Spring Clean Your Life

April 18th 2007   Personal Development   3 comments  

We are well into Spring now and it’s at this time of year that people begin the spring clean. While this traditionally involves cleaning the home, it can also involve other aspects of your life. As we finally recover from the holiday season and begin to feel the benefits of the warmer weather, there is no better time to have a good look at your life and get everything in good shape for the rest of the year.

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Deal With Interview Nerves

April 17th 2007   Work   1 comment  

I had a job interview this morning and it gave me an idea to discuss a few pointers on how to deal with something I was feeling a lot of - nerves. There is a lot of advice out there about how to conduct an interview but what about before the interview? Everyone suffers from anxiety when it comes to them and I will tell you here and now that you can’t magically make it disappear. Instead I’ve compiled some thoughts and ideas on how to manage those nerves and ease your anxieties a little for the next time you have an interview.

• You have nothing to lose (other than the job). If you just happen to make a fool of yourself, or not come across as you would have wanted to, so what? You won’t see your interviewers ever again and at the very worst you have just wasted a few hours.
• Prepare! If you know what you want to say, what points you want to get across, where you are going, what the company is about and what the job entails, then that’s a big weight off your shoulders because as far as you’re concerned, you are prepared for whatever they throw at you.
• Take, for instance, that your interview is at 10.30 and it goes on for 30 minutes. Hold onto the thought that by 11.00 it will be all over. However the interview goes, remind yourself that in 2 hours time, 1 hours time, etc it will be done with and you can take a huge sigh of relief.
• Cope with your nerves at a physical level. Take deep, slow breaths. Also, body parts like your shoulders and jaw tense up too so loosen them up. Shake your limbs. Roll your shoulders and wriggle your jaw about.
• Get there on time. While this usually means sitting there dwelling on all that anxiety you are feeling, it is much more preferable to rushing around and panicing about being late. You can use the time to do some relaxation exercises and more preparation.
• Interviewers know interviews can be stressful, and if they have been trained at all properly, they will take measures to calm you and ease you into proceedings with casual conversation and breaker questions. Keep in mind that they want you to be relaxed as they get a better overall picture of you. Tell yourself that you aren’t going in to be interviewed by monsters :)

Organize IT Recap: Getting Finances Done, Cheaper Gas

April 15th 2007   Recap   0 comments  

Organize IT recap for 15th April 2007

• It has been quite an eventful week for Organize IT. Zen Habits listed me under his top 50 productivity blogs and I got an incredible review from A Higher Level.
• If you havn’t read my roles & responsibilities post yet then may I suggest you do. I consider it a big accompaniment to the GTD vertical map. I’ve created printable templates to accompany both posts. I’ve not had any feedback regarding these templates so if anyone has looked at them/tried them then I would love to hear your thoughts. I have quite a lot of other templates I use and I would like to put them up if there is interest for them.
• If you like Getting Things Done, they you will no doubt like Getting Finances Done. In this post he goes over how to apply GTD principles to managing your finances. Excellent read.
• Gas prices are high and they will only get more expensive as time goes by. The Free Geek has 12 good points on how you can cut back and make good savings.

How To Delegate

April 13th 2007   GTD, Work   3 comments  

With delegating, the first and most important thing to bear in mind, is whether the task is appropriate for delegating in the first place. If, for instance, you can do it better and more quickly than other people, it may not be appropriate to hand it off to someone else, and vice-versa. However, if you need to manage your time better it is a viable option. Below is a guide to how to delegate effectively:

• Explain the tasks clearly and precisely. You are the one who knows exactly what the job involves, they don’t. It’s up to you to transfer that information thoroughly.
• Remember the basic rules of productivity: explain why you are doing it and what you want the outcome to be. Just because you are delegating the task to others does not mean that they don’t need to know these details as well.
• Likewise, timeframe the task. When you delegate, you don’t then want to worry about when you will hear progress reports or how quickly things are moving forward. It allows you to be aware of progress without constantly hovering around the project.
• Explain why you are giving the task to the persons involved, what they can get out of it and what their boundaries are. This way they are clear about what is expected of them as individuals/as a team.
• Give the people you delegate to the responsibility of the project. If you are telling people exactly what to do, micromanaging the project and not allowing for any initiative that is not delegating. Rather than seeing it as doing a project for someone else, it becomes personal to them with all the responsibilities and expectations that accompany it.
• Give recognition! The key is to be positive and when criticism is required be constructive with it. Let them know where things are going wrong and discuss together how it can be rectified (if you just tell them how to fix it you are no longer delegating, as mentioned in the previous point).

GTD Dictionary: Organization

April 11th 2007   GTD Dictionary   2 comments  

Organization:

1. Something that has been made into an ordered whole
2. An organized structure for arranging or classifying
3. Orderliness by virtue of being methodical and well organized

GTD allows for you to organize your thoughts into actionable projects and encourages you to get everything off your mind. The mind is not an organizing tool, you can’t rely on it to remind you about things when you need it to, it doesn’t neatly put everything into neat little compartments; you need a system that takes all this content out of your mind and organizes it for you, whether it be on paper or on a laptop.

The system needs to be quick and simple to use. There is no motivation to use something that is a burden. You want to be able to take it out and write down your thoughts in seconds (yes, seconds!). If you have to wait for something to boot up, go through loads of menus to get where you want or flick through hundreds of pieces of paper then the system will fail.

Likewise, the system needs to be accessible. Thoughts can occur at any time. If you are walking down the street or sat in a cafe how are you going to make notes if your system is so cumbersome you had to leave it at home? Similarly it should not be overly reliant on technology.