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You know how it is. You’ve got a task you really need to get done right now, but you keep getting distracted by other things.??

Maybe you have writer’s block or think the task is so boring that you find it hard to work focused with it. You check your e-mail, flip though Facebook, call someone just for fun, you go and get another cup of coffee and happen to hang around the coffee machine for a while and small talk, read an online newspaper, Google something you’ve come to think about, and so on.??
You do anything except what you actually know is the right thing to do right now.??

Now you are going to learn ...

Every now and then, I am invited to speak about structure and productivity at breakfast- or lunch-seminars hosted by business networks, business associations etc.

A short while ago, it was at a Rotary Club in Kungälv, Sweden, and again I was astonished by with what warmth the Rotarians receive their guests (me included). As tradition dictates, I had the privilege to sit at the president’s table and we began to talk about ...

Do you feel that you’re constantly lagging a little behind with what you’ve got to do, that you always complete what you’re working with at the last moment, that deadline is always a bit too close??? From time to time I experience this myself and ...

If you are in the habit of using a to-do list, it probably mostly consists of tasks you’ve realized you have to do and therefore wrote on the list. They are tasks you will carry out soon after that and then cross off or delete.?? But you have to keep even less information in your head if you let the to-do-list generate new tasks on its own.?? We all have tasks we perform on a regular basis. It may be tasks that you ...

Many of us experience chaos from time to time in our everyday life when we are flooded by a constant stream of proposals, information and messages, more or less unchecked, through too many different channels. It’s as if we are exposed to a bunch of pipelines which deliver contributions to our everyday planning.

??If we’re not to drown in piles of paper, ...

The fact that papers and documents which are trash should be thrown away and that good-to-have-material should be saved may sound obvious.

??However, ...

Do you remember the early 90’s legendary series “Twin Peaks”? Each episode contained at least one scene in which Kyle MacLachlan’s character “Agent Cooper” grabbed his dictaphone and began by saying “Diane,…” and then freely recorded his thoughts onto the tape.

?The story never revealed who ...

I sometimes get the question whether it really improves the efficiency to be structured.

Doesn’t it create even more work if you write down everything you have to do (which you’re not going to do right away) and categorize every task in different ways? Doesn’t it just turn into a constant shuffling and moving of papers from one folder to another, which in turn are to be browsed and emptied at different dates?

Since ...

For most people there are times when we during a longer stretch of time have had a heavier workload than we are comfortable with.

If you are the manager or leader of a company, an organization or some kind of group, it might be that you don’t have the time to perform all the tasks which are dependent upon you in particular to perform them (you having the position that you do).

If you have coworkers, ...

Some of us are fond of electronic gadgets, such as an iPhone or a smartphone with calendar- and task-functions which can be synchronized with the desktop computer or the mail server.

There are many advantages with digital systems. One can easily sort and filter out the to-do lists, you’ve got better opportunities for back-ups, etc.

But there are also ...

Have you, just like me, from time to time attempted to establish a new habit, and have had some trouble with succeeding? Maybe you attempted trying a new approach to improve your personal structure.

You have used the new approach for a while, but run out of steam and direction and started to run in the same old tracks again. Sometimes ...

There are some things we’ve got to do which, like the constant buzzing of a summer fly, annoys us so immensely that it makes us spend too much time and energy on grieving over and dwelling on it, or maybe even walk around really irritated due to it.

We lose perspective, and not only do those annoying things feel numerous, ...

I do not want these structural tips to be about specific software, but about smart working methods and attitudes regardless of which software you like to work with.

But, today I would like to make an exception and ...

Do you all too often experience that you are bothered or disturbed by your colleagues? Do you feel that you can’t go through the hallway without getting called in to someone’s office when you have the least time for it? Do you repeatedly get interrupted just when you are at a critical stage in the task you really need to focus on?

Sure, occasionally you want to tell them off for interfering, but at the same time you are after all working together to bring the business forward.

And it is hardly that ...

You can easily be led to believe that the piles on the desk primarily are an aesthetic problem; that it gives a negative impression to someone who comes to pay a visit.

Or, that it’s only a problem with order; that the piles make it difficult to find the documents you are looking for when you need them.

But, unfortunately the problem is more serious than ...

This whole business of good structure – isn’t it sometimes the case that we really feel that we would need to work more effectively in our everyday life, but we just don’t know where to start? It’s just too much right now and we can barely keep our heads above the water.

We’ve got so little time that we don’t have the time to change the way we work, even if it’s in order to get more time to work with. It’ll have to be some other time, when we’ve got time.

But, if we continue like this, will the day when we have enough time to start working more
efficiently ever come? Do we really have to wait?

Not the way I see it. Right now is the second best time to start. The best time was yesterday.

So, let us now take only one simple step in the right direction. What would that be?

This week, US website “Small Business Trends Radio” listed the 100 best small business podcasts of 2010.

In the category “Business news and the big picture”, they picked my ...

To be a ”struktör” is very much about visualizing; to clarify what at first sight might be experienced as messy. By structuring and visualizing you make it all apprehensible and tangible. Then it will be easy to see what is big and what is small (it can be problems, opportunities or something else), what’s important and what is not so important, what the next natural step will be et c.

This type of work is a lot easier if you have well adapted tools, tools which you are comfortable with and enjoy working with. The struktör’s eight tools are:

Do you find it hard to compile tasks that were completed in a project or an assignment with the purpose of writing a report or create an invoice from the hours you spend on the project?

Is the result of this that you work until late at night trying to finish the report in time or that you send the invoice much later than you would like to?

Could these difficulties be due to that it’s hard to remember what you did and for how long when trying to remember it long after it was completed?

Here are five simple tips on how to make this process easy as pie.

Have you ever experienced losing the receipts you got during a business trip that you had to account for, that the notes you took during the conference just disappeared, or perhaps the business cards you received at the mingle party apparently were nowhere to be found?

They have probably disappeared because ...