Every August I try to (1) cull teaching materials and (2) establish a routine of activities that lead to greater productivity. This is a challenge for me since I have the clutter gene.

Culling the Clutter

Things were much much worse in 2005 when we moved from Kilkenny to Cashel. I dumped an assortment of boxes into a home office then simply packed them tighter before moving them to storage locations in the garage and attic. I needed a lot of the print materials for several new higher education courses I was teaching. I was between floppies, Zip drives, and DVD storage. And I had no strong routine with Evernote at the time. So I just kept saving paper and my boxes kept getting overfilled.

My wife occasionally levelled a withering gaze at my stash and that helped me control my clutter at source. She still has that superpower today. At the time I snapped the shot above, I started using printed materials as show notes for Sunday News Clips with the now defunct Qik streaming service. Today, I try to reduce written materials to either scanned OCR items or to short snippets saved inside my Obsidian Personal Knowledge Management System.

I established several semi-permanent connections with people across the globe by using Qik and audio postcards. I think I should restart my audio postcards.

Routines of Activity

I'm a strong believer in making progress by completing a daily routine for more than three weeks. I hope to follow a daily routine throughout the month of August so I can level up my productivity. I'm using a checklist inside an Obsidian Daily Note. The Daily Note incorporates a checklist of simple tasks and it has several headed items worth accomplishing. I know from experience that I sleep better after I complete a Daily Note.

Both decluttering and productive activity flows fit nicely into a nano training session I am developing called "Practical Workflows". I'm not confident that my methods would appeal to a wider audience because there are plenty of business books around that well-developed frameworks. However, if a focus on decluttering coupled with regular use of a checklist enhances personal productivity, I'll be happy simply sharing details of what I'm accomplishing.

I have a big hurdle to jump next week with the American Embassy in Dublin, Ireland. Check back next Monday to see what happened.

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