One thing that is “evergreen” with the Getting Things Done set is the topic of workflows. HOW do you do things? What’s your process? How do you settle in and decide what to attack first, second, and so on, until you’re done?
My good friend, Shawn, and I were talking about workflows when I wrote about Gmail and the calendar. So, it got me wondering, what are YOUR workflows?
Share with us. Share some of the nifty things you’re doing in a day. Post some comments to this about flows that you use, or point us to your blog posts on the topic. Open up the floodgates on workflows!
[...] Surfing the Technorati mindscape, I stumbled upon a provoking article. What are your best workflows? [Lifehack.org] To throw caution to the wind, I’ve come up with some answers. We’ve all developed our own methods to attack one problem or another. Wether it’s that healthy breakfast, or that good night’s sleep, everyone does something- most likely without realizing it. Well, just in case you have no idea what yours are, I’m going to talk about some of mine. [...]
Studying for final exams, so working is one thing I’m doing plenty of right now. I might have gone off with my own blog post http://www.gen.newrandom.com/2006/05/31/divide-and-conquer/ but I’ll summarize my main ideas here.
When settling into a new project, understanding all the components is key. I didn’t even mention that in my post, but, that’s pretty well understood. Second, divide and conquer. Split the project into many managable pieces, rather than one large task. Dividing it up makes the project seem a lot less daunting, and focusing on getting the easier parts done, puts you in the “groove” while boosting your confidence and sense of accomplishment as you move along.
Lastly, taking breaks often when you just aren’t getting things done is much more beneficial than sitting at your desk counting the pixels on your monitor. You’ll be much more productive when returning to your task, thus making up for the lost time. Oh, and if you like music, good. Search for music that keeps a 60 Beat per minute tempo. It’s scientifically proven to increase brain activity. A sample tune is available on my blog post.
(Oh, and a nice little tip for also stimulating brain activity, sit in a chair, cross your legs, and wiggle your toes. Believe it or not…)
Josh
I just wrote a post about putting workflows together to do collaborative research using social bookmarking apps, an rss agregator, and a blog. The goal being for multiple people to “dump” the links and articles they come across into a blog for the other users to read and post comments.
http://www.lifeinlists.com/2006/06/blag-blogging-links-articles
thanks