owners manuals

How To Control Owner’s Manuals

Just about everything you buy comes with some sort of paperwork. Appliances, software, window accessories, even furniture comes with a stack of paperwork. While most of that information is simply the manufacturer's way of avoiding liability claims, there is occasionally times when you need to put your hands on that information. If you had to find the papers for a purchase, would you be able to do so? Today we will look at how to control owner's manuals.
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.
manage children's papers

How To Manage Children’s Papers

Childhood is precious, and it passes quickly. The souvenirs of childhood - the papers that mark the gain of skills - can become a jumbled mass if not handled well. Without the context of child, age and year, many of the milestones can disappear. Today we will talk about a method to manage children's papers.

Children are rightfully proud of the work they create, and they want to share it with their families. The amount of paper, though, can be overwhelming, with art projects, spelling tests,worksheets and more. If you have more than one child, it can take over. With a simple system, you can manage the paper so you don't lose the context of who did what when, but also not be overwhelmed with the quantity.
6 things to do on sunday

6 Things To Do On Sunday For a Less-Stress Week

The weekly review of Getting Things Done is a way to set your week on track. It focuses on the things you need to do to make the start of your work week smooth. And, like the rest of GTD, the focus is on your work week. But what about the rest of your life? Today we will look at 6 things to do on Sunday to make the rest of your life's week run smoothly.
Why You Should Say No

Why You Should Say No

Have you ever said yes when you wanted to say no? We've all done it, and it can lead to some far-reaching consequences.

Saying yes when you want to say no can lead us to build resentments as well as take us away from the things we really want to do.

Between visiting my parents, re-assessing commitments at church and some tumult with one of my music teachers, I have had to say no quite a bit lately.
Handling Inputs With Getting Household Things Done

Handling Inputs With Getting Household Things Done

One of the weak spots of the Getting Things Done process is that it doesn't deal well with household and family type items. This article is the second in a series to show how you can create a system for Getting Household Things Done.

One of the big foci of Getting Things Done is handling the inputs that come into the system in such a way that you get them out of your head and into a trusted system. Once they are in the trusted system, they will be served up to you at a time and place that you can deal with them.
The Best Laid Plans

The Best Laid Plans

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

As some of you know, I was summoned for a visit by my mother during this past week. I went, fully intending to be able to get the blog article done during that time away.
Getting Household Things Done

Getting Household Things Done

One of the downfalls to the Getting Things Done system is that it focuses on work. And in that focus, it loses sight of the myriad things that have to be done to support life.

I've suspected for a long time that the reason so many people are able to make Getting Things Done work is because they have someone to deal with the household stuff.

Today we start a series of articles on Getting Household Things Done, which will cover applying the tenets of modern productivity systems to the maintenance tasks of life.