One of things I’ve discovered about myself recently, with more clarity than I’ve ever had before, is that my interest in “organization” goes a lot deeper than I ever really suspected.
When I grew up, the family would track the time it took to drive from one place to the other. We would experiment with different routes till we were positive we had identified the most consistent and fastest route. Having identified said “best” route, we would would always stick to it from then on forward. We had the evidence. Anything else would be an intentional waste of time.
Later in life I continued this experimentation in efficiency – with household chores: Which outlets do you use when vacuuming to minimize the number of times you have to unplug and replug? When emptying the dishwasher, what items do you grab together to minimize the trips across the (admittedly small) kitchen? What side of the garage do you park the car to maximize door swing space – accounting for who gets home first and who’s has the kids? 
What is the most efficient order for the morning routine? If you don’t know what I mean, watch the first 10 minutes of Stranger than Fiction. The lines, measures, calculations — they really do run through my head like that.
It’s all sort of trivial in one sense because you don’t really save that much time and avoid that much hassle, but somehow it gives me peace. A feeling that things are right with the universe, and I’m making the most it.
More recently however, I have been taking the practices to work. The challenge of course, is that the problems are quite a bit different there. As a Knowledge Worker, there is never a project that is repeated – and that makes it hard to experiment with efficiency. You might create procedures or policies to follow over and over, but then the whole point there is to specifically not vary.
So you focus on the the other stuff. How to organize the ideas. How to decide what to work on. How to decide how to decide. There is a lot more meta work than one might think. What are you researching? What has to happen next when the research is done? How do you remember to follow up with the vendor that hasn’t answered your questions? How do you follow up with the person sitting next to you? What if they are too busy to answer you? What if the right time to follow up is at 2pm next Thursday? How do you remember it all?
So I’m rambling here, but where I am going is that I’ve found some tools, crutches, stuff as you say, to help organize it all. And I feel like I am actually getting things done for once. I feel like I’ve appropriately captured all of the information I need to, and that it’ll be obvious to me what I need to work on tomorrow morning. 
I’m not sure this specific stack is optimal, but these tools are the things that have been helping me. And as silly as it may be, I’m kinda excited about them.
The things that help me get things done:
#1: Getting Things Done principals. I’m not following it 100%, but overall it really works for me. Drop the concept of a priority list and work off of lists for: at work, at home, in the car, etc. 43folders has a nice intro: Getting Started with GTD.
#2: You’ve got to have a way to track your to-do’s and other random data that you want to get done. I’ve been using Backpack for a year or so and really can’t explain why it works for me. Outlook’s To Do’s failed, Palm Organizer’s failed, and they should have all worked. But Backpack really works for me. If I were always on the same computer, I’d use OmniFocus in a heart beat. As it is, the web platform of Backpack works well for me.
#3: Ubiquitous data collection. I keep some paper around and have been meaning to try out one of those Moleskine’s notebooks, or perhaps a Hipster PDA. But despite what they all say about an easy, fail-proof, no-batteries-needed collection method, my iPhone has been working pretty well. I send myself an email while on the road and then pick it up and process the reminder the next time I am at a desk. 
And Jott is absolutely fabulous. When you’re driving, or in my case walking about the building remembering that I forgot to do ___, I just call Jott and record a reminder. They bundle the message up, transcribe it, and send it automatically to my email inbox – waiting perfectly for me the next time I can do something about it. This is an extremely useful service. I use it a few times every week.
#4: Inbox Zero. I use my email as a dumping ground for everything that yet needs to be sorted, cataloged, or otherwise acted on. So I need to process my email – not read it. I wrote a post on Inbox Zero a while back and having an empty inbox is remarkably freeing. Really, if you just approach your inbox as a list of things to process (while maintaining your to-do list elsewhere) you’ll be miles ahead. David Allen suggests that if you can’t “do” the email in 2 minutes or less, delegate or defer. Get it onto the correct to-do list, and get it out of your inbox. Don’t be afraid to delete stuff too. And get Google Desktop to search your email. This works wonderfully, and I no longer mess with folders and sub-folders for organizing – they never really helped me find things anyway.
#5 Contact Management. This is a new addition for me. I’ve had a digital address book for a decade or more, but Highrise takes it up a notch. Instead of just tracking the basics (name, phone numbers, email address, etc), you get to track historical notes about people. What did they say when? Was there an important email sent? What did it say? The real gem however, is To-Do’s attached to contacts and notes. Create them ad-hoc, or my favorite way: send an email to your dropbox+tomorrow, dropbox+nextweek, etc custom email address and not only does it attach the email into Highrise for future reference, but it automatically creates a follow up reminder for you. My jaw dropped when I ran across this feature. I use it every day. It’s perfect.
Anyway, these are the ways I’m staying productive now-a-days. They seem to be working for me, but if you have ideas or your millage varies let me know! I’d love to hear about what works for you and what doesn’t.
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