Stevea Robbins here. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

With so many smartphone apps, desktop apps, and sticky pads, our organization systems themselves have become a source of chaos.

Andrew wrote in, saying, I'm at a loss when taking notes or remembering dates.

If I have an idea at night, I add it to Notes app on my iPod touch, but in the daytime

it may go into a small notepad, a sticky note, or a text document.

How do I keep it all straight?

Andrew, it sounds like you have a case of too much productivity, or at least too much technology. Oh, look, a shiny new gadget! Using it will surely make me more productive!

And what do we like even better than gadgets?

We like choice and variety, so we duplicate functionality everywhere.

Heck, if a smartphone with a to-do list helps us get organized,

then having a to-do list on our smartphone and our desktop and our notepad and our email program and our social media platform and our widgets bar and tattooed on our inner thigh must be even better.

We can even put a calendar in all those places, too, except your inner thigh, of course, that would be tacky.

Now that you have seven to-do lists and six calendars, life is perfect. No. No, life isn't

perfect. Life sucks. Because now, life is spent scouring all those devices and systems in a futile

attempt to figure out where you wrote the phone number for the item,

call IRS back to renegotiate audit details. You better hope it's not on the to-do list

on your inner thigh. The IRS will not be amused. Having multiple systems for a productivity

area can be worse than having none. Remember all that choice that we like so much?

There's no point to having choices unless we actually choose one. Keeping options open keeps us paralyzed. You have to choose.

You need one master system for each of your major productivity areas. You need one master calendar,

one master to do list, one master address book, and one master place to put your reference notes.

All your information for an area goes into your one-master system, and you go to your one-master system to get your latest info.

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