Reblog: How to Plan, Organize and Get Things Done

I have developed a system that encompasses all areas of time, event, contact and task management. Here are five simple principles that translate across any system:

• Manage your physical presence, that is where you have to be, on your calendar.
• Manage what you have to do on a prioritized task list. The a,b,c method works great for me. I also use categories with a numerical prefix to manage projects and role based actions.
• Manage your paper flow. As digital as the world has become there is still a consistent mild flow of paper to deal with on a daily basis. I use a 45 hanging folder system I’ve adapted over the year. It looks like this:

1. 12 monthly labeled folders.
2. 31 daily labeled folders.
3. 2 additional folders labeled as needed. I label one ACTION and the other READ.

I never handle paper without moving it forward in productivity or out into the trash.

Manage demands on your time. Avoid committing to work without considering how a request impacts your top payoff activities. I use the acronym RAFT:

• Refer it – Can I complete this by giving it to someone else?
• Action it – Schedule the request into my productivity process.
• File it – If the item is informational only, file it for quick retrieval in the future.
• Trash it – Comletion by deletion.

Use a system that fits your life style and stick to it until you master it. Avoid jumping from one thing to another never really giving the method a fair chance to become routine.

I also use Outlook to manage goals and contacts, in addition I integrate Evernote to manage notes and ideas.

Systems don’t avoid work, people do. It’s another commitment worth the time and work to become successful.

I would love to hear from you if you have suggestions that other may find helpful. Please get involved and leave a comment. If you like what you’ve read let me know. If you didn’t let me know that too.

A couple of thoughts of my own:

Previously I’ve broken up with systems. David’s system is an example of how my system used to look like to an extent. If you are a beginner, this might seem like complicated thing. If you want to try something simpler, I would advise you to check out CORE and adapt it to your needs.

That’s how I went from Omnifocus. I’ve started very small, was hitting just a couple of areas, and than I started expanding, as per need. So even if you want to grow the system, start small, and resume building from there. If you truly need a system, it will develop by itself, as your needs grow. Also remember to downsize it too, as per your need.