The Whys of Productivity: Gathering

The Whys of Productivity: Gathering

The secret to any organizational system is that like items should be stored together, be it by type or by purpose. But in order to see what needs to be organized, you have to know what you have.

Gathering is simply a fancy way of getting information into one place so it can be stored together.
The Pros of Batch Processing

The Pros of Batch Processing

One of the concepts that has shown up in quite a few productivity methods is to "batch" activities. This means that you do all like activities on your list at once.

There are pros and cons to this batching technique. In this article, I will present the pros.
The Whys Of Productivity

The Whys Of Productivity

Throughout all the years that I have been writing about productivity and researching productivity, I see a lot of articles on the "how". But knowing how to do something isn't enough if you want to expand on it. As a math teacher, I know it isn't enough to have students memorize formulas. They have to be able to understand why a formula works if they are to be able to apply it.

As I was considering this, I decided to revamp and expand a series on the "Whys of Productivity". Over the next few weeks, I will look at the similar basics to several productivity systems and dig down into the "whys" behind each method.
Tips: Highlight Alternate Rows In Excel…By Formula

Tips: Highlight Alternate Rows In Excel…By Formula

I work in IT. As a function of my job, I know a lot of little tips and tricks for many programs. Excel is one of my go-to programs, but I rarely use it for numbers - I generate code and do a lot of data work with it instead.

I recently had a long list of information to print out as reference material. It contained several columns, and I wanted a quick way to follow the information across the printed row without having to use an external guide.
Why I Keep My Work And Life In Separate Notebooks

Why I Keep My Work And Life In Separate Notebooks

There are a lot of productivity systems out there that insist that you have to keep everything in one place. There is a solid logic behind this stance: one place means you never have to decide where to put things, and you never have to figure out where to look. One life, one system.

But there is another side too. There are just as good reasons to maintain separate systems for work and non-work parts of your life. Today I will go over my reasons for maintaining two separate systems.
What is Done?

What is Done?

How do you know you are done traveling if you don't know where you're going? None of us would start a journey without some destination, or even just an idea of what you want to accomplish. Imagine running errands without any idea of what you needed to do!

Of course it makes sense when I put it like that, but how many of us know what we are trying to accomplish with our projects? Few of us actually stop and think about what Done looks like. We may have a vague idea, but most of us just plunge into the project without considering the end.
cyclical tasks

Handling Cyclical Tasks: Getting Household Things Done

It's often said that out of sight is out of mind. At the same time, things ignored pile up and can get out of hand. Getting Household Things Done really has two parts: the items that process through the system, and the items that reoccur. Today we will look at how to handle those cyclical tasks within a framework of Getting Household Things Done.
Getting Household Things Done: Setting Up Mission Control

Getting Household Things Done: Setting Up Mission Control

Most of the productivity systems and instructions out there are written for work and business. Trying to apply the system to the household can be troublesome, particularly with managing the dozens of little projects that come up just in the course of living. If you don't have a system to manage the papers and projects, Getting Household Things Done becomes a morass of unfinished and forgotten projects. The key to managing the papers and projects is having a center where everything gets processed. Over the next two articles I will share with you my Mission Control center, the key to Getting Household Things projects done. Today we will examine my Mission Control setup.