Getting Organized.

I asked a few of my successful friends, about a key reason for their success. One answer that is almost a common denominator (a distant second to saying "No") is being 'organized'.

Your brain suffers (for lack of a better word) if you do not close out and organize all the information in it. Think of it as an open process in your brain for all the small, medium, and large tasks that you have lurking in your brain.

If you ever read David Allen's book called Getting Things Done, you will learn that if you do not write down these tasks and organize them, they are then fragmenting your brain and essentially causing it to slow down.

There are many Notion-based templates for GTD. Here is a nice article you can read that tells you how to go about it in Notion.

If you can simply list down all your thoughts and tasks, you are already ahead of the curve. No matter how small, or inconsequential the thought may be, write it down.

The five steps of the GTD system are:

Capture all the problems and ideas that are taking your attention.

Clarify what each one means and what you need to do about it.

Organize the decisions and actions you’ve clarified.

Reflect on everything in front of you to choose what to tackle next.

Engage with the task (get it done).

When you first start out, you’ll have a large mental backlog of items to capture and process, and this will take a good amount of time. After you get through it once, you’ll have all the items in the proper place. Then, on a regular basis (for example, daily), you’ll step through the five steps to capture and process new items, then figure out what you want to do that day.

From the summary of Getting Things Done by David Allen at Shortform.

It has been a couple of months since I started down this path, I have literally 1000s of files (better known as swipe files) that I am getting into Notion and organizing my life. Already I am starting to see the benefits of it all.

So, in short, go get the book, (there are no affiliate links) and get started with organizing your life. Trust me, you will thank me later.

Peace.