A tickler file is one to manage date-sensitive information. It can be implemented for paper or electronic, and the classic version contains 43 folders. This can be overly burdensome, though, if you don't deal with a lot of date-sensitive material. Today's article is about simplifying the classic approach to ticklers.
-
-
Scope creep is when you are asked to add things into a job to get it to done. It means that "done" becomes a moving target, and can cause things go be in a perpetual state of work.
-
My mother had a saying: “Out of sight, out of mind.” In spite of her being a supremely organized person, her belief in out of sight out of mind led to piles of paper on her kitchen counter, desk and other places in her house. I also have a tendency to pile things in order to keep them on the front of my mind. This indicates a breakdown of my systems. And on the flip side, once things are in my trusted system, I have a tendency to ignore them if they are not right in front of my face. . In today’s podcast, Episode 82, I will address both sides of this concept.
-
Feature creep is not just something that happens in software. The over-complication of devices that we use can lead to a near constant level of feature creep with every area of our lives.
-
A reader asked me, "What are your thoughts on 'busy work'? For some whose jobs are based more on time than production, it's easy to get caught up doing some busy work to justify one's existence." I realized that there are actually two types of busy work: that which we engage in when our time is our own, and that we engage in to fill working hours owed to someone else. But we can turn busy work into productive time with a bit of planning and action.
-
A tour of my latest product: a OneNote book journal, designed to help you keep track of what your are reading.
-
A couple of weeks ago I updated a post called "10 Things You Didn't Know About Me." So I thought I would update another 10 things post that had followed it years ago.
-
The weekly review, made popular by David Allen in Getting Things Done, is supposed to help you look back and assess the week as well as plan the next week. I have done various forms of the weekly review for years, but the “review” part of it always slid away in the face of planning for the next week. Recently I made a list of questions that will allow me to do a look back with intention, so that I can assess what happened in the past week - and more importantly, what is outstanding and why. I’m going to call this Episode 81: My New Weekly Review Questions.
-
A mindset shift and a timer can help us in reclaiming time in small pieces, yet most people will tell themselves that they can’t possibly get anything done of worth and will fritter it away. A large part of managing time is to use the time that we have. Small chunks of time can be used effectively if we shift our mindsets and use tools to help us stay within the bounds.
-
A reader wrote in, curious as to what podcasts I listen to. She was particularly interested in how many productivity podcasts I follow. Today I talk about the 5 podcasts I never miss…and there is only one productivity podcast on that list!
