Energy-Attitude Chart (or staying productive)

So I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about working, how to be most effective, and how to stay productive. All this was spurred on from when I first started consulting a few months ago, and quickly ran into so much demand for my time and tasks to do that I was totally overwhelmed and had 'get my shit together' so to speak. I've always been somewhat disorganized.
I'd heard a lot about this book called 'Getting Things Done', which I read, and it turned out to be a huge help in getting myself better organized. I very much recommend it.
It also got me thinking about when I do my best work, and when I can't seem to do anything right, and I've boiled it all down to this chart here I came up with:

So, it works like this. I've noticed that I'm at my best when my level of energy and my attitude is good and balanced. Too much or too little of the other, and I fall into not being as effective as I could be. So one axis is how much energy I've got for that task, and the other is my attitude about it. The shades of red represent roughly how productive I am at different 'zones'. So when I'm depressed or manic, an extreme low or high of both, I'm least effective. When I've got too much of one, and none of the other, I'm only a little effective. When I've got the right amount of one, but not of the other, I'm doing ok, but when I've got I've got the right amount of both is when I do my best.
So now, my big goal here, is to try to keep myself in that center cross, and preferably right in the center, by managing my time, environment, process, and such, and by choosing when to do certain things. The whole 'task context' thing that the Getting Things Done book talks a lot about.
Now to those that read my blog because of Revit or CNC, my next few posts will be about those things, I promise. I don't want to loose my two readers. I just wanted to post this up 'cause it has been helping me a lot, and I wanted to share. So I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about working, how to be most effective, and how to stay productive. All this was spurred on from when I first started consulting a few months ago, and quickly ran into so much demand for my time and tasks to do that I was totally overwhelmed and had 'get my shit together' so to speak. I've always been somewhat disorganized.
I'd heard a lot about this book called 'Getting Things Done', which I read, and it turned out to be a huge help in getting myself better organized. I very much recommend it.
It also got me thinking about when I do my best work, and when I can't seem to do anything right, and I've boiled it all down to this chart here I came up with:

So, it works like this. I've noticed that I'm at my best when my level of energy and my attitude is good and balanced. Too much or too little of the other, and I fall into not being as effective as I could be. So one axis is how much energy I've got for that task, and the other is my attitude about it. The shades of red represent roughly how productive I am at different 'zones'. So when I'm depressed or manic, an extreme low or high of both, I'm least effective. When I've got too much of one, and none of the other, I'm only a little effective. When I've got the right amount of one, but not of the other, I'm doing ok, but when I've got I've got the right amount of both is when I do my best.
So now, my big goal here, is to try to keep myself in that center cross, and preferably right in the center, by managing my time, environment, process, and such, and by choosing when to do certain things. The whole 'task context' thing that the Getting Things Done book talks a lot about.
Now to those that read my blog because of Revit or CNC, my next few posts will be about those things, I promise. I don't want to loose my two readers. I just wanted to post this up 'cause it has been helping me a lot, and I wanted to share.