ScatteredGenius.com

Someone has created a system for workflow organization called called “Get Things Done.” The idea behind the system is to Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do. Not a bad system, and one that I’ve been adapting. Other people have adapted it, as well. I also found an interesting whitepaper on organization. My problem that I’ve been trying to work out is how it splits up the info; it has you group up your tasks into related projects or areas.

For example, any phone calls you have to make go under a @Phone Call heading. Any bills you have to pay go to @Bills. My problem is that I always collect tons of shit, be it random ideas and such, so that this one ‘project’ file becomes huge and ends up being a chore in it of itself to work around. I’ve been slowly figuring out what kinds of projects to use things.

Like recently, I consolidated a lot of random ‘project’ points into one or two big ones. One being ‘@creative ideas’. This is a catch-all section where I can put all kinds of creative ideas; ideas for entire websites, for a beat in a story, for a single webcomic, for a song mash-up. The important part being to record the essence of the idea; when I have time or inclination, I can dig through the ideas and pull one out, and then make it.

The other project I’ve made is ‘@consume’. This is a catch-all for any kind of consuming. Movies to watch, books to read, games to play, things to buy. The difference being that I’d put ‘buy new car stereo’ under @consume, and I’d put ‘get oil changed’ under a more important or pressing project.

It’s important to mention at this point that I do all of this ‘filing’ entirely in google docs.

I have tried my hardest to avoid putting entire projects into their own files, lest out of site out of mind. I’m finding that I may just not be able to do that. The original ‘get things done’ philosophy is to create a project out of something if it has X or more things to do; I think 4 or so. Mine has been more like 10-20ish but I think it’s starting to make more conceptual sense. In my current example, I have a document for any and all World of Warcraft stuff. Any snippets of advice, talent specs, links to websites, good quotes, anything at all.

I can keep stubs of stuff in the main project document and make new documents when needed. The important thing is that I print out the first page (and only the first page) of this project document and work off of that. I rearrange projects when needed, so I don’t get overwhelmed and go ‘oh I’ll just work on this for a little’. Cuz then nothing ever gets done!