Perhaps from sheer boredom, I decided to try something different with the phonebook that arrived this week. I decided to page through it — through the Yellow Pages section, at least. And, wow, did I find some cool stuff.

For one thing, there is a whole section of coupon pages. I tore out all the ones that looked useful.

There was also some amusement to be had: On an ad for men’s haircuts: “Just Because You Live in Southern Illinois Doesn’t Mean You Have to Look Like It.”

I learned about some local businesses that I wasn’t aware of. An ad — how it looks, the object of its appeal — tells you a lot about a company.

This whole process didn’t take much time. Maybe 30 minutes. I was just skimming. But it was time well spent.

Some years ago I decided to pull my gloves on and take care of the clutter in my life once and for all. Now, older and wiser, I’ve come to see that years of bad organizational habits are not easily undone.

Lest you think I’m a slob, I want you to know that I’ve been a neat freak since about age 10, and in high school one of my proudest possessions was a 2-drawer filing cabinet. Unfortunately neatness, cleanliness, and basic orderliness are inadequate without a well-thought plan. Sooner or later, depending on the volume of potential clutter, every overlooked detail in your organizational scheme will become a magnet for chaos. Once chaos begins to collect, it snowballs.

A while back I made one of my best organizational investments in the form of a book: Getting Things Done, by David Allen. I’ve written about it before. While in Sweden, I was laughing with my friend Daniel that—insert a little nervous chuckle here—I’ve never finished the book. The good news is that, despite not completing it (yet), the book set me on a good course. You could say it was because of the book’s advice that I had to set it aside. I had to focus on other things immediately.

I have recently become a huge fan of the software OmniFocus (available for Mac only). It is built around the “Getting Things Done” principles, and I say without hesistation that it is the best organizational application I have ever used. It makes Outlook’s Tasks look like a toy. Mind you, OmniFocus is not a productivity suite with e-mail, calendar, contact list, etc. It is simply an amazing, glorified to-do list manager. But what it does, it does extremely well.

I’ve been using OmniFocus at work and at home since the version 1.0 release came out. I don’t know what I’d have done without it. With dozens of projects to juggle, I’d be totally lost with just about any of the other to-do list programs I’ve seen. Instead, I’m able to keep focused and, generally speaking, on top of things.

For any OmniFocus users, or potential ones, out there, here are my hints and tips:

• In your Library (in the Planning mode), create subfolders called “Action List,” “Delegated List,” and “Someday-Maybe List.” These correspond to the respective concepts in the book Getting Things Done.
• Never create ambiguous tasks (“Complete the Jones project” ). Always break projects down into concrete steps (“Call Bob,” “Confirm dates with Peter,” “Gather data for progress report” ).
• Create sensible contexts. For me, the default contexts of “Phone” and “E-mail” are meaningless. I just put everything I do at my desk under “Desk.” Create contexts for people (your boss, your spouse), your places (home, work, nearby towns and cities), anything that is likely to be related to actions that you do regularly. You can create nested contexts. For example, I have a context called “3ABN,” and underneath it, all the different departments, and in each department the people I regularly work with. When I need to visit a particular person or department, I can quickly see what other items of business I can take care of at the same time.
• Create a context called “Unassigned” for projects you will assign to someone else.
• Pause all projects in the Someday-Maybe folder.
• Create a bin for miscellanous actions. I call mine “Singletons.” Set it to function in Single Action Mode (each action is a project unto itself).
• Create a bin in your Action List for use as a shopping list.
• Create a bin in your Delegated Items for order tracking. (This one sounds a little sloppy, but basically you are delegating the order fulfillment to the company, and are waiting on them to ship you the products.)
• Create automatic, repeating actions and projects for those things you do regularly.
• It really helps to have a multiple-monitor setup, so you can have several windows open at once. I have a list by context, a list by priority (flagged), and a master list on screen at once.
• Add shortcuts/aliases to your documents and folders in your OmniFocus projects. This saves a lot of time, since you don’t have to switch to the Finder and find the related items every time you return to a project.
• Do the weekly review! OmniFocus has a built-in feature to make this really easy.

I’ve been using OmniFocus for qutie a while now. So if you decide to try it out, and have any questions or problems, send me a note and I’ll be glad to help.

If you have this address in your address book, or penciled in a coffee-stained notebook opposite your online banking passwords (I’m not telling how I know), please DELETE IT, cross it out, or whatever you must do.

That address has been defunct for about eight months now, so if you’ve sent anything important (money, fan mail, etc.) to that address during that time, I haven’t received it.

Here is the address you should use:

Besides being easier to remember, it has this major benefit: It works. You can, of course, also contact me through this website. Or at my workplace. Or by phone. Or chat. Or Facebook or MySpace. Or just Google for my name—it’s everywhere!

If you want a free and easy way to keep your contact information current, try Plaxo. It synchronizes your contact information with the latest updates from other members. Works on Macs and Windows PCs. I’ve been using it for some time now, and quite a few of my friends use it too. It seems to work reliably, and has been a great help. The only gripe I’ve had is that it has merged contacts who shared an email address, such as married couples. But if you make sure Plaxo is set to require confirmation before making changes, rather than working in fully automatic mode, that kind of error won’t happen. (It doesn’t hurt to backup your data first, either. I believe Plaxo does this automatically the first time you run it, at least in Outlook.)

The second annual MacHeist promo is underway. This bundle includes more than $350 worth of applications, for only $49. Two of the three “locked” apps have already been unlocked in the first 3 days of the promo. And the third locked app is well past 3/4 of the way to being unlocked. And that’s with 10 days left … so it’s pretty much guaranteed that all 11 (there’s a chance a 12th will be added) apps will be unlocked and included in the bundle.

If you visit the MacHeist website, you will find a description of all the apps. Just click on their icons to learn more. The most useful ones in my estimation are 1password, Awaken, Speed Download, AppZapper, CSSEdit (if you edit websites), Snapz X Pro, and Pixelmator (which is not unlocked yet).

1password is helps you manage your passwords and much more. It does everything the autofill features of Safari and Firefox do, plus some other nifty things. You can create multiple identities — for example, one for work, one for home – and auto-fill forms from whichever identity you want. It can store secure notes on any topic you want. It has a “Wallet” feature where you can securely enter your credit card information and other personal details, to save typing them. It’s quite flexible, and you can use as many or as few of the feature as you desire. (Personal details were obliterated in Photoshop from the image above.)

AppZapper provides the uninstall functionality that Apple should have built into OS X. Before deleting an application forever, it allows you to see, and selectively keep if desired, any files related to the application.

Awaken is a glorified alarm clock. You can enter as many alarm events as you like. These can play iTunes playlists or other media that you select. You can also launch applications or files at specified times. It also has an egg timer (countdown timer) and a sleep timer (go to sleep listening to music, and it eventually shuts itself off after the time you specify). The clock can be show full-screen (handy if looking at it from bed), and it can be controlled via an Apple remote.

CSSEdit is for the webmasters out there. It allows you to edit CSS files with all kinds of super cool features every computer geek will love.

Snapz Pro X is a screen capture utility. Besides simple screen captures, it can also capture specific program elements, selected screen areas, and — most impressively — movies and other things that change over time.

Pixelmator (not yet unlocked as of January 13) is a cool-looking Photoshop-type application for editing photos and other types of images. If you look at the screen shots, you’ll notice it contains many of the same tools and features as Photoshop (Photoshop Elements is about $80 retail, Photoshop CS3 is $620–$1,040 retail, depending on the version). Although it doesn’t do everything Photoshop CS3 does, it appears to cover all of the most common tools and commands. And unlike Photoshop, it is designed exclusively, and optimized specifically, for OS X.

Speed Download was recently added to the bundle. I’ve been using this application for years. It’s very handy if you ever have to deal with downloads over slow internet connections, or downloads that are difficult to start or finish.

Other applications in the bundle include CoverSutra (works with iTunes, requires OS X 10.5), Cha-Ching (financial app), iStopMotion (create your own stop motion videos — fun!), and TaskPaper (note-taking app … a little underwhelming, but what can I say? … a better app is OmniOutliner). There is also a hint that one or more additional apps will be added before this bundle offer is done.

Interested? Head on over to MacHeist and buy the bundle!

If you’re wondering what this “MacHeist” thing is all about, it starts as a series of online puzzle games in the form of missions (“heists”). Those who complete the puzzle missions get other free apps, as well as discounts on the MacHeist bundle offered at the end. I completed all the puzzles this year (with help from other users … the puzzles can be very tough), and came home with all kinds of cool stuff. You can read a fuller description of this year’s puzzle goodies here.

I have not been using Yahoo as a primary email account for years. However, I had given it out as a fall-back address for various online services. If you have my former Yahoo email address in your address book, please delete it and use my current michaelprewitt.com address only. If you don’t have that one, you can contact me through this website for details.

PS: I recommend the free address synchronizing service Plaxo. I have not had any problems with it (spam, etc.), and it has worked well for keeping my email addresses current with friends and family that use the same service. There are clients for both Windows and Mac OS X. (One caveat: The software offers to send sign-up invitations to all your contacts, which may annoy some of them. But you have complete control over the process, and sending the invitations is optional.)

From the day I lined up my toy cars on the second shelf — each one not only in line, but also in a specific parking spot that it held exclusively from then on — all the way through high school and college, I pursued orderliness with a zeal as strong as anyone I knew. One of my first rules was the mantra, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” Once I was happy with an arrangement, I seldom changed it. If you had snapped a photo of my dorm room on the first day of classes, and compared it with another taken on graduation weekend, you might not have noticed any difference. [Edit: I should be clear that orderliness does not require that arrangements be static; however, constant change does interfere with orderliness.]

Orderliness is not just an ideal. It is a way of life that has tangible rewards, from garnering the respect of fellow students and faculty, to being able to find some obscure item in a rush or in the blackness of a power failure, to having the answer to a coworker’s question at your fingertips, to the peace of seeing your personal space as a well-ordered machine and not as the scene of a perverse scavenger hunt through an endlessly shifting mass of stuff.

With orderliness, one thing easily leads to another: Shirts all facing the same direction. Dress shirts here, casual shirts there. Subdivide the casuals — short sleeves, mock turtlenecks, collars. Shirts that have been worn once, on a different colored hanger. My music is arranged by genre (religious, classical, holiday), then alphabetically. Books by subject, and those I’ve read separate from those I haven’t. Software applications are in virtual folders according to function. Incoming email is automatically tagged with colors and keywords, and sorted into folders by rules I’ve set up.

I’m addicted such that it sometimes spills over into others’ lives. I spent part of one holiday sorting my mom’s pantry: canned veggies here, fruit there; everything grouped by varieties and brands. Another holiday I sorted all the books in the library of a small Bible worker school, and labeled all the shelves by subject. Just recently I cleaned and sorted my mom’s bathroom closet and kitchen storage (women have some really weird stuff!).

Flash forward to the present: Some years ago, I’m not even sure when or precisely how,* various elements of chaos begin to appear in my life. Clothes piled up, the dishes went unwashed, email accumulated for months, magazines and books overflowed desks and spilled out across the floor, bank statements piled up unopened for six months or more at a time. You get the picture. Still, there was some level of organization, subtle and esoteric: I knew this pile contained something, and this other pile something else. I made to-do lists, sorted by project and priority. Yet the lists kept getting longer, the piles bigger, my life less satisfying. [*Pouring a lot of energy into a relationship that ultimately flops is a good way to throw yourself into a tailspin, and there are other methods equally effective — but I digress.]

As my life became more complicated, and I seemed to fall ever further behind, I looked for ways to get out of this spiral. Sometimes the solution seemed to be to buckle down, focus, try harder. But that set me on a collision course with new priorities ascending in my life: social interaction, exercise, projects. I didn’t want to be a “Martha” (Luke 10:40–42), always busy keeping things in order, but missing out on life. But neither did I want anything in my little world to fall into disarray. It seemed to be such a fragile balance, a little too gray for my exacting mind.

I tried Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits” formula. It was helpful, but a little too abstract and old-fashioned for my tastes. Still, the key ideas are worth absorbing, especially “First things first.” And I must confess that I never read his best-selling book, although I’ve used his workbooks and software. I also looked at the “personal mission statement” philosophy. Again, good, but not a full solution.

One concept that helped me a lot was multitasking. I’m not sure where I found it, or if I developed it in my own mind. But the key idea is this: The multitasking I’m talking about is not reading a book while you’re talking on the cell phone as you’re driving to work. That’s called, “Cruising for an insurance adjustment.” The multitasking I’m talking about is doing a single task in such a way that it accomplishes multiple goals. For example, if you want to learn Spanish, and grow spiritually, you could try reading a Spanish Bible. You might catch a new nuance of word that never struck you the same in an English Bible, for example, and thus gain a fresh insight into what God has said while learning a new language. Or you could invite friends over for a meal, and thus try a new dish you’ve been itching to make, and yet also get to socialize as well. You could listen to a podcast while walking for exercise (or walking to work). I hope you get the picture. The idea is not to add complexity by doing competing tasks at once, but to find tasks that could naturally blend together so your life is more fluid and efficient.

Another step in the right direction was adopting a principle of staying current — and only current. In order words, when a new Lands’ End catalog arrived in the mail, I would immediately toss the old one. I began clearing my inbox by deciding to read at least as many (or more) emails as arrived that day, and respond to those ones or delete them immediately. (I must admit that I did not, and still do not, always respond immediately to emails, because I am the type of person to write and rewrite messages until I get them perfect, or until it’s 12:15 in the morning and I need to get to bed.)

I also identified another problem: I had too many inputs for my poor mind to handle. Between home and work I had three email inboxes on three computers, two physical mailing addresses, three phone numbers (and voice mails), at least six computer and desk calendars (not counting anything on the wall), perhaps dozens of to-do lists on multiple computers, as well as other inputs (verbal requests made in passing, sticky notes on my desk, and so forth) that were sometimes slipping through the cracks. Critical requests and reminders could pop up anywhere, and with so much “noise” it was easy to miss one. I realized that some of these I could not eliminate. However, there was definitely room for improvement.

I had been some months in the process of trying to streamline this system, when I ran across an awesome book that has helped me a great deal: Getting Things Done, by David Allen. If you do a Google search for “getting things done,” you are sure to find a wealth of resources. David’s book is extremely popular, having achieved almost cult-like status. Many refer to the system by the acronym GTD, as I do now. A host of spin-off GTD books, websites, and software is out there for the taking. However, I highly recommend you read David’s book.

The book is very practical and easy to read. The basic premise of the book is that you cannot rely on priorities and mission statements to get you through the inundation of tasks related to so many jobs in our knowledge-oriented society. You need methods and tools that will help you get new tasks off your mind, and into a trusted system of reminders where nothing can slip through. You need a system that is so easy to use that in the heat of your busiest day you are not tempted to skirt it. It needs to be simple, quick, and thorough, able to handle every type of task and project timeframe. The book also presents a very useful paradigm for how to think of tasks and projects (a task is anything you do — write a report, call a coworker, take your spouse to dinner — and a project is any goal that is achieved through more than one task), and presents a conceptual workflow that anyone can implement and use. It is presented, not as a way to handle the challenges of a certain job or career, but as a way of life in the information age, encompassing both your personal and professional tasks.

Since implementing David’s GTD system, my home and personal productivity has dramatically improved. Of course, nothing is magic about it; it requires work and dedication. But it has helped me be more productive with less stress. And that in itself is very energizing.

Some software applications that help me are Apple’s iCal (for appointments and visualizing project timeframes), OmniOutliner (for managing to-do lists — such an awesome application!), OmniPlan (for orchestrating the busiest months of the year when my department staff are spread very thin and lots of things are happening simultaneously), and Sciral Consistency (a really cool application for those tasks that need to be done regularly, but don’t have definite due dates or times). If your needs are simple, a single program like Outlook or Entourage may be sufficient. In my workflow I use Outlook (on my Windows computer) and Entourage (on my Macs) to schedule recurring appointments that I don’t want to see in my calendar. When they pop up, I either do them immediately, or else immediately add them to my OmniOutliner to-do list. Either way, I instantly dismiss the Outlook/Entourage reminder, whether the task is done or not. Each day I look at my to-do list, and put the tasks for that day into my calendar with reminders. I shoot off emails and calls to people I’m waiting on. And then I focus on what I can do. At the start and end of each day I also review the Consistency program to see how well I’m doing in personal areas, and what trends or slips need adjustment.

The benefits of this system are that I have only one to-do list at home and one at work, which is sorted automatically by due date, so that earliest due dates are always at the top. Each to-do item is a task, not a project. This keeps me on track when multiple projects are current, and forces me to determine what the actual tasks of a project are — nothing is left ambiguous (if I don’t know, the task is to find out). My calendar programs put pop-up reminders on my screen whenever I need to change focus, so I don’t have to worry about what is coming up and can focus on the task at hand.

One habit I highly recommend for everyone is emptying your email inbox entirely, every day. You say you can’t deal with everything the day it arrives? Then decide what you will do, and when, and schedule it. If you’re not sure, then schedule a reminder to think about it again later. And then delete the email. If the email requires a response, hit the reply button, save a draft you can finish later, make yourself a reminder in your calendar to finish it, and then delete the original email. If your inbox is habitually full, the sight of a clean inbox will probably give you such a feeling of accomplishment you will be immediately energized. Keep it that way.

I am now only about halfway through reading the GTD book, but it has already made a dramatic change in my energy levels and confidence. Its potential benefit to you will depend on how much you need order in your life, and how willing you are to apply its concepts and suggestions. I give it my highest approval.