I’m really into efficiency TACTICS as opposed to “strategies”.

They each have their place.

Yes, when you cut out things you don’t need to do this is a good thing. However, if you’re over your teenage years you might have actually figured out what you like to do. So rather than have someone tell you you should shut off your high-def TV and wake up an hour earlier, wouldn’t it be nice to get some of the things done you have to do anyway in a fun stress-free way so you can turn on the game or pick up your favourite magazine?

So that’s why these past few months I’ve gotten into learning about personal productivity.

Here’s a terrible secret…

… I used to be the most disorganized person on the planet. I’d have big ideas and managing the details could be overwhelming.

Have you ever looked at your email inbox or your workload or your calendar and said to yourself, “How can I get this done?”

“Without being totally stressed out?”

I don’t have all the answers. The site I’m going to introduce is based on a “Four-hour workweek” in concept and theory. Even if this is possible, I like working too much to want to be that hard core (soft core?) about it that I’m putting in 48 min. a day.

But… it’s these types of personal hacks that simplify your life so you can read, learn, and grow in addition to just work and produce. Because isn’t it really the synergy between these two ends that lead to your greater results and happiness over time?

life sutra — the 4-hour workweek journal was started by Brick Andrews, a friendly guy to have a mini-conversation with me in his comments, and also to share his ideas about living a good life. At the same time, he gets a social and public reason to refocus his mind on these important ideas. Kind of like why I’m writing my website.

He’s based his concept on a book “The 4-Hour Workweek” by a man named Timothy Ferris which you can order here through Brick’s online Amazon store.

Obviously this book takes a different approach from Getting Things Done®, my personal productivity “go to” resource of choice.

GTD is based on capturing everything so nothing falls through the cracks. Near as I can figure 4-Hour is based more on doing only what is essential and not sweating the rest. I think that’s difficult to implement in sales because if you work an average — say — 45-hour workweek to be productive as a sales pro, what 41-hours of activity can you cut out and still wow! your clients, allow for your own professional growth, and collect purchase orders, cheques, and financing arrangements?

But hey. I think it can be done for someone in a different profession. However, like a doctor, if you enjoy what you do you want to work it.

So why not drop by Brick’s contribution to advancing the cause of life-work balance, maybe order that book or GTD, and see which approach might help you best avoid stressing over what you want to do, but haven’t done yet?

Brick gave me a great idea I really appreciate: Just using one email inbox and having everything filter to it. From all your accounts.

I didn’t use Google’s GMail like he does. In fact, I don’t even really like GMail and am not sure why everyone does. Yet the idea’s sound and I’m using it with my web hosting company’s huge email inbox.

So if you send me an email to either my business or personal accounts, it shows up and I filter it through the GTD system as appropriate:

… without fiddling with two accounts. And I can send email from either email address using just one inbox yet it appears to come from whatever of my accounts I want it to.

Brick’s idea also helped with contact backup.

He uses GMail contacts. Yet he doesn’t really like them and neither do I. So I use Thunderbird, my IMAP email client’s native address book, and sync it with Plaxo, which works beautifully online. I also sync my Thunderbird Lightning Calendar with GCal from Google and from there sync that with Plaxo. Data accessibility, backup, and redundancy are important.

By Christoph Dollis at 2:41 PM on Saturday February 16th, 2008, and filed under Favourite Sites, GTD / Productivity, Software.

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