Rethinking your workspace

In this article, David Allen of GTD fame discusses the office hardware that supports his implementation of GTD. And by hardware, I don’t mean computers, I mean the aluminum, wood, and plastic contraptions and tools that populate our offices, that create the environmental backdrop for our workdays.

We’ve come across a similar analysis of office supplies that focuses more on actual specifics of style and even daily usage guidelines. Pierre Khawand, of People-OnTheGo, has an entire seminar on Accomplishing More with Less. Pierre’s seminars actually exist in both live and web-based versions so you don’t have to be local to the SF Bay Area to participate.

The piece of this seminar that really grabbed my attention was so good that I really do hesitate to reveal it here. Let me say just that Pierre walks participants through a complete reconstruction of their work (and home, if you do/leave work there) environments to help you rationalize everything that you use to capture, store, use, and transmit information. It’s a service I’ve long thought he should provide on an individual basis to busy executives and professionals.

Those of you interested in learning more about AML should contact Pierre directly; anyone interested in customized service should contact me and we’ll work out a plan of attack to get Pierre’s system working in your office. This plan is not about office organization; it’s about rationalization in a one-person-sized unit of business process reengineering: it’s BPR for your desk.