Brick wall © Les ChatfieldWhy are Projects so hard? Why do we fail here so often, even in workplaces featuring thorough planning and highly disciplined execution?
We do not fail despite, but because of these. We believe that turning a project into a success is like baking a pizza, while in fact, it resembles much more creating a pizza recipe.
Why? In our projects, we're not into producing identical results from identical ingredients. Every project is unique - it is like research & development, not like production. In R & D, diversity of results is what we strive for. In production, diversity is our worst enemy. We should be aware of this, however, we're making the same 4 mistakes, over and over again: »
Stephen Smith (of HD BizBlog 1.2) recently asked his readers for a suggestion: define a weekend project that will reduce the number of items on your @Home list.
As a matter of fact, I don't like this kind of projects, that's why I suggested one, immediately.
You wonder why I don't like this type of projects? Simply because @Home is cluttered by too many items already that are neither single next actions nor project next actions, but habits. I'm quite frank about it: if you put «Take out garbage» on your @Home todo list, there is something wrong. Fundamentally wrong.
Ok, so what's »
You can become effective and efficient not only by doing something, but also by refraining from doing something.
For instance, you might ask yourself how you're currently wasting time, energy and money - and how you could eliminate the causes. The Toyota Production System (TPS) takes this to a higher level. As you can tell by the name, the system is about manufacturing cars. Anyway, if you take a closer look, you realize TPS can »
About 5 years ago, I became Director IT & Organization at an SME. I had been leading several teams and a whole software development department before, so I thought I was familiar with a staccato of ever-changing tasks. It turned out that I wasn't familiar with the staggering diversity of my tasks. My system of personal organization was faltering, although the level and frequency of my tasks hadn't changed that much.
As a a matter of fact, I didn't really have a «system of personal organization».
Bookshops are favorite places of mine, but at that time, I was carrying that passion to the extreme. There wasn't probably any time / task / priority / self management guide that I didn't hold at least three times in my hands, skimming the pages for any hints. That's when I stumbled upon Getting Things Done (GTD). It wasn't love at »
GTD on D*I*Y Planner: MaterialsWhat options do I have to maintain a reliable system if I prefer to stay «unplugged»? This time, I'm going to present a variant I've tried for a few weeks, using the D*I*Y Planner printable templates. »
