Friday, August 11, 2006

MEME: how do you organize your life?

I recently read an interesting post at AllFinancialMatters discussing Brian Tracy's book Goals - it certainly sounds like an interesting read.

It very much reminded me of Hyrum W. Smith's 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management. What a wonderful read. Smith is the founder of Franklin Planner. The book emphasized the connection between values, goals and action.

It can take quite a few hour long sessions to define and redefine your goals, plans and responsibilities. Even longer when you try to incorporate other's thoughts (such as a spouse).

I spent a year using the paper Franklin Planner system and then about 1-2 years using their software, which I found kludgy and awkward, although it was almost six years ago. I'm thinking of taking another shot at their software - hopefully it works much better now with MS Outlook.

How do you organize and plan your life and activities? Is there a regimine or technique that you use? Is there a software product you use to track or organize your goals and activities?

I'd hope you share it with us.

Have a wonderful day,
makingourway

3 comments:

Foobarista said...

For finances, I just use Excel - I like that it's highly customizable, and I dislike learning overly complicated software. Things like Quicken have too much of a "heavyweight model" for me to like, since I like to do my own models. (One could argue that spending hours fiddling with Excel formulas is no better than exploring the mysteries of Quicken, but I just like Excel better!)

Also, I find that a good paper filing system is wonderful. Great software still can't beat a well organized file cabinet.

For things like exercise, it helps greatly that my wife and I work out together, or on days when we can't walk outside, we make each other get on the exercise machine.

Other than that, my life is rather disorganized :) I like a fairly high level of spontaneity - as long as finances are solidly grounded.

Prem Sagar said...

Hi,
I have the same question too. but I found the technique in the book First Things First by Stephen Covey very agreeable.
His time management is about doing important things first, and not just the urgent ones.

I am trying to inculcate the habit in my life. Will update you on how things go.

Anonymous said...

I'd recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen. I like his techniques quite a lot, and I use it in conjunction with site called RememberTheMilk.com. I found Outlook too difficult to organize into most methods out there. Most of my communication is through email, so Outlook + tools like ClearContext works great, but Outlook is kind of weak for Todos.