Anyone who knows me personally, knows I am a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. Now that I am full time freelance, it makes sense for me to work on my to do list.
I started by tidying my office and collecting all of my loose items, receipts, bills, notes on bits of paper, random cuttings, boarding passes and loose change. Everything went into my in-box. Because I have been rather busy traveling and working the last 5 weeks, as you can imagine, this pile was rather large. It overflowed from the in-tray all over the desk and was actually falling on the floor at times.
My in-box with already a pile of papers sitting in there despite being cleared only the day before.
Even though this was not a priority in terms of sustaining, I made it a priority in terms of clearing the decks, making room for the work that I need to do. Much like a chef cleans up the kitchen of any old pots and pans, it made sense to clear the in-box. I did not actually do much of the work represented by all this stuff. I actually use my iPhone to keep the time I spend on each item less than 2 minutes. I did manage to get off a few emails to contacts with the business cards I collected. In 2 minutes, its possible to send a quick email and add the contact details to my address book.
Today, I have a meeting with an event center based upon that email blast. I also have a makeup artist adding me to the links section of her site. This is a great reason to actually keep the in-box clear and do something about the potential contacts that you collect.
Following the burst of energy that a clear in-box generates, I tackled the somewhat curly task of adding social media to my blog. This meant creating an application in Facebook and adding plug-ins to my site that interact with the application. Now all of my posts automatically feed into a mirror blog. Also, perhaps more importantly, people can authenticate on my blog using Facebook. This is great because it makes it easier for viewers to comment and share.
Now with clear decks, I was able to work on a live project – an exciting one which will take the next 2-3 weeks to shoot. More on this development in future posts. For now, time to get back to some of the more urgent items on the to do list!
Mark
