Too Many Tools and You Won't Use Them
January 8, 2010 in Productivity
My friend Amber Naslund shares a post on how she stays organized and manages her workflow.
Naslund does a lot of traveling and spends a ton of time online, interacting with people for her personal- and professional lives.
Read her story:
Project Management and the Dynamite Philosophy | Altitude Branding
Too many tools and you won’t use them. I need a few simple functions: idea capturing, task management, information/communication management, and scheduling. I found a simple tool for each that works, but isn’t complex. More than that bogs down my pace.
How I Organize and WorkflowNot an exhaustive list, but because so many people asked, maybe a couple of these tips or tricks are helpful.
1. Again, I organize my information by project rather than task type. It helps me to know that everything and anything related to my blog goes into one bucket. Anything related to, say, building an online community for Radian6 goes in another.
2. If an email has a to-do in it – either explicit or implied – it’s added to the list and either deleted or archived (if it has information I need later). If that info is brief, I’ll copy it into the notes of the task in Things and delete the email. If it’s just an FYI or informational, I decide I either need that info for later (label and archive), or I’ve absorbed it and can delete it. Keeps the inbox shallow.
3. When I take meeting notes, I always have a spot on the page for tasks that I capture throughout the meeting. At the end of the call or meeting, I transfer those to Things and track them there. Then I can forget about the notes except as reference.
4. I only set deadlines on my tasks in Things when they really have them. I find that I don’t stick to arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines, so I just don’t bother. I tackle the deadline items first, then review the rest of the list and pick the next most logical (or attractive) thing to work on. Which brings me to…
5. When you get stuck, do the work that flows most easily. Busy work or otherwise. It’s the momentum that’s important.
Read the whole thing: Project Management and the Dynamite Philosophy
