Productivity - One

I've been struggling to find a system that works well for me to get organised in my line of work. A recent discouraging appraisal has caused me to think again about the bottlenecks in my attempts to get things done and so I've made some changes.

Looking at how I've been working, I'm astounded that I still have not yet settled on a single collector. What started off as an attempt to try out various online tools (Remember The Milk, Hive Minder and Stikkit), turned into three collectors, none of which became definitive and, if I'm honest, none of which were really designed to be collectors. Sure, they do a great job of tracking tasks, but I rather foolishly lost sight of the need for ONE collector.

So, with this in mind, I have caved in to the Moleskine! In this, I collect everything and handle each item as required. Each item starts off with an associated empty box drawn beside it and then I put a symbol in that box depending on what I've done with it so that I can cross it out.

Merlin Mann, in his Inbox Zero talk, mentioned limiting himself to five actions. Alas, I'm not as clever as him which is I've got eight which are as follows;

* Awaiting Action (Default)
This is merely something that's just been put in and hasn't been actioned. I suppose that if this doesn't count as an action, I'm already down to seven! Nice!

* Done
I was able to do it there and then. Very nice.

* Scheduled
I've put it in my diary for later action. This is no longer an issue for my collector and it will be brought to my attention when appropriate.

* Cancelled / Forget About It
It's no longer an issue so just cross it off and forget it even existed.

* Correspondence
I have actioned this by replying to the person who brought this to my attention or I've brought it to someone to who's attention I need to bring it or someone else (maybe someone who can get me more information regarding it). This would need to have a flag in a follow up diary entry.

* Logged / Updated
The biggest gripe against my disorderliness in the office is that I don't log and update calls in the helpdesk. The fact that our helpdesk software is to organisation what concrete slabs are to keyhole surgery is no excuse and so I hope that specifying this as an option will help me highlight it and bring it more readily to my attention. This is pretty much going to be only in my Office Collector, but more on that in the last action.

* Reference Only
There's nothing that needs to be done with this information, but it's useful for reference.

* Placed In My Office Collector
While I want to limit myself to one collector, I don't want to take my work home with me, so if something does crop up in my personal time that needs to go to the office, then I'll put it into my personal collector and channel it through that to my Office Collector (if immediately logging it isn't the best thing to do).

As far as the office is concerned, calls should be tracked by the 'helpdesk' software. However, since projects aren't allowed to pollute the helpdesk for fear of making it useless (ahem!), I need something else to track them. For this, I'm using Hive Minder (or is it Hiveminder? Surely, a true Web 2.0 app would have been called HivMindr?) and that seems to be pretty good what with its powerful features, group membership, web front end and even a usable mobile web interface.

I've been getting behind on some stuff and that is getting me stressed, but I'm hoping that this little shift in implementation and a little more discipline will get me to where I want to be.

I need to understand and overcome my two main obstacles (indiscipline and discouragement) to succeed. I can but hope and do my damndest!