63 Spring Cleaning Tips

Here is a list of 63 ways to help you with your spring cleaning. 1. One Room at a Time: Pick a room in your house/office and start there, don’t move rooms until you com­plete that room. Com­part­men­tal­iz­ing a larger build­ing by rooms makes orga­niz­ing seem far less daunt­ing. I rec­om­mend start­ing with the room that is most orga­nized, it will take the least amount of time and give you a visual goal for the rest of the home. 2. Have You Used It in the... Read More

12 Reasons Why Meetings Waste Time

Dis­claimer: I hate meet­ings, all of them. I posted a while back about how 90% of meet­ings are a waste of time, here are some of my thoughts on why they are a huge waste. 1. No One Comes Pre­pared: What are we meet­ing about? If a meet­ing starts with any­one ask­ing that ques­tion it is guar­an­teed that the meet­ing is a waste of time. The con­fused party is either in the major­ity, or will waste the majori­ties time try­ing to fig­ure out just what is... Read More

6 Steps to Create a Better Task List

Ear­lier this month I posted a link to an arti­cle about writ­ing more effec­tive to-do lists. Today I want to share with you my top tips to keep in mind when you write your to-do lists. Nobody is per­fect and as I have talked about time after time, no one solu­tion works for every­one, with that in mind please do not view this list as the let­ter of law, but as guidelines.  Read More

4 Quick Holiday Planning Tools

The hol­i­day sea­son is a pain, and can toss your entire pro­duc­tiv­ity sys­tem to the side if you are not care­ful. Here are some of the tools that I use to stay orga­nized dur­ing the holidays. Back­pack iCal / Google Calendar Mint.com We all have a bud­get that we want to stick to, get it setup and keep an eye on your finances with Mint.com. This is a great free tool that you need to be using. If not for bud­get­ing, then for keep­ing an eye on your... Read More

Time to Make a Decision

Inde­ci­sion causes projects to stall, task lists to over-flow, garages to accu­mu­late junk, and unhap­pi­ness for all par­ties involved. Peo­ple are inde­ci­sive because they are scared to make the wrong deci­sion, always want­ing more data before they can decide. Inde­ci­sion will get you no where, it is time to make a decision. There are to-dos that will sit on my list for days, star­ing at me. I know that the actual work and time required to com­plete the... Read More

Do Not Prioritize: Just Do

I have been using a to-do list in one form or another since 5th grade. Tra­di­tional to-do list soft­ware, and even fancy to-do list notepads, will usu­ally have some way to pri­or­i­tize yours tasks. Over the years I have tried this rank­ing sys­tem off and on, and it has never worked, and is always useless. Mer­lin Mann, on an index card that read: Read More  Read More

OmniFocus: Recurring Projects Make Great Grocery Lists

One of the fea­tures that I love about Omni­Fo­cus is not only can you cre­ate a recur­ring action, but you can cre­ate a recur­ring project. At my com­pany there are a series of reports that I have to do each month, they each involve a lot of actions, that for the most part I know, but occa­sion­ally I miss a step. To solve this prob­lem I cre­ated a recur­ring project, with all the actions to com­plete the project neatly out­lined, it pops up in Omni­Fo­cus... Read More

Taskpaper: A Minimalist to-Do Manager

I have been using Taskpa­per along side Omni­Fo­cus for the past week, hav­ing never given the app a full shake down before I was intrigued to see how I liked it. My ver­dict: a great light weight min­i­mal task man­age­ment solu­tion, but not right for me. Taskpa­per is absolutely great, and if pro­grams like Omni­Fo­cus and Things are just to over­whelm­ing for you, then Taskpa­per will be per­fect. I would describe it as one step up from using Text / OmniOut­liner... Read More

OmniFocus for iPhone Tips

Sync Files to OmniFocus I am sure you are aware that you can attach and alias to Omni­Fo­cus on your Mac, if not just drag a file to an action and it will attach the file as an alias (or link) to that file. How­ever if you hold down Option while you drag the file in, it embeds the file to the action. This means that when you sync with your iPhone, it will sync that file. If your iPhone can open the file, it will inside of OmniFocus. Read More  Read More

7 Symptoms You’re on the Verge of a Burn Out

Dra­gos: Here are 7 signs which, in my expe­ri­ence, can wit­ness the prox­im­ity of a burn out in your life. A great list here, often by the time you real­ize it, you are to late. via Link.  Read More