• You shoes- do you really need 10 or 20 or 80 pair of shoes
• Your books – see my previous blog post
• Your DVD’s or CD’s (guilty here) major sign of procrastination
• Your stamp collection unless you’re Hercule Poirot
• Anything that doesn’t lead to an increase in productivity or a simplification of life

In all seriousness it’s OK to organize some of these things but you must stop and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is this really procrastination?
2. How will this lead to me saving time or adding measurable productivity to my life or work.
3. Even if this needs to be organized is it a priority to do it right now?

If you’re stuck, then sometimes action of any kind will help you get moving and achieve little successes. In that case pull out the books and clean out the pantry. Take the dog for a walk or mow the grass. Lift some boxes and sweat a little, then quickly get back to the things that matter today.

I am terrible at this and that’s exactly why I’m writing it.

This is a two part answer and the answer is never the same for two totally different people. I spent many years thinking of perfect solutions, when there are no perfect solutions. Even though I believe in principles which can work for everyone, the means or method may not. Want to watch a cool video that explains this in unique way.

I used to be a big time list maker, note taker, write on a calendar and planner kind of guy. About a year ago, I completely went digital with all my lists and to do’s and everything else. Before that I read David Allen’s GTD book, and I decided to try it with paper and folders. The system worked, but so many of my projects didn’t work that way. I was using Basecamp to work on my biggest current project, and I had found Backpack to be so useful in managing just about everything else. Well I love 37 signals aforementioned products and use them more than any other applications except Google. I don’t plan on stopping my use of them, but actually probably increasing it. What I did realize a few months back was notebooks and small pocket notepads are still the best way for me to capture a quick list, idea or thought. It is still the best way for me to draw out a mindmap or brainstorm a project to determine next actions. I was inspired yet again by a very digital guy, who still says the pen and pad trump typing in a web based application. If it takes me 5 minutes to locate my laptop, open it, wait a second to refresh my wireless connection, open up backpack, find the appropriate page and then type out my thought, it will always lose to grabbing my moleskin notepad out of my back pocket or my notebook and getting the thought out of my head. Earl Nightingale was famous for saying that ideas are like wet slippery fish. I have found that to be true. The only substitute for the Moleskin back pocket notepad for me, has been using the digital recorder on my cell phone. The only problem I encountered was that when I did a weekly review, which was about as often as I would check my little digital notes to self, I would have to replay the message and type it out into backpack. I didn’t like the extra step. It wasn’t my typing skills either. I type over 45 WPM, which isn’t ground breaking but it’s not slow either.

I have decided to use Backpack more for reference, personal projects, sharing pages with customers (works great to develop a word press site- although I’m experimenting with Basecamp for that right now) and someday maybe categories. I use my large moleskin notebook to record video ideas, blog architecture, mindmaps of my marketing plan and many other things. I use my small notepad to list my next actions for the day and to make quick notes throughout the day. I take both of these and review them as collection buckets during my weekly review session (for GTD’ers). I am trying to use Tim Ferris note taking system linked above, but I haven’t mastered the techniques or organization just yet. I use a new page for each day in my small notebook.

GTD suggests that you limit your amount of collection buckets. This is hard to do in a digital world but right now I’m trying to work within these parameters.

• Gmail-  Incoming messages, outgoing messages, waiting for, read/reviews, and next actions
• Google Reader- I read my feeds with this tool and use share and star as my filtering mechanism
• Delicious- it helps to have some broad tags like toreview, toread, toblog more on this in a future post
• Backpack- helps me stay on top of personal projects, customer projects and someday maybes
• Physical inbox- I still get mail, papers, business cards and other non-digital items that must be reviewed
• Large Moleskin- project notes, ideas, creative development, mind maps
• Small Moleskin- daily notes, reference, passwords to be indexed, phone numbers to be indexed
• Whiteboard- I have one behind my desk to record ideas when I’m working at my computer

A case could be made for Stumble Upon, if you really want the community to work as it should. I’m not there yet.

Also I like to review my reference folders using a File Map. If any name on the list prompts me with an open loop, I’ll take it through the GTD process.

Hope this helps. Maybe it’s not for you, but maybe it is for you.

I don’t like to eat fast food, even though my lack of will power leads me there a little more often than I would like. When I am on the road or in a different area of town, I usually opt for McDonalds. Why McDonalds? Why not Burger King, Arby’s, A&W, Hardees, Rally’s, or a million other restaurants? Well the reason I choose McDonalds is because their franchise model seems to me to be the most duplicatable and therefore the most predictable. If I go into a McDonalds in Louisville or stop at one off of I-65 on the way to Atlanta; the service, the cleanliness and the food is very similar and very predictable. Sure there are exceptions, but I find that is not the case with the more loosely organized franchise restaurants. When too much autonomy happens in the restaurant business, you see a line wrapped all the way around a restaurant even though they are not nearly as busy as McDonalds during lunch. You get a burger on a stale piece of bread with wilted lettuce. You get home and your food is not in the bag. You get a flat coke. You get a pain in the neck. I have never sent a plate back at a restaurant, so I am not hard to please when it comes to food. When systems are documented and tested, the franchise owner doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. He just follows the system. Sure McDonalds has changed the systems that Ray Kroc put in place some years ago, but the point is that they have a system, they teach a system and they follow a system. When a problem arises they fix the system. How does this apply to your small business, practice, non profit or home business? Are your services predictable? I know mine need some work from time to time.

Organization is futile without developing the proper habits and mindset. Call it a new philosophy about stuff, or a call it whatever you like. The fact remains- if you organize your home, your email, your systems, your finances, your garage, your files, your office, your iphone, your computer, your calendar or your life; they will probably become disorganized very quickly if you don’t work hard to develop new habits and a new mindset.

Here are the most important tips I can summarize to get you moving with small daily improvements in your organization quotient.

1. Eliminate- the more you eliminate off your calendar, next actions list, projects list- the more you eliminate from your office, home, finances, and life in general the simpler you will make it to keep organized.
2. Seek simplicity- if there is a complicated way to o something and a simple way, choose the simple way. Go for the big picture. Sometimes simple may cost a little more on the surface but after you look at the hidden costs ( opportunity cost, cost of time, cost of gas, cost of diffusion, cost of distraction) you’ll come out ahead by choosing a simpler more focused option.
3. Organize your stuff. After step 1 and 2 you shouldn’t have that much stuff left to organize. The proper process to organize just about anything (hat tip to all professional organizers like myself, NAPO and where I first learned this system- Julie Morgenstern) is as follows. Sort by putting like items together by association, then Purge by tossing, selling, giving away or recycling, then Assign the remaining items a home, then Containerize the items in their home, then continually Assess your system.
4. Put your stuff back in it’s home right now. Form the habit of picking up your stuff and putting it back after you use it. We teach our kids this right? Put you toys up before we go to bed. Put your books in your locker before you leave school. Put the dishes in the sink. Put those toys up before you get more out. So, my theory is that if we teach it to our kids you better do it yourself or you’re a hypocrite and kids are the best hypocrite detectors. Not to mention the fact that your life will be less stressful when you know where things are.
5. Implement David Allen’s GTD system to handle the rest of your productivity concerns. This system will help you organize your thoughts and close the open loops in your mind. It will teach you to collect your information with various tools, to process this information and then how to act on it. You’ll create next actions lists, tickler file systems, project plans and lots of other helpful systems for increased personal productivity.

I have blogged about one of my favorite characters in TV/literature on my personal blog at bryceraley.com. Over the next few weeks I’m pointing out some of the effective habits of the famous sleuth Hercule Poirot. If you have never seen Poirot or read anything from Agatha Christie you may want to read my past post here.

As I was watching an episode this week (I have the entire A&E series on DVD), I noticed how Hercule Poirot was a masterful delegator. Whether he is dictating a letter to Mrs. Lemon (his secretary) or sending Captain Hastings on a fact finding mission, Poirot exhibits the following traits.

1. First he is precise. He gets on topic fast.
2. Second he is direct. He doesn’t add extraneous details.
3. Third he is decisive. He makes his mind up and then communicates with confidence.
4. Fourth he clarifies. He makes sure the task is understood. He listens to input but is the ultimate decider.
5. He does all this politely. He says thanks and earns the respect of his assistants.

I haven’t mastered delegation yet. I haven’t even delegated much to this point, but I know that I have to start learning this artform.

Hopefully, the famous Belgian detectives M.O. can help you delegate your work more effectively. We all need to spend time as efficiently and effectively as possible in this time-strapped day and age.

To start with:

37 Signals products- Highrise-Basecamp-Backpack- Now we can share pages and update them with task lists, notes, pictures and files. We can organize the info and act on it seamlessly.

Copilot- now I can sit at my computer and fix yours by actually taking over your mouse and looking at your screen. This happens with a simple link I send you and takes 30 seconds to download.

Apeer- Now we could share and edit documents, videos and photos in a live environment. This is not sharing- it’s better.

Gotomeeting- we can conduct live webinars or meetings from the comfort of our own offices. I can train you or your staff to work better, and use their stuff better.

These are just a few. Their are so many new ones each day I have trouble keeping up. Somebody has to sift the tools and show you how they make your business work better.

My wife and I probably don’t talk enough- I’m sure that’s the case as far as she is concerned. She is the one who told me that woman speak more than twice the number of words in a day as men do. So I thought I was off the hook. Not so much. Well when we need to talk about something important like issues of faith, parenting or date night; we sit down and discuss them face to face. I’m not suggesting you become a robot in dealing with your spouse or family, but for the little interruption conversations throughout the day- we’ve opted for the Backpack message board. I can make a quick post in the newsroom and my wife is immediately notified via email or text. Now instead of the old way (replying to a chain of six emails- which isn’t so bad in Gmail) you can each take time to reply to the post when you find the time. No more interruptions via phone calls or emails that need a reply. The whole conversation is right in front of you and it’s organized by all the different post topics.

Just this last week, My wife I had handled the following tasks within Backpack’s message board.

1. Dog’s vet trip, and which account to use for payment.
2. RSVP ing for a kids fall bonfire/hayride.
3. How to handle servicing the heater before we crank it on this year. It was 32 last night in Louisville, KY.
4. Fixing an incorrect medical bill.
5. Coordinating a dinner for friends of ours who just had a baby.
6. Registering for a class at church.
7. Preparing a list of things we needed for our monthly Costco trip.

These were just a few. When the task or issue is resolved we delete the message. Pretty simple. When we check email or blogs, we just check Backpack’s newsroom as well.

I’m sure there are a ton of other digital tools and programs that will also get the job done. Backpack is so intuitive that we opt for it.

After reading almost all of Zen Habits popular blog posts this weekend, I have reaffirmed a decision I had been leaning toward. My family and I are going to put the blinders on and see how much focus we can exhibit in the next 6 months. This was inspired by lots of thought and prayer and a little nudge from Seth Godin’s blog last week. Here are the bullet points:

• We are continuing our process of simplifying life by selling our larger home and moving into a smaller one with about half the payment.
• We are purging even more of our furniture, kids toys, clothes and other “stuff”- my favorite term for everything I don’t really need that takes up space in my home and my mind. I’m all for stockpiling some things which I’ll talk more about in future posts.
• We are cutting expenses and increasing our means per Ben Franklin’s famous quote.

The road to wealth lies in augmenting our means or diminishing our wants, either will do, but the quickest way to wealth is to do both at the same time- Ben Franklin

• We are going to lose the excess weight we’ve gained while having three children the last 3 years.
• We are going to stop doing things that we don’t value or that don’t serve others. No will be a frequent answer.
• We are going to wake up early and go to bed early.
• We are going to focus on growing our primary income through our services to local small business owners.
• We are going to create multiple residual income streams through Eniva and their wonderful health product Vibe and through some other means I won’t mention here.
• We are going to start investing our US dollars in gold- actual gold coins minted in Australia. One is shaky and decreasing the other has stood the test of time.
• We are going to start investing money with Euro Pac capital and Peter Schiff’s team.
• We are going to continue giving money to the ministries, missionaries, our church and local charities/nonprofits. We’ll make every effort to increase our support.
• We are going to pay off our business debt and avoid it like the plague for the rest of our lives.
• We are going to start enjoying life like the famous story of the Mexican Fisherman. I’ve never read this blog but they were the first result in Google so they get the link. I first read this story in Dan Miller’s book.

We may fall directly on our face and miss the mark, but I have a sneaky feeling our situation will look a lot better if we put forth this effort. The blinders are going on. We’ve planned a few rewards along the way for hitting certain benchmarks and we’ve committed to keeping our plans simple. Small daily improvements are the focus. Massive action through a series of small steps with one foot in front of the other. I’ve always had a problem with focus, so I’ll let you know how the battle is going. It will be a battle, but the stakes are too high today to sit on the sidelines. If you’re up for it, let’s draw a line in the sand today and hold one another accountable.

Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler- Einstein

Simplify, Simplify- Thoreau

To close, a large men’s bible study I attended this weekend had a guest pastor who taught us about simplicity. He said following Christ is not always easy, but it’s never complicated. He quoted Micah 6:8 which says “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” No matter what your faith background is, these principles are timeless. Justice- Mercy- Humility.

For me elimination is always the toughest efficiency technique to master. Timothy Ferris of 4 Hour Work Week fame, is a nice balance to David Allen’s GTD. Sometimes no matter how well we collect it, process it, organize it and review it, you still can’t do everything. Sometimes it’s effective to do a Commando Raid, as Peter J Daniels suggests. Sometimes we have to simply eliminate as Timothy Ferris suggests.

I often joke with my wife, that I could get along quite nicely with my golf clubs/bag- a laptop/printer- and my favorite books. The rest of the time I could sit and connect with people drinking coffee in front of a fire. Sure I love my wife and kiddos so I would never take certain joys and niceties away from them, but it is funny to see how kids can have fun with the simplest things. My 3 year old daughter and 2 year old son ( our baby girl is only 6 months and she watches with visions of participating) can play for an hour with the following objects:

• a cardboard box
• some bowls and spatulas
• dirt

Even though I say I can get along with very little, I look around at my office and it gets piled up with clutter from time to time. Things I’ll never use. Things I will never read again. Distractions and reasons to procrastinate.

I think I’ll eliminate some things tonight. I think I’ll do the same with my schedule. No is a great word that’s full of conviction when you say it, mean it, and stick to it. I often say it, kinda mean it, and then hedge when I’m asked a second time.

Breaking your word to yourself is just as damaging as breaking it to others.

Let’s cut to the chase here as well- If you don’t know what Google is, then sorry. The ship has taken off and you’re stranded on the desert island. The good news is that this is the search party. If you wave your hands and light a flare or two then we’ll swing by and pick you up. If you continue to ignore Google, it won’t be good.

1. It’s free- well there are no free lunches right? That’s Econ 101 right? Well for your ticket to use Google Apps you must be willing to see their ads in the margins as you use their highly productive tools. I’m in.
2. GMail is very effective at working with multiple email accounts. I have 3 different email accounts sent into GMail, but I can respond to to any email from my business email. Which is what I prefer because it has the free promotion from my signature byline. Ever have trouble with that one in Outlook?
3. GMail also allows you to never really delete email unless you want to- which I do. The labeling system in Google is far superior in my mind to a simple drag and drop folder system in say Outlook. In Google I can label an email with 3 different labels. Then later when my mind tries to find it through association I can look in two or three spots that jog my mind. Of course you can also search your emails using the most powerful search engine in the world. Integration it’s amazing isn’t it?
4. Google calendar allows me to create seperate calendars for my schedule ( My wife and I share calendars of course- meaning she can click on mine and I can click on hers at anytime). I have business calendar, a calendar where I schedule my customer site visits and organization jobs. We have a meal plan calendar for each month. I also access my backpack calendar with tasks via Google Calendar. How powerful for the small business owner!
5. Google Reader allows me through RSS to bring in all the blog and news feeds I like the best into one location. Instead of going to Doug Wead’s or Eric Schansberg’s blog every time I want to check for updates, I simply open up my Google Reader application and it’s all there for me. I keep up with 15-20 different blogs and news sources on politics, business, my Christian faith, organization and sports. The typical guy topics. Sorry ladies.
6. Google documents allows you to upload, share and access key files from wherever you are. Pretty straight forward but nice feature alongside all the others.
7. GMail has a feature to house all your contacts as well. I imported mine via an excel csv and it was pretty seamless. Now if you follow my lead you have email, contacts, calendar, RSS/blog reader and document sharing all in one web-based application via Google. You also would have everything else you need in Backpack. One is free and the other is a great value.
8. Igoogle may be my favorite Google application. I was slow to discover the power in igoogle but now I love it. Would you like to have exactly what you want on your homepage along with Google’s powerful and simple search engine box? If so give Igoogle a try. Pick your favorite news feeds or your favorite tools. I like the bible verse of the day, the google maps and mapquest boxes. How about a link to movies playing in your area or the local weather? I have a Youtube widget along with a craigslist search box. I use the digital and second hand clock widget telling me the time all day. Last but not least I have an ever-changing picture of a really neat place somewhere off in the world.
9. Google checkout has some powerful applications and is great for non-profits I’ve heard. I haven’t used it a lot myself but I’ve heard it’s great.
10. Do you really need a 10th reason to get started with Google apps? Even though they are free to use, maybe you need some assistance migrating your small business over to them. Give us a call and we can make that happen for your business. We have already helped other small businesses make this transition and they’re not looking back.