How do you organise all your projects and to-dos? Do you organise by project, context or some other way? Well that’s the question I’ll be answering this week.

 

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Script

Episode 119

Hello and welcome to episode 119 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week, I have a well-timed question about how to organise your to-do list manager and your work. Well-timed because I recently I changed the way I organise my to-dos and projects to better reflect the way I work today and I have been getting a lot of questions about this new set up. So, it seems appropriate to answer this question this week. 

Now, before we get to this weeks question. My first Productivity Masterclass course has now launched and I am excited to tell you this course will transform your days. The course teaches you how to build your very own daily workflow. We don’t achieve our goals and objectives by luck or chance, we achieve them by taking small deliberate steps every day. We achieve through our routines and habits and all you need is a workflow you create for yourself that you can follow that takes you a step closer every day. 

This is what the Productivity Masterclass is all about. It teaches you how to build your own workflow that reflects the type of work you do and the way you manage your personal life. It gives you the tools you need to build your own workflow that will take you in the direction you want to go. Whether that’s to earn a promotion at work, to build your own business, prepare yourself for retirement or prepare yourself for the challenges of a career change. Wherever you are in life, this course is designed to help you create the future you want to live in. 

Now there is an early bird discount period you can take advantage of by signing up today. So don’t miss out on this chance to start building your future through your daily actions and save yourself a little money today. 

All the details of this course are in the show notes.

Okay, it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Anna. Anna asks, Hi Carl, I’m really struggling to find the best way to organise my projects and to-dos. I’ve read Getting Things Done and I think I understand it, but I am confused about how to organise my projects. Can you help? 

Hi Anna, firstly, thank you for your question. I find this is a very common question for a lot of people who have read Getting Things Done (GTD) because David Allen intentionally left how to structure your stuff vague. I say “intentionally” because David understands we are all different and we all have different ways of thinking and organising our stuff. 

That said, I feel there is a problem with the way people follow the GTD book and that is what I call the “because David Allen says…” problem. This is where a person takes everything written in the GTD book literally and tries to build the ‘perfect’ GTD system. You see the thing is, the ‘perfect’ GTD system does not exist. It can’t exist because machines are not operating GTD. Humans are and we have emotions, variable energy levels and are prone to be distracted from the work that we want to or should be getting done. 

If you have read the most recent version of GTD, the 2015 version, you would still need to go out and buy yourself a load of file folders, a labelling machine and a set of drawers to keep your project files in to follow the book. In reality, I’ve not needed any of those things for around eight or nine years. I went completel