Any productivity guru you ask about some basic productivity tips for starters will tell you this - you need to have a clutter-free place to be able to work efficiently and focus on your work.

My personal experience has taught me the very same thing. Clutter-free desk makes all the difference and helps me really concentrate and get things done.

But what if I’m a computer geek?

Chances are you’re a computer geek like myself and you’ve got lot’s of computer gear… which basically means = lot’s of cables, charges, and the like… Well, you can still work in a clutter-free environment! Read this blog post to find out how.

(before I start, I’d like to thank Van Mardian of Decluttered.com for his great article and inspiration!)

First of all - I love cabinets.

Some like desks, especially these ultra-modern glass ones, Apple-style… but in this regard I’m more of an old-school guy and I like cabinets. Especially that me and my wife live in a very small appartment (one bedroom, one living-room and a kitchen). When I work at home, I have to do it in the living room and having a cabinet lets me just close this thing and all of the sudden my work area is not visible to anyone.

What’s in my home-office cabinet?

A lot… you wouldn’t believe me so I’ve got photos to prove. My guests don’t believe me when they see this small IKEA-cabinet in a corner of our living room. Here’s what’s inside:

• My primary work computer: IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X60 TabletPC (update: I’ve just switched to the Macbook Air)
• My “home server”, which is actually another laptop: Toshiba M200 TabletPC
• External 21″ Gateway LCD display
• Two USB2.0 Hard Drives: 750GB for storage and 250GB for backups
• External DVD RW drive in a USB enclosure.
• A network switch, lot’s of cables, chargers and power cords.

Below the cabinet you can see a black box - it’s a subwoofer for my Home DVD Movie Theater setup which is… (you gussed it) on the cabinet. As you can see, it’s plenty of stuff to fit into one small cabinet.

Decluttering my cabinet

The idea is simple:

Put all the gear below the cabinet, with only 3 cables to connect to 2 computers and one power outlet. That’s it. All the rest of the cables stay below the cabinet.

So where how do I put these cables below the cabinet? Easy, I found this metal drawer in a local furniture store. This drawer is normally used to store socks, pants and other clothes… in my case it’s perfect for my cables:

The cool thing about this drawer is the fact that it’s made of aluminium and has lot’s of “holes” for the air to circulate and cool down all the devices that are supposed to fit in there.

Apart from the drawer, I’d also need cable ties and cable pipes:

The “pipes” for cables are mostly intended to combine cables together, you’ll see later.

Let’s get to work - here’s how the clutter will be placed in the drawer:

It’s important to put the chargers on a different side than the hard disks, as the chargers generate lots of heat. Please note I’ve put an extra space between the chargers. When I added the cables and two USB hubs, the clutter started to show up:

I’ve also added power outlets to actually power up all of these devices. After that I started to organize everything using the cable ties and the outcome is more less like this:

As you can see, there is a “Drives’ Zone” and a “Power Zone” in the drawer. And there is space between. On three sides of the drawer there are power outlets. The black power outlet (on the right) is the one that will eventually charge the whole thing.

Where’s the DVD drive? Below the drawer, here’s why:

This way I can access the DVD drive anytime, right below the cabinet.

Now, how did I actually mount the drawer to the cabinet?

Quite simply, here’s what I used:

Just screw the hooks to the wooden bottom of the cabinet like this:

Now I just use a wooden dowel to hold the drawer. I need 4 mounting points like this one to ensure the drawer holds well and will not fall out. It’s a great way of mounting the drawer since I’ll be able to dismount it whenever I want to.

Now, before I mount the drawer, I need to make sure there are just three cables going out of it. Actually there are more cables, but thanks to the pipes, this looks like this:

Only 1 power cord, one “pipe” with power, USB and LAN going to the server and another pipe with power and LAN going to the Laptop.

As you can see the pipes look really nice and professional and make it easy to connect to the computers.

Mounted Drawer below the clutter-free cabinet

Here’s how the drawer looks below the cabinet:

Everything nicely mounted to the bottom of the cabinet. The DVD drive can be used at any time and ther is only one Power cable going to the power outlet. (the grey cables you’re seeing in the background are the cables from my hi-fi set and they’ll need to be taken care of as well).

Presto! Here’s my home office environment:

Update: Actually after one month of working like this I got a new Macbook Air and now the updated home office looks like this:

There you go. Here’s my home office. Now, whenever I need to work at home, I’ve got a perfect work environment and I can always put the screen to the side, close the cabinet, and nobody would notice there is so much great computer gear inside… and so many cables… all totally clutter-free.

Hope you like my setup and hope it inspires you to do the same for your home office (and real office).

Now I can get my stuff done in a nice clutter-free environment.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve just released the first issue of the Productive Magazine! I’m particularly proud as this is my first attempt as the Editor-in-Chief of a Magazine.

33 Pages, 17 articles, 3 MB FREE PDF download that looks like this:

Before you download…. watch the video of me introducing you to the magazine (only 6 minutes):

To download, just click here!

What’s in the magazine:

• Interview with the David Allen himself - the best-selling author of the Getting Things Done book
• 17 great articles by the most active productivity bloggers in the blogoshpere, make sure to check these out!

Thanks to all the contributors and to everyone who helped me make this happen!

After you’ve downloaded the magazine, please do come back to this web site and post your comments to let me know what you think! Thanks!

- Michael Sliwinski (Editor)

P.S. Productive Magazine is sponsored by Nozbe - Simply Get Things Done tool that keeps you productive when you’re by the computer or with the mobile phone or the iPhone.

I’ve been recently very busy working on new Nozbe and iNozbe - and decided to optimize my Email setup to make sure I don’t spend too much time with Email and can get stuff done.

I’m so happy with this new simple setup and with my recent IMAP discovery (I know, IMAP has been around for ages…) that I decided to go back to the good, old 2-minute productivity shows. Hope you like the new episode:

How do you setup your email? Please let me know in the comments below!

Here’s the next episode of the 2-Minute Productivity show. This time I’m sharing my tips and tricks that help me read lots of magazines quickly and efficiently.

Enjoy!

Yesterday I’ve officially launched the “Productive Magazine” project.

From the Productive Magazine web site:

Our Mission:

Productive Magazine is a platform where the top productivity bloggers will share their best productivity principles and tips’n’tricks. Let’s help everyone get more done and be more productive!

The idea is simple:

Productive Magazine (PM) will be regular magazine (monthly or bi-monthly - not sure yet) featuring the best articles (blog posts) from best productivity bloggers on the Internet. Downloadable in a PDF format for free for anyone from this web site.

Visit the Productive Magazine web site for more details and the progress!

Productive Magazine is sponsored by Nozbe.

Here’s the second episode of my “2-minute Productivity Show”:

Enjoy!

Note: This new article of mine has been published yesterday on the GTDtimes blog.

We all strive to make everything easier-to-use, more accessible, etc.
We strongly believe that if all of our applications and all of the tools we use on the daily basis are properly optimized, we can get more done and have everything accomplished.

This is true in 80% of the cases…
I couldn’t agree more – I love it when everything goes more easily and automatically. Actually I’m always coming up with ideas on how to make certain aspects of my life “more automatic” to make sure I’m not doing the same boring stuff over and over again.

But in 20% of the cases… I’m trying to complicate my life… on purpose.
I know this sounds weird. It struck me the other day upon a conversation with a fellow GTD-er Testeq that as strange as this may sound, this is actually a good thing to do.
So why would I want to complicate my life if I can get stuff done the easy way? Why would I do something manually if I can have it done automatically or semi-automatically for me?

The answer: to fight temptation… and reduce procrastination.
Let me give you an example. I love blogs and RSS feeds which let me read great up-to-date information from many sources across the web in one place. To read RSS feeds, I used to use a great plug-in for Firefox called “Sage”.

Sage works really great, just press “CTRL+Z” and your RSS feeds appear on the left side of your Firefox browser and once you click on the feed that you want to read, you can see all of the feed’s content right there in the browser. Neat.

The problem… I would turn on “Sage” too often… and instead of actually browsing for the stuff I needed for my work, I’d happily turn “left” to check how the feeds are going and if there is some new interesting info that has been published…

When this “habit” of checking feeds turned into a temptation I couldn’t resist, I decided to put an end to it. I removed all of my feeds from Sage and copied them to my Google Reader account.

Now when I want to read the feeds, I need to explicitly log in to my Google Reader account and start reading… and since I’m not logged in to my Google account for most of my day, this takes several steps to do.

A “Tempting” habit turned into a conscious decision…
Now, instead of “clicking and checking what’s up” I need to decide: “OK, now I’m going to log in to my Reader account and read the feeds for 30 minutes”. After that I’ll log out and won’t be reading them any more.

You can apply the very same thing to email. If you use Gmail like I do - just log in to your Google Account only when you want to check your email. Decide to check your email. Once you’ve processed your email, log out and continue with your next action on your Next Actions list.

Conclusion: focus on your next actions and help yourself resist temptation.
So there you have it. I’ve made my life a little more complicated, but then again, I don’t get distracted all that much anymore. When I want to read my feeds, I log in to my Google Reader account – once I’ve read them, I log out. When I want to process my email, I log in to my Google Mail account and also log out once I’m done. However to make sure I know what to do next, I’m always logged in to my Nozbe Account to see my list of “Next Actions”.

How do you fight your distractions? Do you complicate your life as well?
Please do let me know in the comments what your daily temptations and distractions are and how you fight them. I’ll be happy to learn from you!

Yes! I started my own Internet show - the “2-minute Productivity Show” and here’s the introduction:

Stay tuned for the new episodes!

Today is my birthday and I decided to give you a real treat - my 10-step Simply Get Things Done course.

It was initially performed by me in January, at the 2-weekly Aula Polska meetings (30 min):

Later I decided to split the course into a bunch of short videos, adding a short screencast from Nozbe to each of them. The resulting 9 videos have been added to the course page in Nozbe:

Enjoy!

Note: This guest article for GTDtimes has been published yesterday on their blog.

Update 1: Inspired by this article and by the response to the “beta” version of Nozbe’s Family Plan, I went ahead and officially introduced the Family Plan to Nozbe

Update 2: This article made it to Evan Carmichael’s top 10 GTDtimes blog posts list at #10

“Don’t try this at home” (MTV – Music Television)

As I mentioned in my last article, being at the GTD seminar and listening to David Allen inspired me to try out different approaches to GTD.

I decided to actually try GTD at home.

I had a pleasure of talking to other fellow GTD-practitioners about their positive experiences at their homes. This short article will include tips and tricks for implementing GTD at home gathered from my friends’ homes and from my very own.

Although in my case the experiment is an ongoing work-in-progress, I’m really happy with the results. Here’s a small fraction of GTD concept you can introduce in your family to get more done and motivate (and inspire) each other and have a happier home:

Inboxes for everyone!

First step is to prepare inboxes for each and every member of the family. Put the names on each of the inbox and instruct the family members “what is the inbox and why do they need one”. Some practical tips on setting inboxes for family members:

• Don’t put all of the inboxes in the same place – put each inbox in the place the family member will most likely see and pay attention to it. Why? If the inboxes are grouped together – the items will most likely “migrate” from one inbox to the other instead of being processed and done by the family member they belong to. Family members really understand the concepts of “delegating” too well.

• Locate the inbox in a place where the family member will pay attention to it. I initially placed my wife’s inbox in the hallway of our apartment. She would repeatedly ignore it. When I relocated her inbox to a spot near her cabinet with jewelry, the results improved tenfold.

• Motivate your family members to process their inboxes. Initially assist them in processing their inboxes and from time to time remind them about the piled-up inbox that needs to be cleaned to zero. I even heard a tip by one of the fathers who would actually put occasionally a 1-dollar bill or another kind of “pleasure-item” to encourage inbox-processing among his kids. I think this kind of bribery is worth trying out.

Work on the projects together

A family is a team and there are many projects, especially home-related ones, that need to be planned and executed together with several family members. Planning a project like “cleaning up the house”, “redecorating one of the rooms” or “family Sunday dinner” can be planned with a simple to-do list for each of them. In my home one of the places for these kind of to-do lists is on the fridge.

A simple to-do list won’t be enough, though. When planning a project like this, it’s important to pay attention to these two things:

• Clearly point out each other’s responsibilities in the project and delegate the tasks to each of the family members.

• Clearly define Next Actions for each other so that everyone knows what they should do right away.

Encourage the 50,000 feet level thinking

Make sure you talk to your loved ones about the meaning of their lives. About their overall area of responsibility, their goals – both long-term and short.

Try to schedule these kinds of talks to on at least monthly basis and make sure everyone (including yourself) really knows why they are doing what they are doing. Why they participate in their projects and review their priorities and analyze the motives of their actions.

I’ve started this kind of ritual with my wife and found out one of the best moments to do it is Sunday morning, right after our breakfast, when there is no pressure to go somewhere or do something.

Apply the great 2-minute rule at home!

After my last article about the “2-minute rule”, one of my friends told me how he applied the 2-minute rule at home and gave me several examples of daily rituals that could be accomplished within this short period of time, or faster (and I never realized that!):

• Take out trash
• Clean the table after the dinner
• Put the dishes into dishwasher
• Start the dishwasher to actually clean the dishes
• Make the bed
• Turn off lights in the rooms unoccupied by other family members
• Put the shoes into the shoe-drawer
• Grab a beer from the fridge
• Etc.

I’m sure there are many more quick 2-minute tasks at home that you can add to this list. I’d encourage you to identify these quickies with your family members. Once discovered, nobody will have an excuse to procrastinate and leave these tasks off for later.

Tip: To motivate my family members and myself, I’ve actually created a list of these 2—minute “quickies” and posted it on my fridge for others to see.

Do it now – start introducing GTD in your Family.

I’m hoping I’ve encouraged you more than enough to try and start GTD in your family. Creating good habits is very important in a team such as a family that lives under one roof and wants to live in harmony, love and respect for one another.

To foster family-friendly GTD I’ve introduced a “family plan” in my Nozbe web application where you can set up an account for up to 6 family members to manage projects and next actions together and spread more GTD-goodness among your loved ones.

Please post your comments about GTD in your family and share your successes and challenges below – I’d be more than happy to discuss my experiences with you!