Image by: Austin Kleon

Choosing an organizational system can feel a little like picking your favorite cult. Whatever system you’re weighing up, you’ll always find teams of people ready to tell you how it’s changed their lives, made them more efficient and allowed them to achieve more than they ever thought possible. That’s particularly true when one of the systems you’re considering is Getting Things Done (GTD), David Allen’s “productivity principles for work and life.”

But despite what GTD’s fans will tell you — and they’ll be ready to tell you a lot — David Allen’s methods aren’t the only organizational system in town. Mindmapping can be no less effective in planning what needs to be done, filling in the gaps and creating a workflow that takes you from concept to product. So which is the most effective tool and which method should you be turning to as you’re planning your projects?

Mindmapping Keeps Students Awake

Mindmapping is said to have been created by psychology author Tony Buzan, although others have argued that the method has actually been in use for millennia. The motivation is supposed to have been the difficulty of creating lecture notes. They’re a pain to write at a time when students would rather be listening (ideally, and if they’re not sleeping) and they have to be reviewed before the student can make sense of them. Buzan thought that mindmapping would be a much more efficient way of remembering what the lecturer was saying. His brother, Barry Buzan, then described in his book The Mind Map how entrepreneurs and managers could use the same techniques to develop their ideas.

The principle is very simple. Mindmappers begin by placing an image or a word at the center of a page then extend branches around the page leading to single words describing individual aspects of that idea. Multiple colors can be used to show different areas of the concept, the branches describe how those ideas are related, and the distance from the center can be used to express the priority of those aspects.

The result, say mindmap fans, is easy brainstorming and a representation of an idea that’s free to grow organically, instead of being forced into the kind of linear structure that might restrict natural growth.

As an added bonus, the visual characteristics of a mindmap are supposed to make its contents easy to remember. One study found that mindmapping increased recall in students who used it by as much as 10 percent. The same study though also found that students really didn’t like to use it.

GTD Needs a Road Map

There’s really not a huge amount to mindmapping then. It doesn’t take long to get to grips with and it’s very easy to understand. GTD, on the other hand, needs a road map to understand. Designed by coach and management consultant David Allen, GTD works on a number of different levels. It uses a five-step information workflow made up of: collect; process; organize; review; and do. Plans are divided into six focus levels: current actions; current projects; areas of responsibility; yearly goals; five-year vision; and life goals. And then there’s the five-level “natural planning” process which organizes action by: defining a task’s purpose and principles; envisioning the outcome; brainstorming; organizing; and identifying next actions.

And it’s all centered on lists placed in 43 folders for monthly and daily planning. Plus a “tickler file,” which is a kind of procrastination box used to push nasty jobs to a definite point in the future.

In a straight scrap then, Occam’s Razor would make pretty short work of GTD. If the simplest solution is always the best, then Tony Buzan always beats David Allen into a messy pulp.

But it’s not that simple. GTD is more complex than mindmapping because it’s trying to do a lot more. Mindmaps have two functions: they draw out thoughts, allowing creative thinkers to dream up new concepts and link them together; and they make it easier for those thinkers to remember what they’ve been imagining. Mindmaps generate ideas, structure them, organize them and help people to become familiar with them. And then they stop.

It’s the next stage though that’s much harder. You still have act on those ideas, and that’s always going to require far more organization. A mindmap for a new iPhone app, for example, might place a bodybuilding image in the center then have different branches leading to areas for exercise regimes, diet-tracking features, updates from bodybuilding events and motivational slogans. The branches would contain words that remind the developer of the different features the app would contain and inspire him to add new ones.

Creating the app though, would mean hiring a programmer, designing the navigation system, deciding on the look and the designs, fixing a sales price, writing the copy, submitting it for approval, and finding ways to market it. That’s a lot harder than sitting on a sofa and scribbling single words on a page then connecting them with wavy lines.

But if it’s hard, it’s not always made easier by trying to figure out what David Allen meant by a “mind-sweep” (it appears to be collecting then ditching thoughts you don’t need), deciding whether to write one list or multiple sub-lists, and trying to figure out whether you should “do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it,” another of Allen’s set of task rules.

In theory then, mindmapping and GTD aren’t really in opposition. Mindmapping is about concepts and ideas. It’s for brainstorming and thinking, not for planning and doing. GTD, on the other hand, is supposed to make action more organized. While it does have elements that are supposed to help creativity, it’s main role is to ensure that the thoughts you’ve already had are turned into plans — and that those plans are turned into action.

In practice though, by the time you’ve finished coloring in the different branches on your mindmap and highlighting the various aspects of your idea, you’re already going to be fairly tired — and possibly fed up with your concept. Toss in the creation of 43 folders and the endless lists that David Allen will have you writing and you’ll be lucky if you have the energy to get anything done at all.

Fortunately, in the end it doesn’t matter which organizational system you use as long as the result is that you stop organizing and start doing.

Photography: koalazymonkey

What could be easier than making a to-do list? You just write down all of the things you want to do… then get on with doing them. It sounds so simple and yet with a little thought and a strong inclination to procrastinate, creating a list can quickly become a research project all of its own. There is, after all, a difference between the things you have to do and the things you’d like to do. And there are differences too between what you really have to do and what you probably should do… just as there are differences between the things you think you’d enjoy doing and maybe you’ll do one day, and the things you know you’ll enjoy doing and sincerely hope that you’ll do. Which of these kinds of tasks should go on your to-do list, how do you prioritize them and how do you stop your list from becoming so overwhelming that having written down everything you plan to do, all you really want to do is hide under a blanket and do nothing? Lists-making might look simple, but when you’re trying to organize your time, your life and your tasks, it’s vital to know how they work.

The simplest kinds of lists are tiered lists. These allow you to prioritize your tasks so that you can see instantly what needs to be done first. Alan Lakein, author of How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, recommends these kinds of lists in his time management system.

Prioritizing Your ABC Lists

For Lakein, tasks are categorized into three lists, marked “A”, “B” and “C”.  A-list tasks need to be completed within a day, B-list tasks should be done in a week, and C-listers are supposed to be completed by the end of a month. Within each list, tasks can also be prioritized either by writing them in order of urgency or by assigning each task a number. So the most important task each day will be A-1; the least important might be C-23. Beneath each task, you should also write the goal-specific activities needed to complete them.

As time management systems go, it’s remarkably simple.  But while that can be a benefit, it also brings limitations. Because the system doesn’t distinguish between tasks that can be completed quickly and those that need more time, it’s easy to get the prioritization wrong. A small job, such as writing a quick email or giving a quote, might be less urgent than a tougher job, such as completing a white paper or writing a report. But if it can be done in minutes, getting it out of the way can help to bring clarity, increased focus on the remaining tasks — and the satisfaction of crossing an item off the list. Events too have a habit of increasing the length of the lists even as you’re working through them. That means tasks don’t get completed and instead are shunted on to the B list… which then begins to form a new A list, parts of which are shunted onto the next B list and so on. Instead of feeling as though you’re achieving your goals, you can often feel as though you’re simply reorganizing tasks.

Mark Forster, a business coach and author of Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, takes a slightly different approach. His “closed lists” are intended to set a boundary on the work that needs to be completed. Having made a list of all the tasks that need to be completed within a day, you draw a line underneath the list to mark it off and provide yourself with the kind of reinforcement that helps to say “no” to more work. And if you can’t say “no,” anything else you take on has to be added to the next day’s list — or in the worst case, placed below the line.

The aim each day then is to complete all the items above the line, then the items below it. Keeping track of the amount you manage to complete each day will also provide a good idea of the amount that it’s possible to get done in a day so that future lists will be more accurate. The main benefit though should be a methodology that enables you both to plan the day and deal with the inevitable interruptions that crop up so that each day’s to-do list is always finished.

Recently, Forster has honed his system a little further with “Autofocus” which uses closed sub-lists and intuitive choices to guide prioritization.

Four Lists and 43 Folders

If that sounds like it’s starting to get a lot more complicated, then David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity system takes things up a whole new level. Allen recommends creating four different kinds of lists.

“Project” lists describe goals rather than actions. They aren’t followed on a day-to-day basis and the tasks they contain aren’t ticked off regularly. But they are reviewed weekly to ensure that you’re on the right track and in control of events rather than allowing events to control you. A project list may, of course, be subdivided into smaller project lists.

“Action” lists, which contain specific tasks, will almost always be subdivided and may be broken into sublists as detailed as “Calls,” “Errands” and “To Read.” Placing the lists in context is supposed to make them easier to complete.

“Waiting for” lists are projects which can’t continue until the next step has been completed by someone else; and the items on the “Someday/maybe” list are the long-term goals you really hope to reach one day. The support material required to complete the tasks on all of these different lists should be filed in 43 folders.

It’s a system that’s completely comprehensive and fiendishly complicated, and its adherents swear by it even as they adjust it to fit their own lives.

And that’s really the key to using lists for productivity. It’s not the list-making that’s important but completing the tasks on the list. A simple list system like Alan Lakein’s is fine if you know what you need to do and what you have to do to complete it. Mark Forster’s is good too if the kind of interruptions you receive are rare and easily manageable. And David Allen’s structures appear to work for geeky types who can make sense of his workflows. Inevitably, you should find yourself gravitating towards the organization system that works best for you — and which,  unlike this lady, gets the work done.

“It is a shame that most creative breakthroughs never materialize.”

That’s the philosophy behind Behance, a company dedicated to helping creative professionals turn their ideas into reality. The firm’s website provides networking opportunities, creative job listings, and articles and advice to enhance productivity.

That’s all useful stuff and certainly the positions on offer on the site, though few, are high quality. (There are only sixteen of them and none seem to be freelance, but Flickr is looking for a senior visual designer, and Apple wants someone to do design work on the iPhone.)

Behance’s main offering though is its Action Method.

This is a productivity approach designed specifically to help creative staff ensure that their plans aren’t lost somewhere between inspiration and implementation. It involves pulling three elements out of each creative process, whether that process is as formal as a brainstorming meeting in a lava lamp-lit room or as spontaneous as an article you’ve read on the MUNI or an idea that hits you on the head while sitting in the bath.

Each concept, Behance recommends, should leave you with Action Steps, Backburner Items and Reference Items.

The Action Steps are relatively clear. Behance gives examples that include “follow up with x, review y, meet with z.”

The Backburner is intended to be a place to hold ideas that “may someday require actions, or just to clear your mind of the little and non-urgent things.”

And Behance recommends that reference items should be kept sparingly to avoid clutter.

Burn your Ideas
None of these elements is particularly revolutionary. The BackBurner, for example, could be one of David Allen’s folders — a place where things go never to be seen again. (It’s not entirely clear why productivity systems think they need to tell us how to procrastinate but it does seem to be a vital — and probably the most popular — part of every work method.)

Reference Items are dismissed in one article on Action Method’s own website as being “generally pretty useless.” That’s likely to be an exaggeration. Most ideas will need some sort of research before the implementation process can begin, but it’s possible that Behance’s recommendation to keep that research to a minimum is one of the company’s most valuable suggestions. Collecting reference material can often be just another way of pushing an idea onto the backburner, replacing an action step with a procrastination step.

Reading about your project feels too much like you’re doing something to make it happen — even though you’re not.

It’s the Action Steps themselves though that are likely to be the element that brings the best results from the Behance’s system. Having an idea is nice. Describing that idea to other people and persuading them it’s the killer app that’s going to bring in the mega-bucks is even nicer.

But nothing is going to happen unless a course of action is clearly laid out right away.

Just being reminded of that simple truth is important. Remember to follow the Action Method and you should be able to drag a vision down to the ground and begin to put it in practical terms.

The Holy Grail of Creative Productivity
But the Action Method stops there, leaving any creative thinker with a whole bunch of vital unanswered questions. How do you organize the action steps? Which steps should be taken first and which put off until later? How do you prevent those later actions from disappearing over the edge of the backburner and never being acted on at all?

And most importantly, how do you extract practical steps from a creative vision? Is there a routine workflow that can turn any idea into a series of standard steps that need to be taken to reach the goal?

That’s really the Holy Grail of productivity systems and it’s one that, as far as we’re aware, no workplace guru has managed to track down.

It’s possible though that it is addressed in one of Behance’s advisory sessions, and it’s here that we can really begin to see the genius of the company’s system.

The ideas might be simple but as a marketing method designed to give potential clients a taste of what the company can do, Behance’s Action Method provides a great example. It attracts attention, outlines the benefits to clients and generates leads for its main product.

And it also provides sales for its long list of Action Method products — notebooks color-coded to match the system.

For any business looking to sell something as intangible as advice, it provides a great marketing model, even if it doesn’t do a great deal to increase creative productivity.

The Action Method does have its uses though. It can remind creative types that they need to get practical if they want to see results, and it tells them that it’s okay to put some things off and skimp on the research. But other than its lack of detail, it does have one major flaw: it isn’t a shame that most creative breakthroughs don’t materialize.

Most creative breakthroughs are worthless. Only a few will go on to generate money, and it’s those that tend to spark the enthusiasm and motivation to become real. It’s better that an idea withers away before it’s born than after months of effort have been put into its Action Steps and Reference Items.

Part of being successful involves knowing when not to take action — as well as which Action Steps to take.

Take a look at the Action Method here and tell us what you think.

[tags] gtd, productivity, creativity, behance [/tags]

For iPhone owners who aren’t paid-up members of the Church of GTD, life can be hard. Browse through the productivity apps on Apple’s website, and it seems that every other offering is based on David Allen’s system.

It’s almost as though it’s not enough to have a mind like a filing cabinet to get the most out of GTD. You also need a pocketful of whiz-bang gadgetry and all the electronic gizmos you can think of to keep your lists in order.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. While David Allen might have managed to turn a simple list into something more complex than the control panel of the space shuttle, it is possible to keep them organized using nothing more futuristic than a pen and a sheet of paper.

Reading that Eston Bond at Hyaline Skies managed to do it with a souped-up moleskin — he added some colored post-it tabs — made us wonder how else you could keep GTD working on the day the lights go out… and we came up with a number of possibilities.

Whiteboards
Whiteboards are the real reason people become teachers. They’re fun to use and in addition to the pleasure you get from crossing out a task, you also get an extra thrill by wiping them out physically with an old rag.

You’ll need a fairly big board, of course. It has to be large enough to be easily divided into separate sections. And you’ll want to use different colored markers. That will make it easy to see at a glance whether you’re looking at “Projects (planning),” “Project Plans (review for action),” or the tickler area.

But even that would start to make things a little complex so the best option when using a whiteboard is to boil GTD down to its essentials. Draw three vertical black lines down the board, dividing it into thirds. Mark the first area “Delegated Tasks” in one color; mark the second area in a different color “Projects;” and call the third area “Someday/Maybe.”

That divides the space vertically. You’ll now want to divide it horizontally to indicate the status of different tasks. Place projects in the planning stage above projects that need to be reviewed, and use the top half of the Delegated Tasks section for jobs that are waiting to be outsourced keeping the lower half for jobs that are waiting to come back.

Tasks for the Someday/Maybe section can be written in at random as you think of them.

Clearly, a whiteboard doesn’t allow for all of the benefits that people manage to squeeze out of GTD — it’s not portable, for example, and adding new information won’t be easy when you’re limited for space — but it is visible all the time and it could make a very useful and simple office GTD system.

Calendars
Using a whiteboard for GTD has the advantage that you can always see all of your tasks in one go. That can be true too when you use a physical calendar but a calendar also brings a different kind of benefit: it shows you when tasks are going to be done.

That’s very valuable. It’s one thing to create lists of tasks that need to be completed and organize them in different ways. It’s quite another to actually do them. When you write them on a calendar though, you set yourself a time to do them that’s hard to ignore.

To make a calendar work with GTD, again, you’ll need to use different colors. You’ll need one color to indicate whether the task is a project you’re planning, another color for delegated tasks and a third color for delegated tasks that are waiting to come back.

More importantly though, you’ll have to decide before you write them down when each task will be handled.

That provides a whole new dimension to GTD but it is a very useful one that increases the chances that each day’s task is actually completed. (If the day ends before its list does, simply move the remainder of the day’s tasks to the next available time slot.)

On the down side, there’s no room on a calendar-based GTD system for those “someday” tasks that are pushed into the far future. But maybe that’s no bad thing.

Index Cards
Joe Ely, a member of the GTD Community, recently wrote a post on the GTDTimes website describing how he uses index cards to keep track of his GTD lists. For Joe, portability was the most important feature he was looking for. He wanted to be able to write down ideas and tasks whether they came to him in his office, on the shop floor, or at a ball game. A computer-based system wasn’t going to cut it and although a PDA worked, he found it “clunky” and wasn’t sorry to lose access to it.

Instead, Joe now writes his task lists on index cards. Again, he uses color to differentiate his lists, choosing seven different tones for each of the different contexts his tasks might take. One color of card is used for home-computer tasks; another for home-projects, for example.

And to show the status of the tasks, Joe uses various notation marks that include arrows to indicate delegation, and dashes and pluses for the state of completion. It’s not a bad system… but pulling out a stack of cards from your pocket is never going to be as cool as pulling out an iPhone.

Photography: Margolove

Time-sucks come in all shapes and sizes. Google Earth, for example, is a planet-sized time-suck that could draw in hours if you were to allow it to — and especially if your Internet connection is running a little slow.

Following Twitter tweets can be a pretty big time-suck too, but they at least come in bite-sized chunks letting you look up and remember that you’re supposed to be doing something more productive.

Much more fatal is research.

That has the dangerous temptation of at least looking and feeling like work. It’s something that needs to be done, and reading — whether it’s surfing online, browsing through a magazine, or leafing through a book — is something that just about everyone has to do if they’re to stay informed about their field and up-to-date with the latest ideas.

Unfortunately, it’s also something that can go on for ever, with one article leading to another and one book to another reference in the bibliography. The result is that instead of pulling out the information you need to know to make the right decisions, you waste hours picking up details that are interesting but unproductive.

Only a small fraction of the time you spend scouring words may actually give you practical knowledge that you can use.

Faster Pussycat, Read, Read!
There are solutions. Speed reading, for example, uses a range of different techniques to help readers absorb written information while spending as little time as possible actually reading it. Those methods might involve skipping the subvocalization (not sounding out the words in your mind as you read them), skimming some sections to focus on others or identifying words without focusing on all of the letters.

That can have some pretty dramatic results. Howard Stephen Berg is reputed to be the world’s fastest reader with a rate of 25,000 words per minute and can even remember everything he reads. He’s unusual. The best speed-readers tend to reach a top speed of 1,000-2,000 words per minute and that comes at a price. Their comprehension rate tends to be a paltry 50 percent, which suggests that at least half those minutes were wasted.

An alternative approach is what philosopher Mortimer Adler has called “Synoptic Reading.” This involves reading around a subject. Rather than focusing on one book in detail, synoptic readers gather a number of different volumes on the topic, and check the table of contents, introduction and conclusion to get a feel for the book and the approach the author takes. They then dip in and out of selected chapters from each book.

The advantage of this system — apart from the time it saves reading each book properly — is that it provides a general picture from a number of different viewpoints. Read just one book on a topic and you might gain an in-depth view from one person; dip into several books and you’ll have an idea of the way several different thinkers approach the same field. You’ll be aware of the different arguments affecting the field and the weaknesses of each approach. Provided, of course, that you can remember what you’ve read and you can understand it based on a quick dip.

Google — The Ultimate Synoptic Reading Tool
In practice, this has become the way people research on the Web. Unless you’re boning up on some esoteric topic of interest only to you and one other person, it will be impossible to read everything that exists online about any field. (And with much of it copied anyway, you won’t need to.) Nor is it easy to find a site that goes very deeply into any topic, offering new knowledge as well as background material.

Googling then might be seen as the last evolution of synoptic reading, the most efficient way to gather information on one topic from a range of different sources — and skim them.

But synoptic reading still takes time, in particular, because it’s never quite clear when you should stop reading. That’s especially true online where one link can lead to another, and before you know it, you’ve somehow drifted from an investigation of the versatility of Ruby on Rails back to the latest posting by Perez Hilton.

The alternative is to read with “Intention Bias.” This involves understanding what you what you want to achieve from your reading, then seeking out the material that supplies it.

Someone interested in using meditation to relax, for example, would pick up a pile of meditation books in a store and only read those chapters that explained how to use the lotus position to lose stress. A synoptic reader would read other parts of the books too and understand that some people believe that meditation isn’t relaxing at all.

So which approach should you take when there’s knowledge to be acquired and time is short?

As is often the case, the best method might be a combination of all of them. Knowing what you’re looking for from your reading will help to reduce the time spent looking at the least relevant information, even if it does limit your knowledge. Dipping into more than one source will help to broaden your knowledge and show where you can go to learn more at a later date.

And reading quickly is always a good idea when you’re not reading for pleasure, if only so that you can move on fast to something more fun.

But perhaps the best advice is to set yourself a time limit. Know when to stop reading and you’ll not only give yourself an incentive to focus, you’ll also increase the chances that you’ll turn that knowledge into action.

It took David Allen about 250 pages to explain his Getting Things Done productivity system. You’ll have to read each page at least twice to understand it, spend several hours wondering how to make it work and fiddle around with 43 folders before realizing you don’t need a book to teach you how to procrastinate.

The UNO system provided by Metrostate University comes free on two PDF pages. It will take you about three seconds to figure out and unlike GTD, you might actually use it. It’s a perfect example of how often the simplest designs can bring the biggest benefits.

UNO, which stands, a little ambitiously perhaps, for Universal Organizer, consists of nothing more than a series of four concentric circles divided by lines radiating out from a central bulls-eye. It looks like a dartboard but with only six numbers (or sections).

Graduating from College
The organizer was designed to make it easier for students to plan their college papers, and the instructions still place an emphasis on essay-planning when explaining how to use UNO. The center circle, it says, is where you put the topic or title you want to write about. Each section in the first inner ring would contain one key point the essay would discuss. Sub-points continue in the middle ring while support information and details would be added to the outer ring.

A summary of the inner ring then, would be the introduction in which you describe what you’re planning to say. The sections of the middle rings become paragraphs or sections of the essay, while information in the outer rings would help you to flesh out the details.

Using a highlighter to mark the ideas you’ve already covered should help to keep your ideas ordered as you write and see how much work still needs to be done.

So far so simple, especially for students. But if UNO was only good for college kids wondering how to make sense of Sociology 101, it would have limited appeal. Other recommended uses though include project-planning, website design, goal-setting and preparing presentations.

It’s not too hard to see how that would work. Instead of using a tree structure to plan Web pages for example, it would be possible to print out a copy of UNO, use the concentric rings to show how users surf into the site and indicate the sort of content each of the pages should contain.

Similarly, distant goals can be made more concrete by a planning process that indicates each of the skills that would have to be acquired and challenges met along the way. Highlighting each of those in turn would be particularly satisfying.

For example, a designer planning an online travel store for a client might write “Flights,” “Hotels,” “Packages,” and “Car Rental” in four of the inner circles to indicate the main sections of the site.

In the middle circle under “Flights,” he could put “Search” and “Special Offers” to remind himself what would appear under the Flights tab. And in the outer circle, he could add “Purchase and generate ticket.”

The structure itself is also meant to be flexible. There’s no need to fill the entire diagram if you don’t need to and subdividing sections and creating more rings requires nothing more than adding a line. It’s even possible to break out complex sections into “satellites” that provide even more detail.

Altogether, UNO is a pretty neat tool that has all the benefits of simplicity while combining segmentation and priority.

UNO, the Limits
It’s not perfect though. The limited space in each sector of a circle means you can never do more than write a word or two to remind you of what you need to do. There’s no room for detailed notes, and breaking out too many satellites could start to make things very messy very quickly.

That could be a pretty big limitation. It restricts users from thinking too deeply about their plan, restricting preparation, and it could hide problems until the implementation process is well under way.

Similarly, while the concentric radials indicate priority, they don’t reveal order. A circle doesn’t have a beginning, so you’d have to make sure you knew which main topic you wanted to start with and where you’d want to go next, especially if you wanted to re-order the content. Adding numbers to each inner circle could help.

Nor, despite its name, is UNO a universal organizer. It’s a useful planning tool but it’s not going to organize your life, help you sort out an overflowing inbox or turn your life from a mess of missed deadlines into order and stability.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of UNO though is the characteristic that’s also its strength: the diagram’s simplicity. It’s so easy to reproduce that no one is ever going to make any money marketing it. David Allen certainly has it beat there.

[tags] productivity, gtd. uno [/tags]

When it comes to productivity tools, nothing seems to be able to beat the old fashioned list. Take a look at the Productivity Web Apps available for the iPhone, for example, and almost every other page seems to point to yet another way of putting one item after another so that nothing gets forgotten and everything gets done at the right time.

From Tadalist’s simple type-and-check list to the sophistication of RememberTheMilk, there’s no shortage of ways of organizing your work — and feeling that you’re doing some even when you’re not.

But one of the most unique and useful listing tools is also one of the most overlooked. Amazon’s wish lists were created to make it easy for shoppers to let friends and family know what they’d like to own, and to buy each other gifts they needed. But the versatility of those lists also allow them to do much more than that.

Entrepreneurs and team-members can use them as a very effective collaboration tool.

Multiple Lists… with Notes
Wish lists have two main strengths. The first is in the detail of the list itself. Amazon lets registered users create multiple lists with different names, and add “unique facts” — or notes — to each list.

That already gives you a certain amount of flexibility. A Web designer, for example, could create one list called “Flash Ideas,” another called “Programming Developments,” and a third called “Inspiration.” Adding notes to each of those lists would let other programmers and designers working on the same projects see that the designer was thinking in terms of “This sort of color scheme,” “That sort of programming functionality” or just “Ideas I like.”

Using the lists isn’t particularly intuitive. To create a new list, you have to press the “Create a New List Button,” but instead of being taken directly to a form page, the new list appears immediately above the title marked “Your Private Wish Lists.” You then have to click that New List heading, followed by the edit link to start entering information.

Clearly, if you’re using the list for productivity rather than to pick up some nice presents, not all of that information is going to be useful. You won’t have to worry, for example, about entering your birthday details (although you could use that field to indicate deadline dates.) Nor will you have to worry too much about the address.

But you should make sure that the List Name is informative and that the Unique Facts provide relevant details.

Of course, you won’t be able to type your own ideas into the list in the same way that you’d be able to do on RememberTheMilk but that’s not as limiting as it sounds. In fact, it both makes Amazon’s list unique and gives it an advantage.

Instead of a typed list, users are able to add items from Amazon’s inventory. In effect, that means you can add just about any item at all, creating a list that’s pictorial rather than verbal.

An interior designer, for example, who wanted to show a client the sort of furnishings he thinks would suit a room could create a list entitled “John’s Bedroom,” write a note saying “These are some of things I thought we could include your room. What do you think?” then add each of the items to his list. Sharing that list with his client would show exactly what he had in mind and would be a lot more effective than writing “1970s lava lamp in fluorescent green.”

Use Reviews but Pay your Way
Anyone though could use items in an Amazon wish list to represent either things they need or tasks they have to complete. A developer who was building a website, for example, could include Excel to remind him to build a database, a disk drive to show that he needs to buy storage and a server to remind him to find a host.

All of that could be useful and it would make the list more entertaining to look at than a pile of words, but it does come with a restriction. Because you can’t make notes next to each item, it might not always be easy to understand what exactly you had in mind when you placed the item on the list. That’s particularly true when you’re sharing the list with others.

That’s where the reviews can come in handy.

Each item on Amazon can carry a customer review, and while you have to pay your way by making that review useful for others, you can still use that space to send a message to a user of your list.

The interior designer, for example, could say what he liked about the lava lamp so that the client understood why it would suit him. The developer could point out which other servers could do the job better depending on what the job required. Again, as long as those comments also help other readers understand more about the product, there’s no reason why you couldn’t use reviews to add more information to your list.

Ultimately, whether you choose to use Amazon’s wish list as a productivity tool, a collaboration tool or just as a way of making sure you get the birthday presents you want depends on you. With so many different ways of organizing your work available, you’ll always have to weigh the convenience of being able to type directly into the list with the ability to see a graphic representation of what you’re discussing.

And of course, there’s always the danger that as you’re adding to your list, you also end up tossing a few items into your shopping basket and breaking your budget too.

It’s the challenge that just about all entrepreneurs stumble over — knowing when and how to hand over some of their responsibilities to someone else so that they can focus on the most important stuff.

For a growing company, it’s a vital move. For the company’s founder, it’s as difficult as lending their Porsche to their teenage son. There are all sorts of ways to delegate though, some of them easier and more likely to bring success than others.

Here are some of the best:

1. Go to India
Not literally, unless you really want to, of course, but the sub-continent is stuffed with talented, skilled locals who can do some of the hard coding while you focus on the plans. And they’ll do it for less than the price of a lunch in Silicon Valley. Start here.

2. Find a Virtual Assistant
Or you could keep things local — relatively speaking, at least — by hiring a virtual assistant. They can handle all sorts of office and secretarial tasks without you having to buy another desk or cough up huge amounts of money in benefits. You can read about them here and find one here.

3. Use Family
Yes, it’s old and traditional. But it works, family members can’t walk out on you, and best of all, you might just end up getting tax benefits for giving your kids their pocket money.

4. Use eLance
When it comes to offering freelancers, few sites have got the system down better than eLance. Freelancers themselves aren’t crazy about it, but if you start by finding someone reliable to outsource to, you can slowly build up the responsibility.

5. Form Joint Ventures
One way of sharing the load is to share the profits. Find a business with a market like yours and you should be able to pass on some of the marketing.

6. Partner with an Expert
Or you could just find a partner. If you’re a whiz at something creative, for example, team up with someone with a nose for sales and share the profits. Shoving the work sideways still counts as delegation.

7. Award Responsibility
The reason that delegation is difficult is that it’s hard to trust someone else to do the job as well as you. One way to make that more likely to happen is to make them feel that they own the job. Give them the responsibility to make their own decisions and you’ll make them feel like — and work like — you.

8. Use Shipwire
There’s nothing worse than doing something as brainless as stuffing boxes when you could be building a future. This is something that anyone can do — even Amazon. We prefer Shipwire though.

9. Ask Suppliers to do More
Not every business can do this, but if you’re doing anything that involves manufacturing, then squeezing a little more out of your suppliers — whether that means pre-cutting parts to fit or removing the labels — could help to save you time and another pointless task.

10. Get an Intern
Big businesses have been doing this forever. If you want to create a big business, then try acting like one. Find a student who’s prepared to be paid in experience and bring them in to lend a hand. But make sure you really do pay them by giving them plenty of responsibility to show off on their resumes.

11. Build a Fan Base
Sometimes, you don’t even have to look to find people to delegate to. If people are excited by your work — perhaps because it brings real benefits or maybe even just because they want to be associated with it — you might find that a call for help on your site is enough to get the offers. Political campaigns, for example, thrive on volunteers.

12. Make the Cause Cool
It’s not just Obamania that can get people to contribute hours of their time without pay. So can any cool cause, especially when the reward is neat too. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, for example, managed to get millions of people scanning the skies with its SETI@home screensaver. Everyone wanted to be the first to spot an alien — and it made their computers look pretty too. What can you hand out that will let people work for you, enjoy it and not cost you a dime?

13. Go Open Source
You could hand out your technology, of course. Opening up the code will make it harder for you to make money out of your product — although not impossible — but just unlocking the door could be enough to find that hackers have broken in and done all your housework for you.

14. Make the Deadlines Easy
It’s impossible to delegate all your work to someone else — just the act of delegating takes effort, management and preparation too. So plan ahead and makes sure there’s plenty of time to get the work back. Nothing increases the chances of failure faster than a too-tight deadline.

15. Create an Affiliate Program
It’s true that affiliates won’t help to put CDs in disks or handle customer enquiries, but they will do your marketing for you. It’s not very original but as a way of delegating your evangelism, it doesn’t get much easier — or much more effective — than this.

16. Team up with Non-Profits
A charity isn’t going to help a business to make money just because the owner asks. But it might if the interests of the business converge with the aims of the group. A company trying to create a green engine, for example, might find that an environmental group was willing to help with the marketing. And the association would make the business look good too.

17. Run a Competition
This is an old marketing trick that still has legs. Instead of wracking your brain to come up with a good tagline, logo or new product idea, ask people to send in their thoughts and hand out a prize. (An iPod Nano is cheap and desirable). The temptation of being a winner can be enough to get the entries flooding in.

18. Ask for Help
Or you could just ask for volunteers. Admittedly, this is going to be less tempting than dangling a reward in front of them but just asking people if they have some time available to lend a hand might just be enough to get a few people turning up to be part of the team.

19. Make it Fun
That’s especially true if you can make the work itself fun. Even something as boring as stuffing envelopes, for example, can be turned into an experience with some good conversation and a plate of tasty, home-made brownies.

20. Call in Favors
When something really needs to be done — and when you really don’t have time to do it yourself — this could the opportunity to call in a favor. Most people know someone who owes them one. While it might not work for an ongoing gig, this sort of delegation can get you through a tough period.

21. Teach… and Employ your Students
Just about every entrepreneur has skills that other people would love to own. One way of finding worthy people to delegate then is to teach — always something worthwhile anyway — then pick the best students to take up some of your extra work in their spare time. Community colleges and adult education centers are good places to start, but you could also hold your own classes.

22. Use Big Thinkers
There are really only two kinds of staff: big thinkers and little thinkers. Little thinkers do the job, then stop. Big thinkers understand why you need the job done, and do more. Only delegate to the big thinkers… then encourage them to grow with you.

23. Only do the High-Value Stuff
That old rule about 80 percent of your profits coming from 20 percent of your customers holds true when you look at productivity too: 80 percent of your revenues is likely to come from 20 percent of your tasks. That means you should be delegating the other 80 percent. Just make sure you know which tasks are the most important.

Photography: firewarrior

If only every dream came true, every deadline was met and every goal achieved. In practice, it just doesn’t work that way. Plans are often left half-finished, goals never seem to get closer and as for deadlines… well, if a life really was on the line, they’d never get broken. Fortunately for all of us, a life never is.

There are all sorts of ways to increase the chances that you’ll make your deadlines and your goals, and that’s the way it should be. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. Here are 42 different ways. Pick the ones that work for you:

1. Get Things Done
Not our cup of tea (for all these reasons) but David Allen’s GTD system works for some people. If you’re one of them, we think you’re strange… but there’s nothing wrong with that.

2. The Printable CEO
David Seah’s Printable CEO system turns work into a game that gives scores for completing tasks. It’s easier than GTD and a lot more fun.

3. Procrastinate
Work has a habit of expanding to fill the time available. Wait until there’s less time and you might just find that you’re getting more done.

4. Delegate
You don’t have to do everything yourself. Another way to make sure that you do what you need to is to call in help. It’s not as scary as it sounds.

5. Assassinate your Irrelevant Goals
There are important goals and there are goals you can live without achieving. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Just don’t do them.

6. Separate the Soft Deadlines from the Hard Deadlines
There are deadlines that absolutely have to be met, and there are deadlines that you probably should meet. Know where you can compromise and when you have to sacrifice.

7. Plan the Future
For some people spontaneity works. For others, each step has to be laid out long in advance. Know whether you need to just get on with it — or get on with just thinking about it.

8. Don’t Procrastinate
Yes, yes… we said you should procrastinate. But we also said different methods work for different people. Procrastination can create the stress that gets things done but if it means things never get done for you, you need to think again — or rather stop thinking and do it.

9. Work a 4-Hour Week
Timothy Ferriss swears you can achieve everything you want working just four hours a week by doing what you want now. For most of us, working four hours a week is a goal in itself.

10. Drop the Self-Help Books
Reading books like Timothy Ferriss’ and David Allen’s are often replacements for taking action. Unless your goal is to read lots of books, you might be better off tossing the volumes and doing what you need to do.

11. Check your Goals
There’s a difference between a goal and a dream. You have to know your goals before you can achieve them but you also have to know which goals are achievable.

12. Know Why you’re Doing It
Divorce courts are filled with couples who just drifted into marriage and offices are filled with employees going through the motions without knowing — or caring — why they’re doing it. Look at the big picture and you might feel more inclined to reach it.

13. Focus on the Reward
That big picture is likely to include the benefits of reaching your goal. Some people find the benefits — whether that’s financial freedom, a bigger house or just a sense of achievement — a more powerful motivator than the achievement itself.

14. Correctly Estimate the Time you Need…
One reason that deadlines get missed is very simple: the work takes longer than you expect. Get the timing right and you’ll have a better chance of getting the work done in time.

15. …Then Take off 10 Percent
And another reason is that you’ve given it too much time. If you’re one of those people who works best under stress, then once you’ve decided how much time you need, reduce it. The fear will keep you focused.

16. Share your Goals
Peer pressure can be a powerful motivator too. Tell your friends what you plan to do and if you don’t stay on track, you’ll have to admit your failure when they ask how you’re doing. Shame works too.

17. Keep your Goals Positive
Goals can be negative (“I’m going to kick this stinking job!”) or they can be positive (“I’m going to be my own boss…”). Positive goals tend to be easier to reach than negative ones.

18. Break your Goals into Milestone-Sized Chunks
When a goal takes a long time to achieve, it’s hard to stay enthusiastic throughout the journey. Aiming to write a novel one chapter at a time or achieve 100 sales before thinking of your 1000th can keep you moving forward a little at a time.

19. Take it One Day at a Time
Or a day at a time. You can think of each day as a container that you have to fill with valuable completed tasks. Each day then becomes a new challenge and each completed challenge moves you one step closer to your ultimate goal.

20. Build a Routine
The best way to use this approach is to create a daily routine. When completing steps towards your goals becomes a thing of habit, you can’t help but reach them.

21. Build your Day Around your Most Important Task
Each day though is going to include a number of mini-tasks and sometimes you’ll find that some of them don’t get done. Make sure that time for the most important task is set in stone and build the rest of the day around it.

22. Do Tasks that Make a Difference
You might find that it helps too to occasionally complete tasks that make a real difference. A software programmer, for example, might have a lot of coding too but being able to complete sections of the program and play with it while he works can help to keep him motivated.

23. Do a Variety of Tasks
And when you’re doing a lot of tasks to reach your final goal, try to mix up the activity. Boredom is a pretty effective deadline- and goal-killer.

24. Use Post-it Notes
Yes, they’re old fashioned and you’ll probably need to get a bigger computer screen if you want to see what you’re doing, but writing what you have to do and sticking them where you can’t miss them can be a good way of keeping what you need to do on your mind.

25. Get Physical… with your Reward Symbols
Step into a top salesman’s office and you can expect see an overworked telephone and an expensive suit. But don’t be surprised if you also spot a toy Ferrari or mini Lamborghini on the desk. Salespeople often use physical symbols to motivate them to reach their sales goals. It might work for you too.

26. Make it Matter
Toy cars are nice… if you’re in sales. A better way to get motivated though is to have a goal whose results matter. It’s good to be rich; it’s better to be a philanthropist.

27. Get Organized
It sounds so fundamental and yet so many people don’t do it. Their desks are a mess, their papers are in chaos and their goals… well, they know they put them somewhere. Put everything in its place and it will be easier to find what you need — and what you need to do.

28. Get Busy
Nothing kills achievement faster than lethargy. Get in the habit of taking action and you’ll find that the momentum alone can take you far.

29. Get the Equipment you Need
That old saw about the right tools for the right job might have been written for carpenters but it applies to everyone. Whether you’re building a website, writing a screenplay or creating a new version of the Web, take the risk — invest in the right tools.

30. Get the Friends you Need
All your friends should be supportive when you tell them what you’re planning to do, but some of your friends should be able to help you too. They can supply information, expertise and even a lending hand. And if they can’t, ask if they can supply friends who can.

31. Network Upwards
One method that people have find helpful when it comes to achieving their goals is to hang out with people who have already achieved theirs. When you really have to justify your position, you will.

32. Join Groups
Support groups aren’t just for people trying to ditch the bottle or steer clear of the roulette wheel. They can also be good for anyone engaged in a long-term project or hoping to reach a different goal. There are plenty of writers’ groups and artists’ studios. If a group doesn’t exist for your field, maybe you should start one.

33. Build a Team
You could even go so far as to build a team to help you reach your goal. No one said you have to reach your goal alone.

34. Do the Research
Yes, it’s all part of basic preparation and no less important for all that. Careful research doesn’t just give you the right information though. It can also give you new ideas as you discover tools and details you would never have thought of.

35. Know What you Need to Know
“Research” can often be a euphemism for procrastination. Effective research starts before you head to the library or open the browser. It begins by knowing what you need to know and keeping your search well-focused.

36. Understand the Sacrifice
Gaining something often means giving something up. That could be a job you hate, but it could also be money or time with the family. Knowing what you have to sacrifice to achieve your goals is part of the preparation?

37. Enjoy the Process
Part of that sacrifice may be coping with the difficulty of actually doing what it takes to reach your goal. Creating a top-selling computer game might be fun; writing the code that governs the physics engine could be as exciting as counting matchsticks. If you can find a way to make the actual creation process enjoyable, you’ll make your goal-getting fun.

38. Ask your Boss What it Will Take
Not all achievements are up to you. If your goal is to move up within your company, make sure you know exactly what that will take. Ask the person who makes the decisions — and set yourself deadlines to meet those demands.

39. Be Nice — you’ll Get Help
Getting where you want to go and rushing to get what you want done in time can mean shoving competitors out of the way and thinking of number one first. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you can — and should — do it with a smile. At some point, you will need help. You’ll be more likely to get it if people like you.

40. Know When to Give up
No, we’re not being defeatist. The path to a goal isn’t always straight. Sometimes you can get lost and find yourself facing a dead-end. The important thing then is to know how to recognize it and turn around before you burn up your energy for nothing.

41. Know What to Do Next
All of these methods should help you to reach the goal that’s foremost in your mind. But things never stop there. Know what you want to do next and you’ll understand that achieving that goal is just one small step forward.

42. Do What Works for you
And finally, you can untangle these contradictory systems — and everyone else’s — by picking and choosing the approaches that work for you. Or better still, create your own.

Now there’s a goal…

[tags] gtd [/tags]

Wouldn’t it be great to sit in front of your computer in the morning and realize that you only have one thing to do? That one thing might take you all day, all week or even all year but from the moment you start the project until the moment you finish, that’s the only task you’re going to have to complete.

It’s never going to happen.

Any work day always seems to consist of half a dozen or more mini-projects all of which have to be done before you log off for the night. They could include research, emailing, marketing, blogging and yes, even some billable work too if you’re lucky.

And each of those projects requires sub-tasks too.

It’s the need to keep all of these projects and tasks in order — and ensure that they get done — that has led programmers to offer a string of online to-do lists. They all claim to do roughly the same thing: let people write lists that they can access from their computers so that no task gets forgotten.

In practice, they’re all a little different, so here are some of the most useful to-do lists to do some of the most useful of projects, including writing a blog.

Ta Da

Ta Da claims to be “the easiest Web-based to-do list maker.” Easy it is: Ta Da lets you create long lists of tasks complete with check-boxes that you can tick off when the tasks are done. At that point, the tasks move to the bottom of the page, where they appear in a fetching shade of gray indicating you don’t have to worry about them any more.

And that’s all you get… apart from a very long URL that you’ll want your browser to complete automatically rather than type in yourself.

Ta Da is fine for jotting down ideas for blog posts as they turn up but it won’t let you do any more than that.

Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk (RTM) is what you’d get if you pumped a to-do list with steroids… then strapped on an accessory pack. Lists can be created under tabs marked “personal,” “study” and “work,” keeping the different parts of your life separate and making the tasks easy to find.

That’s neat enough but each task can then come packed with information. While Ta Da only lets you add a title, RTM will also let you add the task’s — or blog post’s — deadline to your Google calendar, insert an estimate of how long you think it will take, prioritize it, add tags and mark it as postponed.

You can even send new tasks to your RTM page by email.

Best of all though, each task comes with space for notes. So if you’ve spotted a blog post that you want to respond to, you can add the URL to the notes so that you know what you were thinking when you read the list a week later.

If you want simple, then Ta Da is probably better. But if you want flexibility, then RTM offers a ton of useful tools.

RoughUnderBelly

And if you want rewards, then you might want to try RoughUnderBelly. This is based on David Seah’s Printable CEO and the fun is in the prizes. The list itself is pretty basic but you get to assign a score to each task. That score is tallied as you check off each item, giving you a daily graph showing how well you did.

It’s fun and colorful but it might take a little creativity — and perhaps a touch of cheating — to make it work for blogging. Unless you’ve got multiple sites on the go, you’re only going to be writing one post a day. While the tasks to create those posts might involve reading, emailing and writing, can you really justify giving yourself a score for each of those? Just write the post and give yourself a cookie.

OrchestrateHQ

The advantage of RoughUnderbelly is that it looks nice and playing with it is fun. That’s true too of OrchestrateHQ.

This is another very simple list program. You don’t get notes, email additions, priorities or other cool add-ons like you do with RTM but you do get multiple task lists that you can drag onto the page from a central box.

That sounds pretty basic but for blogging it can be pretty useful. Each task list can become one blog post idea and each task an item that you have to do to write the post. A glance at the page then would show you the week’s posts planned out, complete with the state of the work. Simple but handy.

ToodleDo

And finally, ToodleDo is a bit like RTM but without the cow. It also lets you prioritize, estimate and note but its interface isn’t as slick as RTM’s. The whole thing looks very serious — like a real productivity tool rather than a way of putting off the things you should be doing.

And that’s really the point of an online to-do list.

There are times when nothing but a chat will do. When you’re closing a deal, winning a commission or picking up the details of a project, you want to do it in person. You want to be able to ask questions, make suggestions and give the client confidence that you can do the job.

But when the project’s underway, you want to be left to get on with it.

It doesn’t always work out that way. At best, clients have updates. At worst, they have whims. A quick chat to tell them how things are going can soon become a 180 degree change of direction, complete with back-flip and forward somersault. Sometimes, the less said — and the less often — the better.

Fortunately, when you have to get in touch but don’t want more than the briefest of contacts, you do have options.

SMS for Quick Updates
Perhaps the simplest is to send them a message by SMS. You know they’ll get it, you won’t have to type more than a sentence or two — no one expects to receive a complete report by text — and you can do it from anywhere.

On the other hand, an update by SMS might seem a little rude; if you can text, you can call. And once it’s arrived, the client (or whoever you’re avoiding) will know you’re by the phone. You can expect them to call back, which rather defeats the point.

The best bet then, is to start by indicating you’re not available. “On the road now, but work’s going fine. Halfway through.” gets the update across, shows you’re not available to talk but also suggests that the client’s on your mind so much that you’re prepared to text him even while you’re out. Now, there’s a bonus.

Instant Messaging for Delayed Replies
The only thing worse than a long chat about a job when you’d rather be getting on with it, is a long IM conversation. It’s slower than a phone call, rarely goes into as much detail and the typos are frustrating.

But who says the conversation has to be two-way? One of the advantages of instant messaging is the ability to snoop. You can be invisible, wait until the other side goes offline then send the message. They’ll get it when they come back by which time, of course, you’ll be offline again…

Twitter for Public Messaging
SMS lets you send a private message to one person. Twitter lets you send a message to lots of people at the same time.

As a way of avoiding talking to a client — or anyone else — Twitter is a bit of a blunt instrument. Writing “Finished the first stage of the widget project. Going to buy bread.” might keep the client off your back for a while but it’s a bit impersonal, and you have to know that the client is on your Twitter list.

But if you’re looking for a way to keep the other side informed without showing that you’re trying, Twitter could work.

Blogging for Power Messages
Like Twitter, blogging makes your message public — which might not be a good thing. But unlike Twitter, a blog lets you go into detail and sometimes, a client might appreciate the publicity.

Clearly, you have to be careful here. You don’t want say something on your blog that could get you into trouble but if you can put a report on your blog — and if you’re sure your client reads it — you might be able to write enough to make any follow-up call unnecessary.

And you’d get some blog content out of it too.

Emails for Detailed Messages
Of course, get the client’s wish for privacy wrong on a blog and you could get a follow-up call anyway… telling you you’re fired.

If you’re going to go as far as putting a complete report on paper, you may as well put it in an email and keep it private.

That might be convenient for you — you’ll get the time to organize your thoughts, attach examples and go into detail but some clients prefer to listen rather than read. And many like to make their replies in person.

Email is often the best solution when you have a lot to explain and want to make your points clearly but if your client’s the type who likes to talk, it might just shorten the phone call rather than substitute it. Or worse, create a reason for it.

Voice Mail for Missed Messages
When a client really wants to talk — and when you really don’t want to — there’s always voice mail. It might be an old standard but it still works… provided it’s done right. That means describing when you’ll be available to talk so that you’re ready when it happens, and leaving enough detail to reduce the chances that it will.

It also means picking a time to call when you know there will be nobody home, and that’s not always easy.

Video Mail to Show you Care
Receiving a voice message can be frustrating. It makes people feel that they missed a call rather than received a message. Put your words on video though and you can create a completely different impression. You might be saying exactly the same thing, but your face in front of a camera will show that you’re hi-tech and prepared to make an effort.

And best of all, a video message looks like a complete package rather than a note that needs to be answered. It might just be enough to do the trick while you do the work.

Of course, there are always going to be times when you have to get in touch. But getting the most out of your productivity means choosing those times carefully… and messaging the rest.

Tell us how you provide updates, without calling, below.

Photography: David Seah

One of the advantages of being an entrepreneur — and even just a freelancer — is that you don’t have a boss. There’s no one to tell you what to do, no one to hand you an urgent project at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and no one to tell you that you’ve done a bad job and have to start again.

On the other hand, that also means that there’s no one to warn you when you’re about to go wrong or give you a confidence boost when you’re on the right track.

That’s a problem that David Seah, a freelance designer, hoped to solve with his Printable CEO. A colored scorecard that anyone can print and use, the Printable CEO is intended to be a motivational tool that encourages freelancers to do the tasks most important to their businesses. Points are awarded for each item completed on the list each day, and users can track their progress on a special score card.

Billable Work is Life-Sustaining

Doing “life-sustaining billable work,” for example is worth ten points. Writing a blog post brings two points while “maintaining an old relationship” scores just one point. The same task can also be scored multiple times.

“One of the beauties of the system is that cheating is not bad,” explains David. “If you can rationalize meeting a friend as social development, then you are still thinking in the right way: you are maximizing what you need to be doing to actually move yourself forward. In fact, you should count the meeting with the friend as three points: one for maintaining the old relationship, and two for social development. If you tell your friend about something you’re working on, then that’s another two points for ‘self promotion.’”

Although the scores change from day to day and from person to person, David reports that on a really good day, he might rack up 60 or 70 points. To get that though, he would need to release something that contains both code and graphics, tell a bunch of people about it, and receive a check. A bad day — such as the days when he was creating the form — would have only scored 8 or 9 points.

The list of tasks contains just ten items, with the score weighting drawn from points allocation in games: big, infrequent tasks such as winning new business or completing billable work score the highest, while frequent tasks score the lowest. The tasks themselves, David says, were based on his understanding of personal motivation and focus — as well as advice from MBAs that “revenue is number one” when starting a business.

“I emphasize tangible results in the list, which to me are either physical artifacts or interacting directly with a person. It’s too easy otherwise to award yourself a pat on the back for just having ‘done some work’ when all you did was shuffle some data around,” David says. “Supporting day-to-day activities that happen more frequently are also important. Sometimes I lose entire days just talking to people about their projects; that should count for something.”

What Drives your Business Engine?
David stresses that the list was inspired by his own understanding of what drives his “business engine” and doesn’t reflect personal values. Nor might the list reflect the tasks that drive other people.

Although David’s score card — his Concrete Goals Tracker — has been downloaded about 60,000 times and a Ruby on Rails version another 10,000 times, it’s hard to estimate how many people actually use it. The fact that other industries have taken his idea and applied it to their own sectors though suggests that the format is both strong enough to work and flexible enough to cover a range of different uses. A magazine specializing in HVAC equipment, for example, has made a small business version of the form and David has fielded requests for versions for practicing music.

“[The Printable CEO] has been a good jumping-off point for other form designs for task tracking and day planning,” says David, “all centered around my UI [user interface] philosophy of ‘maximum informational gain for minimal input hassle.’”

Perhaps the best measure of success though isn’t the number of people who have found The Printable CEO helpful but the fact that David himself is one of them. His original motivation for creating the form was wishing that he had a boss who could tell him that he was doing the right thing after one unproductive week in 2005. Since then, he says, his attitude towards freelancing has changed and he is able to tell the difference between “sustaining work” and “busy work.”

“It essentially helped affirm that I knew what was important, and that gave me confidence, which is an important part of being productive,” he says.

Download your Printable CEO form from here and tell us what you think.

[tags] Printable CEO, David Seah, gtd [/tags]

Say it softly. Whisper it to your friends. David Allen’s Getting Things Done is NOT the best way to get things done.

It’s dull, it’s difficult, it’s about as satisfying as an air sandwich. And it doesn’t work.

Here are 26 reasons why you should NOT use GTD.

1. You have to read the book
The first reason is the best. To do GTD, you have to actually read the book. That’s about as much fun as hitting yourself over the head with a brick, and slightly less enlightening. It might be just 250-odd pages but it’s so badly written you’ll have to read each page three times to understand it.

2. It’s not practical
It’s hard to believe that anyone actually follows GTD to the letter. Okay, some people probably do, but lots also adjust it, tweak it and make all sorts of changes to make it actually work. If you’re going to invest that much effort into a productivity system, you may as well create your own.

3. It feels like a cult
If GTD feels like a cult, it might be because David Allen is a minister in a church called the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. The church believes that its founder, Roger Hinkins (who later changed his name to Sri John-Roger), is a Mystical Traveler who has previously appeared as Jesus, St. Francis and Abraham Lincoln. He’s the “J-R” Allen acknowledges at the beginning of the book.

4. There’s no conflict between writing and thinking
One of the big “benefits” that the book is supposed to deliver is that by writing everything down, you no longer have to think about them. But ideas and thoughts can be in two places at once. It is possible to put everything that you need to do to complete a task in your “bucket”… and still find that you’re thinking about it.

5. There’s an advantage in thinking about what you have to do
And that’s probably a good thing. What Allen dismisses as the “monkey on your shoulder” nagging you to do things is also reminding you that something needs to be done… and prompting you to figure out how to do it. Dwelling on things might be annoying but it can also prompt solutions.

6. There’s no limit to what you can write down
The first phase of the GTD workflow is to collect representations of “all the things incomplete in your world.” But where do you draw the line? And if you leave something out — such as your dream of building a company that will buy and asset-strip Microsoft — does that mean you’re giving up on it?

7. Incubation is the same as procrastination
Allen’s response to the previous reason would probably be that you write down everything and file the things that are unlikely to happen under Incubation > Someday/Maybe. In other words, you put them off.

8. “Waiting for” is procrastination
Putting something in a list called “waiting for” isn’t a way of getting things done; it’s a way of doing something later… or putting it off.

9. Deferment is the same as procrastination
“It’s likely that most of the next actions you determine for things in ‘in’ will be yours to do and will take longer than two minutes to complete,” says Allen.

Those things should be deferred, he continues. In other words, you should put those off too.

10. Delegation is procrastination
One alternative to GTD’s procrastination deferment is delegation, which sounds like a tempting way to shift responsibility… and another way to procrastinate. That’s especially true when you know the person you should delegate to is going to throw it back at you eventually anyway.

11. What if the person you delegate to isn’t using GTD?
And what if the person you delegate to hasn’t discovered the wonders of GTD? Your task will sit in their head, causing mental anguish and confusion, and never get done. What will you have achieved then?

12. Sometimes procrastination works
Again, if GTD fails to stop procrastination, maybe that’s a good thing. Important things usually give way to urgent things eventually anyway, and putting them off while keeping them in your head often means that when you do come to do them, you’ll know exactly what to do. No thanks to GTD though.

13. Trust your instinct and experience, not David Allen
If you’ve got so much on your plate that you’re struggling to keep up, there’s usually a good reason: people know that you get things done, so they give you more to do. It might be a bit of a struggle, and you might not realize you’re doing it, but it does mean that you are sorting out your work and getting through it.

14. GTD doesn’t leave room for spontaneity and creativity
It’s hard to be spontaneous and creative when you have to write down absolutely everything you were thinking of doing long before you actually get down to doing it. What if you just feel like going to a museum? Do you have to create a file first or can you go and put the tickets in the folder retroactively?

15. The world contains enough jargon
David Allen’s books contain more jargon than the average Silicon Valley café. What most people would call a “to-do” list, he calls a “next action” list. Instead of “reminders,” we have “tickler files.” Instead of “ongoing projects” we have “open loops.” And instead of English, we have something that sounds very clever but actually ranges from common sense to nonsense.

16. Just because you can do something in two minutes doesn’t mean you should
One of the tenets of GTD is that if something can be done within two minutes, it should be done now. It could be tempting then to scratch something off your list and squeeze an email into the 120 seconds David Allen allots to it. Procrastinating — and thinking about it — might produce a better missive.

17. Just because you can do something in two minutes doesn’t mean you should do it now
There are lots of things you can do in two minutes. You can boil the kettle; feed the cat; clean the keyboard. But just because something can be done quickly doesn’t mean you should do it right away. You can clean your keyboard at any time. Deadlines need to be met now.

18. David Allen can’t count to two
In fact though, the two-minute rule is flexible. According to David Allen:

“Two minutes is in fact just a guideline… you can extend the cutoff for each item to five or ten minutes.”

So which tasks should we do first?

19. There are too many GTD apps
Priacta has a list of 74 GTD-related programs ranging in price from free to $300. That’s not a good thing. It’s a sign that using GTD requires lots of help.

20. You’ll get more done with a routine
The best way to get things done is to get in the habit of doing bits of them every day until the task is completed. With GTD, you’ll just get in the habit of doing GTD.

21. You should never pay attention to anyone who tells you to brainstorm
“Brainstorming” is another piece of jargon that’s popular with self-help gurus. In English, it means “I don’t know what to tell you, so you go away and think about it for yourself.” If an author tells you to brainstorm, he should buy your book.

22. Panic focuses the mind
We’ve already pointed out that most people naturally prioritize their work by waiting till the important stuff becomes urgent, then panicking and getting on with it. If GTD works, then you’ll lose the focus that panic can bring. And if it doesn’t, why do it?

23. GTD replaces doing with planning
GTD is such a complex system that instead of thinking about what you should be doing, you’re going to be thinking about planning what you should be doing. How is that better?

24. GTD isn’t for everyone
It’s hard to believe that a system as complex and detailed as GTD is going to appeal to more than the small minority of people who like flowcharts, filing cabinets and carefully maintained inboxes. If that’s you, great. But then again…

25. GTD is only for people who don’t need it
If you are the sort of person who likes flowcharts and organized inboxes then it’s unlikely that you need an organizational system. You know how to organize things.

26. It’s really, really anal
Really, it is. If you’ve got lots to do, start with the most urgent and get on with it. Making lists, sublists and 43 folders is just far too pernickety. People will laugh at you. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

[tags] gtd, getting things done, David Allen [/tags]

URL shortening services have taken strong root in the internet community. It seems that there is a lot of bias in which URL shortening service is the weapon of choice. For instance- Twitter users commonly use TinyUrl for their shortening needs. But TinyUrl is far from being the only URL shortening service out there. In fact, each service has its own very special service to offer; so don’t take sides just yet.

Doiop.com

Doiop brings something interesting to the table: you can pick your own URL. Unlike many other services that pick a random URL for you, this feature will let you remember the shortened URL. If you’ve ever tried to remember URLs of other services- you know what we mean.

SnipURL.com

SnipURL has the ability to change the URL to something more memorable- a big plus. What we liked about SnipURL was the fact that it provides traffic statistics on the newly created URL. A private key can also be created to limit access to the URL. Finally, there is just something about the “Snipped! 92% of original url,” line that makes the experience very satisfying.

DwarfURL.com

DwarfURL is an elegant yet simple AJAX application. Like SnipURL, it enables traffic statistics for submitted URLs. What really made it shine, however, was the fact that a Mozilla Firefox Add-on can be installed to use their application on the fly. Clearly, this application was optimized for speed and efficiency buffs.

MemURL.com

MemURL is the classic URL shortening service. It doesn’t bring a lot to the table, but it does get the job done. But don’t discredit it just yet- what really sets it apart from other services is its naming convention. MemURL automatically creates human-readable URLs. Sure, they aren’t real words, but they sure are fun to pronounce! Services like this will likely take over when other services that allow users to edit URLs become flooded. This alternative is much better than trying to guess a URL no one else has taken.

TinyURL.com

At long last, we get to Twitter’s dominant URL shortening service. TinyURL has the same kind of shortening service everyone else does, but it packs a punch: it includes a preview URL! How many times have you clicked on a shortened URL, only to find that it led you to a virus, disgusting picture, or web prank? With the preview functionality, that will never happen again!

TraceURL.com

Out of all the URL shortening services available, TraceURL is easily one of the most advanced. It features a highly advanced user interface that makes the process incredibly simple. Sadly, you have to register before you can use the service (which is free). It supports tracking statistics, the ability to choose your URL, and features a simple pop-up interface. If you need options, TraceURL is your shortening service.

URLTea.com

At first glance, URLTea.com is just another URL shortening service. If you’ll look at the above image more carefully, you’ll notice something more is going on behind the scenes. When you submit a URL to URLTea, it will automatically copy the new URL to your clipboard! This makes the copy and paste process a thing of the past, and we aren’t sad to see it go. Just make sure you don’t have anything important in clipboard you’d like to save before using URLTea.

NotLong.com

NotLong is yet another URL shortening service, of which offers statistics, password protection, and the ability to chose your own URL. It’s fast and simple; what more could you ask for in a URL shortening service?

XAddr.com

XAddr is an interesting URL shortening service. They offer the basics, and not much else. What they do throw into the mix, however, is extra security options much like TinyURL does. When the shortened link to a URL is clicked, you are instead brought to a landing page- not the direct URL. XAddr then gives you options to check McAfee SiteAdvisor for more information on the URL. If security is an issue, XAddr is a great alternative to TinyURL.

Azqq.com

Last but not least, we have AZQQ.com. We like this shortening service because it doesn’t do anything extra- just shorten URLs. Sometimes it isn’t about how many features you can pack into a URL shortening service, but how fast the service works. If you just want the bare bones of URL shortening, AZQQ.com is your man.

[tags] url shortening [/tags]

When your life gets hectic, you need to get organized.

It’s a simple fact of life that the less clutter you have, the more efficient you’ll become (Albert Einstein not included).

But not just clutter- remembering dates, appointments, and events can clog your memory and degrade your performance.

To fix the problem we have techniques such as the Get Things Done, Mind Mapping, and the 4-Hour workweek.

But before you jump on the bandwagon, you should keep in mind that despite their popularity, these methods aren’t as useful as you may think.

Getting Things Done (GTD)

Image courtesy of www.vitalist.com

Getting Things Done is a revolutionary organization technique outlined in a book by David Allen. This technique has swept the internet by storm. You can find programs and online web applications that organize your life with a few clicks of a mouse: sounds simple enough, right?

While we hate to go against the grain, there are some aspects of the GTD principle that hinders efficiency. Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? Well, indeed it is true- GTD is far more complex than it needs to be. GTD operates on five distinct principles: collect, process, organize, review and do.

The bulk of the problem lies within the organization and review principles.

In the organization principle, it is stated that a proper filing of events should be observed, complete with a note on the side that outlines when the event should be completed. It sounds easy in essence, but actually going about organizing upcoming events can detract from efficiency.

Look at it this way: if you were busy articulately organizing your life by dotting every I and crossing every T with poise, you aren’t necessarily doing anything productive. With the 20 minutes you spent adding details, dates, and events you could have instead been maintaining good work ethic.

More importantly we have the review principle- which states that every single item that needs to be taken care of should be reviewed each day. Just like the organization principle, we find it contradictory to efficiency when you are spending 20 minutes reviewing events and committing them to memory- and every day, no less.

Using GTD is still beneficial, but it’s flawed- unless you have the spare hour each day to review and organize every aspect of your life.

The Mind Mapping Technique

Image courtesy of www.yogateacher.com

If you are more of a picture person, mind mapping may be more appealing that GTD. Yet still, mind mapping is just as oxymoronic as GTD, in the respect that it degrades efficiency in the process of improving it.

Mind mapping revolves around the simple idea of grouping like objects and linking them to other objects of similar interest. It is commonly used for brain storming, note taking, and organization. Don’t bust out your pen just yet, however.

The problem with mind mapping lies within its sense of practicality. Is it practical to write down notes, draw a bubble around them, and then link them to other bubbles? Sure, it may help in grouping similar objects, but it does nothing more.

The concept doesn’t have easy support for large subjects, unlike objects, or even timing. And what’s worse, you may lose friends over the amount of trees you kill (or heaven forbid- sleep!).

The 4-Hour Workweek with Timothy Ferriss

Image courtesy of www.4hourworkweek.com

A four hour work week probably sounds appealing to you. In fact, it’s safe to say you’re probably intrigued, ready to shell out big bucks to find out how you can maximize profits and get by on four hours of labor every seven days. While we would agree, that sounds like a paradise, the four hour work week proposed by Timothy Ferriss just doesn’t make sense.

Ferriss has a lot of room to brag, we will admit. He is the entrepreneurial type that can make a hundred dollar bill magically appear out of a one dollar bill. In his travels around the world as an entrepreneur, Ferriss claims he developed the four hour work week to share with everyone how he survived the onslaught of disorganization.

So far, it sounds like the four hour work week is a sure shot plan.

But that is where the good sense ends, and the questionable begins.

Ferriss claims that you should only check your email once a week.

He’s a big advocate on the theory that internet addiction, constant checking of email, and even reading the news are a waste of precious time. Instead of keeping updated on your surroundings, you should keep your nose to the grindstone and labor away. In fact, he claims you shouldn’t even save for retirement- saved money is a low blow to potential profit.

We could just sit back and let these statements speak for themselves, but that’d be too easy. What if a CEO of a major corporation emails you something urgent- something that could cut you a deal that pushes you into the entrepreneur hall of fame? Guess what- you only check your email once a week and probably missed out, touch luck. We’ll admit internet addiction is a problem, but it isn’t something that should be quit cold turkey. If you aren’t aware of your surroundings, you probably aren’t learning much.

Events in life shape who and what we are. If your nose is indeed glued to the grindstone, you’ll miss everything else.

And lastly, who still saves for retirement anyways?

If you are part of the majority of the population, you still do. It’s easy for Ferriss to say retirement money is unnecessary- he has enough money to retire twenty times over! What about all the rest of the people who can’t afford to take risks, to ensure a happy lifestyle when they aren’t able to work anymore? If you aren’t a gambler, you can no doubt agree this is a bad decision.

Your Alternatives
A lot of people simply say, “Man up, remember what you need to do and do it.” Of course they probably haven’t experienced the world of business or even deadlines.

It’d be great to simply remember everything and work without relent. Sadly, it just isn’t applicable and people instead switch to the fore mentioned techniques- so what are you alternatives?

Buying special (and expensive) organizational software and books is unnecessary. You may instead invest in what thousands do every year- a sticky note. Keeping a simple notebook and a pen around has known to work wonders as well. And when you get to the top of the corporate ladder, you can always hire someone to do the dirty work- or depend on others to remember appointments and deadlines.

We realize GTD and other similar techniques are incredibly popular at present day. We aren’t proposing a boycott, but perhaps a change in how things are developed. If you are perfectly fine with spending an hour a day on organizing and reviewing tasks- you have nothing to worry about. For everyone else, you can patiently wait in line for another innovator to bring us the next generation of organization. And stay tuned for our post on Alternatives to GTD.

[tags] gtd, mindmaping, 4-hour workweek [/tags]

For those who don’t know, GTD is a common abbreviation for the “Getting things done” principle, outlined in a book by David Allen. The basic principle is that if you are constantly under the stress of remembering things you need to do, your performance and work will suffer. Instead you should record things that need to be done and forget about them.

This is great for entrepreneurs, ambitious personalities, and those looking to increase efficiency. But without the proper programs, the GTD principle is too cumbersome. What’s more, the Windows Vista community doesn’t have as many GTD applications as some operating systems- such as the Mac. This is by no means a full-fledged list, just a list of some of the best resources Vista users can take advantage of for the GTD lifestyle.

Getting Things Done with Simple GTD

SimpleGTD.com is a GTD web application- most notable is the fact that it isn’t operating system specific. Like the name suggests, it is a very simple form of GTD. It doesn’t contain any unnecessary items, features, or advertisements.

You will notice that SimpleGTD.com has an impressive AJAX interface. They make good use of newer technologies that make fast, simple, and easy operation possible. We like the fact that you don’t even need an email address to signup- the registration process only requires a username and a password.

SimpleGTD.com obviously targeted the GTD community with a no-frills, fast, and easy GTD organizer. Vista users will appreciate the fact that it isn’t operating system specific, and everyone can appreciate that it is completely free.

Getting Things Done with ThinkingRock

Another GTD application Windows Vista users can explore is ThinkingRock. This application has cross-platform support for Apple, Linux, and Microsoft systems. Like SimpleGTD.com, ThinkingRock is completely free.

ThinkingRock is a little more advanced that SimpleGTD.com, and likewise may have a certain learning curve to it. The user interface can sometimes seem cluttered, although it is still a very functional program. Practicing GTD through ThinkingRock is quite easy as it offers support for multiple types of timers, filters, options, and much more.

Getting Things done with FusionDesk

FusionDesk is actually Windows-specific. Windows users can enjoy both a free and paid version. The free version lacks a few features, but of course it doesn’t cost $90 like the Pro version does. The Pro version actually does have upgrades worthy of $90. Recurring events, handy timers, reporting tools, notes, and many more features are included.

As you can tell from the above screenshot, FusionDesk takes pride in a user-intuitive interface. It has many web 2.0 qualities- which values ease of use over clutter. The interface is much cleaner as compared to ThinkingRock, but keep in mind that FusionDesk does cost money for all of the necessary features.

The final straw to get people to try the Pro version is the money back guarantee. You may try the Pro version for a full 90 days before you actually commit to paying for the program. It’s a nice touch, and definitely gives no excuse for users to not try out the Pro version. If nothing else, it is a great meter stick in which to measure other GTD applications with.

Getting Things Done with Tudumo

Tudumo was built with the .NET framework, meaning that Vista users already have full support for this program. Other operating system owners may have to download the .NET framework to ensure stable usage. Tudumo is slated to cost around $30 after it is released from the beta tests. Currently it can be downloaded for free, and will be offered free until beta testing is completed.

As you can see above, Tudumo is another prime example of a clean interface. Objects can be interacted with easily, and without effort. The main selling point of Tudumo is that it has a tagging feature, like you would see on many web 2.0 websites today. You may tag events with tags, and then filter display settings based on the tags. This gives an extra level of functionality that most GTD applications don’t have.

A few other handy features include the auto-save and the heat map. You may use the auto-save to prevent loss of work from system crashes, or other types of events that may make you pull your hair out. More interesting is the heat map, which will display the least used events: meaning you can weed out the old events you forgot about, and clear your to-do list accordingly.

Tudumo has a nice set of features, we recommend trying it out while it is still in beta. The $30 may scare some people away, but Tudumo is still much less than FusionDesk Pro.

If All Else Fails, Buy 43 Folders

If you want a more physical solution, you may instead wish to switch to simply buying 43 tabbed folders. Windows Vista users will be more than pleased to know that this solution is in no way operating system specific- it doesn’t even use a computer.

In this design, twelve of the folders are used for each month in the year. The rest of the 31 folders represent each possible day in the month. The principle is quite simple: place documents that need reviewing in a certain day of the month. For instance, you may buy plane tickets for a business trip, and it is scheduled a week from now. Simply go to the folder that is exactly one week from today, and place the tickets in it. When the day arrives, simply open the folder, and they are there for the taking.

This principle may sound too simple, but it is still accomplishing what software programs are. In fact, it is better in many ways. For instance, Windows Vista users may not have full access to all GTD applications- this solution works regardless. This solution also is physical- meaning it can be transported in everyday life. Lastly, this solution can hold real data- not representations or fake data on your computer.

[tags] gtd on vista, gtd [/tags]