I don’t know about you, but I have three (only three?) prevailing faults when it comes to personal organization:

1. I’m disorganized.

2. I procrastinate big-time.

3. I love personal organization systems, whether electronic or on paper.

I can give you plenty of evidence of (1). Just look at my bookshelves…

Erica and I moved here a year ago. I was full of plans to get my bookshelves organized, but once I’d got the shelves up and I’d begun to get the books out of the boxes in some kind of order I lost the will to continue. Some of the books are still in boxes.

To be honest, I’d meant to sell these books on eBay, but I just never got around to it.

And then there’s my desk… No, let’s not talk about my desk!

I’m sure I don’t need to go on. The thing is, I find this state of affairs deeply frustrating. On the one hand, I can’t be bothered to organize and tidy up. On the other hand, I hate this shambles; it stops me working effectively.

You may be getting the picture now about (2). I procrastinate. I put things off. I postpone. I defer. I use delaying tactics (like writing in my blog). I temporize, stall, drag my feet, take my time.

And (2), I think you’ll agree, is very much tied up with (1).

As it happens, it’s also tied up with (3). One of my procrastinating strategies is to spend a great deal of time seeking the “perfect” system for organizing myself and my to-do lists. I have this illusion that out there, somewhere, is the very system that will change my life, that will organize me and get me to do things on time.

In other words, I’m looking for the magic bullet that will kill the procrastination bug.

So now, to the point of this post (I’m sure you really don’t want to know any more about my inadequacies). There is a very good system, and it’s called Getting Things Done

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