Organize IT

Welcome to the second part of my guide covering prioritizing by needs, where tasks are prioritized by whether you need, should, or just want to do them. I’ve already introduced the concept and last week I discussed tasks you want to do. Today I am going to look at the next stage in the system, things you should do.

This is a guest post by Chris Bowler.

I recently returned to work after four months of parental leave. Four months does not seem like a long time, but it was long enough that I forgot about some of the aspects of working on a larger team in the same physical location. Specifically, I had forgotten just how many interruptions there are at the office. In comparison, even three kids at home were no match for the number of interlopers appearing at my office door. How does a person remain productive in the face of these distractions? What I’m going to say here is common sense, but I needed to remind myself of these ideas and thought other folks could use them as well.

Organize IT recap for 15th August 2008.

• You may have noticed that I’ve sneaked in a new design for the site to freshen things up, seeing as the old one was a year old and looked really cluttered. It’s very much a work in progress and I will be tweaking, adding and removing bits over the next several weeks. I like it, I hope you do too. Let me know your thoughts and feedback on it.
• There is a new productivity blog out there with some big names behind it, called Work.Life.Creativity. What makes this one special and different from the crowd is the active forum community, which I will regularly be posting on. There are some great ideas, great discussion and great people on there so I definitely recommend you check it out.
• If you haven’t checked out my new, free ebook covering how to de-clutter your life, please do! I’m going to be turning my attention back towards the topic of clutter soon, but in the meantime I have came across a Reader’s Digest article that covers 75 storage tips for each and every room in your home. Because how you store your possessions is one of the keys to effectively de-cluttering, it will certainly give you some ideas.
• How do I describe this site? The blog covers how to improve and accelerate your learning potential through a combination of mindmaps and life coaching principles. The mindmaps on it are incredible and well worth a browse. There is some deep stuff to delve into if you have the time.
• Tea is nowadays becoming a standard part of any healthy lifestyle thanks to more exotic variations like green, black and oolong teas. Personally, I’m a big fan of green tea, if only for the simple reason I think it tastes nicer. Men’s Fitness has a short but sweet look at these three types of tea and covers what the exact benefits are.

A few months ago I started experimenting with a different form or prioritizing, where tasks are prioritized by whether I need, should, or just want to do them. While this is hardly a radical departure from traditional forms of prioritizing, I do find it to be much more flexible (for instance, you don’t need to do something when the deadline is a long time away) and in line with basic commonsense. I’ve introduced the concept but now I want to expand on it. In the first part of this regular guide I take a look at the lowest (I use the word loosely) level of the hierarchy, which covers items you want to do.

Recently, it occurred to me that there are four practices in my life that I use to great effect. I’m so used to thinking in terms of fully systems like GTD that I hadn’t thought about individual methods and practises that I use. Below I’ve detailed them and discuss how they all work together to great effect. As part of this it would be very interesting to see what you would choose as your four techniques, tools or ideas that boost your productivity. Share them in the comments!