Getting Things Done and Wunderlist

Quality is all about continual improvement so I’ve been re-reading the latest edition of ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen in order to help increase my productivity. I started an MSc in Total Quality Management and Organisational Excellence last month and need to schedule time very carefully to ensure I get everything done on time.  I have been practising ‘The 2 minute rule’ of getting things done that take under 2 minutes that fall into my inbox for quite some time.  That helped increase my productivity no end and regularly enables me to get to ‘Inbox Zero’.  What I needed to do now was to figure out a better way to manage my ‘to-do’ list and projects.

I’m glued to my iphone and computer most days so it made sense to start using an electronic ‘to-do’ list application.  I decided after trying quite a few to stick with ‘Wunderlist’.  It is available on all platforms, easy to use, has capability to sort lists into folders and has sub-tasks which can be used as checklists. So far this is the folder structure I have come up with:

• Inbox – This is my collectbox of all ideas and actions
• Clients – All actions to do with my clients goes in here
• Business Projects – This folder has all my projects for my business in it
• Finance – This has anything related to Finance in it
• Networking – This helps remind me of commitments made while out networking
• Personal – All my personal projects go under here
• Shopping – I hate shopping so keeping a list helps make that efficient as possible!
• MSc – This is where I keep all my MSc related projects
• Someday – Projects and ideas that I want to do someday

I’m sure this list will evolve over time, but for now it works for me.

The next thing I need to implement is the weekly review.  This is where you review all your folders and allocate next actions to complete.  Using the sub-tasks section in Wunderlist I have created a ‘Weekly Review Checklist’ for this purpose.

Having set all this up I feel confident it will increase my productivity and help me continually improve my service to clients.   If you want help setting up a system to improve your productivity just give me a call on 01604210488