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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nI\u2019ll freely admit that I\u2019m still obsessed with the idea of personal productivity. I read way too much about it. I listen to a load of podcasts on the topic. And I follow a huge number of people on social media who discuss the topic of personal productivity<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the years, I\u2019ve discovered one framework that has helped me immensely. There are all sorts of names for this sort of framework, but I call it Areas of Focus<\/em> or AOF<\/em> (because I\u2019m in love with acronyms!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the past few years, I\u2019ve discovered I work best when I separate my life into five Areas of Focus<\/em>:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the start of the year, I\u2019ve been striving to capture all the tasks that come to mind. This sounds like an easy thing to do, but it turns out it\u2019s actually pretty difficult. In fact, I\u2019ve had to add reminders throughout my day to nudge me into clearing all those tasks I\u2019ve thought of out of my head and into a capture place. It\u2019s still a work in progress, but I\u2019m getting better at it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once I\u2019ve got the tasks captured, I try to take a little time every day or two and sort them from the general capture area into one of the five areas of focus<\/em>. I don\u2019t spend too much time thinking about what project<\/em>\u00a0a task belongs to, but rather what area of my life<\/em> it should reside in. So when I think, \u201coh, I need to fill the car up with gas\u201d, that get\u2019s captured. Then it gets sorted into the Household<\/em>\u00a0category. When I realize I need to pay the electric bill, it goes into the Financial<\/em>\u00a0category. While those are pretty mundane examples, there\u2019s a lot of power in this classification. And it gets better when there are tasks that are done very infrequently.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, after several years of destroying hoses because we left them hooked up to the spigots through the first freeze in the Fall, I added a recurring task to my Household AOF<\/em>\u00a0to remind me to disconnect the hoses, roll them up, and stow them in the shed. The reminder comes on the first of October, with a second more stringent reminder on the 20th. The first freeze is usually around the end of the month, so I\u2019ve got plenty of time to actually do the task of storing the hoses before they\u2019ll get destroyed. And it\u2019s amazing, in the three years I\u2019ve been using this system\u2026I haven\u2019t mangled a single hose!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n More importantly, I\u2019ve got that task setup so I don\u2019t have to think about it. It just comes to me when I need it. And because I review my Areas of Focus<\/em> on a weekly basis to see what things are coming up that I might not have thought of\u2026it\u2019s right there when I need it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking in Todoist<\/em>, my task manager of choice, I\u2019ve got nearly one hundred of these atomic tasks<\/em>. And they\u2019re setup to pop up throughout the year. In fact, because Todoist will let me set reminders with the tasks, I\u2019ve even got some that are tied to a location. So I get reminded to check my Mom\u2019s sump pump every time I\u2019m at her house. While it\u2019s not something I think of all the time, and certainly don\u2019t need to do on every visit, it\u2019s kind of neat to get the reminder. Especially the time I discovered the motor had burned out. We got the sump replaced the week before a huge rainstorm that would\u2019ve flooded the basement if the sump pump had been inoperable. Talk about the magic of my productivity system!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I mentioned above, I\u2019m working really hard to capture<\/em>\u00a0all the tasks I think of. Then they get sorted into the AOFs<\/em>\u00a0on a regular basis. At the very least, I do this as part of my weekly review<\/em>. That\u2019s also the time I review the tasks I didn\u2019t get accomplished the prior week, and figure out when they\u2019re going to get done. And if I discover something that\u2019s now expired\u2026I simply delete the task.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the dangers of having so many tasks on a single list is that it\u2019s hard to attack them in a systematic way. By breaking the tasks down into Areas of Focus<\/em> it\u2019s possible to make a little bit of progress on getting them organized. I further group tasks of a similar sort together into projects<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, the stowing hoses for Winter<\/em>\u00a0task is actually part of a project for tidying up for Winter. I\u2019ve got things like check the status of snow shovels<\/em>, verify we have driveway salt<\/em>, and put out driveway reflectors<\/em>\u00a0inside that project. The idea is tasks that fall into the same realm are grouped together. Then when I\u2019m focusing on doing household chores<\/em>\u00a0during the course of the week, one of the projects I\u2019ll see is Tidying up for Winter<\/em>. That reminds me that I need to do some things before it\u2019s too cold.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n By grouping tasks together in projects within the AOFs<\/em>, I\u2019ve got a fighting chance of actually doing them. There\u2019s nothing worse than starting the day with a list the length of your arm and knowing you won\u2019t get to everything on it. It\u2019s even worse when there is no organization. The beauty of the Areas of Focus<\/em>\u00a0is they help me concentrate my efforts in a particular place. Plus, with the ebb and flow of life, there are going to be times when one AOF<\/em>\u00a0takes precedence over the others. Having a small number of areas allows me to dip in and check on the others, even if I\u2019m focusing primarily on another one.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you thought about grouping your tasks and projects into Areas of Focus<\/em>? If you have I\u2019d love to hear what your AOFs<\/em> are. If you haven\u2019t now might be a good time to start doing that to help you get a handle on everything you\u2019ve got going in life! Sometimes it\u2019s hard to get your head wrapped around all the things you need to do. There are too many things, in too many areas, to attack everything. But without some sense of structure, nothing gets done.\u00a0 Sound familiar? Yeah, it\u2019s the problem that I\u2019ve been facing most of my adult life. Honestly, until recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-productivity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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