All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘planning’
Weekly Links for 7th of November
A weekly collection of posts and articles about productivity, time management, tools and technology.
- Setting the Scene for a Productive Day : The 99 Percent
- A Master Plan for Taking Back Control of Your Life : The 99 Percent
- Start Planning For 2012: Your Goals
- The Strange Art of Achieving More by Doing Less — Chris Garrett on New Media
- Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review
If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.
Weekly Links for 24th of October
A weekly collection of posts and articles about productivity, time management, tools and technology.
- Checking Your Personal Performance – Sources of Insight
- How to Better Control Your Time by Designing Your Ideal Week | Michael Hyatt
- Organize Your Life! – Magazine – The Atlantic
- The Future of Work is Now – YouTube
- There Are Stupid Questions
If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.
Kick start your day
The way you start a day has a big impact on how you are going to feel at the end of it. There are lots of different ways to do it and below are just two suggestions.
Free form
Some people don’t like plans, they prefer to go with their gut feeling and focus on whatever seems right in the moment. If you’re one of those below should be helpful.
Clear you mind – each morning take a piece of paper and write down the ideas, thoughts which are floating in your head.
See what stands out for your and select three items and focus your efforts on those.
Structured approach
If you follow any productivity system and you’re used to keeping various of lists, make reviewing those your priority for each day.
Sounds obvious and simple but it’s not always easy. There were many time when before I managed to open my task list I got sucked into the email and my day was gone. To prevent that and get few things done start your day with REVIEW and PLAN:
- Review your project list and pick three projects you want to move forward.
- Review your action list and select three items you want to finish first.
- Focus on the three actions first, one at a time.
- Once you’re done with those look at the projects and pick one, make as much progress as you want and them move to the next one.
Perhaps any of this won’t be easy or even possible to achieve each day but once you make a habit it will become more natural.
Do you have any tips for kick starting your day on a good note? Please share them in the comments.
Weekly Links 2nd May
A collection of posts and articles about productivity, time management, tools and technology.
- Guest Post – Managing Content w/ a Dashboard Pt. 1
- The Two Types of Procrastination
- If It Won’t Fit On A Post-It, It Won’t Fit In Your Day
- What Are Your High Value Activities?
- How to Harness the Power of Momentum
If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.
GTD Projects – summary
This is a last post it the series describing basics of GTD projects. While I don’t think I’ve covered everything that’s there it should be just enough information to get you started.
Below is the list of topics that I’ve covered.
- GTD Project Series: Natural planning model
- GTD Project series – project tools
- GTD Projects series – software list
- GTD Project Series – executing a project
Just to summarize in couple sentences the main concepts.
Firstly everything should be a project, at least every outcome that takes more that two steps. Why is that? Mainly because it forces you to keep track of all your open projects and secondly in your busy life it’s easy to drop a ball when you juggle a lot of them.
When ever you finish something you can check your project list and see what’s out there. If you’ve been tracking your projects even on a simple list, it’s almost guaranteed that you will be better at completing things and following through.
We all want clarity and whether we realize that or not, we like the routines and to follow a path. By referring to the planning model and establishing the purpose, vision and actions we are getting a clear vision of what we want to achieve and how to go about it. No need to re-think what’s next, just use the plans.
You will hear that tools are not they factor to increasing productivity and that’s true. No tool will enforce the right behaviours as you rather abandon the tool then change your habit. Yet finding a good set off applications can reduce the friction of tracking projects and actions. So as long as you don’t obsess with finding the perfect tool and master what you have spending some time searching good software will payoff.
I hope you’ve found this series useful. Please share your best practices or problems you’re facing when working on projects.