Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: In Context Blog

Friday is Weekly Review day, and in the spirit of sharing my progress to improve my accountability toward my January Goals, here is the report on how I did for Week 4:

• I have been 100% in keeping my GTD journal scoring, this Sparkline shows the progress this past week - - Monday was the worst day in a while, with Thursday being the most productive.
• I was able to clear my in-box to empty every single day this week. Woo-hoo! That is two weeks in a row.
• The Project Planning e-course was published (a soft release) yesterday. The Goalpost was 23 Jan. , so I was one day late with the sneak preview. The e-book and training program are all available here.
• I wrote 6 Content posts, and 3 link/commentary posts. Goal met.
• Average subscriber count was 619 (+24 over last week), with a high of 642 on Thursday. The goal of 650 is right around the corner, remember: if you subscribe to the blog by e-mail you get a free link to the new Project Planning in Context E-book. Click here to subscribe, and get the free e-book!
• I did create the Squidoo lens that I had planned for The Tickler File. Click here to check it out - GTD: The Tickler File.

With the release of Project Planning in Context this was a very good week and I am looking forward to going to the Levenger store today (that is my reward)! Monday afternoon I should have some fun pics and a new notebook to show off.

How are you doing? Leave a comment. Download the new e-book.

“Everything we do is infused with the
energy with which we do it. If we’re frantic,
life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will
be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation
becomes inner peace.”

~ Marianne Williamson

[Editor’s note - This post is an excerpt from my forthcoming e-course - Project Planning in Context ©. Read through to the end to learn how to get the premium E-book (no charge!).]

Affinity Diagrams

Organizing Ideas Into Common Themes

Is it ever a bad thing to have too many ideas? Probably not, but if you’ve ever experienced information overload or struggled to know where to begin with a wealth of data you’ve been given, you may have wondered how you can use all of these ideas effectively.

When there’s lots of “stuff” coming at you, it is hard to sort through everything and organize the information in a way that makes sense and helps you make decisions. Whether you’re brainstorming ideas, trying to solve a problem or analyzing a situation, when you are dealing with lots of information from a variety of sources, you can end up spending a huge amount of time trying to assimilate all the little bits and pieces. Rather than letting the disjointed information get the better of you, you can use an affinity diagram to help you organize it.

An affinity diagram helps to synthesize large amounts of data by finding relationships between ideas. The information is then gradually structured from the bottom up into meaningful groups. From there you can clearly “see” what you have, and then begin your analysis or come to a decision.

Affinity diagrams can be used to:

• Draw out common themes from a large amount of information
• Discover previously unseen connections between various ideas or information
• Brainstorm root causes and solutions to a problem

Because many decision-making exercises begin with brainstorming, this is one of the most common applications of affinity diagrams. After a brainstorming session there are usually pages of ideas. These won’t have been censored or edited in any way, many of them will be very similar, and many will also be closely related to others in a variety of ways. What an affinity diagram does is start to group the ideas into themes.

From the chaos of the randomly generated ideas comes an insight into the common threads that link groups of them together. From there the solution or best idea often emerges quite naturally.

Affinity diagrams are not purely in the domain of brainstorming. They can be used in any situation where:

• A single, best solution is not readily apparent from a series of choices
• You want to reach a consensus or decision and have a lot of variables to consider, concepts to discuss, ideas to connect, or opinions to incorporate
• There is a large volume of information to sort through

Here is a step-by-step guide to using affinity diagrams to show how the process works. Read the rest of this entry »

The results of the survey are in, enough to be representative anyway. I want to thank everyone who took part in the survey and giving me feedback as to the types of articles that you like best, and least. One of my 2008 goals for this blog is focused on building a community, which of course means interaction.

This is your blog too.

There were some interesting results, and I’ll share them with you now. (The survey is still open, and there is some room for you to participate. If the results change drastically, I’ll update this post.)

Of course, the answers were anonymous, and I want you all to know how much I value your opinion. Here are some screen-shots of the results for each question, and my analysis follows:

Analysis: A whopping 2/3rds of you come here for the Technical Content based on productivity practices. I expected this, as my traffic figures back it up. Whenever there is a post on a specific element of your system, there tend to be more comments and links. I did find the individual comments to this question very interesting:

1. I like the mix/variety and keep coming back
2. all the above, I can’t decide
3. Tips & Advice : I like to read about your own advice on how to improve productivity based on your experiences
4. I’m recently diagnosed with ADD. I was tickled to discover you have similar problems. I’m interested in “innovative” ways of approaching organization and productivity since much of what exists doesn’t work for me.

So, there will continue to be a good mix, with the technical articles becoming more in-depth. I will also be adding more “GTD with ADD” content with concrete, specific examples of how I personally work to manage my own Attention Deficit issues. I have been meaning to do the ADD series for a while, but a big project has kept me from it.

Analysis: The vast majority of readers come here for information about Productivity Practices. Duh. This is my favorite topic, and will definitely continue. I am also heartened that the second most popular topic is Paper Applications, as that is my specialty. Neck-and-neck for third place are Software Applications and Leadership Education, trailed by Gadgets, Gear, PDAs and Links. I infer from this that I should spend some more time on Paper Applications, balance with Software and Leadership, and spend less time on the hardware and productivity pr0n. In each instance, I will also work to make the information more detailed and specific.

Read the rest of this entry »