Productivity Pants? How I’ve been getting stuff done lately (or not)

I am a full-on systems geek. Some people say it’s because I’m a Virgo. I dunno. I’m not convinced that planetary alignment has anything to do with my personality, but those astrological profiles can be maddeningly accurate. It keeps me in just enough doubt to make me read my horoscope now and then.

As an artist, I’m not what people typically envision as the flaky Puck-like creature, waving my sparky wand of color at this drab, drab world. I’m a logic-driven systems geek who likes making graphics.

I eat productivity systems for breakfast (it balances the chocolate and coffee). I adore them. They are my little friends. I hated the idea of going to school, but when mom said it was time to buy school supplies I was in the car first. Trapper Keeper? David, stop drooling, someone could slip. Bic pen packs? David, stop licking that.

In my working life I’ve used lots of systems to get my stuff done. Everything from Franklin Covey planners to simple To Do lists on legal pads. GTD? Of course.

I’ve been sticking to my simple written to-do list for years now. It works great as long as I’m only thinking about Today. Planning for the week or even the month was something I did in a haphazard when-I-remember-to kind of way. Mostly I relied on my email and iCal system to remind me when stuff was due. Due? Perfect, except for those things I was doing that didn’t involve client deadlines. My stuff. Stuff that fell through the cracks because I have more ideas than I have capacity to implement them.

Maybe that flaky Shakespearean character description fits me more than I like to think. Whatever, man.

Enter Charlie

If you haven’t heard of Charlie Gilkey, please go see what he’s all about. Wait! After I’m done talking at you. Thanks.

I had seen Charlie’s posts and heard a lot about him around the twitter campfire, but my first real introduction to his stuff was his Email Triage. I was leading a workshop in Phoenix last year and I was collecting resources to offer my workshoppers (workshoppees?). I tested out his product and it was one of the things I felt most confident about sharing (it also fit right into my lesson on handling outta-control client email).

So I started to read more of his stuff and keep tabs on new products he created. As soon as I saw the word “planners” on his site I was that drooling Trapper Keeper Kid all over again.

The coolest part was that he offered a whole page of free PDFs for download so I could use the planners right away. Mom wasn’t there to stop me so I collected them all. I’ve spent the last few weeks testing them out.

How this planning thing worked out

I don’t want to weigh you down here with a lengthy description of how the planners themselves work. Charlie does a fine job of that on the site. I do want to tell you how it worked for me, because it’s been pretty damn cool.

What do you mean, plan my month?

Apparently it’s a good idea to plan what you’re going to accomplish beyond today. I printed out the Monthly Action Planner and… froze. Hmm. What do I want to get done this month? Wow. I guess I have to really consider this instead of hitting what comes across my desk (or my noggin).

This was a great exercise for me. There was also a place on the page to distribute the happenings into projects by the week. This carried over into…

The Weekly Plan

Just like the Monthly Action Plan, I hesitated over the weekly plan. Less so, because I had that handy Monthly plan to refer to now, but I really had to decide what was going to get done and when. There’s a lot of power in that. I felt in control of projects instead of just reacting to the projects coming at me.

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Smoothie

Every day I wrote down the projects I would work on and listed the tasks I needed to perform. I really put this to the test in my latest project with Tzaddi. I also noted scheduled events, which for me means phone calls, mostly.

During the day I put away the Monthly and Weekly plans and have that Daily Action Planner sitting on my desk. It’s all I need to get through the day and finish my stuff. Except when I didn’t finish my stuff. Oops.

What happened when it didn’t work

Raise your hand if you ever get in your own way. Yeah, me too. Every damn day. In fact, on the Daily Action plan there’s a section for Emergent Tasks. It wasn’t hard for me to fill this up. Between actual emergent tasks (clients needing help) and manufactured emergent tasks (watching that alpaca surfing video that Jason sent me) it was a wonder I didn’t have to start writing on the back.

So I didn’t always get my stuff done. I even had a couple very late nights returning to finish up the stuff I had left hanging when it was time to connect with my family in the evening.

Major fail on my part here, but this was a good thing. I learned that I was taking on too much every day. The slap-me-upside-the-head signal was that I would sit down in the morning and not get up until 6 PM. Sometimes I would pee, but that was only when there was pain involved.

The planners were awesome for this. No, I didn’t start writing “empty bladder” in Emergent Tasks. Hey, I’m learning here.

What they did was bring this stuff to light. It’s kind of like when I use Freckle to track my time on a project. I’m usually surprised how far off my estimates are sometimes. In the same way, I was surprised to find out how much stuff I was trying to cram into every day and how often I was getting off track (alpaca surfing is pretty fascinating, though).

Every week and every day I’ve been tweaking my workload on the planners. The good news is, the list is getting shorter and I’m getting more done. The bad news is that now I have a lot more time for alpaca surfing videos. No planner can fix that one for me, it’s simply a character flaw. Yeah, I’m working on that.

Get these planners and try them yourself

These planners threw me over the cliff into CharlieLand.In fact, I’m going to purchase his Premium Planners after I write this post (it’s on the list today).

I’ve also joined his affiliate team (I get a little cash for the links here). His planners are useful, sure, but they’re more than a glorified task list. They have been a killer tool for learning about how I work. It’s feedback that I gave myself without really knowing it during the process.

Both my Spock-like Virgoness and my creative inner muppet really dig his stuff. Check it out. Now you can go. I’m done. Seriously. Go. Now.

http://productiveflourishing.com

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