Productivity boost
Weeks 38–40
September ended up being a month of settling in and getting organized. After a summer of being all over the place, it was no surprise that many of my project management systems were in crazy disarray.
One thing I did was get clear on quarterly goals, as well as planning for October. I also tidied up my desk and set up workspace where I could be reminded of goals and things that make me happy. Here’s how it looked last week:
On the left are all of my planning docs: quarterly, monthly, weekly worksheets are on the bottom, with annual plans, priorities and core practices I want to be reminded of above. On the right, I have a few pictures of where I want to be in the future, namely traveling around the world and having an awesome cabin in the woods one day.
I also updated my weekly project planner. I found the time based approach of my past schedules was making me very stressed out. For example, if an urgent email came through, and made me miss a block of time I’d assigned to something else, I’d feel dejected and rushed for the rest of the day. In response, I’ve updated my worksheet to this:
It’s focused on core tasks to achieve, rather than when during the day to do them. Column 1 is weekly objectives and notes, 2 is for appointments, and 3 is for daily tasks I can realistically get done. A bad habit of mine is to have a list of 10–15 things I want to get done in a day, and then to feel bad because I don’t do them all. This week, only listing 4–5 tasks, I’ve ended my days feeling accomplished. BONUS.
Finally, I’ve been drowning in email for the last few months. Drowning in email is pretty stressful, so I set out to find systems to help me process and reply in an efficient way. I found this post by Andreas Klinger that utilizes multiple inboxes in Gmail. I sunk about 4 hours into implementation and clean up on Sunday for both my personal and Coastermatic accounts. This week, I’ve successfully hit inbox zero several times, and have a good awareness about what emails need to be actioned on and when.
Next up is updating the Coastermatic filing system. I had a big chats with Tom Harman about it when he visited last week (yay!). He’s recently put together a very simple system for his files, which I’m going to emulate to get the Coastermatic house in order. At the moment we’re spread across several systems, and getting everything into one place will make life a lot easier!
