The Horror! Myfax.com is running a ‘the messiest desk’ competition, and the results are frightening. How people can live like this? Click to see the winners from the past three weeks. It’s open for two more if you want to enter. (Though if your desk looks like these, you might want to consider hiring my organizational services)
When I first read Getting Things Done four years ago, I didn’t know the profound impact it would have on me. I thought it was a good, though not extra-ordinary, book on organization. However, over time and through constant application of its principals, it is no hyperbole to say that Getting Thing Done has fundamentally changed the person I am for the better. I have become a better, more organized, more self-reliant, and less anxiety-prone
In his book, David Allen suggests several radical departures from traditional organizational planners. First, prioritizing is a waste of time. Listing your to-do’s with a ‘one’, ‘two’ or ‘three’ based on how important they are is useless. You end up spending a lot of time futzing over if an item should get a ‘2 — important’ or a ‘1 — vital’ next to it, rather than just doing it. Either you have a commitment to cross off that to-do and thus put it on your list, or you don’t and don’t.
Secondly, Treat your personal and work responsibilities in the same way. Don’t separate systems — it leads to needless inefficiencies. Your ‘Errands’ list should have both your personal and professional commitments on it so that you can get maximum use out of your time. All your obligations and responsibilities are filtered through the same system, and processed in the same way.
David Allen also suggests writing everything down — an idea he refers to as ubiquitous capture. You shouldn’t waste brain power trying to remember anything. Free your mental CPU cycles for creative and important work. As much as possible, set up paper and digital systems to remind you of what you need at an appropriate time.
In the Getting Things Done system, all projects must have their next actions defined. When you decide to go to the dentist about your tooth that’s been hurting, think about what the next physical thing is that you need to do. You have to make an appointment, but before you can do that you need to get the number. ‘Lookup dentist number’ is your to-do. It’s concrete, specific and the very next thing that must happen. ‘Look up dentist number’ is much clearer than the vague ‘visit dentist’, which you couldn’t do anyway until you made the appointment.
In addition to a description of David Allen’s ruthlessly efficient system, the book also serves as a productivity coach. A chapter goes through an explicit and step by step process of how to boot up into the Getting Things Done system, how to process all your current work, and how to migrate from your current system
My criticism of the book is relatively minor. Occasionally Allen’s examples of the kinds of problems that people need to solve are laughably upper class, e.g. setting up an Orchid or filling out paperwork for buying a company. The beginning of the book waffles a bit about ‘paradigm shifts’ and other content-less jargon along with the nature of ‘work these days’ and how that fancy-pants Internet will change everything — but compared to other books in the genre, it’s remarkably concise. The only real problem with the system is how to incorporate deadlines.
Nothing the book says is complicated or radically difficult: it’s mainly a collection of simple tips brought together in a well-tested, smooth system. But, more than any other book of its kind, this one can really change your life if you follow the ideas. I’ll admit that it took me about three years of on and off usage of the system before I really got it. But now I wonder how I possibly stumbled through my work before.
The book doesn’t do your work for you — no book can. There have been plenty of days when I haven’t gotten much done even when using the system — the only difference is now I know when I procrastinate that it’s my fault and I’m not missing something vital.
[Click here to buy Getting Things Done]
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Header photograph by racatumba
Too much organization has its disadvantages. That is the thesis of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder by Eric Abrahamson and David H Freedman. In their book the authors go through examples where over-organization is detrimental and mess should be allowed to grow.
Take, for example, governor Schwarzenegger of California. According to the book, it’s impossible to schedule an appointment with the governor — not because he’s such a busy man, but because he doesn’t keep a calendar. If you want to see him, you can call right now. If he’s free then come on over, if he’s not free, call back later. While this must be frustrating for people trying to reach the governor, it allows him the freedom to immediately deal with whatever messy problems arise. If disaster strikes, Schwarzenegger doesn’t have six hours of perfectly planned meetings blocking the day, he is clear to get the problem solved.
As another example, the authors discuss the ideal American suburban lawn. They detail the enormous amounts of time, energy, and money that go into maintaining perfectly weed-free square of grass. Aside from the effort involved, communities that mandate orderly lawns reap ecological disaster on water-strained areas, such as the American Mid-West. The trouble of a traditional lawn can be avoided, but only if the home owners are able to embrace some mess and develop a more natural looking lawn that blends with the environment.
The book is, perhaps inevitably, a mess itself. Unfortunately, this is not in the good way the authors champion. Sections are written in inconsistent ways and with different styles: evidence of the problems intrinsic to dual authorship. Many of the chapter subtopics are only a paragraph or two long and read like they are place holders intended to be filled out in more detail later, but never were.
Also, there are the lists. For a book on messiness, it has weirdly obsessive lists of things. Lists that numb the mind with their completeness. You’ll be reading a chapter when, suddenly a multi-page long list of ‘The Ways People Can Be Messy’ appears. This includes, but is not limited to: appropriately messy, cosmetically neat messy, weak-link messy, sloppily versus structurally messy, transiently messy, provocatively messy, contextually messy, constitutionally messy, existentially messy and genetically messy.
Still, The Perfect Mess is highly worth reading, especially if you are on the more obsessive-compulsive side of the organizational world. I’ve taken a few of the book’s principals to heart and have allowed some limited, productive mess into my life.
[click here to buy A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder]
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Header photograph by thesullys
Locked-down computers, like those at work or in Internet cafes, are a necessary computer-security evil. While their high security helps prevent them from becoming part of a spam-spewing zombie horde, you can’t do much on them. It’s frustrating to need a program but when you try to install it, you get the ‘Administrator access needed’ window thrown in your face.
PortableApps.com gets around that problem. They make versions of open source programs that don’t need to be installed on a computer to run. Load them onto your USB drive and you can use them anywhere, even if you just have lowly guest access. I particularly rely on their Open Office portable, GIMP portable, VLC portable and Notepad++ portable.
Not sure what you’ll need? Then just grab their suite of nearly everything.
Now if they just had a TrueCrypt portable…
[Click here for portable apps]
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Header photograph by wrestlingentropy
Firefox is a great browser. With it you can have tons of tabbed webpages open with ads blocked, weather foretold and page rank indicated. What more could a web surfer ask for? Not getting distracted by the weather, the page rank or the other ten tabs, for starters.
Firefox is a recreational browser. When I need to get things done, I turn to Camino.
Good old Camino — the forgotten open source OS X browser. Camino is pretty, simple and gets the job done. There are no plugins: ads are not blocked and their presence is just enough to annoy me back to work if I begin to stray. When I need information on topic ‘X’ I use Camino for precision, ninja-like strikes on the ‘net. Open Camino — ask Google — receive answer— get working.
Firefox, though it is the darling of the open source world, has turned into one hell of a piece of bloatware. Timing it on my MacBook, Firefox takes forty eight seconds from launch to open. Camino takes six. Waiting a nearly a minute for Firefox to open isn’t a long time, but it’s long enough to start wondering about my email, RSS feeds or website stats. Just long enough to get distracted.
Firefox is now limited to recreational browsing, going on the ‘net with the intent of puttering around. But for solid work, Camino is the only choice.
[click here to download Firefox]
[click here to download Camino]
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Photograph by catwall_elle curotto