Clean desk policy explained
Goal Have a decluttered, clean desk in your office and at home. Why? You’ll be able to focus a lot better if piles of papers don’t distract your attention every few minutes. How? Remove everything from your desk which you don’t need every day. Things to keep: post it notes, clean papers, pens or pencils in a holder. My father had a master when he was...
How to care more for the environment
Stop wasting your time on social media
Goal Reduce the time you waste on-line, and spend it on yourself: on self improvement, meeting friends in real life or working on those projects you always wanted however never had the time to start How? Why? Let’s think a bit. How many hours do you spend on social media on a week? How many useful things did you learn? How many of...
Shop from your local farm
Goal Help the environment by buying local products. Intro I’m quite lucky as I have a farm just about five minutes walk from my apartment. The farm has a big vending machine with vegetables, diaries and other products and it also has an automatic milk dispenser. Advantages It’s cheaper than buying from the shops It’s more fresh and higher quality I help the environment by skipping on...
Declutter your e-mails: zero inbox method
Goal: The main goal if this method is that your e-mail inbox always remains empty. This way you will not lose or forget any important e-mails. How: If you’re like most people chances are that you have hundreds of e-mails in your work or private inbox, however this is an inefficient way to organise your e-mails and tasks. So instead you should keep...
How to improve your life and be happier 1.
Intro
You might think this sounds bullshit, however bear with me for a moment, as I’m talking from experience. You don’t have to take big steps at any time. Trying to make huge steps and stopping after two will take you nowhere. Taking small steps constantly will take you to the highest peaks. Set a goal. Break it down. Focus on the next step and go on. This is how you climb Mt. Everest.
How? I’ll list a few bigger topics which I started to do. Not all at the same time, however once I got the momentum things just followed, so I could say it was roughly a few weeks between I’ve started doing these. And I did it in this order, however that’s up to you to decide if you’re willing to go on a similar journey with me.
Organize yourself aka Getting things done
I had the getting things done (GTD) book by David Allen for a few months on the shelf when I decided, it’s time to read it. I wish I would have done it earlier, it would have saved me some from worry on how to get the dozens of projects and tasks done and how to organize them.
So what is this book about? Get things off your mind. It describes a way on how to organize your daily, weekly, monthly tasks and life goals. David estimates that it one needs about two years to fully implement GTD in her life. I think I can do better, however I have to tell you that I already had a similar system, so I just had to adapt it. I’m using GTD since two months and my life feel already a lot more organized, and I never forget anything. I might sound like someone who wants to sell the book, however I want to sell the idea.
Getting things done method
Getting things done (GTD method)
I’ve read the book from David Allen a couple of months ago and started to implement the methodology right away. For me it was rather easy to do this, as I already had the tools (mostly software) to create my lists and planning tables. I’ll describe a short version of this method, however I highly recommend that you read the book for detailed explanation and real life examples. If you would like to read more details on the software I use please read how to be efficient.
Goal:
Get things off your mind so you can focus on the action which you’re actually doing. Your mind should not wander. This will help you to be in the flow.
How:
This method is quite simple, however, it might take a few weeks until you get used to it and build your own system. I’ll describe my way to do it, however, create your own way to implement it in a way which makes most sense.