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This week is all about getting organized and what to do when it seems that everything is sliding off of our plate.  In other words, when we aren’t getting anything done and our tasks seem to be all over the place.

First, if you don’t have a habit of regularly organizing yourself, forget it. The good news is that this is step one. Organizing is simply the process all looking at the things coming at you and deciding what to do with them. This also includes the crazy ideas that come into your head (i.e. I want a new love seat for my house).

My favorite approach first; I call this the “go slow to go fast” is the weekly review from David Allen. Yes, David Allen again! This is the habit and interestingly enough, it is the part of his process for keeping our productivity stress free that almost everyone skips or just doesn’t do. Reviewing all of your “stuff” weekly. And the weekly review isn’t necessarily “doing”; it is preparing for the doing. It’s interesting that we will do this with teams (stand-up meetings, project reports, etc…) but we don’t do it with ourselves.

The weekly review includes getting everything together that hasn’t been processed as a task or something to delegate, deferred for later or file as reference. Then you look at all of the tasks that are upcoming and you look at your projects too. Remember, projects and tasks are not the same thing and it is important to make the distinction.

And if you don’t have a system for capturing all of your stuff, you better do that first. 

How do you like to get organized?