Many people set out to be productive and then ultimately fail and don’t know why. They’ve tried GTD, they’ve tried Moleskine and all other methods on the net and nothing is working. In fact, I think it is quite common that you can not organize yourself and be productive on the first go.
There are two factors that go into being successful in this and they are
The first one is pretty obvious. If you don’t work at it, you won’t accomplish anything. There is no instant, push-button way to organize yourself and be more productive. Each productivity method requires a lot of work and patience.
The second one is less obvious and I want to share some of the insights I have gained throughout the years. It is very important to know that no matter how hard you work at it, you could still fail. You need the proper mindset, ways of thinking to get there, let me explain.
I have seen so many unsuccessful people, at least 60% of whom couldn’t be more productive because of their mindset, not their inability to work. They tried so hard, wanted to be so totally and completely focused and organized that they utterly failed at it. We have much going on in our heads, and even though many productivity principles instruct us to get everything down on paper, I think this is impossible.
These „directives” create a lot of stress, and people try to indeed put everything down on paper. They are then either frustrated because they can’t get everything down, or that they have so much written down they can’t make sense of it. My first advice is relax! You are not organizing to be organized, you are organizing to be productive. Know where the boundaries are, if you can’t put something down, just forget it. If it was important it will come back, if it wasn’t then there’s no point in fretting.
If you start trying to organize yourself in a more relaxed manner I think you have a much better chance to become a productivity machine and you also reduce your stress, which has all kinds of other beneficial factors attached.
