A couple of years ago, I got a job at Stanford that involved being a manager. Up to that point, my organizational system had been as follows:

“Write stuff down somewhere, sometimes….!”

Once I started the job, it became clear that this strategy wasn’t going to work anymore. I decided to read a bunch of books about how to be organized and productive and so on. They kind of blew my mind, and I wanted to teach other people what I learned. So I got on Facebook, where productivity traditionally gets suplexed by puppy videos and rage media, and I asked my friends if they’d be interested in receiving emails about what I’d been learning. They were very interested.

So the next week, I began a series of e-mails to those friends, and now, about a year later, one of them thinks I should share those e-mails with the Internet at Large. So here goes.

EMAIL #1: GET SOME THINGS DONE.

Welcome, nerds.

I’m so thrilled that these strategies could help you with your work on economics instruction, refugee services, podcasting, and/or laser-cut textiles. Especially because a lot of the stuff I read seems to be geared towards, like, finding time to maintain your yacht. No offense to your yacht; I’m sure she’s really nice.

The first thing I read this year is a book called Getting Things Done, by David Allen. David Allen is a productivity guru — he WILL help you maintain your yacht. (And your job.) Anyway, he has a system that I adopted, and that I and many other people have found enormously useful as a baseline way to get organized. Here is a basic summary.

A lot of anxiety and disorganization comes from two places.

- We try to keep lots of tasks in our heads at once. These tasks act like a mental alarm clock that you can’t reset and can’t unplug, because it runs purely on randomness and guilt.

- We try to do projects instead of doing tasks. This is hard. Like, no wonder you haven’t accomplished “get a job” yet. What does that even mean? How does one even go about “getting” a “job”? What kind of job? Oh my god?

The solution to this is to have a clear input system full of tasks, aka next actions.

This input system is reliable because you consistently put tasks in it. I like to call this step, “Maintain one inbox, not a bunch of cute notebooks.” Seriously, folks. I too know the magicalfeeling sparklepromise of a blank notebook. But it’s a fake sparklepromise. The truth is: it doesn’t matter that much what you use, as long as you use it consistently.

In your input system (ok, basically, your to-do list), you write down TASKS, not PROJECTS.

A task is a physical next action (e.g. “write rough draft of cover letter”). A project is a set of physical next actions (e.g. “get a job”).

Projects are psychologically hard to get started and complete on time, because you usually haven’t calculated all the stuff that needs to happen for them to get done. Also, we humans are notoriously TERRIBLE at estimating how much time something will take. Even though this occasionally helps us do wonderful difficult necessary projects that we never would have attempted, had we known how horrifyingly painful and complicated they would be….this irrational optimism can also lead to a lot of avoidable failure.

You can use projects as categories, but try to write down all the tasks in each project, as far as you know them.

If you have projects that you don’t want to, don’t need to, or can’t process right now, put them in a separate projects list that you can fill in and transfer to tasks later.

Processing tasks means processing the email inbox.

It can be really helpful to have a clean inbox. Just read work-related emails for tasks, put them in your system as next actions, and then archive them. Personal emails can go into the system too. It’s like shoveling your driveway in the winter. It’s important if you want to go places in a dignified way.

THE EXCEPTION — things that take two minutes.

You don’t need to import these into your next action or project list. Just do them now.

….

TO GET STARTED AT BUILDING THIS:

….

:D

Take a couple of hours. Get a bunch of scrap paper/notecards, and begin dumping the contents of your brain onto them (figuratively). All the tasks you can think of. Process your email inbox. Go through the papers waiting on your desk. Go through the papers waiting in your mind.

Each task (or project, since we’re at an early processing point) should go on a SEPARATE notecard or piece of paper.

These tasks/projects can be everything from “print out instructions for turning off the gas in an emergency” to “respond to Azmaan about setting up named submissions” to “attend bridge rave on Saturday”. Try to not let anything of this nature stay in your brain. Put it onto a card.

Once you have done this, you should have a pretty big stack of notecards. Now it’s time to begin organizing them into a next actions list.

There are a ton of ways organize your next actions list. I organize things by work type (paid work, finances, domestic tasks, etc), and then tag them with when I plan to do them. There are a lot of online systems that can help you do this. My favorite is called Workflowy, because the tagging system is really useful (I might tag things with “next,” “someday/maybe”, and then if I want to I can isolate them), and the design is simple and intuitive. Other people I know use Trello; others use Asana, which has good calendar functionality and group assignment stuff.

But again, consistency is the most important thing. You can actually just put all your tasks in a row on a memo pad, if you will actually look consistently at that memo pad.

If you have a bunch of unthought-out, non-urgent future projects, you can put them into a future projects list, and then process them for actual tasks later.

You can organize by project, by urgency, by importance….whatever. Some people also organize/tag by context — e.g. “things involving the phone”, “errands”, etc.

OK, now that you have your system, now what?

It should be easier from here out to prioritize tasks at a quick glance. Once your projects are turned into tasks, you should know all that you have to do, which will make it easier to go through things one at a time and knock them off.

Each time a new thing comes your way, put it in your system, or if it will take less than two minutes, do it now.

This system should also help you know when you don’t have to work. There should be nothing rolling around in your brain, causing you work anxiety when you’re trying to take pictures of your food, talk to your mom, crowdsurf across San Francisco, etc.

Then, every week, review.

Do another brain dump. Put in those tasks. If you see that you’re about to have some extra productive time, potentially consider moving one of your tasks from “someday/maybe” into your “next actions” list. If there’s a task you did but forgot to cross off, do it. Maybe take a glance at your longer term goals and visions, if you have written those down.

See if there’s anything new you want to do. Make it into some next actions. Relish the idea that you’re now a little bit more likely to see it happen.

For reference, and a more matoor, detailed version of what I just wrote, check out David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done.

That’s all for now!

Cheers,

Rachel

Here’s the next e-mail, on structuring work days!