I’m writing a tip on solutions getting to be more complicated than the problem they are meant to solve. For example, I once bought clips to clip together similar pairs of socks during the laundry. Dealing with the darned clip turned out to be a lot more hassle than just sorting and folding my socks in the first place.
In what areas do you have systems that you might not actually need? Here are some of mine:
- Tracking parts of my finances that aren’t tax or business-related, and that I never go back and look at. (E.g. tracking daily expenses but never actually printing a report to find out how I spend my money.)
- Sorting socks.
- Elaborate TO-DO management software.
- Labeling my bookshelves by subject but not actually filing my books that way.
- Scheduled “let’s discuss house finances” days that don’t happen.
What about for you?
Our project management office purchased a SaaS based project/program management system. If I use MS Sharepoint, I can update a task within a few seconds. If I use the new system, it takes minutes. It’s further proof that not all web apps are created equal, and interface design is crucial for a SaaS app’s success. It must be snappy – click&wait is so 90s….
Hey Stever,
For me, it’s the all-in-one check register I designed several years back. It was originally designed to track balances in checking, mortgage checking, savings, and credit cards.
After overcommitting and robbing Peter to pay Paul several times, I decided that sometimes out-of-sight, out-of-mind is a good thing.
Now, my register shows only the amount in my primary checking account, I’ve stopped tapping the checking account from which my mortgage drafts, and almost all of my bills are set to auto-pay one or two times a month. This way, I can set the amounts, make my savings plan, and forget about it for a while. Viola, finances simplified.
Mind you, it’s necessary to spend some time taking a long, hard look at your budget before you do this, but it helps in the end.
I hope this helps!
Rob
Now I tend to over time things sometimes, but the best example of this I have was when I decided to use the Getting Things Done system for task organization. I got all my folders setup and setup a Ultra Recall database for it. Then I tried to use it.
After a week, I was spending all my time managing the GTD system and was still not getting anything done, and getting farther behind on stuff. I finally gave up and went to a simple TODO list which has served me much better.
I still use some of the concepts from GTD, but the system just made things worse.
All-in-one devices of any type are guaranteed not to work for more than two weeks for me. The more features and complications something has, the less likely I’ll be able to make a habit of using it.
Sorting clothes in the closet is a lost cause, as well, because my husband and I have different ideas of how it should be done.
Hi Stever,
1. Filing:
One of my favorite things to do is to rip apart a filing system and put it back together. I’ve seen so many offices with such terrible filing systems, that they would do better to leave paperwork loose on work surfaces.
Common problems:
- Folders are not uniform. Different colors, different tab location (too much effort required just to find the correct folder)
- Labels are not uniform (poorly labeled/hard to read, different sizes/colors)
- Over packed drawers (difficult to find/pull/add files)
- Poor logic in filing (difficult to determine where a file should go/could be)
It’s a simple thing to fix and can save much time when filing/finding files.
2. Weekly ‘brain-storm’ meetings turns into a weekly-catch-all. We each spend 45 minutes listening to other folks updating the COO, before we get into creative discussions. By then we’re all fried from listening/sitting stationary — not at all feeling creative. (This is being remedied – we’re now working toward splitting the weekly into two meetings.)
3. Key sharing: (my favorite)
A local community center is rented out to various orgs, including a music school that I teach for. The building manager gave each group X number of keys to distribute to its staff. Building managers are concerned about “too many keys floating out there” so we’re asked to not make more keys. There are more teachers than there are keys available. Teachers need keys to open/lock the building, depending on who has an earlier/late lessons.
- Scenario 1: A teacher who is supposed to open the building had her first lesson canceled. She’s required to go to work early anyway, to let other teachers in.
- Scenario 2: When anticipating schedule changes, some teachers will pass the keys back/forth, or pass it forward. Often this happens until no one can recall who the key belong to originally, or until a key gets lost.
- Scenario 3: Teacher who was expected to open the building is held up unexpectedly. Once this affected a group of families/students waiting to perform in a recital.
4. I have multiple personal e-mail accounts: one for close friends, one for acquaintances, one for junk/web accounts sign up, one for each of my websites. In retrospect, having just one is probably plenty.
Sorting the mess my kids make. Well, I don’t do it but my wife and her mother seem hell-bent on getting that pile of stuff in order. So two or three times a year, they will go through all the toys, PIECE by PIECE and but them in bins. They will stop short of labeling the bins. After they have spent HOURS doing this, they will parade the kids around to show them how neat and beautiful everything is. The kids rejoice because they discover some toys they had “lost.”
How does the discovery process work? By emptying the bins, of course. Two days after all that work, the house is in a bigger mess than it was originally, except that now my wife is upset because all that work and sweat amounts to naught.
My technique has worked better, so far: get an orange bag from the garage, stuff junk in there. If in a few weeks they don’t realize the toys are gone, ditch them!
I also have oodles and oodles of Pictures, videos and audio recording from various electronic devices. I don’t know when I’ll get to all of them.
L
Currently, in my job search, I’m interested in working in CRM, so I downloaded some sample programs to use them to track the process. I’ve spent a few days setting up the data (pulling information out of my trusty spreadsheet.)
I spent way more time on the system than I did actually looking for a job. Admittedly, I did learn a bit about some of these CRM products (and how I might make them better.) But I’d rather stick to my spreadsheets, business cards with notes on the back, and ToDo list.
For this example, it’s hard to differentiate the time associated with the learning curve for the tool from the application of the tool. And there is a time advantage to using a system already familiar to me.
Certainly for large amounts of data I can see the value of such tools. In this case, the ROI was not there for the specific situation, but it was an interesting and instructive experiment.
My #1 right now is task management systems. I’ve been reading David Allen’s book and trying to adopt the GTD system. I’ve been looking for a good program that I can keep on my laptop to track all of my actions/projects, that will also sync to my Blackberry. The time I’ve spent trying to find the right system that will work properly has taken time away from my “real” work.
Can we name names? Just because it was my gut reaction -
MSProject
Most unintuitive program I think I’ve ever used… or attempted to use. Set up and maintenance of even the simplest project is way too time-consuming. Plain old spreadsheet w/ a little fancy formatting always worked better.
(Of course – haven’t tried it in a couple years – I gave it three tries at different jobs – for all I know it’s been redesigned so you can fly through it with minimal training).
Oh, and there’s the time as a child I decided I wanted to file the Sunday funnies for some reason – clipping them, pasting them on full size sheets, double-hole punching the sheets, putting them in folders with wire clips. Kept it up for about 2 months – still have no idea why I thought it was a good idea – never ever looked at them again.
Our company implemented SAP to control stock……now it controls the company!
1. GTD Outlook plug-in. It would regularly hose Outlook. Couldn’t get anything done!
2. That color-coded file system I implemented that seemed like such a cool visual organization idea. Until the first time I ran out of one color file folder…
Sorting socks (clip or no) is not more trouble than it’s worth if you have to get dressed in semi-darkness, like I do — my fiancé gets to sleep longer than I, so I don’t turn on the light.
I’m taking a class in knowledge management right now and discussing personal knowledge management strategies, based on some points in Thomas Davenport’s “Thinking for a Living” book. He says that one of the tools that people who are good at managing the stuff they need to know use is paper. I know you advocate this, but I’m surprised how many people in my class will do everything they can to keep it all techno-savvy. I used to log all my appointments, calendars, contacts, etc. exclusively in a PDA–it was so time consuming–much more than just scribbling it in a paper notebook, and then it fell in a puddle of water. …
I have a small, home-based business. In an attempt to keep my money budgeted and tracked closely, I opened two checking accounts and one savings account for this business. It has cost me more time because now I have three accounts to track and two checking accounts to balance every month. Additionally, I end up taking money out of one account to put into the others, so it’s not serving my original purpose anyway!