Done!

Being structured is in some respects simply about being conscious of where you are, where you are going, and what you can do while you are in the situation you are in. Tagging tasks by context might be familiar to many to-do-list-users, so Done! is this week about how to take this method a step further and be just slightly more efficient, but without exerting any extra effort.

When life is hectic and busy, and your work-spaces are cluttered with all kinds of material, you might find yourself in a dilemma. Should you spend your time cleaning or working? There are alternative ways of reducing the amount of stuff distracting you to doing a proper cleaning of the office. This week, Done! presents a cleaning-challange with will save you both time and energy in the long run.

As the world digitalizes and gadgets of all shapes, functions and sizes rapidly get a more prominent role in most people's lives, we can either embrace and take advantage of this progress, or choose not to. I say we should. This week, Done! provides you with eight suggestions on applications which will make your life easier.

Some things quite simply need to get done. But if they require typing in some way, shape or form, you are not alone if you keep feeling that they consume vast amounts of time. Here are the good news: This is a problem with a solution. This week Done! promotes a skill worth learning and the wonders in terms of improved efficiency it unquestionably will bring once you have learned it.

Once again, the concept of "less is more" is a saying that says it all. It can be applied in almost any situation, including the one presented in this week's Done! Done! will this week give you two surprisingly simple but effective methods to clearning out the material you never use almost without making any effort at all.

According to me, the classic saying "Less is more" couldn't be truer. Having too much of anything usually leads to some kind of imbalance, and when it comes to our daily lives, and office-spaces in particular, having too much of something eventually leads to chaos. This week's Done! is about how a single word can guide you towards increased efficiency and less frustration.

Some things are best done in cooperation with others. So one way or another, we need to meet. And in order to do so we need to be able to schedule our meeting. Preferably with ease... But even through e-mails and phone calls are perfectly good ways of communicating, they are sometimes not sufficient as smooth tools of coordinating many people and their individual agendas. But not to worry. This week's Done! is about the various methods you can use to set a meeting time with ease.

Those of us who travel in our work are aware of the possibility that a train breaks down, that we get delayed, that the flight gets cancelled and so on. We also know the frustration that comes from being stalled and not being able to turn the situation into something positive rather than letting it get to us. Bringing material to work on is a good way to make your traveling-time more productive, but taking this a step further is the way to be proactive and avoid potential frustration and aggravation. This week's Done! is about how to avoid the frustration of being stranded and make unexpected delays into productive time.

When times get tougher and we feel as in the midst of the tempest raging all around us in terms of deadlines fast approaching, meetings, tasks awaiting completion and so on, the hectic intensity of our daily doings can appear to be good reason for neglecting our structured ways of working. But this is a deceiving conclusion! It is when chaos is all around that we need our structured routines the most. This week's Done! is about how to preserve at least the most essential structural routines when we are stressed and overworked.

Many have difficulties saying no even though being able to say no is just as important as saying yes. We might have learned that denying people our helping hand is rude, and therefore tend to say yes to every little request others extend to us, regardless if we actually have the possibility, time and energy to help. In actuality, the essence of prioritization is that saying no to one thing is equivalent of saying yes to another. Therefore this week's Done! is about how to say no with a clear conscience and with good reason.

Not getting all the way when attempting to do something, big or small, can be frustrating since we do not get to check it off as completed, and in worst case scenario, it can make us unmotivated or in other ways unable to continue the task. This week's Done! is about a simple method which will make this transition from inertia after leaving the task unfinished into motion as you take up the task again, both smoother and easier.

If we alike our vision of the future to a beautiful forest, and all the activities which lead to its fulfillment as the trees the forest consists of, the following might be true: When we cannot see the wood for all the trees, the trees may appear as aggravating nuisances, as something which is in the way of us reaching our destination, of attaining our goals, rather than what they really are - the means to getting there. In light of this, this week's Done! is about how to make our future more accessible to ourselves in our daily doings, and by doing so, bring meaning to all the numerous tasks and activities we complete to get where we want to go.

To be able to bloom and grow, a garden needs to be pruned and cropped. Taking care to cut down some and guide the remaining branches of a tree will in the long-run make it strong, big and beautiful. The same principle goes for our projects and engagements. If we do nothing to sort amongst them our energy and attention gets increasingly scattered, but if we make sure to with greater care select what is important for us to do in order to grow and prosper, we will achieve what we strive for faster. This week's Done! is about how to crop our project-list and hence be able to finish more.

When you have a few moments to spare, you might take the opportunity to glance at your to-do-list to see if you have enough time to complete a task or two. But assuming that you, like most people, have a lot to do and many engagements to fulfill, the list is both extensive and detailed. This is, if you have read and followed my previous advice on how to create an effective to-do-list, as if should be, but can be inconvenient when you want to quickly identify what you have time for right now. This week's Done! is therefore about how to take your to-do-list one step further and make it even easier to use as a tool in your structured life.

There are certain words any management- or project-group should tread carefully around. They are words which are illusively tempting to use but which will bring nothing but trouble, or at least delay any progress you might have had if you refrained from falling for the temptation... In order to make projects move forward, concrete steps are needed to set motion to the progress. Therefore, the first Done! of 2012 is about how to avoid one word in particular and thereby do yourself a big favor.

Most people are familiar with the expression "less is more", but few implement this brilliant phrase. Strangely enough, it is in the areas which are in greatest need for less, where there happens to be more. We need less stress, fewer meetings and fewer deadlines to adhere to. But instead we often have more than we can cope with. This week's Done! is about how we can implement the concept of less is more in our calendar.

All people have a creative ability, and we all get ideas. Some get more brilliant ideas than others, but success comes from going through with what you come up with, not just getting the idea itself! It is therefore essential that you have a good place to store, or park if you will, your ideas until the time is just right for you to set them into practice. This hundredth Done! is about eight ways in which you can safely store your ideas until that moment arrives.

There are many bad habits you can suffer the consequences of, and one of the worst is the habit to consistently postponing things. Procrastinating is indeed a nuisance as it gives you more to do, an increased general stress-level, makes others annoyed with you and removes any flow you might have had if you dealt with matters at once to move things forward.

Without knowing what is functioning inadequately in our system of structure, there is no way of knowing what needs to be improved, and hence there is no way of improving it. The key to moving things forward and achieving a better personal structure is therefore awareness. Today Done! is about how to increase our level of awareness and insight, and then begin making improvements!

When we fail our ambitious attempts to become the structured, efficient people we want and strive to be, a sense of despair may not be far away. But, not to worry. You might just be making one out of two common, but crucial, mistakes. Today Done! is about two mistakes common when initiating a change for the better and how to avoid them.