118: How I Get Organized When I’m Overwhelmed

The John Poelstra Show

The other day I was overwhelmed with all the things I needed to. This is how I got organized and less overwhelmed.

Highlights

• Getting email and Trello under control
• Where are the places you store things that need to get done?
  • Trello
  • Post-it Notes
  • Email
  • Slack
  • 3×5 Cards
  • Notebook
• Offline email client–Thunderbird
  • Used in conjunction with GMail and other email providers
  • All of my email is stored locally where it can’t be hacked or lost
• Recomendo (my favorite newsletter of all)
• Getting to Inbox Zero at least once during a given day
• Sharpies & 3×5 cards are an easy way to capture and organize all the things overwhelming you
  • Easy to move around
  • Don’t stick to surface
  • Collapsable into a single pile so you don’t have to see all the cards (and get overwhelmed)
• Trello
  • Columns
    • Today
    • This Week
    • Next Week
    • Backlog
  • Set due dates and alerts for specific cards (generates email)

• Overall triage process
  • Go through all the email in Thunderbird and get the main Inbox to zero
    • Move to folder
    • Delete
    • Forward tasks to Trello via email
    • Book mark related webpage/information via Pinboard
  • Organize and move cards in Trello
    • Move all the cards (not in Backlog) to “Next Week” column (as often as you need to)
    • Triage from there
  • Look for patterns in the cards/tasks if there’s another
• Projects vs. tasks
• How to do this process with 3×5 cards

Credits

• Original photo source

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