Gerhard Rasocha - Unplugged

There is a big hype around personal productivity these days. New websites are appearing almost daily, promising to help in the search for the perfect solution.
I am not surprised by this trend. The stress-level of the average business person has become almost unbearable. There is big demand for personal productivity systems to help us cope with our daily workload and all those things entering our lives. Just look at 43folders, DIY Planner, Getting-Things-Done (GTD), Franklyn Covey and Total-Workday-Control (TWC). They are all really worth a look - you will definitely find some great input to increase your efficiency.

But, beware! The search for the perfect system is a dangerous one, because:

1) there is a risk to get over-organized - this is something I experienced myself: you implement a sophisticated system that becomes either very complicated to maintain or which simply is incompatible with your personality
2) you are easily traped by the temptation to keep on trying new systems - as a result you will wind up less productive, because “searching for the system” or “improving it” becomes more time/energy consuming than the productivity gains you get through using the system.

So, my advice on this is very simple (and I admit I am sometimes guilty of not following it through myself):

1. look at the different productivity systems/solutions
2. pick one or a combination of them, whatever suits you best
3. make sure the system works for you
4. decide on how you want to use/implement it (PC, MAC, PDA, Blackberry, filofax, paper, …)
5. and then stick to it ! (though minor tweaking is propably ok)

I think this great cartoon by Shannon Wheeler says it all: (and I hope you will agree that we don’t want to end up like this)

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