OPTED Magazine

This post is part of a series called “Fortune Fridays”, inspired by motivational fortune cookie slips. Read more.

After some self-criticism of my time management skills, I identified what I consider a weakness: spending too much time planning and not enough time acting.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of evaluating the most effective, productive habits to have, faithfully organizing project plans into a trusted system using GTD, and embracing a love of lists.  What I’m finding is that the amount of time I’m spending planning and methodically gathering thoughts and ideas for future tasks has prevented me from actually DOING those tasks.

How could someone so productive and so organized take so long to realize this?  What good has it done for me to complicate the organizing and productivity process only to lose time that could be spent creating valuable things?

My latest chinese food dinner served up the following fortune cookie slip:

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

I drew a lot of inspiration from this quote, and I’m challenging myself to evaluate how I spend my time, but in a new way.  Now that I’ve explored productivity tools such as printable forms, tweaked my Gmail account to fit my needs, and developed some new habits — it’s time to simplify.

Ideally, productivity strategies should enhance time management by capitalizing on effective practices to free up more time to do other things.  This only works if the system is simple and easy to maintain. While it’s important to test out new strategies and continue to improve, the system is all for nothing unless you’ve freed up time to spend with loved ones or enhance your life with the projects that bring you joy.

I also began wondering about others who strive to be productive and devote time to blogging and sharing their experiences with others.  Have you faced this same dilemma?  Any suggestions?

As the fortune cookie slip says: the secret is getting started.  I won’t have much success pursuing my life goals if I’m held back by the planning and brainstorm stages.  If I’m spending time organizing my progress rather than making more progress, the productivity system has failed me.  It’s time for me to get started.

If you liked this post, you might like::

1. How to make progress with your to do list
2. Top 8 printable productivity forms