Whether you use GTD, Agile, Kanban, the Franklin/Covey Method, Leo Babauta’s Zen To Done, or some other approach to personal productivity — the key is to make sure that the approach allows you to treat everything that you need to do and want to do as personally as possible. By that I mean to treat your tasks with the highest level of attention and intention.
If you have a task that comes your way and it can be done in two minutes or less, then get it done and out of the way. It seems like a good idea, right? I’ve even offered it as productivity advice in the past. But here’s the thing: I’ve discovered that it doesn’t work.
What I have discovered is another approach that does work, all while helping stave off overwhelm and setting realistic expectations in terms of focus and achievement in my day. Something that just can’t be done in two minutes or less.
It’s been said that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. But how do you make sure you’re measuring the right things?
Whenever you’re starting something new – no matter what it is – if you want to get better at it then it’s important to see the gaps. You need to first recognize where the holes are in your game and then do what you can to fill them. Whether you fill those gaps up with new approaches, tools that can handle them, or bridging them with existing approaches and tools, you need to fill them in order to improve. And your productivity is no different.
Are you one of those people who takes a look at the projects you currently have in progress and wonder how on earth you are going to work your way through them? The amount of work that can be completed in that Pomodoro is quite staggering, especially the first time you complete one.
Some people – check that – lots of people, need to be able to pick up a device, regardless of their location and interact with their daily list of tasks. Period. No messing around with various contexts, calculating how long a task will take to complete, playing with defer dates and the like. They also want the ability to be able to add to their to-do list directly from their email as this is where a lot of their actionable tasks originate.
I used to consider myself reasonably adept when it came to using OmniFocus, a feature-rich to do list and action management application for OS X and iOS, however that opinion was blown out of the water within a few hours of reading this book.
For the past two years, Productivityist has published an annual gift guide that features gifts that won’t just help the “productivityist” get more of the right things done, but they’ll have some tools that they can use that will make the process all the more enjoyable. There are a lot of gift ideas to cover
This article, written by guest contributor Ray Sidney-Smith, originated from a conversation on Episode 142 of Workflowing. Ray is a personal productivity and GTD enthusiast, and the blogger, podcaster and organizer-facilitator behind Two Minute Rule, #ProdChat, ProdPod, Productivity Book Group, and many other productivity-inspired projects. I admit it: I am a planner. You know the
One of the most common productivity pitfalls I’ve come across is that people spend too much time in their email application than in any other application on their computer. This problem is universal, whether the user is a Windows or OS X devotee. The pull of email is strong. And it’s often strengthened by those
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