p80 Organize

Organize

Take-aways:

Create lists.
Start a tickler file.
Use the 80 / 20 rule.
Batch activities.
Say No.
Don’t be early.
Set time limits.
Use keywords and templates.
Set aside time to organize.
Use triage.
Give everything a "parking spot".
Create physical next actions.

Introduction

In this section I’m going to provide many brief tips on getting organized and becoming more efficient. Most of these tips have been described more clearly and in greater detail elsewhere. I will cite sources whenever possible and I highly recommend you read the original sources whether or not you are having trouble implementing the advice as I have described it.

Create lists

Grocery list, to-do list, to-do today list, to remember list, phone calls to make list, emails to send list, idea list.

The goal of creating lists is to externalize our thoughts and reminders in order to free up mental resources.

Eventually you take so many digital pictures that you must download them to the computer in order to take more pictures. Your brain is like that too. It needs emptied in order to process new content.

But I’ll be swimming in lists in a matter of days! You might protest.

Then you will need to review your lists, discard those you no longer need, consolidate lists that can be consolidated, and file those that may be needed later on. Yes, this takes some time, but the improvements in mental clarity, stress relief, and confidence that you will not forget something important, are well worth the small time investment.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done has many more tips on creating useful lists.

Start a Tickler File

A tickler file is a collection of date-labeled file folder organized in a way that allows time-sensitive documents to be filed according to the future date on which each document needs action.
- wikipedia

Create a filing system to organize your lists and other things in your life. To start off with you will need twelve file folder, one for each month of the year, four folders for each week of the current month, and one folder for collecting ideas that have no specific date, but you don’t want to discard yet. Some people even have seven daily files or thirty-one daily files, one for each day of the month, but I find that to be overkill.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done has more information on creating an effective filing system.

The 80 / 20 rule

The 80 / 20 rule (also known as The Pareto Principle after Vilfredo Pareto who observed the rule) states that 80% of the output of any system comes from 20% of the input. This is no idle speculation. The 80 /20 ratio, or something close to it, has been observed in developmental biology, economics, and computer science. Pareto himself noticed the principle in pea plants: 20% of the plants produced 80% of the peas.

What does this mean for you? It means that there is a lot of unimportant work and effort, 80% in fact, which can be de-emphasized if not flat out neglected without greatly effecting productivity.

Think about activities you engage in whether the activities are related to your work, education, or even house cleaning / maintenance. Which activities produce the greatest impact and which produce the smallest impact? Think about how you can reduce the time spent on the low-impact activities, or stop doing these activities all together.

For example: Vacuuming the house once a week removes a lot of dust and takes relatively little time. Switching attachments and getting in all the nooks and corners, as well as vacuuming the stairs is much more time consuming and doesn’t get much more dust so you should only be this thorough once a month (or whatever you think is an appropriate interval).

There are many examples in the workplace. You may wish to directly ask your boss, what are the most important things I do? Tell your boss that you want to know so that you can focus more energy on these things. He or she will love to hear it.

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss has the best chapter on the 80 / 20 rule that I am aware of. Check it out.

Batching

Batching is a simple concept: perform like-activities all at once.

Run all your errands all at once. Get all your phone calls done all at once. Deal with all your emails all at once. Pack your lunches for the week all at once on a Sunday. That’s also a great day to cook a big dinner that will provide you with leftovers for the week. Lay out the clothes you’ll wear for the week, in the order you will wear them, all at once. I’m certain you can think of many more activities that can be batched.

Remember the lists you made? The "phone calls to make" list and "emails to send" list are designed for batching.

Batching saves time because transitioning between activities always takes time and energy. Even the small amount of time that it takes to open your email can add up if you’re doing it all day long.

Batching is also a great way to avoid distraction. Once you get into the batching habit, you won’t check your email all the time to avoid your current task because opening email is a commitment to getting through your entire inbox and all the items on your "emails to send" list.

Both The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss and David Allen’s Getting Things Done have more tips on batching.

Say No

Develop the habit of saying no to requests. If this makes you nervous, start small. Don’t worry about coming up with excuses. You don’t need them. Just say no to requests on your time.

Will you really get fired for refusing to do extra work? Probably not. Will your friends stop hanging out with you if you don’t help them paint their garage this weekend? If so, then maybe they weren’t worthwhile friends in the first place.

The Joy of Work by Scott Adams gives amusing tips on saying no (starting on page 181).

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss also gives great advice on saying no even if you’re uncomfortable with the concept.

Don’t be early

More specifically, don’t let your efficiency be used against you.

You may have heard the following saying before: If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late!

Think about where you heard that from? From an authority figure? From a boss or someone who placed demands on your time?

Take back your time with the following re-phrasing:

If you’re late, you’re on time, but if you’re on time, you’re early, and if you’re early, here is some more work you can do.

When you finish tasks early and make it publicly known you finished early, then you invite more work for yourself. It is better to strategically appear overworked and keep the spare time for yourself. After all, you earned it with your superior efficiency! This is doubly important advice as you tuck more and more efficiency tips into your tool belt.

Arriving early is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m using it here as an example of how increased productivity can lead to a downward spiral of increased work load. By all means arrive early for appointments that you deem to be valuable. (Another benefit of arriving early is the reduced stress from not having to rush.)

Remember, the goal is not to be super-productive for what other people tell you is important. The goal is to be super-productive for the things you believe are important.

The Joy of Work by Scott Adams gives advice on avoiding work by appearing too busy (see pages 160 to 174).

Set time limits

Set self-imposed time limits on your activities, both work and play. Such limits have many benefits from improving focus to avoiding the morass of unclear projects or the time suck of hilarious cat pictures (icanhascheezburger.com).

When the time limit elapses, you don’t necessarily stop what you are doing, but you pause and reevaluate: Are there other more vital things to work on? Am I making progress on my current task? If not, why not?

Self-imposed time limits are particularly valuable for any sort of open-ended research. Set a time limit and tell yourself, "If I have not found what I am looking for in X minutes, then I will stop looking and do Y instead."

See David Allen’s Getting Things Done for more information.

Use key words to mark where you left off

If you are working on a project and you get interrupted by some other urgent task, take the time to leave a marker in your current project so you can come right back to where you left off. I like to use "TODO", one word, in all caps. I’ll use this in long emails, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and more.

Use the same keyword for everything you do. Think of these keywords as bookmarks. No one puts a book down without somehow marking where they left off. It’s absurd to flip through the pages trying to find the exact same page again every time your novel reading is interrupted.

To rapidly find TODO or whatever keyword you choose, use the "Find" function (aka: search). Word, Excel, and most other programs have a search function that finds any word or phrase you type in. Usually the shortcut is control-f (hold control and press f). A little window with a text box should appear where you can type in your keyword, press enter, then go right to the spot you left off.

Sometimes TODO is not enough. I strongly recommend leaving notes on what you planned on doing next right where the TODO is located. I highlight such notes in Word to distinguish them from the true content of whatever I’m working on.

Use other keywords or markings to maintain flow when you are working on a task. If you get stuck on something and want to move on, but are frustrated that you will forget to come back and fix the obstacle, leave a marker and get into the practice of checking for this marker before finalizing any sort of document. I like to use "FOR NOW". "FOR NOW" tells me that I don’t like this section, but I’m leaving it the way it is for now so I can move on to the next section. Again, a note next to the marker describing what is wrong and brainstorming some ideas on how to fix it is valuable.

There are many ways to accomplish the same things in the non-digital world using highlighters, sticky-notes, bookmarks (of course), and even color coding items with crayons. Figure out a system that works for you.

See David Allen’s Getting Things Done for more information on leaving "stakes in the sand" as he calls markers.

Templates

For any repetitive task, consider how templates can help you out. I used to create a lot of Excel reports in a job I had. For each report I would always list the name of the excel file and the folder I was keeping it in at the top of each sheet in the workbook so if I printed it off and handed it to someone else and they handed it back to me a month later asking for an updated version, I would know where to go find the electronic copy.

I also created a "notes" sheet with the headings: "for", "goal", "instructions", "notes", and "queries". "For" described who asked me for this report and when. "Goal" described the goal of this report, what it was supposed to accomplish. "Instructions" were instructions on (re)creating the report. "Notes" were extra details about miscellaneous problems or surprises encountered while running the report, or anything that I wanted to remember the next time I used the document. "Queries" identified a list of queries used to create the report.

Set aside time to organize

Reserve time for sorting, organizing, and eliminating. Physical stuff takes up mental space and every little nagging project takes up a lot of mental space. Cleaning house literally and figuratively frees you up for the task at hand.

When you are frustrated, feeling stuck and mentally clogged, get up and start organizing. The clutter in your house, workspace, computer desktop, or even a particular document actually clogs the flow of ideas.

The danger you want to avoid is using petty organization and cleaning projects to procrastinate bigger, scarier, and more important projects (remember the difference between actual progress and artificial progress). That’s why it’s best to schedule sufficient time to organize, rather than doing it when you feel like (ie. when you feel like procrastinating the important project.) However, sometimes, the allotted time is not enough and you simply must clear your mental / physical space. To determine when you need to clean and when you need to focus on the task at hand, ask, "What is most on my mind? And how can I get it off my mind?" You may find that the task at hand is the one nagging your thoughts more than anything else.

Triage

Triage is a process of prioritizing patients in need of medical treatment based on the severity of their condition. We want to apply the same dramatic, decisive decision-making to our to-do list.

All projects and to-do’s will receive one of four triage designations. The designations are, in descending order of usefulness: Delete, Do, Delegate, Defer.

"Be decisive! Everything that is on your countertop or desk right now most likely represents decisions that have not been made. Clutter results from putting off these decisions for later. Your ability to get and stay organized is directly related to your ability to make decisions!"
- Lifehack: Stay organized