Comments on: Review: Order from Chaos

By: Jules

Jules — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:38:28 +0000

You know what’s really weird? Ever since I found that I REALLY like my new job, keeping my desk clean hasn’t been hard at all.

By: Sandy Fleming

Sandy Fleming — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:41:08 +0000

Great review Trent. I found “Getting Things Done” to be overwhelming. This book sounds a littlle more user friendly so I have ordered the book from my library.

By: Mydailydollars

Mydailydollars — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:38:10 +0000

Some good tips here! I like the “cockpit office” idea as well. Of course, my office is so small that it’s pretty easy to create!

By: Ann at One Bag Nation

Ann at One Bag Nation — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:33:40 +0000

I’m on a personal quest to get my life in order, but I’m definitely in the “GTD is overwhelming” camp – a simpler book on time and paper management is appealing.

I like the concept of daily use, weekly use, and monthly use as guidelines for where to store things, that makes sense to me. I recently removed everything on my desk, as an experiment to see what I really needed every day, and now my desk is much less cluttered.

By: Aric

Aric — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 04:23:58 +0000

This is a great review and I think this book takes the more detailed methodologies from David Allen and FranklinCovey and makes them easy to understand. I think that following some very simple umbrella rules, anyone can be organized. If you want more detail, then Getting Things Done might be for you. If not, you really can’t go wrong with Order from Chaos.

I use daily planning forms which give me space to print my outlook calendar from work, space for priorities and room for notes. I also maintain an excel spreadsheet as a master to-do list and then transfer the priorities to my planner. Any notes from my daily planner that are pertinent to a project end up in a composition notebook that I keep at my desk. It may not be perfect, but it works for me!

By: Mac

Mac — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:26:11 +0000

My husband and I have both found this review very useful. Since reading it we’ve gotten very involved in setting up iGoogle pages. Tomorrow I’m going to “unbury” the surface of my desk and apply the “cockpit office” concept. I’ve reserved the book on the library web site and am looking forward to reading all of it. Having found “Getting Things Done” overwhelming, I think I’ll find this book more useful as a starting point for improving my organizing and time management skills. Thank you for the helpful information!

By: overcoming overspending

overcoming overspending — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:44:23 +0000

I think a lot of our problem with chaos is “information overload” perpetuated by technology. I often marvel at the fact (as pointed out in another very interesting book Trent has reviewed, that I also read called Margin) that all the advances and technology that we now have at our fingertips, that is SUPPOSED to make life easier and more simple, has actually complicated our lives tenfold. Case in point, I am a teacher. When I started my teaching career 13 years ago, we still did everything, from taking attendance to keeping student grades, to comunication with the administration, on paper with a good old fashioned pen or pencil. Now that everything is computerized, in my opinion, it has complicated matters to a ridiculous extreme. Now, instead of simply recording grades in a grade book or on a report card, files must be backed to the server, which must be stored, which must be backed up again to another disk and god forbid if the system goes down. All of this requires hours of training, meetings, an entire dept. devoted to technology and so on and so on. Putting order in chaos would be a lot easier at times if we just went back to doing things in a more SIMPLE manner (PAPER AND PENCIL DO STILL WORK!) For all of our advances, our lives are FOREVER more complicated. Of course all of these advances are with us to stay and will continue to “advance” which in turn continues to overload our lives and make them more complicated.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:00:49 +0000

Like David above, my problem is to stay motivated to stay organized. It is easy to let those papers pile up in the inbox.

By: David Carter

David Carter — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:17:02 +0000

Cool, I’ll have to check it out. I could use more order in my life. I go through spells where I keep everything real neat but more often than not I am just messy. When I am neat though, I feel as if I can think more clearly and get things done quicker and better.