Archive for Productivity
Organization-What’s the point?
Posted by: | Comments- What is the point of organization?
- Who cares if my stuff is neat and my stars are aligned?
- What does it matter if I use a system to accomplish my work?
- Who cares?
It is no secret that I have a passion for organization, but lately I’ve become aware of my true passion for creativity and productivity. I battle an obsessive compulsive spirit and have a tendency to get distracted easily and lose focus. I’ve never been diagnosed with anything and don’t plan on walking around with a meaningless label or excuse. Instead, I work my butt off trying to control my environment, my habits and my focus.
So that still brings us back to why- doesn’t it? Everyone likes to talk about productivity and organization, but many fail to say why. Just do it won’t convince people. Just do it won’t encourage people. Just do it won’t empower people. I want to explain in this post why I’m passionate about productivity and organization.
What’s keeping you from writing a book, painting a picture, taking amazing photos, learning a foreign language, playing a musical instrument, becoming a better golfer, studying history, volunteering at a local nursing home, being a grassroots political activist, taking a mission trip, starting a blog, producing a podcast, writing a screenplay, making someone laugh, organizing a fundraiser, having a family over for dinner, hosting a community group, being there for the kids games, being there for your spouse in a time of need, taking your spouse on a date, teaching and investing in your children, visiting shut ins, taking care of widows and orphans, reading a novel and solving big problems.
Time and your lack of efficient/effective productivity would be the answer. You see nothing on the list above has to do with money. A homeless man could do most of the things above without much if any money.
- How about another question?
What’s keeping you from supporting a ministry, missionary or non profit, from taking a nice family vacation, from cutting checks to those in need during tough times, from taking time away from work to minister to those in need, to invest in your family’s future, for Christians- to fund the gospel, to capitalize great new business ideas, to invest in your continued education, to travel and enjoy the world, to travel and do mission work, to have more children or adopt children without a home?
Money and your lack of it. Trust me this is a big struggle for the Raley Family just like it might be for your family. Most of my business life has been spent looking for and developing a muse for making money efficiently. After all what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul. I don’t want to do it while sacrificing family either.
So you ask why get organized? I want more time to spend on the first list above.
So you ask why get more productive? I want to be the steward of more money and resources for the second list above. Thus I focus on organization for time and productivity for money. There you have it.
The road to wealth lies in augmenting our means or diminishing our wants, either will do but the quickest is to do both- Ben Franklin
20) Don’t organize
Posted by: | Comments- 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:
- Is this really procrastination?
- How will this lead to me saving time or adding measurable productivity to my life or work.
- 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.
19) Organize Your Life-Simplify
Posted by: | CommentsThis is something a little different. It’s basically me talking (and rocking unfortunately) while I discuss four ways I simplify my life. The surprise ending has one thing I don’t do which simplifies my life. For those who read this blog but don’t know me, this will give you a little glimpse on the goofy side of me. You can also learn more here.
The question is why simplify life? For me it means more time to focus on the meaningful things. It means more time to pursue creativity and passions. For me it means more time with family, more volunteering and more time with my Lord, Jesus Christ. It means more time to change the world of politics, or health or business. It means more time to build the BOC and KOG. It doesn’t mean more time to sit around and focus on me or to watch TV or to play video games. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”-hat tip Seinfeld.
Simplify Your Life from Bryce Raley on Vimeo.
10) Organize your ezine
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Some people have wondered and a few have asked how I send out a weekly email with the following categories of content each week without spending a decade doing it.
Each week I include in Simplified Solutions, LLC Weekly Email Newsletter these topics:
- Event of the Week- this is often a holiday or something like National Writers Week or Get Organized Month.
- Inspirational Movie of the Week- I’ve picked my favorite motivational movies and selected appropriate times for each movie- .i.e. It’s a Wonderful Life in December and Rudy at the start of Football season.
- Fun for the Week- these are often bowling, have a picnic in the park or visit a museum kind of activities.
- Quote of the Week- the quotes are many of my favorites and are hopefully timely- Martin Luther King, Jr was who I quoted this week.
- Book of the Week- this was a list of my favorite books I had already read or reviewed.
- Humor for the Week- often a quote from Pat Williams or Will Rogers- maybe Yogi Berra or Mark Twain.
- Bible Verse of the Week- again this list had many of my favorites.
The neat thing about all the above information is that it took about two days back in January of 2008 to compile this list in a spreadsheet. Across the top the columns were labeled with the weeks 1 through 52. In the rows from top to bottom were the categories above. In the spreadsheet cells was the content. Pretty straightforward. I did my research to match quotes, movies, events and humor with the time of the year.
At this point I thought all was done. I created a template in my express email (I’m considering jumping to Constant Contact as we speak). I would now simply log in each week edit the template and click send. This would have worked but it was a bit too boring to keep me excited about sending the ezine each week. Yes it might engage readers (we have about 40% readership weekly) but would it engage me to consistently send it each week (I only send one per week, no questions asked). Knowing myself and my struggle with focus, I left the door open for creativity each week to go along with the prepackaged content.
I decided that I would include a link and description of a very cool website I had stumbled across that would add value to my readers. Many are small business owners or non profits. Second, I would include a link to a cool product. At first I always tried to share products via my affiliate links but that quickly became old and not much fun. It was probably a little too selfish as well. Third, I featured a small business or non profit each week. I used businesses I knew, customers of mine and I took some submissions. I also included my recent blog posts which turned out to be my most popular links each week.
This whole process takes me 30-45 minutes or an hour max if I’m not feeling very inspired. The information in the spreadsheet is easy. I type it, read it, edit it, done. The last few entries require a few clicks, a couple control c’s, hyperlinks, target blank- open in new window, a couple control v’s and a perusing of my latest delicious bookmarks.
I hope you found this helpful. If you want to register for my weekly email click here. I hate spam so I’ve chosen the slow method of growing my list. Speaking could help when I get the time. The readership of 40% is good (so I’ve been told) and sometimes I think it may be better. Many times (just this morning actually), I bump into someone whose address never shows an open, but who says I love getting and reading your emails. Go figure. Needless to say the newsletter is not idea virus worthy yet, given that people are not sharing it and it’s not spreading the way I would like. I guess I’ll take all the positive feedback and the loyal readers and be content with that for now.
6) Organize your notes
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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.
