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I’ve been using some of the time over the holidays to catch up on my “read later” list. This is a list I keep in Evernote where I put any articles, blog posts or stories I find online or in my rss feed and want to read later on. In this way I can focus on the task at hand without getting distracted on the interesting thing I’ve just found.

This collection does not normally get processed as part of my weekly review as I already consider it in my “to read when I have time” box. The only problem is I’ve found that it is easy to forget that it is there and things can remain unread for months at a time. I’m going to put a reminder in my calender to review this collection at a monthly interval at least.

Some GTD purists will be saying “You should be doing this as part of your weekly review” In this cast I disagree; adding them to the weekly review would only put more stress on deciding how to process these items. I put these items in this list for the reason that I can afford to go back to them at my leisure. That is not to say I should be ignoring them for months at a time. Particularly where there are some very good items I could make use of. Adding a calendar remind will meet this goal.

Your productivity system will never be exactly the same as anyone else. There is no one perfect system that works for everyone. We create and mold our systems to what works for us. There is nothing wrong with keeping an open mind and if someone else has a idea that might help us, it is in our best interest to try it. If it works – great. If not then move on and acknowledge that your tried something new.

One last point about trying something new. If you decide to try something give yourself ample time to make sure it either does or does not work for you. Far too often we don’t give enough time to try something new, only to return to it later on and this time, you discover it is the solution you are looking.

Question: What new things have you tweaked in your productivity system.