Fresh Focus On Productivity!™

Welcome back!

Well, we are nearing the end of  our time management series…….it’s been a lot of fun for me, and I especially appreciate the interaction that I’ve had with those of you that have taken the time to comment. Our last step in the series is The Completion Journal. When I started this series, my thoughts of The Completion Journal were from chronicling things you’ve completed during your daily tasks….but it’s dawned on me that this could be done on a much larger scale.

As we go through life, we complete many things in many different contexts and areas of our life. It’s impossible to remember all of what we’ve accomplished. But I think it’s really important to chronicle those things in life. And not just for ourselves, but for our relatives that come after us.

Some of us have family trees….but how neat would it be to have a family timeline? As they say in the New England states, that would be wicked cool! My grandmother came over from Poland when she was eight and had witnessed some of the Holocaust. Before she died, we had talked many times of what it was like for her early in her life, both in Poland and after she came via boat to the USA. But I really wish that I had something more detailed: I would have loved to have The Completion Journal of her life. And this would be easy to do: just watch how!

Using Gmail and GTDInbox, it’s very easy to implement The Completion Journal. There is a tag in GTDInbox that is called “Finished”. Obviously, everything that you finish gets labeled with this tag. Once weekly, pick one monumental thing that you’ve completed (even if you think it’s trivial, the people that will read your Completion Journal will not) and put it in a separate document. It can be handwritten, an office document on Google Docs or another way to chronicle that strikes your fancy. Using FireFox and gDocsBar, using Google Docs would be a cinch! Using Microsoft OneNote 2007, you can print the page and “Send to OneNote”. There are many different ways to do it.

This style of The Completion Journal is the grander scheme of things – but when doing this, you also get to see all the things that you’ve completed that you might consider “mundane”. No matter how mundane you think it to be, anything that has been completed is worthy of a pat on the back. Congratulate yourself for knowing what you need to do, doing it, and reveling in your accomplishments. Always praise yourself for a job well done: what you think and feel about yourself is the most important opinion of all!

To view the other articles in this series, click on the links below.

Time Management – A Multi-part Series
Part One – Procrastination – Stomping Out this Demon Within
Part Two – Mind Dump: What is it and how to accomplish it
Part Three – Processing Your Mind Dump – Tip & Tricks
Part Four – Categorization – Tackle that Email Inbox!
Part Five – Microsoft OneNote 2007 – Using It to Organize Your Daily Life
Part Six – Microsoft OneNote 2007 – Going Mobile, Networking and Sharing Notebooks
Part Seven – Time Management – Using the Action Priority Matrix
Part Eight – Setting Goals – The SMART Way!

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