It is impossible to stay organized without action. If there’s no action on paying bills, the mail will pile up; if theres no action on the laundry, the clothes will pile up; etc. Certain points of compulsion are necessary to ensure that these actions happen.
If the conclusion you are drawing from the combination of this title and this photo, is that your Time Management System is missing Post-It notes, then go ahead and laugh. There’s a little more to it than that, but I stand by my Post-It’s. There are a lot of time management systems out there, both paper and digital, but I have found that NONE of them facilitate prioritizing, especially sudden RE-prioritizing.
Your to-do list isn’t working for you because you are trying to reduce 3 steps to just one. To get your to-do’s to done, requires three essential action steps:
I think I just invented a new word. Com•pel•e•ment |comPELement| (noun) 1 element used to compel one to action. So many organizing efforts are focused on containing items out of sight and out of mind. There are, however, things that we need to make a point of acting on, that should NOT be hidden. Quite the opposite. We need things to stick out like a sore thumb to compel us to action. Those are the compelements. Here are some examples.
Bound and spiral notebooks may make sense for taking notes in school or keeping a journal, but they are terrible for keeping you organized. I have seen thousands of (usually) half-used notebooks in my clients homes and not once have I seen one used as an effective organizing tool. I would add notepads to this list and exclude binders, which can be useful for reference material.
When I work with clients with terminally cluttered desks, I always start by asking how much of the pile is stuff they have to make a point of acting upon and how much of it do they just need to be able to find? Not surprisingly, they usually tell me it ALL needs to get done. Well, there’s no way to focus on an amorphous pile of competing papers.
Tough goals need to be accomplished in stages, in much the same way volleyball players get the ball over the net. You may be accomplishing these goals with a team of coworkers or as a team of one. Whether your are delegating to others or doing the next step yourself, the better the set, the better the spike. When you give your team clearly defined goals and instructions, it is more likely that you will get the results you seek.
Being truly organized requires a balance of three limited resources: space, time, and energy. The first two are pretty obvious, but "energy" is often overlooked. You may be working in a comfortable, productive space and you may have what seems like a well planned out schedule, but if you haven't budgeted for your energy levels, it can all come unravelled.
Originally from Matt Baier's Organizing Works Newsletter, January 2009 REACHING GOALS January is the month we like to make a fresh start. Getting organized is a very popular New Year's resolution and this month I would like talk specifically about how to stick to the goals we set. These goals can be as small as focusing on "simple" errands or as large as creating a website.
Originally from Matt Baier's Organizing Works Newsletter, September 2008 DROPS IN A BUCKET Getting the most out of your time requires many of the same principles as getting the most out of your space, including benefiting from a series of small gains rather than expecting one big one.
