Productivity!

As I have stated before I use Evernote to keep all the bits of information in my life organized. I am also trying to get a good GTD habit going. Both of these attempts to improve my productivity have had fits and starts while they work their way into my thoughts and routine. Along the way I have become increasingly aware of the roadblocks to getting tasks that get log jammed.

One big goal I had was to consistently scan the papers on my desk that fit into the Someday / Maybe and Reference categories into PDF and have them go into Evernote and then recycle the paper. I did this well for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the summer but my method of getting this task accomplished was a bit kludgy. In short, I would organize my papers, walk to the scanner, scan the each document to my e-mail account and then forward a number of separate e-mails to my Evernote account. None of these tasks are difficult, but they are tedious and I could always find other things better to do with my limited time in the office.

Today I had a break through in improving this process. Our Copier/Scanner lets us program destinations (e-mail addresses) into the LCD panel. I programmed in my Evernote address into the scanner and can now scan papers directly to my Evernote account, no more right click forward x50 in Outlook. I know on the surface this sounds like a very obvious and simple solution that I should have found long ago. But as I have found many times, solutions to road blocks in our productivity stream aren't always apparent to us right away. And when implemented these simple solutions pay off exponentially.