Quotes About Organization

I have found that lack of time is not the major issue for them (though they may think it is); the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what associated next-action steps are required.

A task left undone remains undone in two places—at the actual location of the task, and inside your head. Incomplete tasks in your head consume the energy of your attention as they gnaw at your conscience. —Brahma Kumaris

the calendar should be sacred territory. If you write something there, it must get done that day or not at all.

Keep everything in your head or out of your head. If it's in between, you won't trust either one.

Even if you've already decided on the next step you'll take to resolve a problem, your mind can't let go until and unless you park a reminder in a place it knows you will, without fail, look.

three different kinds of activities you can be engaged in: Doing predefined work Doing work as it shows up Defining your work Doing

Horizontal control maintains coherence across all the activities in which you are involved. Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking up and down the track of individual topics and projects.

Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection tool, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through. Second

You must use your mind to get things off your mind. An

The number of coulds, shoulds, might-want-tos, and ought-tos they generate in their minds are way out beyond what they have recorded anywhere else. Many

Aumentar la calidad de nuestro pensamiento y compromisos no disminuye la cantidad de cosas potencialmente relevantes e importantes que hay que gestionar.

No software, seminar, cool notebook, smartphone, or even personal mission statement will give you more than twenty-four hours in a day

The most experienced planner in the world is your brain.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. —Winston Churchill

Here's how I define "stuff": anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn't belong where it is, but for which you haven't yet determined what, exactly, it means to you, with the desired outcome and the next action step.

1  |  Every open loop must be in your capture system and out of your head. 2  |  You must have as few capturing buckets as you can get by with. 3  |  You must empty them regularly.

something is "on your mind" is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: • you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcome is; • you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or • you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust.

We need to transform all the "stuff" we've attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. Almost

The reason most organizing systems haven't worked for most people is that they haven't yet transformed all the stuff they're trying to organize. As long as it's still stuff, it's not controllable.

You increase your productivity and creativity exponentially when you think about the right things at the right time and have the tools to capture your value-added thinking.

The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things;

The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven't yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful. The

Clarifying things on the front end, when they first appear on the radar, rather than on the back end, after trouble has developed, allows people to reap the benefits of managing action.

If the next action is not yours, you must nevertheless clarify whose it is (this is a primary use of the Waiting For action list). In a group-planning situation, it isn't necessary for everyone to know what the next step is on every part of the project. Often all that's required is to allocate responsibility for parts of the project to the appropriate persons and leave it up to them to identify next actions on their particular pieces.