Every Thursday, I’m sharing a new Personal Productivity Tip to help you get more done. Each Productivity Tip is a remarkably simple tool or concept that can be quickly implemented to make a real difference in your personal productivity. When you apply many of them together, they’ll make a big difference in improving productivity, achieving accountability and staying focused on the things that matter the most in your life.
You may want to check out some of the posts in this Productivity series, including the the value of checklists; the importance of getting rid of the crappy stuff; the nightmare of the cluttered mind; and the 4 Do-or-Die Principles to Drive your Personal Productivity System.
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“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“What a mess.” ”I’m swamped.” “I’m buried.” “I’m getting killed.”
Sound familiar? It’s a common refrain just about everywhere these days. Everyone from the executive suite on down is feeling overrun with a myriad of operational details exacerbated by the constant struggle to stay ahead of the sputtering economy and the next wave of inputs. Take away the resources that were lost during the last 30 months … and there’s even more reasons to think about how to leverage our resources.
In my work with CEOs and business executives across all industries, everyone’s swamped. In many cases, they’re barely hanging on, and in all cases, they’re stressed by the fear that they’re missing a lot … and things might be getting worse.
Getting control of your personal workflow when you’re being asked to do more than ever is mission-critical. Without it? You’re dead. You have no real chance to stay ahead of the inbox tsunami or to boost your personal productivity, let alone make any meaningful difference in your performance.
Here’s the key … the issue isn’t getting more done … because nobody dies with an empty inbox. No, the feeling of being overwhelmed is really a matter of being out of control. While all of us have various tools we use to manage our personal productivity, many of those tools are dull and inadequate to the task. That’s why I stressed the importance of the 4 Do-or-Die Principles that must drive your Personal Productivity program.
It probably sounds a little ridiculous to think that by regaining control, you can eliminate the stress of feeling buried all the time. That’s the interesting thing … it’s quite the opposite.
Let me ask you this: Have you ever gotten to the edge of the cliff where you decided, “Okay, that’s it. I’m coming in this weekend and I’m plowing through all this crap, getting it organized and on Monday, I’m going to start really kicking some ass!”
Just about everyone I know has been there at one time or another … and it worked. They got a bunch of stuff cleaned up, organized, filed … and they put together a butt-kicking to do list that launched a resurgence of productivity when they hit the ground running on Monday morning.
Awesome feeling, wasn’t it? Do you think it was because you got a lot more done on that Monday … or because you felt you had finally tamed the monster and stuffed him back into his cage?
But what happened then? Most likely, you slowly started backsliding … slipped back into your old habits … disorder began to get the upper hand again … and you were right back to being the great fire-fighter that you are, attacking everything just before the fuse catches up to the dynamite. Soon enough, you probably grabbed another Saturday to get back to the office to tame the monster again … and so the cycle goes.
What’s happening here is that you don’t have a proven system that is complete, leakproof, mobile and current … the 4 Do-or-Die Principles … and without that, you have no chance to regain control. Worse, you will get further out of control as the fire hose of relentless new inputs pours into your office and slams into your brain.
David Allen’s landmark book, Getting Things Done, is a good place to start. The “GTD” system is a comprehensive process designed to help you gain full control of everything that has your attention … and there’s a lot on our minds. Business. Customers. Employees. Spouses. Children. Siblings. Parents. Friends. Church. Community … and the list goes on. It’s a lot … and it doesn’t stop … but most of it we WANT to do.
Been there, done that? Maybe, but if you’re still reading at this point, you know you don’t have the control you need to be a great executive, mother, father, spouse or friend. Why? Because in the rush of everything coming at you, you’ll miss too many things that people are counting on you to do.
You’ll never get it all done … but knowing what you’re not getting done is immensely powerful and the key to stress-free productivity, or as David Allen describes it, a “mind like water”.
Here’s another way to get started. In my newsletter earlier this year, I talked about mind-mapping and offered a sample Executive Dashboard and a video tutorial of how you can get started. Mind mapping is a graphic technique that helps to create an organized display of related items. It has become an increasingly popular form of software, too, with products like Mindjet, The Brain and others, providing easily accessible tools.
Take a look and see if it doesn’t plant some seeds about how to get your arms around all of this.
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% Responses to "Personal Productivity | Aren’t you tired of feeling buried all the time?"
On March 13th, 2011 at 9:59 am, Dan said:
For implementing GTD you can use this web application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote, and also comes with mobile-web version, and Android and iPhone apps.