A few weeks ago, I confessed to being a PS2 player. This week I’m confessing to being being disorganized.
Now, it’s not that I don’t know HOW to be organized. It’s just that all the organization methods I’ve learned in *cough* all my years just don’t fit me. I grew up listening to Zig Ziglar(Ziglar on Selling, Over the Top) and Covey (The 7 habits of Highly Effective People) on organization. In the last 12 years of business, whenever I had that desire to get on the “organization bandwagon”, I’d always go back and dig out my Daytimer. Prioritize and make a list. I’d spend days making a list. Nothing would get done. The mail would pile up. I’d chuck the entire thing and go back to being me.
Then I came across David Allen’s work, Getting Things Done. It was the first time management system that actually DID anything. The last step is DO. I scrounged the net, looked over David’s website and bought the book.
The book is only 259 pages and I’m on my second reading. Let me tell you where I stand:
- My Outlook Inbox is empty.
- My home-office desktop is clean.
- My office floor is clean.
Let me tell you what I didn’t do:
- I didn’t just delete or archive my emails. I actually processed them all.
- I didn’t just throw papers into a folder and shove them into a cabinet.
- I didn’t just pack everything into a box and toss it into storage.
In part 2, I’ll tell you what I did…