On Becoming More Effective

September 23, 2008 in Uncategorized

So today is one of those funny days when you do a lot of different things but you don’t necessarily feel that you’ve accomplished a whole lot. Like you’ve spent a lot of time in front of the computer, looking at emails, writing emails, figuring out your to do list and then looking at the clock later on in the afternoon, and just thinking “hmmm…. how did the day get to be where it’s at, and I’ve got so little done?”

On the flipside, I actually spent a lot of my day figuring out how to be more productive. For those who know me, this makes a lot of sense. In meetings during college, my friends and colleagues used to mock me by crying “efficiency!” when I’d move to make a decision. So let’s just say I have a thing about doing as much as possible in as little time as possible, which is funny, because I still seem to end up wasting so much of it.

At any rate, I’d encourage anyone who’s interested in maximizing their productivity to do several things:

1) Use a calendar, like gCal. If you don’t do this, may God have mercy on your soul. I used to think I could remember everything I had to do, and then I started using a calendar, and it was like having another brain, like a brachiosaurus.

2) Check out www.rememberthemilk.com. Great productivity tool, with good iGoogle implementation. I like the fact that it lets you subdivide into multiple categories, that it let’s you set deadlines (unlike Google’s crappy task plugin for iGoogle). Unfortunately, I think their UI is somewhat cumbersome, with a lot of extra steps to enter a task, and there’s no way to see tasks that are neither immediately due nor have no timeline. Really, Google needs to create their own freaking to do list. That would solve all this.

3) Check out www.mint.com for some great online financial software. The beauty of this web app is that it doesn’t pin your finances to one computer, which is an experience I had with quicken. Nor does it require you to enter 5,393 passwords to access your financial info. You can log on anywhere and see all of your account information in no time. It also finds ways for you to save money, helps you figure out a budget, and tracks your investments. Though not as feature rich as Quicken (you can’t bill pay using mint, for example) it’s great for most casual users.

I’ve been doing a lot of prepwork for Teach for America in order to do some phone selection for them, and after reading about how to select for highly organized people, I’ve discovered that my own organization skills are not what I thought they were.

My old organizational goal: Don’t drop the ball. (This was neither proactive nor effective)

My new organizational goals: Use calendaring, and a date-and-priority-driven to do list in order to work ahead of schedule and save time.

After a day or two of pounding through these things, I’m feeling much more organized, and looking at my to-do list with less a feeling a dread, and more a feeling of surprise – “wow, I can’t believe I have so little to do!” It’s great.