Productive U Podcast

Exercise equipment and organizational systems have at least one thing in common: many more are purchased than are used for their intended purpose. All of us know why most treadmills become clothes racks; it has to do with sweat. Today the Taskmaster will offer insights into why organizational systems are abandoned in hopes of helping you find one that won’t be. There are five main reasons for organizational system abandonment.

1. Too Much Overhead. If a system requires too much effort relative to the effort that it saves, the return on investment is too small and it is abandoned. Multitudes of bells and whistles are great if your goal is to make a lot of noise. If your goal is to get organized, take an Ockham-ish approach by choosing the simplest system that can do the job. (more…)

I’ll admit it. I’ve done some pretty time wasting things in the past. Most of these came from surrendering to the siren songs of thoroughness and efficiency. Doing things completely and quickly is a very desirable thing, unless it keeps us from seeing a way to do them more effectively. That was my experience with filing bills after paying them.

At one time, I would file bills by payee immediately after I paid them. This was efficient, but the time was not well spent since I almost never went back looking for the paid bills and would eventually have to handle them again when I ran out of storage space. I took myself to task for this when I realized that I could save a lot of time by putting all the paid bills for a time period in a box labeled with a beginning and ending date. Filing time dropped to almost zero, finding them again if I ever needed to was still pretty easy, and disposing of them when the time came was much quicker and easier. Soon my receipts were also going in the box.

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Many people associate the words “cold” and “efficiency,” but they haven’t met the Friendly Taskmaster. He reminds many of our staff of the best sports coaches they have had because of his unflagging enthusiasm for helping us perform better. Our staff thought his coaching would be helpful to you too and he was very happy to help. He offers productivity tips that won’t be like the treadmill that has ended up as a clothing rack. (more…)