If you're new here, Welcome! To learn more about what this site is all about click here [link]. Thanks for visiting!

Today we feature a guest-post from Kris Rowlands, who writes at Words Within.

My To-Date progress with productivity and organization

Firstly, I would like to thank Stephen for the honor of asking me to guest post for his blog. Thanks so much Stephen!

On my path to following GTD and the 7 Habits course, I have learned and implemented several tidbits I have found over the web. One of these things was organizing my household files.

My memory had been going downhill for the last three years or so and it was so frustrating for me. I have a somewhat photographic memory: I could remember a phone number by seeing it as I had written it in my own handwriting. I find if I write things down, I can picture them better in my mind.

Well, I had started to lose that ability. I couldn’t remember things that I had even written down: and I finally figured out why I was having all this difficulty. I just didn’t know how to start to overcome it and couldn’t find the motivation to do so.

Recently a light bulb clicked in my head, and I found the motivation that I needed. With the up-front and simplistic approach that was GTD, I could finally start to organize my life.

My first task was to tackle my desk. It has always been overrun by papers and things that needed filing. But without cleaning out my file cabinet, I would have no where to file everything. So I bought some colorful file folders from my favorite online business supply, and got organized. I made categories with sub-folders within in order to facilitate being actually able to find things! I threw away and/or shredded receipts from years ago, and filed things in the new folders that I had made.

In turn, this allowed for filing of the things that were on my desk. Of course, organization is an expected side effect of filing and clearing your desk.

But the magnitude of the other side effect was mind-blowing. I had an almost immediate improvement in my memory! I was able to remember things that I had thought of the night previous, that I needed to add to my to-do list the next day. I remembered to actually mark our appointments on the calendar, and was readily able to remember phone numbers, and to actually make phone the calls that I needed to make.

So, I have a theory:

I believe that the reason we, as a people, have so many memory disorders is that we try to remember too much, which puts the brain on overload. After too many years of overload, the brain short-circuits: leading to Alzheimer’s, dementia and other ailments in our older age.

There are too many things nowadays to remember, we need a system in place to be able to keep track of our hectic lives.

GTD has helped me with this, perhaps because it’s not something that you have to follow to the letter. It is something that you adapt to your lifestyle and make it fit your needs. If you have had trouble in the past trying to get organized and found other methods having too much structure, take a second look at GTD. It may be just the thing to fit your life.

I can attest to the fact that you can mold it to be your very own. You may be surprised at the unexpected side effects!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6c2ezm. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen