You know, sometimes I think back to how chaotic things used to be. Just piles of stuff everywhere, digitally speaking. Notes scattered, projects overlapping, just a real mess. It reminds me of the time I first tried to get organized using that ‘Kieth Woods’ idea I stumbled upon somewhere.
I don’t even remember where I first heard the name or the specific details, honestly. It wasn’t like some official methodology I read in a book. It was more like a whisper, a vague concept somebody mentioned, maybe Kieth Woods was the guy who pushed this idea? The core thing I latched onto was simplicity. Extreme simplicity. Get rid of everything non-essential. That was the feeling I got.
My Process Trying It Out
So, I decided to give it a shot. What did I have to lose, right? My old system wasn’t working anyway.
- First, I just stopped using most of the fancy tools I had accumulated. Project managers, complex to-do apps, all that jazz. Gone.
- Then, I grabbed a basic text file. Yeah, just plain old Notepad. Seemed radical at the time.
- I started listing only the absolute must-do tasks for the day. Like, maybe three things. Max.
- Anything else? I either dumped it onto a separate ‘maybe later’ list, which I rarely looked at again, or just decided it wasn’t worth doing. Brutal.
- I tried to handle communication the same way. Short, direct emails. No fluff.
It felt weirdly liberating at first. Like cleaning out a cluttered garage. Less noise, less distraction. For really simple, straightforward tasks, it actually worked okay. Check email, make that one phone call, write that short report. Done.
Where It Got Messy
But here’s the thing. Life isn’t always simple tasks in a neat row. As soon as things got complicated, the whole ‘Kieth Woods’ thing, or my interpretation of it, fell apart fast.
Trying to manage a multi-stage project? Forget it. Coordinating with a team? Nightmare. That plain text file just wasn’t cutting it. Details got lost. Nuance disappeared. It was like trying to build a house with only a hammer. You can bang some nails in, sure, but you need more tools for the actual job.
It reminds me a bit of my first job out of college. The boss there had a similar vibe. “Just get it done,” he’d say. No process, no structure, just pure willpower. And yeah, sometimes simple stuff got done fast. But anything complex? It was chaos. Errors, missed deadlines, people blaming each other. That job burned me out pretty quick.
So, that Kieth Woods experiment? It was interesting. It taught me the value of stripping things down sometimes. But it also taught me that simplicity has its limits. You need the right tools and processes for the complexity you actually face. Trying to force extreme simplicity onto everything doesn’t make things simple; it often just makes them impossible. Now, I try to find a balance. Keep it as simple as possible, sure, but not simpler than necessary. That old job, and my little Kieth Woods phase, taught me that much.
