Upgrading your personal systems

We all have work flows and personal systems we are comfortable with. They may be dated and inefficient but, gosh darn it, that's how we've always done it!

Well, maybe a late spring Saturday morning is a good time to think about upgrading one of your systems.

An example: Do you ever see those drop boxes where people can deposit their utility payments? Why are those still there? The people that use them never update their system.

I'm guilty of it. For some crazy reason, whenever I had a check to deposit at the bank, I would go in and have a teller do the transaction. Something in me didn't trust the ATM to do it right, and perhaps most importantly,  I had never used it for a deposit. After my wife made fun of me I realized it was time for a change. The next time I had a check to deposit, I went to the ATM. While I seriously almost put the deposit envelope in the wrong slot (the receipt dispenser - I'm not kidding), I successfully made the deposit and had it show up in our account the next day. Once I'd done it successfully, there was no going back to the old way. That was this year.

Isn't that how it is? We don't want to do something new - even knowing it's better and that everyone else does it - because there might be a little bit of a learning curve. We might look stupid or do it wrong. We might cause more trouble reworking things than we had bargained for (I had visions of trying to pry that envelope out of the wrong slot on the ATM and having the cops show up).

And yet...we might not only save time, but have more fun doing things that were once drudgery.

How you pay bills, manage email, remember information, store/organize stuff in your home or office, get up in the morning - any of these need a rethinking? A reset?

So here is my thought: let's not get complacent with our personal systems. Maybe this will help us keep from getting complacent in other areas of our lives, too.

Have you rebooted any of your personal systems lately?