One of the (many) things I was never taught at school was how to organize myself. You can take that as wide or as narrow as you like, but there wasn’t even any classes on how best to organize myself to revise in the most efficient way possible. I had to work that out for myself, and I did just in time for my final school exams.
Even when I started working for a large bank, there was a ten week training course before I was sent out into the big wide world (well, Sri Lanka), where we were taught all about trade finance and retail banking....but nothing about organizing myself and my tasks efficiently and effectively.
And yet, how ‘productive’ I am relative to my peers has been one of the most important differentiators for me personally, and how organized and efficient the members of any given team I’ve worked in has made all the difference in our collective output.
But asking someone to explain how they remember tasks, hit deadlines and prioritise their work is taboo. Certainly I couldn’t ask someone senior to me in the companies I’ve worked in, and even if I did, I think I’d be met with blank stares. When I have I’ve discovered tasks written on bits of paper, ‘to do’ lists written across several different devices and media, endless Trello boards and note books which just keep going.
There are hundreds of books and blogs out there devoted to systems and processes to increase productivity – lifehacking, GTD, Inbox Zero.....and even more startups who are building ‘the system to rule them all’.
So what’s your method ? Are you as efficient and effective as you could be ? Are you the most productive member of your team ? And if not, why not ?