This sketchcast is a 3m15s video about the concept of Effectiveness and Efficiency. In the video I explain using a simple graphical representation the difference between the two and why I focusing on effectiveness needs to be done before focusing on efficiency.
If you want to read more about the subject, I suggest you head over to the cross-blog series on Mastering Productivity.
This article is part of a four-article series, all published today on different blogs. If you find this article useful, check out the other parts:
- Mastering Productivity - Money at Dumb Little Man
- Mastering Productivity - How to be more effective with your time at Zen Habits
- Mastering Productivity - Energy at LifeDev
Productivity is a subject I write about on a regular basis. Lately I have been getting some feedback that I have a different approach to the subject, as compared to other productivity blogs. This made me realize that I have never really explained what I mean when I write or talk about productivity. So it’s about time to get into the details of productivity, and I got so enthusiastic about the subject that it turned into a 4 part series. Best of all, you don’t have to wait for the other parts. They are available as you read this, just on other blogs. So surf to them to read on and while you’re there, do take a look around because they provide a lot of good content. Click to continue »
I have a love/hate relationship with contact information. I use it regularly and think it’s important, yet I can’t get it the way I want it. The solutions don’t satisfy me, but irritate me most of the time. This goes for both the system (I can’t seem to get categories to work for me) and the software (email addresses in Outlook…AARGGH).
I’ve used paper, MS Outlook, several freeware dedicated ’solutions’, Outlook again, my pda. Still I’m not satisfied. I hope your input and your experiences will help inspire me to get it up to speed.
So I’m curious to know what you, the readers, use as a system to store you contact information with. I’m interested both in what software you use and how you manage the contacts in there (categories, tags etc).
Thanks for leaving a suggestion!
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Gtdfrk is a frequent commenter on this blog, a fellow Dutchie (I think) and a blogger that produces very useful content and resources. He’s celebrating that he has reached a 1000 subscribers on his blog (I’m one of them) and wants to go to the next level. So he started an experiment and hands out cash to other bloggers to review him.
I have to say, the cash is going to be a nice bonus, but the resources gtdfrk is presenting on his blog Getting Things Done and with his accompanying resource list The Ultimate GTD Index are excellent. His approach is more strict GTD than you’ll find here, but I suspect he’s broadening his perspective.
The site design of Getting Things Done has changed over the last couple of months. Gtdfrk has integrated his ultimate GTD index and his blog into one portal. He also added a tumblelog and a “Post Index” to the site as well.
The post index has all the posts conveniently categorized by topic. This way it’s easy to scroll through the posts and decide upon the next read. There are articles for beginners in GTD, lessons learned and for enhancing your system.
The ultimate GTD index is a great starting point for GTD users. It has the 5 most recent posts of 57 blogs about GTD, a softwarelist for both offline and online solutions and more. The major downfall of the index is that it doesn’t list my blog 
There’s room for improvement on the tumble log and it can be a lot more valuable than it is right now. I see tumble logs as a reference to good reads elsewhere, but there are about 50% links back to the blog.
The about page is a bit short, so we’re not really getting a grip on who gtdfrk really is and why he’s blogging. My experiences with gtdfrk so far tell me that he speaks dutch (I know that through MyBlogLog), he’s an early riser (comments on this site) and he’s got a family (comments again).
Pay Getting Things Done a visit and if you like what you see, subscribe to his feed.
Saturday is sketchcast day. Short 5 minute videos in which I explain a concept related to the topics on my blog.
This sketchcast is about the Eisenhower matrix, also known as the time management or time leadership matrix. It’s a short 5 minute 30 second video explaining the concept and ways to use it to your advantage.
Eisenhower is not often credited for this concept, yet he is the originator of the quadrants as the people from Google Answers once checked for a curious person (it wasn’t me).
In the sketchcast I mention the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
