A Guide to My Organizational Workflow: How to Streamline Your Life by Gregory J. Stein.
My system is meant to organize, not confine.
My tools support fast and easy refactoring when necessary so that I can restructure a project to reflect my updated understanding of the problems it was intended to solve. The greater the effort required to reorganize when necessary, the less frequently it will happen and the effectiveness of the organizational system will decline.
However you decide to organize your life, building in extra redundancies or time to tidy up is incredibly important.
One of the core principles of the Getting Things Done methodology, around which my system is built, is that the mind is for thinking, not remembering.
A key part of my organization system is my List of Motivators. Anything that might potentially generate new tasks or projects belongs on this list. In my system, motivators fall into three broad categories:
- Active Motivators Any regular commitments, organizations I’m a part of, or ongoing activity is an active motivator. […]
- Tangible Motivators […] Tangible Motivators are typically milestones that are greater than a few months into the future, yet might require indeterminate intermediate steps to accomplish. […]
- Conceptual Motivators The broadest long-term goals–like creating a successful business or becoming a thought leader in my field–belong to this class of motivator.