Organize IT

When it comes to being productive – much like anything in life – there is no one definitive way of doing things. Approaches covered in books like Getting Things Done and The Four Hour Work Week provide a solid framework and best practise for effective and efficient productivity but they don’t cover everything. One of the biggest tips you’ve probably been taught from an early age is to plan. Plan, prepare, do your research. Only fools rush in, after all.

Today I’m releasing my second ebook, called Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done. It is based on my popular productivity tips series here at the blog, but expanded and improved for an ebook release. I originally started the series as a way of collecting all those random thoughts and ideas on becoming more efficient into one place. It’s often these small tips and tweaks – which don’t really form part of a fancy system or methodology – that make the biggest difference in your life. Seeing as a I recently published my tenth tip it seemed like an appropriate milestone to bring the collection so far together for an ebook.

Organize IT recap for 16th January 2009.

• On Monday I plan to release my next ebook. In a similar vein to my Clutter 101 book, this will be a radically updated and expanded collection of my productivity tips series to date. I plan to do several more ebooks as that series grows. There will be a small price to pay but I hope you find it’s more than worth it. The link to purchase it will be released to my RSS subscribers first so be sure to join in to stay in the loop!
• In typical Daily Mail fashion the headline is slightly misleading, but apparently scientists say depression is good for you. There is quite a difference between depression and just having the blues, but the point is embracing our miserable side rather than medicating it can leave us more motivated to improve our lives when we come through the other side. This is something I’ve considered for a while. Whenever I’ve had a rough few days or weeks I always find myself much more motivated when things start to pick up. What are your thoughts on this contentious issue?
• Gone are the days when I’d simply bookmark sites in the browser itself. Now I use Delicious and because I can tag all my links it makes things much more organized. With this in mind, Ken Clark has several clever ways for using Delicious to get things done. For instance, you can keep a list of books to read by bookmarking the relevant pages at Amazon.
• The Four Hour Work Week is one of my favorite productivity books, nearly up there with GTD. The parts about the 80/20 rule and Parkinson’s law, while fairly simply, have made a big difference to me. However, the rest of the book is a bit patchy. Trying to achieve an exciting, alternative lifestyle is great until the day-to-day practicalities start to kick in. Katy at Flipping Heck! brings up one such example regarding using email autoresponders. What is your take on The Four Hour Work Week?

On Monday I wrote about the self-help myth of working hard and playing hard, a cute little line that has been propagated by businesses and especially universities around the world to show that – yes – you can have the best of both worlds. You can work your ass off to get a good degree or great pay packet and still find the time to have lots of crazy fun. As the sage Andrew W.K. once said, when it’s time to party we will always party hard.

Working hard and playing hard is a very popular saying nowadays. Actually to many people it’s more than a saying, it’s a way of life. Not too long ago Salford University used it as a basis for one of their adverts. Because we spend so much time working it’s only natural that we should find an equally demanding form of release that we can fit into the little time we have left for ourselves. What better way to play hard than to go out on a weekend, down copious amounts of alcohol, and eventually stagger home at 6AM?  The problem with working hard is it’s a surefire way to burn out and the problem with playing hard is… it’s also a surefire way to burn out. You see the problem?