Doing the Right Stuff

In the first three posts on personal productivity, based on the First Things First book, I've focused on how to better accomplish my many tasks. 

Click cover to go to Amazon :)

As I was experimenting with my new personal productivity system, I listened to Steven Covey's audio book version of "First Things First."  Covey's seven habits has been a personal favorite for years.  "First Things First" Reviews and extends some of the themes from seven habits.

The short version is - pick the right tasks!  Recall this matrix from the books:

Assuming that we don't have any issues with reacting to Urgent and Important items (quadrant one) or Not Important and Not Uregent items (quadrant four), the challenges lie in quadrants two and three.

To be more sucessful by working on the imporant stuff, Focus on Importand but Not Urgent (quadrant two) activities and avoid Urgent and Not Important (quadrant three) activities.

I don't know if I have the discipline to really avoid urgent requests because they are not important.  I'm trying to let all of my email "age" a bit, to take away some sense of urgency.  I'm not good at ignoring a ringing phone, or an incomming IM.

The important but not urgent is different.  I have added tasks to my personal productivity system to focus on quadrant two activities at least once each week (every Monday).  This was a very nice dovetail with the Getting Things Done stuff.  Adding these tasks to Trello made perfect sense.  Give me a few weeks trial and I'll report my preliminary results.

Getting Things Done is a good read, and well worth the time and cover price.  It also works nicely along with the David Allen "Getting Things Done" book.  I recommend both highly.

Next:  Covey's four cores and 13 behaviors from "First Things First."

Presonal Productivity - To Do lists

Yesterday I described how I use a Trello board to document my personal productivity system.  This post explains how I use Trello to implement my "Getting Things Done" inspired personal productivity system via three "To Do" boards.  Here is an image of my "To Do @ Work" board:

So here is how it works:

1.  Set up the day by scanning the "Next Actions" list and dragging and dropping cards to get the appropriate prioritization.
2.  Scan the "Waiting For . . . " list to see if any of the items you are waiting for are ready.  If yes, drag them to the appropriate place in "Next Actions."
3.  For each card in the "Projects" list determine the next action that you must take (note - this is NOT where you list tasks or actions assigned to other people - that is you project task list or action item list).  Add that next action to the "Next Actions" list.  The simple rule is - have at least one action for each project in either "To DO . . ." or "Waiting For . . . "
4.  Go to work - work from the top of "Next Actions" and IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE!
5.  If you run out of Next Actions (it could happen) re-review "Waiting For . . . ", "Projects," and then fall back to "Someday" until you find a valid task.  If you ever come up empty - go do something fun!

Personal Productivity - The continuing Experiment

It's been almost three weeks since I started my experiment in improving my personal productivity.  Here is the original post:  Experiment - My Personal Productivity System.

Using principles I learned form "Getting Things Done," I planned to create a simple process that allows me to park my "To Do" items and stop stressing about them.

A key technology has been Trello.com (see my post on this tool: Trello.com).  Trello is an automated board containing lists with each list containing cards.  I use four Trello boards to implement my productivity system.  The process board is where I go first.  I contains discriptions of my process along with appropriate links:

Just read work through the lists from left to right, and work the cards from top to bottom.  It seems to help me a lot to have these decision made before I start my work day.

The remaining three boards are my actual prioritized "to do" lists.  One each for Work, Home and AboutProjectManagement.com.

Tomorrow we can walk through one of these to show you exactly what I'm doing - and I'll describe the reults to date (Hint - Very Good!)

Experiment - My Personal Productivity System

I could be more productive with a better method of organizing my actions.  With that in mind, I checked out the audiobook verision of David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" and listened on my commutes.

The book describes a reasanable approach to handling the ever-increasing amount of "stuff" that is crossing my desk, email, voicemail, etc.  I've decided to give this a try.  Today's post describes the first steps of my journey to becomming a more productive PM and person.