These last two months have been incredibly busy for me. We’ve grown to 24 people now in e3internet, and are currently interviewing for an additional 5 vacancies. I remember when we started out as a small company of 4 people; my main concern was finding work. As you grow through that stage the problem is not finding work - but managing it.

So on those lines I bought a couple of books from Amazon.

The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun

This book is packed with real world experience and practical guidelines to organising any web or application project. It was also interesting to see Matthew Mullenweg is a fan, having used this book when running the wordpress project.

Getting Things Done – David Allen

I really expected this one to be more of the usual time management fluff. I’m a big fan of short books and practical advice and this book didn’t let me down. To summerise massively, David’s theory is that you should get all those tasks out of your head and down on paper/PDA/ etc. Keeping uncompleted objectives in your ‘mental RAM’ only causes you stress and stops you focusing 100% on the task at hand. Once you have written all these objectives down, from buying milk on the way home to launching a web site – you then have to decide the next immediate physical action to move it forward.

Top marks to Amazon for the recommendation there, they were well worth the $50.

To support the new ultra-efficient me - I’ve been using Wikidpad, a handy OpenSource desktop wiki I have installed to my flash pen. Like some applications it has been programmed well but the presentation is lacking IMHO – so here is my ‘quick start guide’

1 min guide to wikidpad

After installing it, open and make a new wikidpad file (wiki> new). Preferably stick this datafile on a flash pen so you always have the wiki to hand. To create a new page type a link [like this] or LikeThis and click on them to see the new page. You can use command words like [action: ring Jim] to make an item appear in your action list (on right hand directory tree, look under views > action).

Other command words are todo, track, projects and question. Write [priority=1] to put the page into that list (views > priority) and [icon=beer] to highlight pages about SEO conferences.

So what tips do you have on getting organised, both yourself and your company? Any books or techniques you would recommend?

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