Year

November 10th 2008   Health & Lifestyle   4 comments

Christmas will soon be upon us again and even though it’s early November my wife and I are already looking at shopping for presents. Every year it ends up being the same process; we get too many gifts, spend too much money and general get overwhelmed by the whole process… trying to buy presents for dozens of people can do that to you. But not this year! I’ve got a plan and in this post I’ll detail my stress-free suggestions on buying presents.

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