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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.
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GTD-Free splash96 If you’re new to GTD or just need some help keeping in line with the Getting Things Done methodology, then GTD-Free is an excellent app to begin working with. Basically, GTD-Free aims to be a complete, desktop-based system for Getting Things Done, from task and project management to handling your digital “tickler” file. The great thing about GTD-Free is its simple, tabbed interface that guides you through the GTD steps: Collect, Process, Organize/Review, and Execute. If you’re stuck with a lot of stuff in your head, and not sure how to get it out and get it done, then GTD-Free is for you! GTD-Free is also a “portable” app, so you can easily put it on a USB drive and run from anywhere!
* http://gtd-free.sourceforge.net/
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/cp4o5e. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
Whether you are a busy executive, a single parent, a freelancer working from home, a student, or a combination of these, you have probably found yourself needing help when it comes to organizing all your thoughts and ideas that occur throughout your busy day. Now you can turn to these tools found on the Internet that will help you with tasks such as note-taking, bookmarking websites, highlighting important text during online research, creating mind maps, tracking time, keeping up with appointments, collaborating with others, managing projects, and much more.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/c5wy2w. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
Entrepreneurs, professors, students, creatives, technology buffs, and even those just looking for inspiration for productive lives will all find blogs with plenty of information and suggestions to get things done more efficiently.
Productivity for Life
Many of the blogs listed in this section are super popular–and for good reason. The advice found in these blogs includes suggestions for finding time, managing money, creating more time for family, and even finding your happiness.
Stepcase Lifehack. The posts here not only include ways to become more productive, but also offer suggestions to help streamline and enhance your money, technology, work, and more.
Zen Habits. The inspirational posts here cover many ways to make your life more simple and at the same time, enriched. From family time to work to money, you can find great tips here.
SimpleProductivityBlog. Find tips on productivity, simplicity, ways to incorporate technology, and more at this blog.
Productivity in Context. The posts here offer suggestions for boosting your productivity and also provides tools for increasing your organization.
Scott H Young. Written by a student at university, this popular blog offers tons of information to help balance energy, productivity, and life.
Get Everything Done. Mark Forster writes about time management and personal organization on his blog.
Productivity501. Increase your personal productivity with the advice available here with focus on time management, money, organization, and technology.
The Slacker Method. The tips on this blog are all referred to as “Slacker Method for…” but they are truly just productive ways to manage your day-to-day tasks with tips on everything from getting ready for work in the morning to measuring without a ruler.
Productive Flourishing. This blog is for those who are too busy to try out new productivity systems and need suggestions that affect them immediately. Check out the recent Beyond Productivity series to see what many productivity gurus have been discussing.
Dumb Little Man. Productivity, saving money, and staying sane are the focus of the posts at this popular blog.
Go ahead and check out the rest of the list. Thanks for sharing this Alisa!
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/c7llsr. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
A common complaint that even well-organized people have has to do with storage of reference material & the archiving of old, completed records.
How long should you keep those important documents?
The short answer is - it depends. I did a little research and found a handful of lists and guidelines for record retention, that I have compiled here for you:
Automobile records (title, registration, repairs) - as long as you own the vehicle
ATM receipts - if to 6 years if you need them for tax purposes
Bank statements - up to 6 years (but you should be able to access these online nowadays)
Credit Card statements - up to 6 years, again for tax purposes
Insurance policies - (auto, homeowner/renter, liability, medical, life, etc) up to 5 years after a policy ends, in case of late claims
Investment purchase records - as long as you own them
Investment sales records - up to 6 years for tax purposes
Receipts -
Appliances - as long as you own the item
Art or antiques - as long as you own the item
Clothing - until the end of the return/exchange limit
Credit Card slips - personal - until you reconcile your statement, business - up to 6 years for tax purposes
Medical - up to 6 years
Tax-related - up to 6 years
Utility bills - up to 2 years
Warranties - life of the warranty, or as long as you own the item
Resume -Keep one updated copy of your resume (and keep your LinkedIn account current too)
Tax Records - Keep this year and the previous 6 years (and next year tax-time ought to be pretty exciting!) These records include:
Bank statements
Cancelled Checks (pretty soon these will all be online too)
Certificates of Deposit
Contracts
Charitable contributions
Credit Statements
Income tax returns
Lease and Loan agreements
Loan payment books
Pay stubs
Vital Permanent records - There are a few papers and records that you should keep forever (like Dark Side of the Moon):
Birth certificate
Death certificate
Adoption records
Citizenship papers
Marriage certificate
Divorce certificate
Last will and testament
Medical records
Passport
Power of Attorney records
Social Security records
What can I purge?
Looking at the above list can be a little disconcerting, but those papers really don’t take up that much space. What does take up a lot of space are the things that you do not need (there’s that pesky 80/20 rule again). Things like junk mail, phone books (seriously, who uses a paper phone book anymore?), expired coupons and special offers, old greeting cards* and invitations.
*[Unless the card or invite has a very special meaning. “Happy Birthday, love Joe” doesn’t cut it.]
You know what else can go in the shredder? All of the above items that are past the retention date. And those magazines that you are never going to read. And business cards of people that you will never call or do business with. Old brochures and travel junk. Old maps. That box of recipes that you’ve been collecting but never made a single thing. And clothes that you don’t wear because they are outdated/don’t fit/you just don’t like them.
Take a good, hard look and narrow your focus
I am willing to bet that there is a lot of stuff that you could get rid of, even if you’re not moving. Not only will a good purge make you feel better about where you live, it makes it easier to keep your home and living areas organized.
Storing Your Reference Materials
For reference materials you have 3 powerful tools: A file Cabinet, Bookshelves & Google Desktop Search. For physical record that you need to keep, depending on the format, they should be stored close at hand. Label them clearly,either with their own file folder or a sticker on the spine of th book/binder/whatever. It is important that each item that can go in a file cabinet get its own folder so that you do not have to search though a jumble of paper to find the one that you are looking for.
A useful tip for reference items is to attach a 3×5 card to each item so that you can track how often you use it. Of course, there may be items that you use daily, but you may discover that less-frequently-referenced items can safely be stored elsewhere, or archived. This feature will come in handy when you do your annual “Spring Cleaning” to purge your workspace of things that you do need.
Another recommendation is to scan as many physical records into an electronic format as often as possible. This frees up valuable storage space and these records can be inexpensively copied & stored off site as part of your disaster recovery plan. See this Work.Life.Creativity post:
I implemented a program in my dept. a few years back so we could cut down on the time it took to find documents. Everything to do with accounting is in there which makes our yearly audits a breeze. I burn all of the scans to DVD weekly and take them off site in case something catastrophic should happen to our building. We wouldn’t even miss a beat if the building was gone since all of the software is backed up daily and all of the paper is digitized.
When these records are digitized then Google Desktop Search becomes a valuable tool for referencing them. GDS is capable of indexing every file, document and application stored on your hard drive, including the e-mails in your e-mail client.
This means that you no longer need to print & save those “important” e-mails as they can be saved, tagged & labeled for ease of recovery. As the ultimate e-mail backup tool I have set up my e-mails accounts & e-mail client to BCC every in-and out-bound e-mail message to a special G-mail account for storage in the Cloud - accessible from anywhere.
Don’t forget your Spring Cleaning
There is one last tool I’d like to mention, and that is the “Spring Cleaning” mentioned above. It is important to go thru your workspace at least once a year in order to archive or toss these items that you don’t need anymore. It is remarkable how much stuff can sneak into your workspace when you aren’t looking.
What do you do to control the amount of “stuff” in your workspace? Share your thoughts in the Comments.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/agmndg. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
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February 13th, 2009 by Stephen
I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.
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