15 May 2007
Doing what's important
The other day I was starting to feel overwhelmed by my massive todo list and my overflowing inbox. (Isn’t everyone?!) I’m sure you all have those moments – mild panic attack are fun!
Then it hit me – it’s because I was nicely organizing all my todos into categories, but I wasn’t prioritizing them at all. Everything was shouting at the same volume: NOW!
So I created a new category in Outlook 2007 called ‘Important’ and chose the color red (see above image). Now I can categorize all my emails (that need a response) and my todos with their category and whether or not they’re important.
This is one of the things I love about Outlook 2007 – the visual colors that go along with your categories. It’s very helpful to just scan my list of things to do today and do the Red ones first. Bam!
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Nick
# May 15, 2007 - 4:52 pm
Looks great. Congratulations on your newfound sanity! Are you still running Office 07 under Parallels? How are you finding it? I’m looking to switch from Mail like you, but am trying to hold out until the Mac release later in the year.
Richard Penny
# May 15, 2007 - 6:58 pm
Hey Ryan,
Haven’t you got your beta version of OmniFocus yet?
I thought you had all the connections!
This is the GTD app thats gonna make me organised :-)
Ryan Carson
# May 15, 2007 - 9:09 pm
Hot damn! When did OmniFocus come out. Someone hook me up with a beta copy! :)
Stefson
# May 16, 2007 - 8:20 am
You can always hire a secretary.
Khoa Bui
# May 16, 2007 - 2:00 pm
Theres a book by Steven Covey – Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about organizing your to do list by Quadrant II activities (important but not urgent). By reading the book, I am able to stay on top of whats important and delegating the unimportant tasks. Worth the read mate. Also, if you’re familiar with the Pareto principle, 80/20 rule, if you were to look at your to do list at a whole, 20% of the items on your list is worth 80% value of the total items on your list. Very useful rule I follow on a constant basis. Getting Things Done methodology works wonders as well…. but hey, thats me :) http://www.khoabui.com.au, http://www.destinygoals.com, http://www.riverdesigns.com.au
Martin
# May 21, 2007 - 12:12 pm
I am quite satisfied with iGTD. And its developement is going forward very, very fast.