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There is still time to join in the August Project Weekend Collaboration:

What will you do with your weekend

Here is the reader participation part of the program: Leave a Comment below with some ideas for things that you could do if you scheduled a Project Weekend.

Be sure to include your e-mail address!

I will send an e-mail reminder to each of you on Monday morning, 13 August. You can then reply with your accomplishments and I’ll put together a summary post. Pictures of your projects are welcome, in fact, “Before” and “After” pics would be the best. Be sure to include your plans for your success and your reward.

Thank you and have a great weekend!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5pmtru. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I am sure that you all have big plans for this weekend, right? Perhaps a ball game, a barbecue, some fishing, or just relaxing with the family. Summer is nearly over for those with children that will be going back to school in the next few weeks, so there is not a lot of time left to enjoy their company.

But what about those projects that you have on your @Home list that remain to be completed? Wouldn’t it be nice to get a couple of those checked off before the beautiful summer days are gone? Never fear, it’s not too late. Take some time today to plan a Project Weekend this month.

Set an appointment with yourself

I have offered this tip before, but setting an appointment with yourself is a great way to make sure that some of the “back-burner” things get taken care of. Some of the things that many of us like to put off because there are more important things that need to be done:

• Yardwork
• Painting
• Cleaning out the family car
• Replacing the filter in your AC unit
• Catching up on the Personal Development reading
• Updating your resume

As you can see, there are a range of activities that will occasionally get bumped by bigger, more important work. But the little things need attention too. So mark down some time for next Saturday (and/or Sunday) as the Project Weekend in your Calendar and make a list.

Reward yourself for a job well done

Not too many of us relish the thought of sacrificing a weekend to mundane (or undesirable) chores. This can decrease your motivation and enthusiasm, not to mention that of your family! So at the same time that you make out your list of Projects to accomplish, make a date to celebrate. Do something nice for yourself and your helpers - go out to dinner, see a movie, go to the park, whatever. Make sure it is something fun, and something that everyone can participate in and enjoy.

What will you do with your weekend

Here is the reader participation part of the program: Leave a Comment below with some ideas for things that you could do if you scheduled a Project Weekend.

Be sure to include your e-mail address!

I will send an e-mail reminder to each of you on Monday morning, 13 August. You can then reply with your accomplishments and I’ll put together a summary post. Pictures of your projects are welcome, in fact, “Before” and “After” pics would be the best. Be sure to include your plans for your success and your reward.

Thank you and have a great weekend!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5aej5l. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Rosemary of the Daily PlanIt tipped me off to this site by Peter Quily, ADDCoach4U, which has a wonderful list of positive attributes of the ADD adult:

Ability to find alternate paths to overcome obstacles
Able to take on large situations
Adaptive/collaborative
Adventurous, courageous, lives outside of boundaries
[…]
Philosophical
Holistic thinking
Playful
Pragmatic
Problem solver
Profound
Quick thinking
Quick witted

It is a long list and it was created by seminar participants asked to describe positive influences that their ADD has had on their lives. Many of these qualities are the ones that we see over and over in “self-improvement” articles. Take a few minutes and peruse the whole list.

Which of these qualities is descriptive of your own personality? How does ADD help you to become successful?

And the most important question: Which of these attributes do you think that you could add to your description in order to improve your productivity and the quality of your life?

I chose these:

• Compassion for others and for themselves.
• Learning as much as I can to help children and others with ADD.
• Thinks 2 meters ahead of the world.
• Very creative, able to generate a lot of ideas.

I am adding these qualities to my list of actions to review weekly.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5bj8q5. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

How often have you struggled through a stressful day because there was something bothering you from the back of your mind? My guess is that this happens to everyone at one time or another. Perhaps it was an unpleasant task, or even just an idea for a project that you’ve been kicking around.

Where does the stress come from?

Part of the cause of the stress that you are experiencing is due to this unaknowledged commitment bouncing around in your head. Keeping something like this in your mental “RAM” is a waste of your psychic energy and a drain on your motivation. Part of the goal of the practice of Getting Things Done is to create a stress-free environment for you to do your real work, thinking. David Allen writes in Ready for Anything:

“Left only in the mind, these self-commitments create infinite loops that make to progress and produce inner conflict and stress. As soon as you make any sort of commitment with yourself, not completed in the moment, your mind will demand and take psychic energy until it’s resolved. That is mental karma.”
p. 27

How can this be overcome?

There is an elegant solution to the problem of having nagging worries and half-formed ideas in your head: Write it down. Grab a pencil and your Capture Notebook and jot down the idea, the project concept, the errand, whatever it is. Write down its name, what is involved, who needs to be informed, and when it needs to get done. After you have defined the thought, consider why it needs to be done, what will success look like, what is the proper context for tracking it, and what is the very Next Action that you can take to get closer to executing the goal. Taking these steps is extremely important if you have a bit of ADD.

Use the Workflow Method

Now that you have Collected and Processed the thought that has been bothering you, it needs to get Organized and placed into the proper category for action. Is this something that you can do in the next two minutes? If so, just do it! If not, which is much more likely, log it in your Calendar if it is time-specifiic, or add it to the proper Next Action list within its Context. Make a note to Review this thought at your next Weekly Review, and then move on to the next thing.

The benefits of trusting your system

Following these very simple steps can be an aid to clearing your mind and reducing the level of stress that you experience. From Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff:

“…there is an inviolable law in our emotional environment that goes something like this: Our current level of stress will be exactly that of our tolerance to stress…As you lower your tolerance to stress, you will find that you’ll have far less stress to handle, as well as creative ideas for handling the stress that is left over.”
pp.53-55

When you can rely on yourself to use your capture system, and you trust that your system will work to provide you with the information that you need when you need it, your stress level will go down. Review your Workflow system on a quarterly basis, making sure that it is as invisible as it can be. Use your system, let it work for you.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike (/wink, nudge): Mike St. Pierre and Geoff are thinking about this too.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5flrx6. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen