I’ve been sick now for about a week and I’m not enjoying it one little bit, but it has given me some useful ‘down’ time at home which I’ve put to good use to get some irritating but essential little jobs done.

There are a number of things you can do to stay productive while you are laid up sick and coughing:

1. Sort out your digital photograhs

I took the opportunity to sort out around 3000 digital photographs over the past week.  These have been photographs people have given me (mostly of family functions) or photos that I have taken and never quite got around to sorting out.  I’ve managed to put them all into categories and uploaded a heap of them to our backup server or online.  I’m feeling pretty good about this one as it has been on my todo list for a number of months.

2. Put some unwanted items on Ebay

This is another nice, quiet activity that doesn’t really require much more than a laptop and internet connection, and can be done from bed.  I’d already taken the photographs of the items I wanted to sell (and sorted them out during number 1) so I had no excuse but laziness for not getting them sold.  I managed to get half of my list of items on Ebay and sold before I got tired of this one.

3. Online Christmas Shopping

This one may not be so good for those to whom impulse buying is a problem, or those who may not be thinking properly, but for the runny nose/coughing group, getting some shopping done online is great.  I managed to make a list and get a number of things either purchased or into wishlists for both my own purchases and those all important ‘send me a list of what you want’ requests from my family.

4. Write letters to people

I love writing letters.  And I love receiving them.  But it seems that I just never have enough time to get all the letters done that I want to write.  So I used my quiet time to get a heap of handwritten letters done to my loved ones and then got someone to post them.

5. Maintain websites and write some blog posts

Yeah, this one is probably cheating, but I did spend some time lying on the couch with my laptop updating plugins, cleaning up html, reloading information and typing posts for my blogs.  Great stuff that is important and I never seem to find the time for.

So this is my list of what I achieved while I was sick this past week.  I’d love to hear other thoughts of what can be accomplished to keep productive while sick.

Finding myself in charge of organising all the food required for the week, and making sure I have enough time to shop and cook has required me to revisit some old processes.

Before I was married, I was a bit of a ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ kinda girl and didn’t really plan food too carefully.  Now, with my new system, everything is planned and organised (or getting there.)

So how do I do it?

Well.  I plan the week’s food requirements out in advance, normally on a Saturday.  I am currently using Kikki K’s excellent menu planner (although I wish it started on the weekend instead of Monday) and plan all the meals for the week ahead.

I then check the fridge and pantry, complete my shopping list on Remember the Milk and go shopping.  We have a habit of cooking larger meals and either eating them again during the week or freezing the leftovers, so normally there is only one or two week nights that need cooking.  The rest is reheating, which really saves both cooking time and washing up.  I now tend to try to cook at least one but generally two main meals on the weekend so they are ready to go, and have a couple of lunches in the fridge to save time in the morning.

Tomorrow, I need to clean out the pantry as I have no idea what is in there, but this system is working out pretty well for me at the moment.

What I now use:

• Toodledo - the current staple of my system, it manages my work and personal tasks and allows me to track by context, goal or time I have available.  I especially like the ‘schedule’ option which asks me my context and how much time I have, and allocates a task for me based on the priority I have assigned.
• Outlook – I just can’t escape it.  My email account at work is delivered to my Outlook inbox and most of my work tasks arrive there.  Add to that, I have a WinMo phone and it backs up to Outlook on a periodic basis.  Outlook isn’t my email client of choice for home, but it still has to be accounted for.
• Franklin Covey Planner: I have a beautiful Franklin Covey planner that I use at home for notes, task lists and other reference material.  I don’t store my current task list in the planner, but use it more for notes and reference materials.  I also don’t currently use my planner at work, it is purely personal.
• WinMo Phone: This is the lynch pin of the entire system.  My personal email is delivered to my phone as well as muy gmail account, and it goes with me everywhere.  At the moment I can’t keep up with my Toodledo task list on my phone, as the Toodledo mobile site doesn’t work that well with my phone, but I have everything else at hand.

Things I’d like to add/use:

• Evernote.  I have played with Evernote in the past, but just can’t get the hang of it.  I’d really like to though.
• Remember the Milk: I have a RTM account that I use for some lists, but due to a rather painful input UI, I just don’t use it as much as I should.  Which is why I moved to Toodledo.
• Delicious.  Like Evernote, I’ve never really managed to get the hang of Delicious.  One day perhaps.

At this stage, my system is still far from perfect.  I think I still have too many variables where something can go wrong and things can get lost in the system, but I’m slowly minimalising everything down to a few trusted collection buckets.

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I did actually trial a fair few of the applications I said I would.  I installed things on my phone; I got online accounts.  But at the end of the day I realised that while each of the applications I tried would manage my tasks, it really came down to how I organised them in the first place, not where I put them.

So the core of the problem is this.  I am inherently disorganised when it comes to my personal tasks.  For things related to work, I am right on top of it.  But when it comes to my private life, I’m a complete mess.

So instead of putting off the act of actually organising myself but endlessly searching for the right solution, I decided to properly deal with the problem.  I am actually getting organised.

I’ve taken a bit of inspiration from Tim Ferris and am outsourcing things that need to get done but aren’t a priority for me.  Enter my new ironing lady and the people doing some web design for me.

I’m also completing or giving up on all the miriad of little projects that have been hanging around in my head for years slowly driving me both insane and lazy.

Will this work?  Who knows.  But I really feel that before I can give any task manager, system, program or plan the attention and use it deserves, I need to close of few of the open loops and give the manager/program/system a chance.