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In this article we talk about four useful ways to eliminate waste in your life. A wasteful life is an unproductive life, and keeping this in mind while going through your day will help you to become more efficient.

1.) Time. This obstacle is the biggest production-killer for most people. While more time can’t be invented, a better use of time can. Stuck in a long commute? Take a train or carpool and use that time to read the paper. Ten minutes before the meeting starts? Do a few stretches in your cubicle. Floss your teeth while the kids splash around in the bathtub. Finding things to do while you would otherwise be waiting is an easy way to eliminate time barriers.

2.) Energy. Adopt the “full hands in, full hands out” strategy of most restaurants. If you are heading to the kitchen empty-handed, grab a few dirty plates along the way. If you’re on your way out, snag some hot entrees to deliver. Using this philosophy, everyone spends less energy by reducing the number of steps they take each day. This translates to regular life as well. Pay all your bills at once, even ones that aren’t due: your checkbook is open, stamps are available, and it will be wiped from your To Do list later.

3.) Things. It may not seem like the number of material possessions in your life affects your productivity, but it does. A cluttered environment leads to disorganization, which leads to limited productivity. You’ll spend countless hours rifling through closets to locate what you’re looking for, moving stacks of magazines when company is coming, and dodging piles of dirty towels on your way to the toilet. The general rule of organization is this: if you haven’t used something in a year, get rid of it. You won’t notice it missing. And when you go digging in your drawer for stamps, you’ll find them right when you need them.

4.) Space. Again, this doesn’t necessarily seem related to production, but a misuse of space can limit productivity. For instance, a family of 4 lives in a 3-bedroom house. Traditional use of the rooms is one for Mom and Dad, and one for each child. However, if the children share a room, the spare becomes an office. Mom or Dad can retreat from the chaos to complete necessary tasks. When allocated a space to perform household work, bills get paid on time, phone calls are returned without noisy distraction, and the car registration doesn’t accidentally turn into an art project. Either parent can even work from home, having a space to earn income while still being accessible for the kids.

Eliminating waste in these four essential areas is imperative for improving productivity!

One day in the early 1900s a stranger approached J. P. Morgan as he walked down a street in New York City. Holding up an envelope, the man said: “Sir, in my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly sell you for $25,000.”

“Sir,” Morgan replied, “I do not know what is in that envelope. However, if you show me, and I like what I see, I give you my word as a gentleman that I will pay what you ask.”

The man thought about it, agreed to Morgan’s terms, and handed over the envelope. Without pause, Morgan opened the envelope, pulled out a single sheet of paper, unfolded it, and gave it a quick glance. He thereupon handed the paper and envelope back to the stranger.

And then he reached a hand into his overcoat, pulled out his checkbook, and wrote a check for $25,000. The Paper read:

1. Every morning, write a list of the things that need to be done that day.
2. Do them.

–SR

The New Year is coming, which means it’s time—once again—to come up with some resolutions for change. A friend of mine is determined to finally rid his workspace of its huge paper mountains and assorted piles of other stuff. According to him, every time he walks into his office the sight of those stacks makes him feel stressed out and miserable.

“I won’t begin 2009 with my office in this condition!” he insists. There’s more truth to this than he realizes, I think, since those stacks threaten to bury him in an avalanche before the year is out.

The thought of that got me so worried that I sat down and scribbled a few tips to help him clear out the debris:

Set a Deadline for Completing the Job: Make this task real. Enter it on your To Do List, tell your friends, set reminders to yourself.

Inspect the Job Site:  Spend some time sitting in the middle of the mess. Don’t do anything. Instead, just imagine how the space will look when the piles have disappeared. Keeping that picture steady in your mind, look past all the piles to the “bones” of your office. Where are the storage spaces? Are they being used wisely at the moment? How can you improve on present storage capabilities? Do you need more filing cabinets, pretty file boxes, bookcases? Don’t buy anything yet. It’s just a good idea to start thinking of ways to contain important papers and other things you need—ways that suit your office and work style.

Place Three Big Bins or Boxes in Your Office—One each for Trash, Recycled Material, and Thrift Shop Donations: When you decide to get rid of something, you don’t want to simply place it in another pile. You want to dispose of it forever. Having “Bye-Bye Bins” right there makes sure you do.

Don’t Forget the Shredder: If a document contains your name and address or any other information that identifies you, don’t just throw it away. Shred it into oblivion.

Eyeball Your Piles for the Obvious: No doubt there are plenty of things piled up around your office that actually have a home. Put all of those things where they belong, give them back to the owners from which you’ve borrowed them, and so on. Doing so will make your cleaning-up task seem a lot more manageable.

Tackle a Pile—Any Pile: No time like the present to get started. Focus on one pile at a time. Many papers or items are a no-brainer and will go straight into one of the bye-bye bins. Other things may be more difficult. Each time you hesitate to bin something, ask yourself whether you’ve missed it while it was buried in a pile. If you haven’t missed it—bin it!

Obviously, some papers and items are going to survive the binning process. Put them aside until you’re completely done going through all the piles.

Go Through the Stuff You’ve Put Aside: After your initial de-piling, take a second look at the items you’ve held on to. Believe me, when you go through these things again, you’ll find more to put in the bins.

Get Rid of the Bins: Now that all piles have been gone through and you’ve sifted the leftovers, you won’t have much need for your three big bins. Take them out of your office (you’ll later recycle the contents of one bin, and donate the useable stuff to a thrift shop).

Examine the Leftovers: Maybe the items you’re left with will fit neatly into your current storage system. If so, Bravo! You’ve done a boffo job.

On the other hand, maybe you don’t have a storage system, or need more storage possibilities. If so, consider what you’ll need to house the stuff that remains—and consider future storage space while you’re at it. Do you need to buy file cabinets, boxes, a bookcase, racks, other containers? If so, give some thought to the way you work. Are you the filing cabinet type? Or maybe you prefer stacked boxes. Whatever. Make it easy for yourself to file things in a logical place rather than begin constructing piles again.

Keeping the Stacks Away…Permanently: Make a point of putting things away at the end of the day. If you need to keep paperwork for a day or two, put a magazine file at the corner of your desk and label it “Current Paperwork.” That way it’s neatly contained, not piled up. If you force yourself to do this for a few weeks, you’ll soon get into the habit. –SR

You don’t have to be a fan of Getting Things Done to appreciate one of its basic principles, which is known as “collection.” Basically, this means collecting those ideas and thoughts that interfere with your concentration on a task, temporarily placing them somewhere outside your head. According to the theory, once those distracting thoughts are corralled (for later processing), you can proceed in an uninterrupted fashion to finish the job at hand.

The thing is, most of the time it seems to work.

Countless book chapters, articles, blogs, and conversations have addressed the question of exactly why thought collection works, but that’s not what we’re interested in here. We want to know something much more concrete–specifically, what collection tool/s you utilize to quickly remove those concentration-disablers from your head and temporarily store them.

With collection, I personally tend to go analog. At my desk I always have a notebook and pen at the ready–a useful and always-on mechanism for jotting down phone numbers, bits of data, and corralling any thoughts I don’t want to deal with at the moment. When I’m out and about I keep a Moleskine in my purse. If I’m doing research in the field or interviewing someone in person for an article, I use a reporter’s notebook; these are narrow (4″), long (9″), spirally-bound notebooks that can be easily held open in one hand.

I asked a few busy friends about their collection tools and have come up with an interesting list: whiteboard, PDA, pen & paper, word processing program, Moleskine, Jott, index cards (some call this method “the Hipster PDA”), various software programs.

So: now it’s your turn. Please leave a comment, telling us what collection tools you use and why. –SR

**(P. S.–Sometime soon we’ll ask you about your processing tools–what you use when you’re ready to deal with the thoughts you’ve collected, turning them into Tasks and Action Items.)

If the inaugural issue of Productive! Magazine is any indication, people are definitely seeking better ways to get things done. Since its November 20 release as a free, downloadable, 3 MB PDF, the 33-page magazine has averaged 1000 downloads per day. That’s pretty darn impressive.

The first issue contains a long and interesting interview with the GTD guru himself, David Allen, as well as 17 other articles by people with a solid productivity rep. I particularly liked “Zen to Done” by Zen Habits founder Leo Babauta−a sort of GTD re-interpretation for the Zen-oriented among us (Babauta calls it ZTD).

When I read through the magazine, a certain synchronicity seemed to be afoot. I happened to be having a not-so-good day (it started with a dead car battery in the morning and just got worse), but my mood improved considerably after reading James Mallinson’s “Having One of Those Days? Here’s How to Deal With It.” I needed to be reminded that, yes, Shit Happens, and also that sometimes it’s a good idea to  just Treat Yourself and Move On. Gretchen Rubin’s “7 Tips for Making Yourself Happier in the Next Hour” also worked a bit of magic.

Since I can’t think or get anything done if my surroundings are a mess, I didn’t really need Chanpory Rith’s “10 Tips for Keeping Your Desk Clean and Tidy”−but I know zillions of people whose lives would change forever if they read his 10 simple-but-effective tips to banish slobdom.

There’s lots more in Productive! to dazzle and amaze and turn you into an effectiveness wunderkind, so go download your free copy at http://productivemagazine.com. You can also buy hard copies online from www.lulu.com.  -SR