Getting Your S*** Together (According to Reddit)
By Smith07 of Reddit
This is advice on how to manage and organize yourself which is useful for everyone at home, and those at work who do not have a repetitive or extremely on-the-fly job.
As new work comes to you, decide if it is a single step or multistep. we’ll call these multistep pieces of work projects.
If it is single step and less than two minutes to do it, do it immediately. If it is greater than two minutes, determine the action that is required to complete that step and put it in a list. We’ll call that list your “Next Action List”. I bolded “Action” as I want to put the emphasis that it must be a verb, not just an idea.
If it requires multiple actions to complete a given task, we’ll call that a project. If you have a project, put it in a list, we’ll call this your “Project List”. This is a very broad definition of a project as long as it takes more than one step but it work.
For each of your projects as they are created, brainstorm as many actions as you can think of to complete the project. Place these actions in your “Next Action List”. If these actions cannot be completed at the moment because you are waiting for something, put this instead on your “Waiting for List”.
Once a week reserve yourself a half hour to an hour to go through your entire email inbox, cleanup any papers or notes you may have on your desk, as you go though these items, place them on the relevant list (Next Action List, Waiting For List, or Project List). After you completed your cleanup, go though your Project List and brainstorm new actions based on any new information you might have. Then go through your Waiting for List to see if you need to pester some people or perhaps that you are free to do an action now that you have received what your waiting for.
Throughout the week don’t “think” about what you have to do next, simply do the next item on your next action list. This will save you time in the long run, as you never have to “Think” about what you have to do next since you’ve already done that.
Furthermore I recommend dividing your next actions list into relevant actions such as; To Call, To Email, To Type, To Meet, To Review, To Research. Make these sections work for you. By doing so you gain efficiency by doing all of your similar tasks at once, such as sending out all your emails at once, then calling everyone, etc.
Make sure to bring these lists with you, so you can add to it on the fly in your meetings, that way you do not accidentally forget an action or a project.
As an added bonus eventually you will feel comfortable that everything you have to do is contained within these lists, so you’ll never find yourself worrying that you’ve forgotten something.
For a very well defined version of this, check out Getting Things Done by David Allen, its the primary basis for this, and I must give credit where it is due.
I work as an engineer, and find all of this very useful, perhaps you may as well.
