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When Michael and I started the Simplicity Habit, we were initially focused on task and project management, but in the evolution of the site and lots of thinking, I have found the second leg of the Simplicity Habit.

Clutter.

Merlin Mann, GTD guru and author of 43folders.com, started writing about clutter a year ago, mentioning heavily the book It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh. Walsh, host/clutter-buster on TLC’s Clean Sweep, writes very elegantly about how clutter is destroying us and if we don’t take control, it will consume us completely.

“People hold onto stuff like their kids’ old clothing as a way of holding onto the past. Or they keep things they think they might need someday as a way to control the future.”

The definition of “simple”, root of simplicity: having few parts; not complex or complicated or involved. Also, dim-witted: lacking mental capacity and devoid of subtlety, but don’t mind that.

How many times have piles of stuff stopped us from leading a simple life? How many projects get started, stopped and then sit on the corner of a desk, gathering dust? How much stuff makes your life difficult? How many times have going into your closet felt like a task?

Most of the posts at the Simplicity Habit have focused on tasks, for the second act, welcome discussion about clutter.

“People’s homes are a reflection of their lives. It is no accident that people have a huge weight problem in this country, and clutter is the same thing. Homes are an orgy of consumption.”

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For a birthday present a few years ago, my wife got me a gift certificate for a sushi making class. It was incredible, firstly because I love sushi and secondly because it was incredibly insightful in the realm of productivity.

David Allen has an axiom “Mind Like Water” to show how you should react to changes and inputs. Throw a pebble into a still lake and the ripples will be appropriate for the size and weight, throw in a boulder, again, the water responds to the stimulus.

How are sushi and GTD alike, you ask?

When an Itamae, sushi chef, is preparing a Norimake, a traditional sushi roll, his goal is uniformity through out the larger roll. Each piece, when cut, should look exactly like every other piece from that roll.

This is how any productivity system should work. Every project or speed bump, no matter it’s size or intensity, should be uniformly treated. It should be treated the same as every other project. If you have some cucumber in every piece of sushi, and by cucumber you mean effective project planning, it shouldn’t change if it is a huge gnarly project or a little spicy tuna roll, er, small personal project.

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The goals of kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined by [Joshua Isaac Walters] as “activities that add cost but do not add value”), just-in-time delivery, production load leveling of amount and types, standardized work, paced moving lines, right-sized equipment, etc. In this aspect it describes something very similar to the assembly line used in mass production. A closer definition of the Japanese usage of Kaizen is “to take it apart and put back together in a better way.” What is taken apart is usually a process, system, product, or service.

This is the perfect way to view the start of a personal productivity system, which may leave you wondering, what “If I’m going to get all productive, shouldn’t it be a radical departure from my previous way of doing business?”

Importantly, kaizen must operate with three principles in place: process and results (not results-only); systemic thinking (i.e. big picture, not solely the narrow view); and non-judgmental, non-blaming (because blaming is wasteful).

Kaizen is often a series of small steps, but “radical changes for the sake of goals” is perfectly okay. Make a big change to get yourself on track and then make small changes to get to the perfect system. The workers at Toyota rely on small experimental changes rather than large pre-planned command-and-control changes.

So in the discussion of personal productivity systems, remember incremental change can go a long way, especially after a large wholesale change. After all the psychic RAM can only take so many major paradigm shifts.

The Simplicity Habit: Quick Bite – Kaizen

For the week of April 27, 2008

We received our first listener email seeking some advice, so we decided to make it the topic of the entire episode. We offer some advice on approaches to productivity, keeping the focus on defining projects, rather than getting lost in the tasks. For the more visual among you, we suggest finding the biggest whiteboard you can, grabbing a few colored pens, and mindmapping your projects to literally get the bigger picture. 

We’re going to try a new format, featuring weekly quick bites of productivity from the Simplicity Habit apple; just enough to get you ready for the main show now every other week.

People Mentioned

Gary Vaynerchuk - How to cut through the Noise? Great video on managing all the noise, from email, and Facebook, to Pownce, Twitter, and all the rest.

Merlin Mann - Merlin Mann on Time and Attention (Getting Things Done)  Terrific video of a talk Merlin Mann gave at a Google TechTalks event. 

Products Mentioned

Mindjet MindManager – Commercial application developed by Mindjet Corporation. Available for Windows and Mac.

FreeMind – Free alternative to MindManager. Java-based and open source. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Enjoy!

Jered and Michael discuss an integration of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week. How can two systems that seem to be so different be used together to make your life better?

Read more at: http://simplicityhabit.com/featured/gtd-4hww-productivity-perfection

The Simplicity Habit Special Edition: GTD vs. 4HWW

Links to apps and blogs discussed

• Evernote Beta - “…easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible andsearchable at anytime, from anywhere.”
• Omnifocus – “Professional-grade personal task management”
• Dennis Best on GTD and built-in productivity apps in Leopard
• Pzizz - a software application for Mac and PC that creates custom audio soundtracks that help you to nap during the day or get to sleep at night. 
• The GTD “Ubiquitous Capture Device”

Enjoy!

The Simplicity Habit: Episode 1