Getting organized with myAgile

Organization, prioritization, and execution are the keys to success.  Many of us work in positions where projects can run over extended periods, interruptions and distractions are frequent, and we are asked to juggle a variety of responsibilities and tasks.  However, no matter where you work, if you can get things done, you will be viewed as successful.

There are more books about organization and task management than I care to list here, and I am pretty sure that if you have spent any time in a company which puts some effort into employee training, you have been asked to read one or more of these books in order to improve your efficiency and throughput.  Each author’s method has its own strengths and weaknesses, but reading any of them and implementing at least one aspect of the method can often put you in a better place than you are now.

The process you use to organize yourself, however, works best if it is personalized.  Yes, it can be based on other people’s ideas, but the most organized people I know have taken parts of other people’s processes and forged them into a unique process that works with their style and situation.  Additionally, their processes evolve over time.  Nothing is stagnant, and new methodologies or technologies will certainly appear that will add a new dimension to your process.

Recently, I began a bit of a personal journey to get organized again.  The stress of work and family have taken their toll on my desire to organize, and things just were not getting done.  With some prodding from a former colleague, I melded some of the organizational techniques I have picked up over the years with the concepts of Agile software development to come up with an Agile process for organizing my life.  I have dubbed it myAgile.

Like all good Agile processes, the idea is not just to get things done, but to also identify ways to get better.  So if you are looking for a new way to get organized, give it a shot:  the worst that can happen is you put to paper all the things that you want to do in the next few months.