The Open Plan Office Trap: Why It Pays To Work Alone There is a prevailing notion that open plan offices foster open communication among staff and make for a livelier workplace. But they are also facing a backlash as people begin to realise their shortcomings. We take a deeper look at the pros and cons of open plan offices and why working alone is underrated. GTD: Best Guidelines to Process your Stuff It is not the intention of this post to explain what processing your stuff means in the GTD jargon or how to process. If you’re a GTD practitioner, then you already know that. If you’re a beginner, I strongly recommend you reading the Getting Things Done book. You can also read here a brief summary of the process stage, and many articles online on the subject, such as this one (SimpleProductivityBlog). The purpose of this post is to present a best practices guide to help you to process things efficiently:
GTD: A Flawed System or Helpful System David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system for organizing and processing the work flow of personal and professional lives has been widely praised and has a huge following of supporters behind it. To them, GTD is a wonderful system to increase productivity and getting things done. On the other hand, others have critique GTD saying it’s not everything it is making out to be and has some major flaws. Getting Things Done The GTD method rests on the idea of moving planned tasks and projects out of the mind by recording them externally and then breaking them into actionable work items. This allows attention to be focused on taking action on tasks, instead of recalling them.[2] First published in 2001, a revised edition of the book was released in 2015 to reflect the changes in information technology during the preceding decade. Themes[edit]
A Beginner's Guide to Making a D*I*Y Planner Many first-time visitors to this site are probably overwhelmed by the vast number of pages, templates, packages, sizes and loose forms available. This little all-in-one guide is meant to direct beginners to downloading the right packages, printing and preparing the forms, and setting up a basic planner or Hipster PDA using the D*I*Y Planner kits. The goal here is to teach you how to create an effective industrial-strength planner system that can last for years, yet costs next to nothing. This page might look a little complicated at first glance, but you'll be surprised by how little work is generally involved, especially after a little practice. For example, I can now create a dozen double-sided punched forms in about three to four minutes, including printing, by using basic (i.e., "cheap") equipment. No special skills are involved, just a little patience and an hour or two to follow the step-by-step instructions the first time through.
Present your data in a Gantt chart in Excel Need to show status for a simple project schedule with a Gantt chart? Though Excel doesn’t have a predefined Gantt chart type, you can create one using this free template: Gantt project planner template for Excel Need to show status for a simple project schedule with a Gantt chart? Though Excel doesn’t have a predefined Gantt chart type, you can simulate one by customizing a stacked bar chart to show the start and finish dates of tasks, like this: To create a Gantt chart like the one in our example that shows task progress in days: Select the data you want to chart. 4 ways teachers can stop procrastinating and get things done This week, we’re tackling one of the most vicious struggles for many of us — procrastination. I’ve spent a lot of time observing what causes procrastination and what prevents it because this is such a deep and pervasive problem for me personally. It’s something I have always struggled with and probably always will. I haven’t found that procrastination is something you can conquer once and for all. Like just about all decisions that involve staying healthy and being productive, your day-by-day choices matter a lot. For most people, there will never be a day when you wake up and don’t feel pulled to be lazy, or eat junk food, or skip the workout, or leave the house a mess.
GTD — Smart Productivity Have a BIG goal that you would like to achieve? How about password protecting that goal. For instance, if you’d like to retire at the age of 45, you could make one of your online passwords Retire45. If you need to lose 20 pounds your password could be LOSeTwenty. I’m sure you get the idea. Exploring the 'Net and Star Trek with Pearltrees Over the past few days, you may have noticed that we've embedded a new tool known as Pearltrees in certain articles on TG Daily. As you can see, Pearltrees embeds a significant amount of supplemental information related to a post in a way that is easy to navigate, while giving you a chance to preview content before you even click a link. There's a lot more to Pearltrees, though.
About 43 Folders Listen: 43 Folders is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work. And, Hello. 43 Folders was launched by Merlin Mann on Wednesday, September 1, 2004 with an introductory post whose improbable title suggested that productivity can be like sausage; no one likes seeing it discussed at length on the internet by middle-aged men.