Tonight, I told Vidya that I was leaving work to buy a self-help book on organization. She told me that I was already pretty organized, to which I replied, 'It's my German soul --organization, and a desire to cause widespread catastrophic harm to my fellow man.' Actually, many of my inner conflicts are probably the direct result of my brutally efficient German side and my woefully masochistic, brooding Slavic side. Anyway, I bought 'Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity' by David Allen. I also read all but the last fifty pages tonight, with a break to watch 'The Office' and 'Scrubs'.
This book is going to change my life! And that's not just what the cover says--I'm really excited about applying its suggestions and principles. I am not going to buy a $100 label-maker to help me in my quest for stress-free productivity, even though he says it's 'critical'; for all that I love paper, I actually don't think it would be efficient for me to keep a lot of paper files, since my work is v. electronically based. Also, I'm perfectly capable of writing labels, and I don't have an assistant to maintain my files, so I don't see myself developing a massive filing system.
However, I think that it will be helpful in other ways, and there are plenty of nifty online gadgets and widgets that will help me. For instance, www.rememberthemilk.com is based on this system, and has built a Firefox extension that will work with my personal Google calendar to keep track of due dates, engagements, etc.
If nothing else, the tip to do anything immediately if it will only take you two minutes to do it will probably be extremely valuable. I have a bad habit of reading all of my mail during the day, starring the things I have to do, then staring in numb horror at the number of starred items in my email inbox (currently 151, not counting the hundreds that are sitting there that I just haven't bothered to star because they're not quite as important). Granted, I'm pretty productive at work, but if I could shave more time off the mundane things, that would free me up to develop other skills--or think about what I really want to do with my life and how to get there.
Funny--I've been managing people for less than a week, and I'm already sounding more corporate. I guess the problem is that I'm feeling a little overwhelmed because this is the first time in awhile that I've faced a completely new challenge--one that I would feel more able to accomplish if I didn't also have to keep doing all of the other things that I was previously assigned to and was starting to feel bored by, which propelled me into accepting the new challenge in the first place. I've had two or three full-time roles at the same time before, and was typically happier then if only because I didn't have time to think, but I need to take a deep breath and figure out where I'm going and what I need to accomplish before I get down to the task of actually doing all this stuff on an ongoing basis.
So, I'm going to devote this entire weekend to taking an inventory of everything (*everything*) currently on my plate in my work and personal lives, doing whatever I can do quickly, making a plan of attack for the rest, and clearing mental space so that I can actually think and accomplish things and not feel so overwhelmed that I just want to curl up in a ball and play Tetris for five hours. Speaking of Tetris, though, since I'm not organized yet, I'm feeling in need of a quick game before bed. Goodnight!
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