Manage Projects Like a Pro
Build a Streamlined System with Google Docs

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #584: Manage Projects Like a Pro: Build a Streamlined System with Google Docs

Jeff Sanders
How do you manage your most important work?

You know, for years I relied on systems like Evernote, but found myself searching for something better.

And after toiling endlessly through dozens of apps, strategies, and project management philosophies,

I found myself back where I started, a simple digital document with a straightforward list of what's next.

This is The 5 AM Miracle, episode #584: Manage Projects Like a Pro: Build a Streamlined System with Google Docs.

Good morning and welcome to the 5 a.m. Miracle. I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, specializing in delivering high energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

Now, in the episode this week, I'll break down how I leverage Google Docs to manage all of my projects, both personal and professional, why I love custom web,

web apps to provide easy and custom access to my projects, and how you can build

your own streamlined system that leverages basic tools you likely already have access

to.

Let's dig in!

How do you know when you need a brand new productivity system?

I think the answer lies less in the technology.

and more in the emotional response to your daily life.

In other words, you know you need a new system if your current one causes you stress, anxiety, fear, overwhelm, confusion,

or you simply just don't like it.

And you want something that speaks to where you are now.

You know, I build and rebuild my own project management systems whenever I can feel that my current one is becoming a bottleneck to my own progress.

If I don't clearly know what my next action is in any given project, I know a new system.

If I don't clearly know which project is the next best one to dig into, I need to pause and rethink the entire thing.

You know, project management is more about the big picture than the details, but ideally, your system will encompass both and provide the calm clarity you are likely seeking.

That's what I want from my systems.

and that's what I would hope you would want from yours.

Let's use a counter example.

The ones I just described, the anxiety, the overwhelm, the ridiculousness of how chaotic life can be at times.

If the systems you use to run your life are causing the stress itself, then it's just adding fuel to the fire.

It's not solving anything.

One thing I know to be true about my life is that when I wake up at 5 a.m.

and I look at my to-do list for the day, if that to-do list is long,

I made a mistake.

If that to-do list is not clear, I made a mistake.

If my calendar is overbooked, I made a lot of mistakes.

And this is one of those key indicators of you know when your system is broken

when it causes that kind of a response, when you don't want to look at your lists

because they just bring on that sense of anxiety and there's just more to do than you'll ever have time to do.

So my intention is to build streamlined systems that allow for one key kind of underlying thing that no one really talks about in project management, which is not just doing less, but is intentionally having places to put things to do later.

In other words, buckets for the future, buckets where you can drop ideas and ignore them, but when the time is right, you come back to them.

The whole system I'm going to outline this week is really about bucket.

I'm not going to discuss it directly like I probably should, but that is the underlying

foundational principle, which is that everything that I build is all about making

sure that when the time is right, I know what matters.

When tomorrow morning shows up, I want that list that I see, my to-do list, my

calendar, my project lists will indicate my next key focus for tomorrow.

Not for 10 days from now or 10 years from now.

I want to know what matters on the day that it matters.

If that's my system and it works as I've built it, which it should work pretty well most of the time, if that is true, then overwhelm will not happen nearly as often.

Because ideally you will balance your calendar, balanced your workflow in such a way that it's actually doable.

One key philosophy and productivity in general is to underplan your day.

In my second book, I discussed that quite a bit.

this idea that you have free time.

Your whole life is nothing but free time and you get to fill it.

But if we overplan, if we think we can do more than we have time for inevitably,

we will find ourselves behind schedule.

But we're only behind because we overplan to begin with.

If we underplanned and then things take too long, it's fine.

If we underplan and things go as planned, we have free time and we can then do more.

In other words, yes, less is.

more. Underplanning is the answer. Doing less is always the best path,

which then begs the whole question, how in the world is that possible?

Life is a mess. There's a thousand things you could possibly do. You will never be

on top of everything. It's just not a thing we're striving for. So what are we striving

for? Why are we here? We're here to acknowledge the fact that we do have goals,

ambitious ones at that. We would like to see big things get done. We'd like to manage most

our life well and have a system that we don't question, a system we can rely on

and trust that will allow us to dump ideas in for the future, like a nice bucket,

to know the clarity of what today's next actions should be, and to be able to say,

whatever happens in the future, I'm cool with it because my system can handle it.

If you don't have that level of clarity, then your system needs some work.

Mine does all the time, and I teach this stuff, and I know very clearly that there is

no ideal scenario here. We're always on this growth trajectory. Everything can and

will change. And technology is one of those key things that we know changes constantly.

AI has been the next big frontier to change everything yet again. So I'm not looking

for a perfect solution. I'm looking for a system that in this current season of my

life and work, I can trust it. I can believe in it. I can know what matters and just focus on the

itself, not the systems that allow me to just know what the work actually is.

All right, with that preamble out of the way, let's get to how to manage your

projects like a pro and build your own streamlined system using what I think is

going to be a great strategy, which is to leverage Google Docs.

Before we go there, let's start with the very beginning.

Let's go back a few steps here and talk about why I ditch Evernote, Devin, Think,

Notion, ClickUp, and every other major project manager that's out there.

Episode 368 of this podcast is called Why I Left Evernote.

If you have not heard that episode, go back right now.

Stop this episode.

Go back to 368 and listen.

It is one of the most foundational episodes of this podcast, and I say that because

it was the most defining moment in my productivity tool-based journey when I ditched

a system I had relied on for almost a.

decade. I got very angry at Evernote, and I left, and I had this whole

transitionary period, and then I wound up a couple of years later in Google Docs

and have been there ever since. And so if you want to understand more about

why I get feisty, why I get really amped up out of this stuff, that episode there

will give you quite a good story. But in a nutshell, I left all of those systems,

Evernote and Notion and ClickUp because of one key issue. They all

have failed and continue to fail to provide simplicity in the way that I think is

most effective.

If you want to get things done, less is always going to be more, but the tools

themselves have to align to that philosophy as well.

If the tool is complex, it's not going to work.

If the tool has too many bells and whistles you don't use, it's not going to work.

You're looking for a tool that is both simplistic and hopefully customizable at the same

Now, the problem there is that those two concepts, simplicity and customization, are kind of polar opposites.

So it's hard to find a system or even to build a system that meets both of those criteria well.

I think for a long time, Evernote met the mark for me.

But then they changed their system.

They kind of dumped it down, which sounded good at first.

But in the process, they removed core features that I needed so that it was kind of useless.

Notion and ClickUp are both a hot mess.

Those two programs, I could argue about those for a long time.

But in a nutshell, they're trying too hard to do too much to be a solution for

everyone.

And it just fails on its face.

Devin Think is a Mac specific app I used before.

It's a great app, but it's a little old school.

It doesn't quite integrate with the cloud in the way that I prefer.

So it's kind of lacking in the modern technology sense.

So I can't use that either.

I just not anymore.

All that to say, you have a lot of options when it comes to project management,

technology, apps, philosophies.

And I have personally made certain decisions about the core principles, the things

that I want to be true about the apps I say yes to, and especially the ones I say no to.

So when I talk bad about Evernote or Notion or ClickUp, it doesn't mean you shouldn't

use them.

It doesn't mean they're actually bad on their face value.

What it means is that I have decided here are things that matter for my system,

and there are a bunch of apps, a bunch of systems that will not meet the mark.

And even the ones that do, even Google Docs that meets the mark for me, it's not perfect.

It's got a lot of

room

to grow.

Once again, there's no perfection here, no ideal system.

There's just simply growth in the direction of the principles that matter to you.

Having said that, this will require testing on your part.

you will probably over time go through hundreds of these things,

trying to find what works best for you.

And that might sound like a lot of work,

but at the end of the day,

that's what's going to be the best path forward

because you will wind up with a core set of apps you trust for everything.

And once you get to that core,

you're going to double down on them and use them forever.

That tends to be how this works.

And then you literally can ignore all that experimentation,

ignore all the apps you no longer use, they don't matter anymore.

Once you have your core, you're good.

And then your energy goes to the work itself, not the system building.

I love productivity.

I love system building, but that's not the work.

That's just a tool to help you do the work.

And so this is kind of the bigger picture question about productivity.

What are you actually trying to get done?

And what are the bottlenecks that are stopping you from getting there?

If the tools are bottlenecks, the tools have to go or they have to be tweaked.

That's the underlying principle for all of this.

Don't use things that don't work.

We'll start there.

The second key component to these systems is that all in one system, is that all in one

solutions are terrible. I hate them. I have not ranted enough on this show about all

in one systems, but I will do so right now. So an all in one solution is anything

in life, technology, a tool of some kind that is just trying too hard. They're trying

to be all things to all people, and they basically argue, hey, come buy our product.

It might cost a little more, but you get everything included into one simple package,

and you don't have to go anywhere else. We'll cover everything for you.

You've heard that speech before, an all-in-one podcasting tool.

I'll tell you a second.

All-in-one productivity solutions.

You know, do everything Microsoft.

And we have all the things you need right here, this little bundle.

It sounds wonderful, but it's never true.

It's just never, never true.

If you find a single problem with your all-in-one solution, you're forced to customize.

You are forced to use a different solution, and then another, and then another, and then another.

Because at the end of the day, no one gets this right.

No one knows what you actually want or need for the job you're trying to get done.

So it is your job to build your own custom system.

And I, in part, I hate saying that because I would love to say that all in ones are great.

I would love to say that here's just the silver bullet.

Take this one pill and boom, you're healthy.

Here's this one answer.

Man, everything's good.

That's just not true.

Life is way more complicated than that, way more nuanced.

than that. Custom is the only path forward, especially in the areas where you want

to go pro, especially in the things that matter the most to you. Simple example here,

if you don't care about being really productive and your to-do app or your calendar

doesn't mean a lot to you, then you can use almost anything. And it's fine. You'll get the

small amount of value that you want and you'll move on. But if it does matter a lot to you

and you have tools that don't work, what's going to happen?

Headaches, frustration, fighting, troubleshooting, calling customer service,

talking to some AI chatbot all day.

I've been there.

I've done that for many, many hours of my life.

My website is a whole different story of issues that I spent years customizing

to finally get to the point where I could ignore it, and it just runs an autopilot.

But that didn't happen with an easy solution or an all-in-one.

it happened through customization to solve the problems I needed to solve one system at a time.

You know, Evernote now today is really trying hard to be in all in one more so than before.

They're trying to be a note taker, a project manager, a scheduler, and a task manager all at the same time.

And I just don't know who actually could use a system like that and live only in Evernote.

You're not going to.

It won't

happen.

It is a productivity tool that, for many years, was excellent at note taking and really storing information.

It was a great bucket system.

Evernote trying to do a thousand other things is a mistake.

It doesn't work.

Not for someone like me.

Maybe for you.

Maybe.

But I doubt it.

Another good example here in the world of podcast.

I'll use a technology solution here as well.

There is a company called Road, and they have this amazing product called the Roadcaster Pro.

They're on version two now of this all-in-one podcasting solution.

I bought it when it first came out, literally the first opening week, and I returned it a week later.

And I returned it for all the reasons I just discussed.

It was trying to be an all-in-one solution to say, hey, you can just start podcasting with this one simple hardware tool.

You plug in a microphone, plug in some headphones, you can record, you can make the audio sound amazing.

It promised a lot.

But it failed in a couple of key areas.

And so what did I do?

Well, I couldn't bypass those few issues.

There was no way to hack the system or customize it.

My only choice was to take it or leave it.

So I left.

I had to return it and then build my own custom podcast studio,

which I'm now using today and have for many years.

And one of the key things about custom solutions that I think people miss is the ability

to swap tools whenever you need to.

So my podcast studio, as a simple example,

has probably, I don't know,

10 or 12 different hardware pieces to it.

Everything from microphones to audio interfaces and mixers and headphones.

Everything here is just this wide variety of tools that if any one of them goes bad,

I swap out that one tool.

If my headphones break, I buy new ones.

If the speakers go bad, I buy new ones.

If the mixer, it doesn't work anymore, I buy a new one.

But that doesn't mean the entire thing gets tossed out.

It means that one individual component gets replaced.

So it's actually very easy.

And because I can replace that one component, I can get the exact right one that I need.

And then all of a sudden, long term, what happens?

Well, I'm not fighting the system.

I'm not mad at it.

I'm not calling companies to complain about it.

I just use it.

I get to do the work.

I get to record my podcast in a high-quality way with all the bells and whistles that I actually choose and opt-in-to-with-in-to-law

while ignoring everything else.

That is the best-case scenario.

That is what you want in any productivity system, in any design you want to put together, you want the ability to ignore it.

You want the ability to not think about it, to just walk in, use the tool, get the result you want, and move on.

No one's here to fight and frustrate themselves to death.

It's just the world of tech begs for that.

The world of technology is asking for us to be mad at it because everything

is broken all the time.

The more involved you are in tech, the more you will go through that process.

And so the path forward here, the real difficult struggle is to find yourself

through all that toil to get to the beautiful end result of simplicity and peace

and calm where everything just works.

I have a tech document, a Google Doc, actually, by system that's called

Tech That Just Works.

And it's a list of all the technology that I use in my personal life and

professional life.

My computers, my phones, my podcast studio, my printers, my TVs, everything

is listed there.

And the intention that I had to design this document, a simple list of tech, was to

be clear about the tech that I love and trust and to identify the areas where things

weren't working and replace them. And now I look at that list once a quarter.

I used to use that list every day because I was so frustrated with all the different

problems that I saw. So the good news with all of this is if you take an area of your

life that's frustrating, that's troublesome, that's full of all kinds of problems,

make a list of here's what I would like to see be true. And just one by one,

you go through it and make it awesome. And one day you will find yourself,

looking at that list and going, yeah, we're good. No issues. Calm, clear.

I've got what I need from that. It is possible to get there. And in my mind,

that's an ideal system for anything. Your job, your personal life, your podcast,

whatever it is, you just don't think about it because it just works. If you can get there,

you won. Okay, now that I have laid the stage for what doesn't work and our ideal for simplicity,

let's discuss why I chose Google Docs itself.

So for years, I have used Google Workspace, which was called G Suite before that.

I used that in my business for email, calendar, Google Drive folders,

kind of the online cloud system.

And what comes with that, obviously, things like Google Docs, Google Sheets,

Google Forms, this entire suite of Google Online Digital products and offerings.

And I am very comfortable with a Google Doc system,

specifically because I grew up using Microsoft Word.

And the word processing format is just what I'm used to.

And this is a very important point when it comes to choosing the tech that's best for you.

To build a system like a pro is to use a system that speaks your language that you are very familiar with, very comfortable with.

Therefore, it feels intuitive and feels natural.

If you're using a tool that feels like it's a foreign language, that's not the tool for you.

You want to use something that just fits.

Because when it does, that's less stressful.

That's more productive.

That's the end result you're going for.

So for me, Google Docs is fantastic because I'm very comfortable with that environment,

but you might like a different one.

So I'm going to discuss why Google Docs is fantastic, but just keep this in mind

that you're looking for the same end result, but with a different tool potentially.

Now, beyond being comfortable with the format, Google Docs is extremely customized.

because a Word document or a digital document is just a blank space to fill in whatever you want.

You have hyperlinks for the actual doc itself that can be shared basically anywhere

or integrated with your task manager, your calendar, shared with anyone else as well.

One of the new features that I absolutely love are tabs, and I'll discuss those in more detail in a second.

And finally, the project lists that I create in the Google Doc itself are just very

straightforward. They're intentionally simplistic. I don't want the bells and whistles. Yes, it's

customizable. Yes, you can toss in images and links and color coding and everything.

But at the end of the day, it's just a list. It could be done anywhere. And as long as I know what the list says and I do these things in a reasonable order, the work gets done, the project gets finished, everything's fine.

The next piece of this puzzle are the custom web apps that I've come to love. And these are totally

optional. This is a piece of the puzzle that I have doubled down on, but you don't

have to do this at all. You could just use Google Docs in your web browser,

and that's the end of it. What I do is take it one step further and have custom

Mac apps, and I use a program called Web Catalog to do so. It works on PCs and

Macs and allows you to build actual applications on your computer that are based on

hyperlinks or URLs. So a Google Doc, for example, could be turned into a standalone

app. And so then on my Mac doc, I can actually select an icon that I design myself.

I click on it and it opens up the Google Doc in its own standalone app.

What this does is provide me easy access to the projects I'm currently focused on.

This has been fantastic for me because what I don't want to do is get lost in a web

browser where you have all of your bookmarks and all your social links and all of

your distractions and your Amazon shopping cart and all these things that might pull you

away from the work, my goal is focus. And to have the best kind of focus, I want to

have my project list in a standalone location where when I look at it, that's all I

see. And so if you're looking for that kind of customization and direct focus,

Web Catalog can help you with that process to have a custom standalone app that

pulls open, that Google Doc, and then your project list is right in front of you.

Now, there's a thousand ways to do this. You can use custom productivity solutions.

that have their own software, they do the exact same thing.

I mean, the task manager that I use, NOSB, that's what it does.

You open up the app and you see your to-do list for today.

Open your calendar app.

You see today's events.

This is the same philosophy.

It's just a standalone customized project list.

And so if you want to toy with that, I say give it a shot because it's actually a very

cool tool once you dig in.

I have had some pushback from listeners who think that web catalog is a little more

work than it's worth, which is valid. It could be. Once again, one of the key things

of all this technology is figuring out how much troubleshooting and customization

do you want to go through. I have found Web Catalog to be indispensable for the way

that I organized my work today, and I'm not going to go back for a long time,

probably. But at this point in time, if you decide, I want to keep things as easy as

possible, I'm not going to add any extra apps or any extra work, start there. Start simple,

and then as you have free time,

dig into more customization down the road.

Okay, let's back up one more step here.

One of the key things about productivity

is to understand the core things that you're working on.

I've mentioned calendars where you schedule your events,

task managers, where for me I schedule my daily smaller tasks,

but projects are a separate piece.

What they are is a consolidated list of items that are similar.

You have batched together a bunch of things.

of tasks to achieve a specific end result. There are endless possibilities for how

you organize what you work on and what you're told to work on by your boss

potentially. There's lots of ways to push information together, separate it apart,

and you want to figure out the most logical way to consolidate like items.

So when I'm talking about projects, what I'm usually talking about is a specific end

goal and all the tasks that are related to make that goal happen are in one location.

And that one location for me is a Google Doc, and then I can access that easily

with web catalog on my computer or on my phone potentially as well.

And so when you think about productivity in general, you tend to have your big projects,

the individual tasks to get done, and the scheduling of when they happen.

And the whole goal with all of this is to not overthink this, to not drown in the complexity, the potential complexity of these things.

And to really ask yourself, where is the simple, direct, easy answer?

So what I'm going to go through now is specifically how I organize these Google Docs so that I have the consolidation components where like items are together, but then I also have the detail when I need it.

I mentioned the top of the show that one of the key areas here are buckets.

And when you have ideas, you can drop them into the bucket and access them when necessary.

That's this moment now.

So, simple example, I get a lot of ideas for a lot of projects.

And what I don't want to see myself do is get distracted by my own ideas.

And one of the best parts of this system is that you can drop an idea into a project, into a bucket, and then not look at it again until it matters.

And so between now and that future date, I'm not going to think about it.

But if I want to, I can just go to that project, go to that bucket, optimize it, tweak it, schedule it, whatever I want to do.

But it's out of sight, out of mind until it matters.

So your goal with all of this is to have very intentional buckets to drop your ideas, your creative brainstorming sessions into so that when the time is right, it matters.

And until then, not your thing.

Okay, so to organize your big picture projects in Google Docs,

one key document that I created recently is what I call my all projects overview.

This is one Google Doc with a list of all my projects.

both personal and professional, as well as a few future project ideas as well.

In other words, this is the number one most important documents in my system

because it lists all of the big picture items that I'm focused on.

One key thing about productivity is that you want alignment between your projects

because in any given season of your life, you can't have conflicting projects.

Otherwise, you've got a big problem.

And so the all-project's overview gives me a clear sense of my entire life.

and I can see which projects belong together, which one should happen later,

and I can schedule the order of events a lot easier if I know all of them in one place.

And to double down on the web catalog concept, once I've decided upon my current season and the projects I've said yes to,

then those projects will get a standalone Mac app in my dock, and then that's what I look at and work on each and every day.

As a good example, I will now go through the ones I currently am using.

The first one is called my inbox.

This is a standalone Mac app.

It's actually not a project.

It's just like an inbox would be anywhere else.

It's a place for me to put random ideas.

I have a specific document just to throw anything that I don't know yet what to do with.

And I'll process that usually once a week at the latest to then move those items somewhere else.

I recommend you have a place like that.

It could be on your phone, could be a notepad.

I have a digital document for it, but a place where you can just write down

any thought that shows up and be able to filter and process later on.

Now, the rest of my custom Mac apps are all specific to projects I have going on right now,

and those include fitness, health, wealth, home projects, podcasting, and public speaking.

So I have specific Mac apps for each of these key areas, and these change by the season.

As soon as I finish one project, I'll add another one.

One thing you may have just noticed in that list, though, is that some of these things,

things are ongoing. Fitness is a good example. Health, wealth, home projects.

these are always there because my entire life will always have these projects.

But then I have more specific ones. My podcast and public speaking goals are a little

more tailored to my current season. And as new things pop up, I'll make custom

projects that are more targeted. For example, podcast ads sales or in my house,

I recently finished a big painting project. And I had a custom max.

app just for painting. So the cool thing here is you can be flexible between the

projects that are always there like home projects versus ones that are more

seasonal like you're going to train for a marathon the next six months. The cool

thing here is you can do whatever you want and that's the best part. And speaking

of customization and doing whatever you want, let's walk through the structure

of how I build out a Google Doc that includes a variety of projects. I want to

begin with the home projects document that I have. These are related to, yes,

projects in my home, repairing things, updating things, maintenance, that sort of thing.

And so in the actual doc itself, I leverage the Google Doc's tab feature.

And Tabs allows you literally to combine what would be multiple Google Docs into a single

document. This is literally what Evernote did for years, except that now Google Doc

has that availability, and they call it tabs and sub-tabs.

But it's the same concept.

It's just a way to have hierarchies within these documents and have basically an endless amount of potential for storing more information that's then divided between tabs and sub tabs, all included in a single document.

So for me to consolidate all of my home projects in one dock is very simple.

But then once you open that dock, there's a lot of potential between tabs and sub tabs to then dial into what it is I'm looking for.

So I have four main tabs that organize this document.

I have current home projects, upcoming home projects, future home projects,

and checklists for ongoing work I'll do later on.

So in this first tab, it's called current home projects.

I will then have sub tabs, which are the actual projects themselves.

Right now I have a project that's called seal the driveway because I'm working on my driveway repair.

Previously it was painting before that, something else.

But that is a place to put any current projects that need my attention and has a sub tab with a document by itself to organize that.

And then the cool part here is these subtabs act as standalone URL Google Docs and then can also be used for a custom Mac app.

So you're not forced to use the hierarchical Google Doc version.

You can use a sub tab URL and that could be its own thing.

The possibilities are endless here.

There's so much you can do to really dial in the customization, but the simplicity of this is beautiful.

And it's really just three things.

A single document that's consolidated with tabs that have your specific groupings, kind of like folders.

And then in those are sub tabs, which are the actual projects themselves.

So that's in a nutshell what all of these are, whether it's for home projects, personal fitness, any kind of a business project, whatever it is you're trying to do,

You organize it between docs, tabs, sub tabs that are the projects themselves.

This is complicated to explain in an audio-only podcast.

This will probably have to be a video tutorial.

At some point in the future, I will break that down, possibly as an online course, because there is a lot here.

If you want to learn more but the exact structure of what I'm talking about,

or if I just confuse you endlessly, email me, jeffat jeffsanders.com.

There is a lot here that probably should be done visually, probably on YouTube.

Anyway, there's a lot here.

I love it, but if you're confused, email me and I will figure it out.

Okay, now we've discussed kind of the bigger picture of how you might organize where the projects are

and where you might access those on your computer.

Let's get to more of the details themselves of what's included in a project Google Doc.

I have spent years customizing my own Google Docs to use fonts that I like and colors that I like

and specific ways to list out the next actions.

By the way, all of that is usually done for you

in a traditional project management software tool.

They will basically give you the format

and you have to learn how they do things.

What I'm talking about is basically a blank slate.

A Google Doc when it comes to you

is just an empty piece of paper, digital paper,

and you get to create and customize whatever you want.

If you don't know where to begin here,

just use a bullet pointed list

and just use whatever defaults are already built in.

You can always customize specific fonts and colors and formatting as much as you want,

but don't go there at first because it's just, it potentially is a lot.

So what I've done over the years is basically create very simple bullet pointed lists

of the key things in the order of events that I'm going to work on them.

And then I take it one step further and I do have color coding that I think helps a lot

to nail in exactly what it is you're doing next.

The first thing you'll see on my project list,

the ones that are active now,

is the color green,

which are the items that are complete.

When I'm done with something,

I'll do a strike through,

I mark it as the color green,

and I move on.

That helps a lot to really identify,

hey, I'm not going to look at this anymore.

It's done,

but the cool thing is,

I will have permanent access

to see what I've already completed,

which is fantastic for future projects.

I can always go back and see what I,

did and that gives me reference for the next time around. So green is the first

color you'll see. The second I use is blue. Blue is my current focus. It gives me a sense

of like here's the header for the next section I'm working on. Within that section,

I use the color red for the next action. The very next thing to do is in red that

gets my attention the most and that's what I'm usually focused on. All of the color

black is used for future actions and things I'll get to later. And then,

recently I added the color gray. Gray I use to make sure that I don't look at

something, but I still have access to it. In other words, I realized that I was

distracting myself with too much data. And so I used a color gray to say,

this is not applicable right now. Jeff, ignore this. And we'll get to it later,

which has been super helpful. Once again, the goal here is focus. And if you're able to say,

well, all the green things are already done, ignore those. All the gray things are not

applicable, ignore those. Well, what's left over is a much smaller list,

which means they're not overwhelmed by it. It's simple and clear,

and the thing to do next is in red. So you just do it. And then when it's done,

market is done and on to the next. That's literally all that I do here.

And that should be all that you're doing in whatever system you have built out or adopted.

Either way, simplicity wins. So now imagine that you look at your project list and you see the color red. Here's a next action.

what do you do with that specific task?

What I do is take one more step,

which is to move that item either into my task manager

or onto my calendar.

In other words, I am scheduling the action to actually do it.

It's one thing to know what's next.

It's another to commit to it with your time,

because that's when the actual event takes place.

Then you know the specifics around where you are,

what materials you need,

and how to make sure your life is oriented around the execution

of the task. None of this project management stuff matters if you don't do the work.

And the work that I do is based on what's scheduled. So at the end of the day,

whatever system you use to manage your projects, the actual next actions must be on

your calendar, must be scheduled in a way that says it's next, it's now, here we go.

And then the final step in this process is my review that I do once a week to look over

my project lists, and in my current life, I have about seven projects.

That sounds like a lot, but really most of these things have very little action.

Usually just one or two that gets my full attention.

But I will scan through each of these project lists and make sure that I'm still on

track with my goals.

And I'll confirm the next actions, make sure I know what those are.

And then that's also when I tend to schedule those next actions on my calendar

so I know when they're going to get done, which also guarantees that I have committed

time to make progress on each of these things I said was important.

Otherwise, I might ignore them.

I might miss them.

You could have weeks or months ago by and you just didn't work on something.

You said was important.

All of these systems are designed to make sure that what matters is top of mind,

that it is reviewed, it is scheduled, and it is done.

And if that is true, then your system is working.

And if it's not true, your system needs to be tweaked.

Probably a lot.

But that in a nutshell is how it all then wraps up.

And I have tons of review systems from weekly and monthly and quarterly,

but all that is designed to look over these systems,

make sure they're still operational, tweak them as needed, and then move forward.

And when all this is said and done, it sounds like a lot when I explain it,

I know on this podcast, but in actual execution, it's very quick.

I'll glance at a document, I'll see what's next, I'll toss it into Nosebee or on my calendar,

I'll do it, mark it's done, move on.

The actual day-to-day of this is very efficient, but it does take a bit of time to build that system and optimize it and make sure it fits your liking.

It has to fit you or the whole thing has to be redone.

And speaking of that, the final section this week is how can you do this?

How can you truly build your own streamlined system?

The first, the most obvious thing I think to begin is to leverage what you already have access to.

If you already have tools you like, double down on them.

Whatever it is that you think is going to be your best future, just lean in.

The biggest mistake that I see people make when it comes to productivity apps and calendars and task managers and project managers is they don't go all in.

They very sheepishly sort of try and then they say it doesn't work, but they didn't actually use the tool.

These tools are designed to put everything into.

And if you don't do that, there's no value there.

A good example, this is Noseby.

I was talking to someone at a conference years ago who had heard my podcast previously,

which is probably amazing.

And she had adopted Noseby as her task manager, but then decided it wasn't for her.

And so I dug into that and asked a little more about why.

Well, as it turns out, she only kind of used it sometimes.

She didn't really have a system of a place to put her next actions or her to-dos.

And so it was just another app on her phone.

that's all it was.

And if that's all these things are to you is just another thing you downloaded

and created a free account for and it just sits there, it's just junk then.

It's useless.

The goal is that these things are not just useful, but they are the thing that makes your whole life function.

This is the engine for your productivity.

And if you're not going to give everything to it, the engine will fail and you'll go nowhere

or you'll just spin in circles all day, which of course is not the goal.

So whatever apps you choose, whatever systems you decide to dig into, make it personal, make sure it fits who you are, but double down on it, actually give these tools the resources that they need so you can rely on them and trust them and use them each and every day as you pursue your next ambitious goals.

I feel like I've said a lot this week.

I feel like I talked more than I should.

So once again, if you have questions, yes, email me.

Jeff at Jeff Sanders.com.

This topic is a big one.

And it's one that I see as being a future potential, yes, online course,

yes, coaching, yes, something to really kind of take this to the next level.

Because how you organize your life and your projects and your work,

it is one of the most foundational choices you will make to ensure that your goals

are accomplished.

And without attention to these areas, I think you're going to see the things I discussed

before.

You're going to see the stress and the overwhelm.

and the frustration and the anxiety and the bottlenecks to progress.

And that's not the goal, clearly.

So having said that, thank you for sticking around this episode this week.

Let's get to that action step.

And yes, your action step this week.

Take a big step back and reorganize everything.

I know, that sounds like a lot.

But if you find yourself drowning,

in your own digital mess, you need a new system. Building a new productivity system

can take time, but it saves you endless hours of stress and anxiety from all the lost

hours you're fighting through now. So you don't have to use any of the tools that I do,

but you do need a system. And you need a good one. You need it now.

Now, of course, subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member

of the 5 a.M. Miracle community by getting the premium.

ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5am miracle premium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and all that fun begins bright and early.

---

© 5 AM Miracle Media, LLC