DonationCoder.com Software > The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006

GOE - GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - DAY 1 ASSIGNMENT

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mouser:
Quick report from me:
I went and bought a bunch of 3x5" index cards, and 2 little plastic boxes that hold them and can be left open.
I have put both boxes on my desk (which is now otherwise empty).
In the left box i have blank cards.

When i get something i have to remember to do (an item for my todo list), i write it out and date it on a card of it's own, and file it in the box on the right.  When i complete a task i put a checkmark on the card and move it to storage in the back.

GTD author suggests using full page sheets for this kind of stuff, but i much prefer index cards.

The nices thing about using cards is you can shuffle around cards and get a tactile satisfaction of manipulating them.

And the most important part is it takes me just a few seconds to add a new TODO item card and then get it off my mind until i can come back to it, which is a key principle of GTD (get things off your mind and written down somewhere where you know you will come back to it regularly until it's done).

momonan:
Oddly enough, I have done almost the same thing as mouser -- choosing an analog approach like the ancient one humorously described at http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda/.   

Building your first Hipster PDA
get a bunch of 3"x5" file cards
clip them together with a binder clip
there is no step 3

At least it's a start.  With any program I have attempted, I spent so much delectible time setting up and maintaining it that I barely had time to do more than click on the annoying reminders as they come up.  With all that activity, who has time to do the things on the list?

I also have dragged out an old copy of "First Things First" that I bought almost 10 years ago.  It is written by Roger and Rebecca Merrill, two disciples of Stephen Covey, the author of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," and really brings home the notion that real effective time management is not doing more things in less time, but, rather, doing the most important things in a balanced and effective way.

So my task will be to determine what areas of my life deserve the most focus -- work, family, physical and mental health, financial, society -- and then plan my "to do" lists to make sure I devote sufficient time to each area.  I think it's easy to get hung up on scheduling to death the ideas and things we want to do in the business or work area, and forget the other important areas of our lives.  As they say: No one ever regretted, on their death bed, that they didn't spend more time working.  I didn't manage it before, but I'm ever hopful this time.

app103:
Rather than index cards, I like envelopes...you can store things in them.

Also appeals to the tightwad and packrat in me, because junk mail supplies plenty for free. ;-)

urlwolf:
Ok, i have two spiral notepads that I use already.
This worked before. But I'm trying to go paperless for the simple reasons that (1) I'm most of the time if front of my computer, (2) I move around a lot and carrying paper is weight (3) it's hard to search, and easy to misplace (4) it is very laborious to do any timing on it (more on this later).

I found that one thing that will help me a lot is to improve my time estimation. I suck at it right now. So I set it so I have to give an estimation and record the actual time I took for every task I do. We'll see  how it goes.

jgpaiva:
I think i'll need something that isn't mentioned in the list: A clock!
Even though the computer has a clock (and it even makes noise at every hour!!), i think i need a bigger visual information of the time, so that i won't get lost in time.

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