Simplify

Over at Zen Habits there is a great post, 7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done. One of his 7 steps for overcoming procrastination is to schedule a time and place to get things done. This is great advice and something that I have put into place recently to get this blog going.

I’ve wanted to start this blog for months. But I never seemed to find the time. Recently, I started forcing myself to wake up an hour earlier so that I could spend an hour each morning working on this blog. This works for me for two reasons:

1. I hate waking up early. By forcing myself to get up and work, I don’t procrastinate or get distracted. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the early morning wake-up call.
2. First thing in the morning means I have no other distractions. I don’t read email, blogs, news, etc. The first thing I do is work on my own blog. All those other things have to wait until I’ve completed my blog task for the day.

When I was in high school, my journalism class had a motto: Make it happen! Sometimes, the easiest way to make something happen is simply to schedule it. What can you schedule?

There are dozens of task management applications out there. But the ones I’ve tried in the past have all forced me to change the way I like to work and as a result I try them for a few weeks and then give up. It’s too hard to change my behavior to fit the arbitrary design of an application.

This all changed about 8 months ago when I started using OmniFocus. This little app by OmniGroup supports my current way of working so well, that these days I’d be absolutely lost without it. It’s quite simple, I keep a list of projects and tasks for each project. When entering a task, I add a context (ie. work, home, online, errands, etc) and due date. The app allows me to view my tasks by project or by context. So when I’m planning out projects I use project view. When I’m ready to do work, I switch to context view and look at the things I can get done based on my context.

For example, each morning before leaving home, I see what I need to do for that day. At home, I use it to keep track of such mundane things as trash day, when to scoop the litter box and when to review my produce delivery.

At work, I use it for everything. I have tasks set up to remind me to send out weekly update emails, to prepare for scheduled meetings, what the next steps are on various projects, etc. When someone asks me to do something, I immediately add a task for it and get back to whatever I was working on before the interuption. I can also send emails from Mail.app to OmniFocus, which is a tremendous help in managing my inbox.

I’ve even started to use it to get me into the habit of doing fun stuff. I’ve set up tasks to remind me to contact friends I haven’t seen in a long time and have them repeat so that I don’t go too long without reconnecting. I have projects for dream vacations with tasks that get me one step closer to making them realities. I even have a couple of inspirational projects like one to motivate me to become a better hockey player, with tasks like working out and eating healthier.

What this has done, is allowed me to focus on the task at hand instead of worrying about all the little things that I don’t want to forget. OmniFocus remembers everything for me, leaving me to live my life.