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Ultimate Personal Management Systems
Setting Up A Productivity System
Your system must mimic how your brain searches rather than setting up a new task that you must learn. This way, it will be easy to adopt, adapt and you will continue to use it in the long run.
You don’t want to spend time thinking about a system and setting it up only to stop using it. Or – even worse – make you do additional steps every time.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
The Outline/List
Is a linear method of taking notes that proceeds down the page, using indentation or bullets to denote major and minor points.
Pros: it records content relationship in a way tha...
The Sentence Method
The goal is to jot down your thoughts as quickly as possible. Format is kept to a minimum: every new thought is written on a new line.
Pros: Is like free writing for notes.
Cons: lack organization and notes can be hard to understand.
Works for: meetings or lectures that lack organization; when information is presented very quickly.
SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review)
- Skim the material for bolded text, images, summaries, to produce a list of headlines;
- Each headline is then written in the form of a question;
- Record your “answers” to the reading questions under each corresponding header;
- Once you’ve finished reading the text, write a summary of the material from memory—this is the “recite” part of the process.
- Finally, review your notes to make sure you’ve completely grasped the concepts.
Works for: dense written material.
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Key Ideas
Personal Operations Category
- Task management. This one is most commonly taught and includes systems like Getting Things Done.
- Knowledge management. This is embodied in systems like productivity educa...
What's on your plate
Prioritizing tasks at work involves getting all your tasks and commitments in one place. Take a piece of paper and make a list of everything you need to get done. Questions to help you:
- Do you have commitments to others like your boss, partner, kids, or clients?
- Do you have anything you need to submit?
- Do you have any financial tasks that need to get done?
- Do you have any planning that needs to get done?
- Do you have any administrative tasks? Legal, insurance, staffing, or training?
- Do you have any professional development tasks that need to get done? Training, areas to research, skills to develop, books to read or study, or classes to take?
Brainstorm your goals
Find your goals. Without them, it is impossible to prioritize your tasks. Try to set 90-day goals, which is long enough to make meaningful progress. Questions to prompt goals:
- What’s the one thing you could do that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
- If you were giving advice to someone else in your position, what 1-3 things would you tell them to focus on?
- What do you want to have accomplished over the next five years?
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Key Ideas
Planning vs Doing
If you spend more time planning and organizing than doing, it's time to shift your focus. Don't waste your time searching for "the perfect organizational system".
...Tips To Be Productive
Use the way to organize that is most comfortable to you, be it pen and paper or an app.
Saying No, and not committing to others as a habit, can be a powerful organizational tool, freeing you up from obligatory work, which clutters up your day and your focus.
Perfection Is Not The Goal
Being an organized person requires a lifestyle change, and is not seasonal. You can't go back to not being organized after your work is done.
The goal is not to become perfect but to have a healthy, productive, organized and peaceful life.