I find that you likely need to determine if you are extremely detail oriented or not in your life. Do you like putting due dates on everything and following che

I find that you likely need to determine if you are extremely detail oriented or not in your life. Do you like putting due dates on everything and following checklists? Or are you more carefree. I have found its best to not fight your own personality. Getting Things Done (GTD) is very popular but if it doesn't suit you, then there is other things to try. Personally, I am following the Personal Kanban approach. Jim Benson has more details at http://www.personalkanban.com/ http://www.personalkanban.com/. I use mind mapping to layout everything for myself in my life (things I need to do, my goals, books I want to read, etc.) I looked at the many different online products for mind mapping but settled on buying Novamind 5. Mindjet's Mind Manager is supposed to be really the best but I didn't want to pay the premium. Xmind is also good and free. The main thing with Novamind and other commercial offerings is the import capability (you can import Mind Manager maps easily). Sites like biggerplate are incredible for the amount of free mind maps others have put together. I use Trello has a kanban board (backlog, this week, today, now, done) and organize my week with this. I don't use due dates period. I bought into Omnifocus on both the Mac and iPhone but just couldn't stick with it. I am finding that with this approach, I am able to stay on track more. This document from Paul Klipp http://paulklipp.com/images/PersonalProductivity.pdf http://paulklipp.com/images/PersonalProductivity.pdf describes this approach nicely. I am using his approach as a guide but with my own tweaks. These tools are not magic bullets. You still need the discipline to stick with it to see the payoffs, but they definitely can help.