Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips and Personal Productivity Tools

It’s too easy to become blind to your living environment – you spend so much time in it that after a while, you don’t really see it any more. If asked, you’d probably admit that there are many things in your home that you’d like to fix, update or replace, but you’d have a hard time bringing them to mind immediately.

Enter the home walkthrough.

Take your pocket notebook and step outside your home. Pause for a moment: the goal is to see your home with new eyes. When you re-enter, try to see the place as someone who has never been there before would see it.

Walk through your home, room by room, and ask yourself what is it about your physical environment that you’d like to change? What minor problems have been bothering you and you’d like to get fixed? Leaky sink? Squeaky door handle? Inconveniently placed items? Decorations you no longer like? Write them all down.

When it comes time to do your weekly review transfer those notes into projects and to-do items. If there is something that you don’t want to start now, put it on your ‘future me’ list. Then, as time goes on, you can work your way through these task and slowly improve your living space. You might also want to consider scheduling the home walkthrough on your calendar as an annual or bi-annual event.

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Header photograph by: franciscoantunes

On day 14 of 30 Days to a More Organized Life you learned how making lists can help you stay organized. By now you have probably made a number of lists but, there is one category you may not have considered: people. People are lists too.

Just as you have an ‘errands’ list to check when you’re out of the house, it’s good to have lists for people in your life who you interact with frequently. People such as your family members, good friends and spouse are all candidates for lists of their own.

As an example, when I work with time management clients who are planning a wedding, making a list for their soon-to-be spouse is a vital part of the process. In any medium-to-large wedding, there are an enormous number of things that need the input of both the bride and groom. If each partner keeps a list of things to discuss with the other, it makes the whole process much smoother.

In the workforce, having a list dedicated to your boss or coworkers helps you look more professional. To walk into someones office with a list of questions for them, and check each off as you’re speaking, is the height of respect for the other person’s time. (This looks particularly good if used in conjunction with a clipboard).

Lastly, for personal relationships it’s a good idea to keep a private list about the other person. For example, if my wife mentions a item that she likes, the chance that I’ll remember her off-the-cuff remark when her birthday comes is close to zero. But, with my pocket notebook, I can discretely jot down the idea when she’s not looking. Then, during the next weekly review, I’ll move that information into my ‘wife gifts’ list.

Start making lists that relate to people, and watch not only your organization improve but also your relationships.

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Header photograph by: jeremybarwick

It’s been eighteen days since you set up your desk and by now you’ve had a chance to fiddle with the placement of your electronic devices to see where they work best for you. Now it’s time to attack those wires with the following steps:

Go Wireless Where You Can:

The best solution for getting rid of wires is to go wireless if you can. Aim for a wireless mouse, keyboard, printer and Internet connection if practical. However, some devices will always require wires and, until Tesla’s dream of wireless power transmission comes true, those power cords aren’t going anywhere.

Minimize The Rest:

Just because you bought a big desk doesn’t mean you need to fill it up. Cable modems, routers, power strips, battery backup, etc shouldn’t eat up desk real estate. Get them under or behind the desk.

If you’re really, really pressed for space, you could attach those peripherals to the underside of your desk using a peg board as described on decluttered.com:

Capture Dangling Wires

Keep-a-cable is useful for holding spare USB wires for connecting iPods, cameras and phones to your computer without letting them falling off your desk when not in use. A cheaper alternative is to use bulldog clips for the same purpose in the way this clever Flickr user has:

Just loop the head of the wire through the bulldog clip’s arm, then attach it to the back of your desk. Not the prettiest solution, but it gets the job done.

Strap And Bind The Rest:

Stay away from using plastic cable ties for bundling the wires together. While they do hold it satisfyingly tight, they are a real pain to undo if you ever need to change your setup. Velcro cable ties are a less frustrating and more elegant solution.

If your keyboard uses a USB connection, as unfortunately most ergonomic ones do, the simplest way to hide the wire is to run it under your desk, rather than over it. This works best if you have a keyboard tray for your workstation.

If your desk doesn’t conceal the wires – like a glass, transparent desk – consider using a split wire loom to bundle the miscellaneous wires together for a smoother look, as in this office from tehdik:

Add Labels

Remember the label maker you got? A great trick is to use it to put labels on the wires at each end so you know what’s connected to what. Who hasn’t looked at a power strip and wondered which of the wires are vital and which can be unplugged at some point?

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Header photograph by D’Arcy Norman

If there is any task that you perform over and over – no matter how simple – you can benefit by making a checklist for it.

Think you’re too good for a checklist? Think you can remember everything? Then consider this article showing how doctors often neglect to follow simple steps in basic procedures. A single hospital added a checklist to the doctors’ routine and it prevented eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs during the trial.

But, doctors aren’t the only ones. Professional airline pilots fly hundreds of times in a career. No matter how often they’ve done it, they still use a checklist to get that plane off the ground.

If doctors and pilots use checklists, so should you.

Think about the tasks or jobs you do repeatedly – any of these are good candidates for checklists.

Some of my own checklists include: performing my weekly review, setting up meetings with time management clients, putting up blog posts, monthly finance meetings with my wife, spring cleaning, and packing for trips.

When you make your checklists, keep them as files on your computer. Then, when the action comes up, you can print out the checklist and get the satisfaction of crossing off the steps one-by-one.

If you have any suggestions of things that you use checklists for, please leave a comment below.

It is a law of nature that the amount of stuff in your wallet or purse slowly grows over time no matter what you do. Reverse that trend today by cleaning it out.

Start by removing everything from your wallet. You’ll be stunned to discover how light and slim your empty wallet is. Try to keep it as close to that pristine state as possible by limiting how much stuff you put back in.

Start with the bank cards: make sure you actually use all of them. Did that card for your savings account you never use sneak into your wallet? Run it through the shredder. Only keep the bank cards you absolutely need.

Re-evaluate how many of the customer loyalty cards you’ve used in the last six months. If your loyalty cards have a bar code use a site like KeyRingThing.com to consolidate them onto a single card.

Put any scraps of paper into your physical inbox. Process those notes, tickets and receipts during your weekly review and find the right home for the information they contain.

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Header photograph by: saad