Quotes About Efficiency

Instead, the key to managing all of your stuff is managing your actions.

The ability to leverage that thinking with good collection devices that are always at hand is key to increased productivity.

have discovered that one of the major reasons many people haven't had a lot of success with getting organized is simply that they have tried to do all five steps at one time.

you don't manage priorities—you have them.

Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task: 1  |  Defining purpose and principles 2 | Outcome visioning 3 | Brainstorming 4 | Organizing 5 | Identifying next actions

the three requirements to make the capturing phase work: 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.

how they might be articulated into productive shape.

of professionals down in the trenches, I can safely say that virtually all of us could be doing more planning, more informally and more often, of our projects and our lives.

You can't organize what's incoming—you can only capture it and process it. Instead, you organize the actions you'll need to take based on the decisions you've made about what needs to be done.

Ask yourself, "When do I need to see what, in what form, to get it off my mind?" You build a system for function, not just to have a system.

Too much information creates the same result as too little:

More formal and structured meetings also tend to skip over at least one critical issue, such as why the project is being done in the first place.

many people let themselves get sucked into the second activity—dealing with unplanned and unexpected things that show up—much too easily, and let the other two slide, to their detriment. It is often easier to get wrapped up in the urgent demands of the moment than to deal with your in-tray, e-mail, and the rest of your open loops.

One of the most powerful skills in the world of knowledge work, and one of the most important to hone and develop, is creating clear outcomes. This is not as self-evident as it may sound. We need to constantly define (and redefine) what we're trying to accomplish on many different levels, and consistently reallocate resources toward getting these tasks completed as effectively and efficiently as possible.

A great hammer doesn't make a great carpenter; but a great carpenter will always want to have a great hammer.

It is possible to be effectively doing while you are delightfully being, in your ordinary workaday world.

next actions will make sense for you: • "Calls" • "At Computer" • "Errands" • "Office Actions" or "At Office" (miscellaneous) • "At Home" • "Agendas" (for people and meetings) • "Read/Review

We need to transform all the "stuff" we've attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. Almost all of the to-do lists I have seen over the years (when people had them at all!)

Horizontal control maintains coherence across all the activities in which you are involved.

you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you're afraid you might.

Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking, development, and coordination of individual topics and projects.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. —CHARLES DARWIN

Many years ago Alfred North Whitehead cogently observed, "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Taking the inventory of your current work at all levels will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and sense of priorities.