“A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world”

– Sussex, England Church (importance of vision).

Welcome to the Progress and Organizational Productivity Principles. Everyone’s system for organization their stuff is unique — and it should be unique.  Why? Because there exist 6.6 billion unique and different people in the world embodying individual personality characteristics, voices, choices, and beliefs!  Even twins are remarkably different with remarkably different goals and projects and todos and productivity items.  POPP is about openly developing your own style, your own method, for staying organized in a way that works, and is consistent, and endures even some of the most fast-paced action-packed times of your life!

Today we’re focusing on the essential 4 principles of the POPP

And before we do that we’re going to discuss the three components to the POPP System.

You’ll notice this system embraces the 80-20 rule but applies it in a way that is tangible, effective, and “do-able”.

What We’re Doing

We’re Presenting Here 4 essential Principles and 10 Classifications of Lists.  Those are the constants.  Those are what do not change.  Those are the universals.  Do not mess with the constant variables of POPP!  What can change? What should you alter? The names of the 10 types of lists!   You can call your 4 Todo-Errand-Runway-Lists whatever you want!  You can call your 4 Master-Projects-10k-50k-Lists whatever you want!  The essential quality is that we understand there are 10 invariant classifications of Productictivity Items (PIs) or List Items, Or Things.  And there exist 4 key principles binding and refining and enveloping nad organizing all of those 10 lists.  The 4 principles make the lists work.  The four principles perpetuate functionality, efficiency, lucidity, and concision into the 10 lists.  So again, what are our constants?

• 4 Principles of Completeness, Consistency, Accessibility, and Completion & Victory
• 10 Collections of Lists
• 3 Classifications of the 10 list collections : RW_TDE-Runway-Lists (4) and ML_Master-Lists (4), and CV_Completion & Victory (2)

Everything else you get to change and should change to make this organizational method your own!

Purpose

The entire purpose to understanding this organizational system is NOT to copy or mimic someone else’s system.  That never works.  Recommended systems usually work best for the author who wrote about it!  That in mind, what I’ve put forth here is not a system so-to-speak for organizational management, but rather a set of principles!  Use your own system.  I’ll share what works for me, but use your own.  You’ll have to; we’re all different people.  Just ensure your system has the key principles of completeness, organizational consistency, accessibility, and completion & victory.  Aside from the 4 key principles, all concepts or examples here are merely suggestions.

Ultimately, our goal is to experience passive productivity from active organization.  How’s that for Zen?

ONE – Completeness: Capture it All

You want your master lists TDE_lists to genuinely capture everything. That’s what I mean by completeness: Capturing Completeness. Collection Completeness (talk about alliterations!).  Collect all projects.  Collect all errands.  Collect all goals.  Collect completely all things you are working on to change your life.   Completeness is vital because if a part of you doesn’t feel like your list is complete, a part of you will then freak out and psychologically not trust the TDE-Runway Lists or MasterLists.  Not trusting your master lists increases stress and causes you to start other random lists, and creates confusion.  You have to understand their are ONLY 10 lists!  So capture EVERYTHING.  Completeness = Trust and Trust = minimized stress, clarity, and freedom.

Here’s some ideas about completeness.  I’m not suggesting these are mandatory at all.  But they provide options if you hadn’t thought of these ideas.  And just a reminder:  Completeness, on the other hand, IS mandatory.  These options and suggestions for achieving completeness are not mandatory, but the completeness principle IS mandatory.  The four principles are constants that MUST occur for the POPP system to work! The entire POPP system revolves around discovering, generating, and then consistently maintaining the system that works for you.  Upper level meta-patterns of everyone’s unique system will be identical.  That’s what we talked about the constants.  Every person’s system will abide these 4 principles, have the 10 collections of productivity items, and also the 2 classifications of list collections, BUT the nuances and details and how the specifics are structured will and SHOULD be different for each individual.  To see what I mean by “tweaking how the specific items are structured” I’ve listed things that you can play around with or add your own:

• Multiple Lists. Yes, I know “Master List” usually implies well…ONE master list!  However, some people may need separate lists one for work, one for personal, one for clients, one for goals or ideas.  I recommend maximum 4 types of “master lists”.  1-3 is preferable.  I use a
• Coaching_Master_Projects list (CoaML).
• Media_Master_Projects List (MedML) READS FOLDER
  • The goal of MedML is to ensure the enormous amount of time you put into reading books (when you’re completely capable of writing them) goes towards reading books that are valuable to your professional and personal life.  This deals with the fact that with the emergence and prominence of ebooks, you can have more ebooks (thousands) that you could ever read in 59 lifetimes all on your computer. Most reads, listenings, and watchings will be in your browser (because tv, dvds, and tivo are out of the equation of media).  Having three stages of reading filtration assists in the decision-process to commit the enormous amount of hours and mental energy needed to completely reading (or if your an author, writing!) an ebook.  It takes many hours and energy to complete an ebook.  Therefore, much filtering and time should be put in to selecting ebooks and/or general reads to ensure said readings meet the following criteria:
  • 1. Aligned with your path career and vision.
    2. Reading the book will provide you with information that will increase clarity in your life
    3. If the read is not a text book, it must be an author whom you admire (you read a book to hear an author’s mind).
    4. If it is a textbook, that the material will galvanize and increase your earning-ability and/or value of your work in your career or provide general clarity and/or meaning.  I read the MCAT book because learning the details of human endocrinology and physiology is invaluable for my health coaching (thus, it satisfying #4, #2, and #1).
  • What’s in the Reads folder? To assist the decision-making process for a reading you should put readings in your main reads folder into three categories of “Commitment to Reading”: CTC_Reads, ODA, and ODB.
    • CTC_Reads — This is the main folder that contains the following 5 folders. ebooks that You’ve committed your time and energy into reading cover-to-cover because said ebook(s) will provide #1-#4 above. This books have gone through the rough selection process and made the cut of a book that reading cover to cover will improve your life and career. The most important criteria for this folder is that, with the exception of absolutely monumentally galvanizing reads, all books that end up in CTCReads must have “graduated” in the filtration process from OnDeckA at least! Demanding that all CTCBooks be “graduates” of OnDeckA ensures that the books to which you commit the many hours of time an energy into reading, are valuable.
    • On-Deck_A (ODA) — On-Deck_A Readings are readings that you have NOT yet committed to reading cover to cover, but these readings are much further along and closer.
    • On-Deck_B (ODB) – On-Deck_B Readings are reads that you flippantly, at a glance, find interesting. Maybe you’ve briefly skimmed over them and want to look into possibly reading more. These reads rarely go to OnDeckA and very rarely make the cut to a read that you’ll read cover to cover (the CTC folder), but this is where the highly-demanding selection process typically commences.
    • Tentative — Additionally, I have a “Tentative” folder that contains the, literally, thousands of full ebooks that I may or may not have even glanced yet. Nothing has been filtered in the Tentative folder, therefore, little time should be put into reading them!
    • AR_thorough — After you finish a book from CTCReads, it has to go somewhere, right?!
    • AR_skimmed — After you’ve skimmed something from ODA or OBA or Tentative that you feel “completed with”, it can go into AR_skimmed.
  • Setting up these 5 folders creates a “leak-proof”, “100% holds water” system for all your ebooks. You know where to put recommended, highly interested books (ODA); when you’ve committed to reading a book cover-to-cover, you know that its in CTCReads. Books that a person recommends to you, but that you know nothing about can go in Tentative or ODB; and when you’re done reading a book cover-to-cover or skimmed, you know they go in the respective AR_thorough or AR_skimmed folders! The MedML (Media Master Lists Folder) is an airtight complete, all angles reading capturing method!
  • Now, why is important to have an important “reads” folder or “reads” system, because if you’re like me and you understand the cult of hollywood, reading is important! Therefore, you read and nourish your mind a lot! Great! But at one time I had so many different ‘read’ bins it was out of control. The POPP system puts you back IN control. For example, listen to how choatic this was. These are all the location of “read todos” I had:
    • Google Docs: My_lists folder. Great list for archiving thigns I’ve READ, but for storing new reads? Very problematic
    • ~/desktop/reads folder As detailed above
    • MLME master list. Of course the great capture all for reads, but again this needed to be simplified.
    • Firefox and Safari browser BOTH had their own set of reads!! Ahh!!! Chaos!
  • So, long-story short the above implementation of POPP truly works!

• Non-Coaching_Master_Projects list
• Goals_Master_List (to capture items that are more intangible like “Increase Website Traffic” yes that could go on Coaching_Master_Project, but it’s difficult to “check off” something like “increase traffic” so it’s good to categorize and cluster “Goal Projects”.  “Make Website Live” on the other hand is a definitive doable, checkoff-able action project that can go on Coaching_Master_Projects. A list like this (you can of course, and should, call it whatever you want) holds “intangible”.  I have three subjects on my “intangibles”  Career, for all career intangibles, like
  

  • Career
    1. website SEO and marketing — increase site traffic and blog traffic
    2. What do i do with my Notes_2008/2009?  Why’d I take all those? FOR LifeCoaching SEMINARS and COACHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    3. Coaching Payment –how to arrange payment from clients!!!!!!!
  • Miscellaneous
    3. wow and real life
    4. Connecting dots –  travel dots of places having visited on LA freedom map Google maps, exercise connect the dots, Journal synopses dots of stories Maybe-Someday Projects
    1. HEALTH — Find an Acupuncture Clinic and GET Acupuncture!!! (three appointments)!! Aligned me so much early 2008, same day had acupuncture had best sex of life!! And then made it to California. Acupuncture aligns like NO OTHER!!! YES!! If feel lost, use acupuncture, it’s amazing and the best!! So sweet!!
    2. Australia — visit move — connect with luscious lovely aussies!!

See?  The intangible lists captures all those goals that you want to capture but may be difficult to “check off”.  “High Web Traffic” great goal, but hard to check off. Goes on intangibles.  Some far off random “would be cool to visit Australia” project that’s still in the works so it’s an intangible Intangibles-Maybe-Someday.  Having a “Master_Goals” (intangible list) is generally a very good Idea as it keeps the Work_Master_List and Non-Work_Master_List very crisp and clean so that those two lists both have checkoff-able goals.

Some other Examples of Master Lists you may find beneficial.  Use what works to create maximum productivity, simplicity and efficiency, THAT’s the goal.

@Phone Master List  (I don’t use this but works for some people; I capture @phone todos in teh “favorites” area of my iPhone as well as on ZenBe’s “Agenda” list.  My phone list is one of my 10 CPIs; it’s one of the runway lists, specifically.  It’s what I have titles RWPHO for Runway-Phone.  Notice the Consitency of the short-hand naming (first letter of each word of the TYPE of list (Runway=RW, MasterList=ML, CompletionVicotory = CV, and then the specific collection indicator is the first two letters of the first word of the that type of productivity items.  So PHone=PH, GOals=GO, and COmpletedItems=CO.  That consistency sounds tedious and overly complex, but it is truly necessary and creates simplicity, ease, and refreshing efficiency because your brain will then trust it.  We’ve taken the time to experiment with thousands of different organizational systems and have experienced the doubt, confusion, and haziness when implementing things that don’t work or aspects that cripple or crumble a system.  We’ve learned that absolute precision-detail in naming lists is not just merely valuable, but MASSIVELY essential to maintaining a list that works, that recollects what you need and want, and is always  cutting-edge and up-to-date with all the things you’re working on currently AND all the things you’ve completed and/or moved on from.  POPP is the cutting-edge system for everything that you do and want to do, and making your life happen!

@Home Master List (I don’t use this one as all the @home projects get filed under the Non-Coaching_Master_Projects list (or the Coaching_Master_List if applicable). However, someone with a huge home and lots of todos, this could be valuable.  It’s all context, personality — what works for you, while maintaing the four key principles.

Media_Master_List: This captures ALL Readings, Listenings, and Watchings you could possibly ever do.  Get a friend recommend a good movie to watch or an article you’re reading recommends a book author?  Slap those on the Media_Master_List.  Then you can compartmentalize the Media_Master_List into READS — Non-Fiction, READS — Fiction, WATCH, and LISTEN.  Very cool organization master list.  After all we all encounter forms of media (podcasts, tunes, movies, films, youtubes, books, articles) that we want to capture and read.  Having this list provides massive clarity for that.  Then when you’re at a bookstore, have gift card to burn, or are at the library looking for books, look no further, your Media_Master_List beholds all the details!  What about putting a category “Recommended Books” on your Media_Master_List?  Useful-sounding, eh?

You can divide them based on context or “clustering” (clustering works for me personally).  But the goal is to “know” where ANYTHING will go on a list when you add something to your Master List.  The Master List structure (be it one list with color-coded clusters or 3 lists all in teh same font) must be airtight, in that it must have the organizational capacity to capture and structure with instantaneous access, all of your projects!

“Outside or Context Lists”. David Allen recommends and a lot of people do go crazy with the “@Phone”, “@Car”, “@Office” Context-based lists.  I’ve experimented with that and for me, the way I structure my life, all the “@Lists” absolutely did not work.  But they may totally and completely work for you.  If so, terrific.  Just as long as you maintain completeness, organizational consistency, and accessibility all combined with a clean completion and victory phase.  What I do is I have my five computer Master_Lists for all major project capturing.  Which are universally accessible from my phone, desktop, laptop, or any computer.  And then for little “errandy” things.  I have four lists on Zenbe which I mainly access and refer to on-the-go from my phone.  They are Grocery, Todo-Ms (which is hte catch all for weird errands like “Walgreens — Ink cartridge #27 and Tape”  and “Checkout Library”, Todo-Communication (I do a lot of NLP so I have a seperate todo list for NLP skills and  techniques to do that I can remind myself of from phone), and finally simply “Agenda”.  If I’m answering voicemails and think of something to sawy someone I’ll write “Their Name. Whatever I need to say” in the Agenda list.  So ZenBe lists are for when I’m primarily on the go.  I can input items into the 4 Zenbe lists from any computer and access them very easily on the phone.  The 5 Master_Lists I may review from the phone but very rarely work on those at any place other than laptop or computer.  So all the quick “out and about stuff” I can instantly check off because they’re all captured in Zenbe.  This is what works for me and very likely will not work for you!!  (You may not have an iPhone, you may prefer paper-based, you may like xyz program, etc).  I presented of what works for me because it satisfies all necessary principles of a system that works.  Everything is captured (Anything I could ever need from “Milk” (Zenbe-Grocery) to “Website mailing list” (Work_Master_Projects-Non-Time-Sensitive) to “Check out local library” (Zenbe-Todo-MS) completely.  My organizational system and method of it works and has consistency.  This system has lasted for almost a year, so it’s “endured” all the weird random “Oh man I still have to do xyz!” things you could throw at it, ensuring it’s airtight, and the lists are accessible and the ones I need to check off on the go, work.  That’s your goal.  Not to copy my system or someone else’s system, but to instead craft your own system that works magically and smoothly and seamlessly with your style ALL WHILE ensuring that it satisfies the four principles (COAC).

Title Your Project Items Well – Give each item a concise, succint, or possibly witty title.  For example, on your goals list you could have “website” or you could have “Cause a Traffic Jam on the WWW my site will be generating so much traffic!”   or on Work_Master_Projects you could have “Mailing List” or “Develop a Gnarly Fellowship of Travelers interested in hearing some of my Monthly Words of Wisdom”.  A good simple title for the project list can seriously quickly infuse a massive amount of clarity and change a “todo” into a masterpiece outcome.

TWO – Consistency: Getting Stuff to Stay…Stay Doggy, Stay.  All About Structure.

Organizational Consistency is a MUST.  I’ll say that again: Organizational Consistency is a MUST.
If you use numbered lists STICK with numbered lists; if you use Bullets, STICK with bullets!  If you use 12 Bakerstreet, or 8 Helvetica, KEEP those minute organizational details consistent.   Changing the organizational details adds unwanted variables to your organizational system, generating a lot of uncertainty and tension. It has to be smooth and consistent. Think of a roller coaster track. They don’t randomly use square and round screws or a purple bevel-curved and then an red inner curved track right?  Your projects list IS sacred; it IS sanctified and it has to be consistent because it’s the track for your awesome roller coaster of life that you design, control, and RIDE!!!!!!

The goal is to increase simplicity.  If this complex array of making some productivity items bold and others underlined and others different colors increases simplicity, then use that consistency. Just keep in mind the goal here is to increase productivity.

Here’s Some Essentials for maintaining organizational consistency:

Time or No Time & Definitely ZERO Priorities! On each list divide items into Time-Sensitive and Non-Time-Sensitive Information.  This is preferable to “priorities”.  Don’t use priorities.  Priorities deteriorate the reliability and validity of your list.  Why? Because if an item is important enough to be put on one of your sacred 10 CPIs — one of your ten Collections of Productivity Items: one of your 4 Master Lists or one of your 4 Runway Lists — it has a minimum standard of priority already inherent to it.  Think about it! If you got through the trouble to put something on a list it could be a “low-priority” or “high-priority” but it’s going to be somewhat of a priority, otherwise you wouldn’t have put it on a frickin list!  You wouldn’t bother to put something that was extremely negligible –  wash hands – or extremely urgent – cut self and gushing blood.  Get band-aid –  on a list, right?  Of course not, any item on your list by its nature already has a range of priority within it.  So dont’ worry about priorities; you’ve evolved beyond them.  Labeling something as “high or low” priority would just inject unnecessary confusion into your  10 CPIs.  We are interested in injecting clarity from organizational consistency, completion, and accessibility instead!  If something needs to be done in the near future or has a specific deadline simply put it under the “time-sensitive” category.  That way you know to glance at those items first.  But it’s important to note that you could have something like “polish About Page of website” on Non-Time-Sensitive information and “Drink Milk Before it Expires” Time Sensitive Information.  Now ideally those would be on separate master lists altogether, “Professional Master Lists” and “RW_Grocery”, but the Time-Sensitive distinguishing characteristic adds massive clarity.  What’s a good way to know if something is time-sensitive or not?  If you keep thinking about an item or if it keeps emerging in your mind “Oh man I so have to do that!” it’s likely time-sensitive.  Items where there exist problematic consequences by not completing an item by a certain date or within a certain amount of time should go on “time-sensitive”.  Now, granted, every item you put on a list has some element of time-sensitivity to it, right?  You’d want all those items completed within the next 20 years maximum, right?!  Of course, so that’s why time-sensitive or not is merely a suggestion.  It works for me; it may or may not work for others, but this is an example of an Emergent Pattern that is useful for having a crisp system. Then you’d simply always scan “Time-Sensitive” (”TS” item)  items before “Non-Time-Sensitive” (Nts = “enTee-Ess” or “enties”).  Conclusively, set up the list so that you’ll check TS items before enties, but that’s only IF you choose to use time-sensitive/not-time-sensitive classifications.

Adjust the font, color, size, and style for visual organization. If you have different types of lists (Work, Play, Ideas or something similar), experiment with making the font or text color different for each list. This can help add to the visual clarity that you’re putting something on the correct list.  If you have one master list, you’ll likely have clusters of different types of projects.  Enjoy the experimentation of color-coding or experimenting with font styles with those lists.What emerged? Emergent Pattern and Outcomes.  This final bullet point is the application of “what you learned” from the completeness phase to the organizatioanl consistency phase.  “What you learned”?  What are some things you could learn? You could learn that you have 75 projects related to computer work and 10 projects related to outside work.  Doesn’t that seem valuable learning and awareness?  Do you think such a list would become more efficient by having a “Computer Master List” and @¬Computer List” (”¬” is the computer science and logician symbol for “not”)?  Quite likely.  This is the phase where you look for patterns into the types of your items on the master list(s).  Each person’s pattern will be unique, but most people almost certainly will have some emergent pattern.  It’s very unlikely for someone to list 50 things and NOT have any pattern emerge.  Examples of patterns:

• • day – night.  Project Items that can only be done during the day or night.
  • people feedback.  Project Items that require feedback from other people.
  Category Chunking:  Type of Consistency Possibility.  That you can use if you want and if you think that it will increase simplicity in your system.

Notation.  I encourage you TO USE some kind of “light” notation.  Examples of this could be “!” at the end of an exciting idea or todo or project or it could be “making stuff you must do or that’s relevant in bold” or it could mean “italicizing items that are less important” or maybe if you’re going to work on a project that day, you color it differently.  Whatever your notation, it MUST MUST MUST be consistent.   It’s much more important to have organizational consistency and NOT have notation, than to have   notation mediocrity, that lacks organizational consistency.  The consistency is a top priority.

THREE – Accessibility: 5-10 Second Rule & Using Your Lists

Where & How is Irrelevant

5 (to 10) Second-Rule

Omnipresent Rule

Great.  You’ve got this sweet, hyper-organized, hyper NEAT & TIDY (if not…ahem…go back and make it neat and tidy!), efficient organizational project capturing method! Now how the hell do I use this thang?!  No problem.  Some great tips for getting the most bang for your buck and maximizing the efficiency of your10 CPIs.

1. Make the Actual List Accessible.  If you have a computer based list(s) that runs in a program, keep in mind you want that program to be low memory because it will always have to be open.  You cannot afford to open and close your master list and wait for your program to load every time you want to take a 5-second glance at all the projects you’re working on.  If you have a paper-based Master List (or lists) hang it up on a magnetic board or use a white board, or make the paper it’s in accessible.  Personally, I only use computer-based lists that sync up with my laptop, desktop, and iPhone. So I can instantly flick to my Master List anywhere and anytime — using my phone, laptop, or desktop by keeping my master list a universally accessible Google Document.  That’s what works for me.  Find your own system.  The key point is accessibility, accessibility, accessibility!  It should take you 5-seconds to pull up your Master List.  It doesn’t matter if you store your master list on your dogs collar encoded in pig-latin, or if you have a bell that rings a butler who serves you the Master List literally on a silver platter every time you ring, or if it’s a note pad velcroed to the wall, it doesn’t matter WHERE or HOW you access your master list, just as long as it can be accessed in literally 5-seconds.  I’m serious.  Time yourself.  Put yourself in various situations and then time how long it takes to access your master list.  If you can make it Complete, have Organizational Consistency, AND Accessible, I’m dead serious, 60% of ALL your organizational work will be DONE, COMPLETED,  ACCOMPLISHED!  You may say “well wait a minute, I still have to actually “DO” Like physically DO (Hello?!) the stuff on the list, right? Of course, but I’m speaking from an authentic and remarkably genuine source that be it synergistic alignment or serendipitous synchronicity, the items on your list will just “get done” if you put the legwork into making sure your list has:
   1. 1. Completeness — All ideas captured.  This ensures you psychologically trust the list.  Oh hell yeah! Everything’s on there!
      2. Organizational Consistency –  Your brain on a subconscious level will trust a system with VERY few invariants.  Be aware of the fonts you use, the styles, the formatting, to keep the constants for staying organized, constant.
      3. Accessibility — Ensure you can access your master list in 5 seconds.

Items on the list will magically and miraculously just get done! Which brings us to the final stage of this: Completion and Victory!

FOUR – Completion and Victory

You may be thinking, Hey this is the easy part!  Not so fast.  In fact, I’d consider this step, not the expected 25% (with each step being 25% of the process), but more like 50% or more of maintaining an effective POPP system  Having certainty that your all of your TDE Lists or MasterLists are updated, current, and accurately reflect actual projects that you have not completed, but are working on makes the entire 4-Principles massively worthwhile and effective!  Keeping tabs of the fact that “Yes, I am doing things on my 8 key lists”  and “Yes POPP System does Work!” is vital!  Remebering to update your lists and remove the items that are no longer relevant, reward yourself and remove the items that have been completed, and keep in mind the items you’re still working on are vital makes your Organizational POPP method bullet-proof, invulnerable, and eternally reliable and infinitely effective!  Not removing items that you’ve completed or “moved on” from is arguably even more of a probablem than not capturing (step 1) an item on which you’re focusing!

Checking items off your list definitely requires a clear focused mental mindset and you must be in a highly productive state to do the intense scrutiny necessary to go through your Master List.  Additionally, if something has not been completed, you have to evaluate if it’s still relevant.  For example, I had a bunch of items on Master_Projects_List involving nature experiences.  I wanted to sign up for this very unique “Tracker School” taught by tom brown a famous tracker.  But that was in Chicago before I moved to California.  Now I’m less than a mile away from 55,000 acres of trails and wilderness!  So I have my nature access at my fingertips and taking a Wilderness course is no longer relevant.  With that specific example I moved it to my expired items list.  Now, the beauty of crossing something out and moving it to completed is you can always scan your completed items for crossed out items you may want to bring back onto a Master_List.   You have to peruse each item and ask “That’s done right?”  or “I’ve reached completion on that, right?” or “Is that goal or project still valuable to me?”.  Then depending on your answer to that trigger question, “Yes” or “No” you do whichever action you prefer:

• Yes — Delete the item or move it to a Separate “Completed Items” list.
• No — Keep it on the list (if you use some kind of emphasizing method such as making items “bold” do that)
• Not relevant — If something is not relevant you want to cross it off AND move it to “Completed Items”.

You may be wondering, “Wait, erm..didn’t we already have a completion phase?  Like Step 1 ensuring our list completely captures all items?” Yes, exactly!  And that’s the beauty of this system!  It reflects the full-circle nature of life and work and productivity!  That’s why completing something isn’t the spectacular part, instead, it’s the celebration — the acknowledgement of that completion (of checking that thing off the list)!  See people have the wrong relationship with lists.  People love getting things done, but the problem with loving that, is that you’ll then have resistance to adding new things to the list!  So my prescription is focus on the four main phases: completeness in capturing, the organizational consistency,  the accessibility, and the updating and completing and things WILL get processed and done seemingly “behind your back”.  I’m serious. It’s an amazing feeling of “passive productivity” form actively staying organized with your Master List.  And then, Schedule in Victory parties.  Schedule in Each week a time to look back over your “Completed Items” list or to look over the work you created.  This Victory Party is invaluable because it instantiates forward movement.  Regardless of how many things pile up on your list, scheduling a Victory Party gives you awareness and clarity to install massive freedom, productivity, and choice into not being overwhelmed and to accomplish amazingly complex tasks with the precision and

assiduousness of a productivity “doer” mastermind, but the ease of a pilot who just flicked on cruise control!

Awesome Times!  Have Fun Experiencing passive productivity from active organization.

Future of POPP and GTD Apps

POPP will start a series of GTD-like applications, but they will be POPP applications.  POPP is better than GTD; it’s a superlative.  GTD is great; GTD is a great starting point; GTD is a great introductory point. A serious introductory point to being organized.  However, POPP is simply intermediate and advanced.  POPP is for people who want organization on a very high level of clarity — a very high level of clarity, of efficiency, of certainty, and of freedom.

Praise of POPP

Home Work:

• Day 1: Capture All your Todos and projects.  Don’t worry about organizational consistency.  Just capture them.  Block out a 3-4 hour chunk of time to do this.  I’m serious.  Check your stickies, computer files, “napkin drafts”, random scraps of paper, everything…your mind…check all those spots for lurking projects and relocate them from those scattered spots to the sanctity and illumination and enlightened clarity of..your nifty Master List.
• Day 2: Organizational Consistency.  Observe emergent patterns, decide on font, color, and outline scheme.  Tweak and adjust your project list.  Make it as professional looking as a report you’d do for a client.  Utmost cleanliness in your organization here is essential for success.
• Day 3: Practice Makes Perfect.  Practice for an hour actually Doing things on the list and check back and scan the full project list every 10 minutes.  This will install two invaluable components: 1.  Awareness of all the stuff you’re working on while accomplishing one item on the list BUT BUT BUT with that clean efficient, cruise control style of clarity.  Essentially, you should be in your vacation state sub-modalities while doing items on the list and it truly should be blissfully (This sounds like some cheesy rock-garden, meditation pond gibberish, but seriously if your master list has completeness and organizational consistency and you know your VAK vacation sub-modalities, you can take an hour vacation, while Doing your work!).
• Day 4: Accessibility: Practice Makes Perfect 2.
• Day 5: Accessibility: Practice Makes Perfect 3.
• Day 6: Victory! Celebrate all that you have accomplished.  Do NOT skip this vital step.  Enjoy, cherish, truly to this very potent, excruciatingly necessary victory work!
• Day 7: Upper meta-level completeness capturing again.