Hello In[FOCUS] Reader,

Welcome to the 2nd installment of Organizing Your Workspace!

Our organizing bible is David Allen’s Getting Things Done. He has by far the most in-depth and complete organizational concepts that we were able to find, so much so, it would be the longest post in IN[FOCUS] history if we tried to teach you everything we’ve learned. In part I, Corbin and I shared with you exactly how far we had to go to increase our efficiency by organizing our office and workflow.  Today, this will be more of a teaser for the 3rd and final installment, but also an overview for what you can learn when you read Getting Things Done or listen to the audiobook.

Here are just a few of David Allen’s life-altering strategies and some examples (at the bottom) of how we are implementing them:

The Major Change: Getting Everything Out of Your Head

The Two Key Objectives:

• capturing all things that need to get done out of your mind and into a trusted, logical system
• disciplining yourself to make quick decisions about all the inputs you let into your life, so you’ll always have a plan for next actions that you can implement at any time.

Your Daily To-Do list doesn’t work:

• calendars should be sacred, everything for your day should be able to be completed
• not completing the day’s tasks and having to move them to future dates is unproductive and demoralizing
• the very heart of his Daily Action Management Organization are your calendar and Action Lists

Collecting All Your Life Stuff, So You Can Get It Out Of Your Head:

• every open loop is in your collection, so it’s in your head
• have as few as possible in-baskets, but as many as you need
• empty regularly by reviewing them all

Collection Tools (Your In-Baskets):

• physical in-basket
• paper-based note taking devices
• electronic note taking devices
• recording devices
• email

The above bullet points are the tip of the iceberg from the wealth of knowledge we’ve received from David Allen’s program. Here’s how Corbin and I have implemented it thus far:

• purchased 2nd editing system: MacBook Pro
• bought the latest version of Final Cut Pro Studio and maxed out our RAM for faster editing
• upgraded to Leopard Mac OS
• bought large and small notebooks for more comprehensive note taking
• upgraded our digital calendar and in-basket with Entourage
• organized our GoDaddy email
• said goodbye to our outdated PC and networked our Mac Pro and MacBook Pro with an Airport Extreme
• upgraded our business cell phone with a Verizon EnV Touch
• purchased Quickbooks for easier bookkeeping and bill pay
• hired Donna and her team of We Keep Books for training in Quickbooks and to catch our books up for the year

Our upcoming goals to accomplish a more carefree, efficient life:

• desks with greater workspace and storage capacity
• physical in-baskets
• large paper filing system
• shelving for closet, The Container Store can customize to fit your storage needs

In the third and final entry in this series, we will show you how we executed what we’ve learned from Getting Things Done and how it has benefited our workflow and business!

Dave and Corb, Soulbox

Click on image above to see my tutorial – If you don’t have access to the video theater already, register for free by clicking “Theater” above.

This is a tip for Final Cut Pro users.  If you have FCP,  you also should have Motion installed.  I only use Motion for this very effect as it’s saved me a number of times when I didn’t have another shot to fall back on.