The John Poelstra Show

The John Poelstra Show


118: How I Get Organized When I’m Overwhelmed

December 06, 2022
Scrabble pieces saying order chaos picture

The other day I was overwhelmed with all the things I needed to. This is how I got organized and less overwhelmed.



Highlights
  • Getting email and Trello under control
  • Where are the places you store things that need to get done?
    • Trello
    • Post-it Notes
    • Email
    • Slack
    • 3×5 Cards
    • Notebook

  • Offline email client–Thunderbird
    • Used in conjunction with GMail and other email providers
    • All of my email is stored locally where it can’t be hacked or lost

  • Recomendo (my favorite newsletter of all)
  • Getting to Inbox Zero at least once during a given day
  • Sharpies & 3×5 cards are an easy way to capture and organize all the things overwhelming you
    • Easy to move around
    • Don’t stick to surface
    • Collapsable into a single pile so you don’t have to see all the cards (and get overwhelmed)

  • Trello
    • Columns
      • Today
      • This Week
      • Next Week
      • Backlog

    • Set due dates and alerts for specific cards (generates email)

  • Overall triage process
    • Go through all the email in Thunderbird and get the main Inbox to zero
      • Move to folder
      • Delete
      • Forward tasks to Trello via email
      • Book mark related webpage/information via Pinboard

    • Organize and move cards in Trello
      • Move all the cards (not in Backlog) to “Next Week” column (as often as you need to)
      • Triage from there

    • Look for patterns in the cards/tasks if there’s another

  • Projects vs. tasks
  • How to do this process with 3×5 cards

Credits

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