Organize IT

Organize IT recap for 04th July 2008.

• There are plenty of stores written about people’s personal experiences in implementing GTD. However, what about entire business structures using the system? A guest post on GTD Times about Vakil Housing in India gives some insight into how they implemented the system across their whole company. Interestingly they have weekly GTD training sessions. Wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall for that.
• Some more Pareto principle loving for you. Thanks to The Four Hour Work Week I’m really focusing on the 80/20 rule a lot more and the emphasis on streamlining and simplifying will be a hot topic at Organize IT over the next several weeks (I’ve already touched on it in my previous post). Scott Young has several other ways you can apply the rule in your life, such as with food, reading material and emails.
• Google has a lot of tools, it’s not just about their search engine. In fact there is such a large variety of features that they offer, it’s somewhat bizarre that they don’t make more of them. College@Home has a big list covering what Google has available. Did you know they have a notebook feature and a map site for public transportation?

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GTD has helped foster a culture of indiscriminately adding to your workload due to its lack of prioritizing. As a result people spend many a time doing stuff they don’t really need to do. All the tools and systems in the world won’t make life any easier if you have a huge to-do list. How do you fit in leisure time? How can you relax and recharge your batteries? How can you focus on your work and truly enjoy what you’re doing? It’s time to get out of this silly trend. It’s time we started doing less, not more. It’s time we started doing the right things, not any thing.

Regular readers of this blog will know how effective I believe next actions are. It’s a concept I first came across in GTD and while at it’s core it essentially involves breaking your work down (hardly a new idea) it goes further in that it helps you to be clear on what exactly you are doing and what physical action is involved. David Allen describes it as, “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.” If there is one tip for being more productive that I could suggest it would be this one.

Organize IT recap for 27th June 2008.

• Thinking positively is a big deal but as with many things there is always a catch. Even with positive thinking there is always that destructive side to it that you can slip into, such as confusing positivity with trying to please everyone. Positivity Blog cover three of those such traps. I think it’s very important that the alternative side of these sorts of issues gets covered because it helps us to get the right balance, which is one of the reasons why I do my self-help myths series.
• I’ve gained a lot more interest in the 80/20 rule recently thanks to its coverage in the Four Hour Work Week so when I came across an article that applied it to what you eat I was immediately intrigued. The author worked out what 20% of his food was causing 80% of his weight gain and went from there. Just goes to show what the principle can be applied to. Have you come across any quirky implementation of it?
• What if you are organized and your partner isn’t? One of the biggest dilemmas for any de-clutterer is having to deal with a partner who doesn’t share your enthusiasm for a streamlined home. I’ve had a few emails asking for my thoughts on the issue and will be publishing a new Clutter 101 post in the near future on that very topic. In the meantime Unclutterer has some very good advice to keep you going.

Last week I discussed several techniques to help you keep promises to yourself, whether it be with sticking to your decision to work on a project or as a motivational tool in your efforts to build new habits. One of those techniques was to treat your promises almost like a business/legal contract. We don’t readily look to break those sorts of contracts so it makes sense to apply the same principle to your own personal work and growth. Shanel Yang commented on that post, using her legal background to leave a great, authentic example contract. This gave me a great idea to take that example and turn it into a contract template for everyone to use.