Organize IT

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.

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.

Organize IT recap for 07th November 2008.

• Lifehack.org has a great look at productivity myths that hold you back. This is well worth a read because, as with most things in life, those little myths are often what holds you back. For instance, one such myth is that you need inspiration to work. This is the sort of logic that causes people to never move forward with anything in their lives. Inspiration and creativity always comes as long as you just start working.
• Unsurprisingly, everybody seems to be talking about Barack Obama at the moment. I guess being president elect will have that effect on you. GTD In Academia picked up on a very interesting New York Times piece covering an overheard conversation between Obama and the Tory leader David Cameron during a trip to the UK. It’s very intriguing because of the rare insight into how politicians work and stay productive.
• The September Issue of Fortune Magazine reviewed three productivity gurus, Stephen Covey, David Allen and James Loehr. Thanks to Rob Thompson, you can now view it online. The article provides a nice summary of each system and further emphasizes the point that no one system will fit your life entirely.
• What is the best time management advice ever? Is it to keep track of the work you’re doing? Or does it involve cutting out those bad, time wasting habits? If you think it’s the latter, then according to the Big Fat Guru you may be on the right track. In fact, he claims the best time management advice ever is to… watch less TV. When you consider that the average person in the UK watches 28 hours of TV a week, it’s hard not to agree.

Effective:

• Producing or capable of producing an intended result.
• Doing something adequately to accomplish a purpose.

Effectiveness is all about doing the right things. While what projects and tasks one can class as appropriate to do will vary between situations and individuals, the general rule of thumb is to determine how much value the task will provide to you (or the company) by doing it. If attending a conference full of open minded people will lead to lots of new clients, that is an high value task making good use of your time and energy. However, if you were to start randomly ringing people up from your phonebook in the hopes of raising business that would be a poor choice of task, likely to result in minimal rewards for the amount of time it sucks up.

A few weeks ago I took a look at time management strategies. However, human nature being what it is, one minute you wish you had more time to get stuff done, and then you wish time would speed up so you can get out of a boring meeting or not have to wait around so long at the airport. Delays and queues are rife in our lives nowadays. However, you don’t have to be a victim to such frustrating circumstances. Below I’ve detailed some of the strategies I use to make a boring trip or a tedious wait in the till queue go that little bit quicker.