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

Here is a short video that I made (pardon the roughness!) about my Next Action Tracking tools:

Shortly I will revise my “How I do GTD” post with the new tools and tactics that I am learning from David Allen’s new book, “Making it all work”.

Stay tuned.

This is a collaborative post from yours truly and @emilyrobe, a Twitter friend of mine:

Just before Christmas I was ill with a virus that took about 20 days to clear off. After that I found myself in what I term a ‘funk’, one of those unmotivated, apathetic moods that drive you insane because you want to work, you just can’t find the energy!

I twitted this out looking for reactions and had a few great suggestions, to do lists, order ranking, people recommended systems for me to look at or resources to read. None of them had hit the spot though. What had put me in this ‘funk’?

My head was so busy with ‘noise’ that I couldn’t think straight and I felt very isolated. There was no creativity or clarity that I could pull on, lists weren’t helping! I needed to clear some space so I could think straight and ping!, there was my light-bulb moment. Space!

I work from home, I’m a busy mum of three, wife and virtual assistant, I’d been ill and my ‘space’ was cluttered. I’d got used to having my laptop on my knee whilst I wasn’t working and had broken the habit of working at my desk, which had become cluttered, in fact the whole house was cluttered.

Having identified the source of frustration and spending time eliminating some of it, my mood lifted somewhat, cleaning up released some of that blocked energy, standing back and noting the small achievements of a clean house and a tidy desk made me realise how seemingly small inconsequential things can make us unproductive.

My good working habits had been broken by illness and I had fallen into the trap of trying to work where there are distractions, ie on the sofa or dining table, the noisiest and busiest places in my home! Once those areas had been reclaimed and the clutter eliminated, I felt much more like working and the ‘funk’ had gone.

I was in a similar “funk” at the same time, and we tweeted back-and-forth about it. I was not sick but we had been doing a lot of traveling and my to-do list was being neglected. My own problem was clutter in my mind and in my scattered lists of things to do.

Unfortunately my newly-mobile lifestyle had not yet been fully organized. Living out of suitcases for 3 months is no easy task, and I finally decided that I needed a new system to capture and track my Next Actions. So I did what everyone should do, and went to look for help in the Work.Life.Creativity forum. We have a topic there called Working the List that was a big help, with ideas on how to capture, organize and prioritize the Next Actions.

What a relief! I did a mind dump last night, writing down every possible thing that I could think of that needed doing and then organized them into a set of lists based on my new Contexts and situation. The new context list looks like this:

• Calls Track in my Calendar
• Errands Track in my hPDA
• Book Candidates Track in my Capture Notebook
• Writing Track in the Lists Notebook
• Computer Track in the Lists Notebook
• Agendas Track in the Lists Notebook
• Read/Review Track in the Lists Notebook
• Reflecting Track in the Lists Notebook

The first three items have been tracked in those tools for some time now so I am comfortable using them and in knowing where to look for them. The new piece of the puzzle is the Lists Notebook.

Once I had organized the various tasks and Next Actions, it was a simple matter to number the pages in the notebook (right-hand only, 1-96) and then break it up into sections. The blank Index page shown in the pic has been labeled and detailed as to which sort of things go where.

What a relief to have this all done! I slept better last night than I have in a while, and didn’t have to worry about anything nagging me from the back of my mind.

What sort of tools do you use for tracking your lists? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

James at Organize IT has a new e-book on productivity tips available today:

Today I’m releasing my second ebook, called Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done. It is based on my popular productivity tips series here at the blog, but expanded and improved for an ebook release. I originally started the series as a way of collecting all those random thoughts and ideas on becoming more efficient into one place. It’s often these small tips and tweaks - which don’t really form part of a fancy system or methodology - that make the biggest difference in your life. Seeing as a I recently published my tenth tip it seemed like an appropriate milestone to bring the collection so far together for an ebook.

I have read part one and it is excellent. Very concise and practical tips on getting your workflow together.

Last week’s conference call was a good discussion about using Tickler files for analog and digital uses. We had some input from the callers about real-life applications, and setting up a digital workflow.

The call lasted just under 13 minutes and I would love to hear your thoughts.
Join in the discussions at the Work.Life.Creativity forum, where we kicked things off.

Be sure to register for the next Productivity Mastermind call [Upcoming link] this Thursday, 15 January, at 2:00 pm!