next »

[Nathan Hale]

This is corresponding forum topic for my blog post, Getting Back in Swing of Things.

In the blog post, I talk about how I've gotten off track in terms of productivity over the past week or two; I really haven't been sticking to my system, even though I know it works. However, I generated a short action list to help myself get back on track, and I think by this time next week I'll back on the productivity train!

Have you struggled to stay disciplined in your own system for productivity? How do you stay on track?

[Rachel Murphy]

I think we all fall off the wagon at some point. It happened to me in a big way a few months ago. I had been using a combination of Things and a Moleskine notebook for a number of months and it had been working well. But I gradually found myself becoming increasingly bored the the system. My in-tray was filling up as it no longer felt fun to do all the processing. And I completely gave up on my weekly reviews. I started to forget to do things, missed an appointment and was dreadfully stressed.

My solution was first to recommence my weekly review to get me back up to date. Then I sat down to think about my system and why was it no longer working. My conclusion was that it had become too complex. I had too many projects and too many next actions. I streamlined my tasks to those which were the most important and interesting. And I switched from Things to Remember the Milk (mainly because the iPhone app was so much better).

Switching apps helped a bit. My interest is always re-ignited when I have a new toy to play with! But I discovered what really got me going again was streamlining my to-do list. When my lists get too long I get overwhelmed so trimming them right back to the essentials made a big difference. I have continued to maintain shorter to-do lists and keep my number of projects to a minimum. I have had a couple of wobbles over the last month but now that my lists are more focused and manageable I've managed to stay on track.

[Stephen Smith]

While my wife and I were doing so much traveling the past few months I was forced to adjust my system to work without having an office or a lot of space. Everyting needed to fit in my laptop bag. So, I found some notebooks to handle all lists and Weekly Reviews.
Now I find that my notebook fetish is satisfied, which makes me much more inclined to use the system and keep crossing things off of the lists.
It's a good feeling!