There are many tools around these days to help the busy person remain organized, taken to the OCD extreme with the GTD movement to which I've aspired and failed. My downfall is the reminders. They pop up to let me know it's time to do something and I have a remarkable capacity to ignore these pop ups. I have scheduled all sorts of routine maintenance tasks as reminders in iCal as well as various important events and projects. A notification pops up and herein lies the real problem: I hate being interrupted when I'm doing something.
I have always hated distractions when I'm trying to focus. Having kids means that's pretty much a constant. So I'm trying to learn to adapt to an interrupt driven life. Step one is I block out time for tasks after the kids go to bed. That eliminates the major class of interrupts though it does constrain those tasks to being things that can be done after dark. It's a start. I'm not sure what step two is...
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grizzly commented, on June 11, 2008 at 8:41 p.m.:
Step three, is obvious though - Profit! (sorry - can't help myself) Seriously though, reminders for tasks never work for me. They annoy me and I turn them off. So I only use the pop-up/beep reminder on my PDA for things I actually have to go to - ball games, picnic with friends, my mother's birthday. Everything else just goes on the to-do list (or one of several topical to-do lists). And once it is old enough that I have to face I'm not going to get to it, it gets deleted. Until I add it again.
Kathy G commented, on June 9, 2008 at 9:03 a.m.:
Some days I wonder if Outlook IS life.
Every morning when I come down to my computer in the kitchen I see my screen of reminders. That's the only way I can remember to do anything. On a good (but very infrequent) day I can complete all the reminders and dismiss them. Otherwise, I just move the leftovers to some time in the future, where they'll annoy me again/