Organize IT

The GTD vertical map (or horizon of focus) has always stood out like a sore thumb. It’s a neat idea and can certainly offer a lot of value to people, but in a book that focuses so much on the here-and-now, it just feels tagged on with too little detail on it. I decided it was about time it was really addressed but as I thought about it and tried to really implement it, something occurred to me. It actually kinda sucks.

July is a big month for me and for Organize IT. Most importantly, I will be getting married but don’t think I will leave the blog without any updates. I’m currently lining up some guest posts from my favorite bloggers and top commentors. Hope you enjoy having a few different voices, ideas and perspectives to read about. On top of all this I will also be releasing my first ebook! However, this post is meant to be about the best content from last month. In June I released a new tool and dedicated a week to my productivity tips series. If you missed any of these posts please check them out and leave a comment.

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.