Mastering the Art of Prioritization There are two approaches to “prioritizing” the tasks in your to-do list that I see fairly often. By prioritization, I’m not talking so much about assigning importance to tasks, but deciding which will take chronological priority in your day—figuring out which tasks you’ll do first, and which you’ll leave to last Approach number one involves tackling the biggest tasks first and getting them out of the way. The idea is that by tackling them first you deal with the pressure and anxiety that builds up and prevents you from getting anything done—whether we’re talking about big or small tasks. Approach number two involves tackling the tasks you can get done quickly and easily, with minimal effort. If you believe in getting your email read and responded to, making phone calls and getting Google Reader zeroed before you dive into the high-yield work, you’re a proponent of this method. My own approach is perhaps a mixture of the two. But I’m not recommending my system of prioritization to you.
GTD® Workflow Map with Coaching DVD by David Allen: X-Plane in collaboration with David Allen: Office Products 20 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Sunday post written by: Marc Chernoff Email At the cusp of new beginnings many of us take time to reflect on our lives by looking back over the past and ahead into the future. If you would like to maximize the benefits of self reflection , I have 20 questions for you. What did I learn last week? Take 30 minutes every Sunday and give yourself the gift of self reflection. And check out these books for more thought-provoking questions: Photo by: Cesar R. If you enjoyed this article, check out our new best-selling book. And get inspiring life tips and quotes in your inbox (it's free)... amazon Create Your Life Handbook by Celes on Mar 15, 2009 | ShareThis Email This Post One of the key tools I found critical in my pursuit of personal growth and living a purposeful life is creating my own life handbook. What do I mean by a life handbook? A life handbook, to put it simply, is your manual that contains anything and everything important in living your life, from your life purpose, adages, life lessons, long-term goals, short-term goals, strategies, plans, right down to your daily tasks. The idea of having a life handbook came to me over a year ago. Fast forward to a year later in 2007, and what did I have? Besides that, I also noticed there were a lot of important things I was learning in life and they were either lost over time or stashed away in my latent memory. When I troubleshooted the situation, I realized it was because I lacked a central system to support my life. Benefits Of Having Your Life Handbook A life handbook is incredibly powerful in many ways. Thirdly, it makes you highly organized.
GTD - Back to basics 3 - Context and Next Actions So, you've captured and processed everything so you now have a nice list of next actions, projects, waiting for's and someday/maybes. A list is all well and good but what's the point if you don't do anything with it? Looking at one huge "To-Do" list can be daunting and off-putting. In order to help you get through this massive list, some time-management systems recommend that you prioritise tasks (A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 for example) and then work through the tasks with the highest priority first. This is all well and good but often you can find that the lower priority tasks are put to the back of the pile and never get finished. What are "Contexts"? A Context is a setting in which an event takes place. So, to stop you feeling overwhelmed by all the tasks that you need to do, and also looking at tasks that you can't complete given the context you're in, David Allen suggest that you separate your tasks into Context Lists. Context List - Quick Guide Organising your Next Actions and Context Lists
Notes: Get the Edge by Tony Robbins - Day 2: Create a System for Change Since today is new years eve and many of you will be creating resolutions, I thought I'd provide some tools so that THIS YEAR, you really MAKE THAT CHANGE. These are my own notes taking after listening to Tony Robbins' Get the Edge audio tape Day 2. Please go through the exercises yourself and view mine as an example. To make this year the year you change, take the time to do this. I cannot stress enough how important this is! It may be a lot of material to go through in one day. Notes Most people buy something good for them and then they feel comfortable and then don’t use it! Make a list of the most common rationalizations I use. People don’t do something because it’s too tough/big to do right now. Exercise is the best way to get out of stress. Just DO. Make a list of things that I now have, which I once only dreamed of having. People use “softeners”. In life, what you give you get to keep. Pressure cooker pattern: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. 7 Steps to lasting change <Part D in workbook>
GTD/Productivity Category In an article published in the New York times in October (yes, I'm behind with my blogging, okay?!) entitled "Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus" the author discusses something we've covered here at Flipping Heck before - how multitasking actually make you more unproductive. See my reviews of review of "The Myth Of Multitasking: How "doing it all" gets nothing done by Dave Creshaw. From the article: Although doing many things at the same time - reading an article while listening to music, switching to check e-mail messages and talking on the phone - can be a way of making tasks more fun and energizing, "you have to keep in mind that you sacrifice focus when you do this," said Edward M. I'm famous! I was asked by the kind folks at Simpleology to write a guest post on running productive meetings which went gone live a couple of days ago over at the Simpleology blog. The lessons cover a variety of subjects such as: LESSON 1 The First Law of simpleology - The Law of Straight Lines
Create Balance With A Personal Life Improvement Plan! Who are you? Who do you want to be? The first step to changing your life is to identify who you are and who you want to be. I am a father, a husband and a man! I decided to change my life by developing a plan! Step by Step Plan My actions plan starts with these thoughts in mind: I am not the best I can be! Each person has their own vision of life, understanding what you want out of life will allow you to be happy with yourself. My thought is if I am satisfied with myself then I will be able to share my positive energy with others. My Vision The vision for my life is to be: HappyHealthySafe In order for me to succeed in having a happy life I must really understand what my vision of life truly is. How To Reach Your Goals! First you must take the time out to identified the areas of your life which are preventing you from being your best. Here is my list: Now that you have identified your issues, based on YOUR opinion not others you can put together an action plan to improve your life. Action Plan
The Ultimate Goals Program By now, you probably realize the importance of setting goals. But if you’re like so many people, after an initial month (or even 2 or 3) of serious progress, excitement and motivation, you slowly lose steam … until you’re stagnant in the pursuit of your goals. You started out with great intentions, maybe even a plan. But then you hit a roadblock. Or maybe you got sidetracked. Within as little as a month (or even a couple of weeks), your goal became just a fleeting memory. So how do you power through the tough times and complete every goal you set for yourself, instead? You create a detailed plan – a roadmap. Introducing “The Ultimate Goals Program.” This product contains absolutely everything you need to get from start to finish – every time – no matter how many roadblocks, obstacles or setbacks you encounter. The starting point of great success is when you decide exactly what you want, and chart your course to get there. In other words, I’m giving you a shortcut. Are you ready? Sound good?