Most of the productivity systems and instructions out there are written for work and business. Trying to apply the system to the household can be troublesome, particularly with managing the dozens of little projects that come up just in the course of living. If you don't have a system to manage the papers and projects, Getting Household Things Done becomes a morass of unfinished and forgotten projects. The key to managing the papers and projects is having a center where everything gets processed. Over the next two articles I will share with you my Mission Control center, the key to Getting Household Things projects done. Today we will examine my Mission Control setup.
-
-
Childhood is precious, and it passes quickly. The souvenirs of childhood - the papers that mark the gain of skills - can become a jumbled mass if not handled well. Without the context of child, age and year, many of the milestones can disappear. Today we will talk about a method to manage children's papers. Children are rightfully proud of the work they create, and they want to share it with their families. The amount of paper, though, can be overwhelming, with art projects, spelling tests,worksheets and more. If you have more than one child, it can take over. With a simple system, you can manage the paper so you don't lose the context of who did what when, but…
-
Did you ever wish that you could have a visual indicator to tell people when you were busy at work? It's worse now that we're all working from home. Enter Luxafor flags.
-
Time blocking is a great way to get things done efficiently. Today I show you how I do time blocking, including pictures of an actual day's result.
-
One of the things people constantly ask me is what tools I use. It’s like they expect I have some magic set of tools that makes productivity easy for me.Nope. I use some easily accessible tools, and most of them are free.So today I will talk about my favorite tools.
-
One of the things that came out of the 2020 Reader Survey is that people are struggling with energy management.I’m not a naturally energetic person. In fact, some of those same readers made the comment that not everyone has energy to manage everything that I do.I laughed until I cried at the thought that anyone in the world thought that I was a peppy and energetic person. I’m not. I don’t sleep well. I don’t sleep enough. I’m often irritable from lack of sleep. I sometimes want to put my head down on my desk and nap.But over the years, I have learned how to manage my energy, and even what to do to increase it. So today I present…
-
Working from home...many of us are doing it right now. Some are doing it better than others. So how can you make working from home successful? Today we look at various ways, including how to make the mental shift to and from working; maintaining an office space; keeping up motivation and the importance of notes.
-
One of the things that I still struggle with, years into the productivity space, is making my to-do list doable. I don't want to put each step to complete something on the list, because a) I don't need to be reminded that I need to fetch the stepladder when changing a light bulb, and b) the list gets far too long the more granular I go.On the other hand, if the tasks are too big, then I can't get them done in a small amount of time.Enter Little And Often, one of Mark Forster's concepts.I've been a fan of Mark Forster for a long time now. Besides being an eloquent writer, he takes it upon himself to innovate new systems…
-
I am aware that you can re-purpose things to serve functions the designer never intended. For example, in college I never owned a tool set. If I had to hang up a picture, I would use a high-heeled shoe to do the pounding.Not only can the right tool make the job go faster, but finding places where your productivity is pinched can help you pinpoint where you need to find better tools.
-
Daily and weekly planning will get you through the day-to-day without having tasks pile up for a massive weekend task-fest. But isn't there more to life than just the day-to-day? For a long time I existed on daily and weekly planning only. Partially it was because I was just so busy juggling all of my commitments (work, child, house, spouse and volunteer) that I didn't have room for anything more. I would plow through my days, insanely productive, falling into bed at night exhausted. But there was never anything more. The novel I wanted to write remained a remote dream, and my craft closet morphed into a craft room with supplies for unstarted projects. Partially it was because I was…
