Internet Commonplace Book

Jul 12, 2014

#Get Organized

I’ll start this by saying that I struggle mightily with organization. I was able to stay super-organized in high school and college with what felt like very little effort, but it’s become more and more difficult in adulthood. I think it’s due to increased responsibilities (hi, family! hi, work! hi, professional commitments!), and I’m sure the daily pain I deal with from chronic headaches must play a role, too. The cherry on the sundae is that I’m not a naturally linear thinker, and while I generally think of that as an asset, if I just go with it entirely, it can take me down all sorts of byways most charitably described as laterally productive.

I get all my work done, and I do it well, but I have to push myself more now than I did in my teens & twenties. So! How do I do that?

  1. Bullet Journal
  2. Eisenhower matrix
  3. Being accountable to others: checklists, spreadsheets, e-mails, texts
  4. Super-direct self-talk

My bullet journal is my pride & joy. I use a Moleskine large journal w/gridded/graph paper. I don’t do everything exactly the way it’s laid out in the introductory video, but I’m pretty close. Here’s a fairly typical day:

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I use tabs to as a visual guide to separate the months or to call out any other major note-taking events (when I went to TEDxPhiladelphia, for example, I took a lot of notes and it’s easier for me to find them using the tab than checking the index at the front for what page range they’re on). These are 3M Post-It brand repositionable filing tabs. I luuuurve them:

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My favorite bullet journal resources are from Miss Zoot. There are also a bunch of extremely detailed videos available, which is a whole other level of planner pr0n I would do well to stay away from. 

I usually spend 5 minutes at the end of each day setting up my to-do list for the next day, and then a few minutes at the start of the day adding new items to the day’s list based on any pressing email that’s arrived in the night. 

This key is really helpful - I have a copy taped inside my bullet journal to refer to daily.

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THEN, I transfer all of those tasks to an Eisenhower Matrix. When it comes to organization, I do indeed like Ike! This tool helps me focus on getting tasks that are both Urgent AND Important done first, because if I don’t think about and categorize my tasks, I will spend way too much time on things that are Urgent, but Not Important, or Important, but Not Urgent. Those are usually the more fun things, the easier things to accomplish - on a to-do list, all items look equal, but that is a trick! On an Eisenhower Matrix, you can see where you should be investing your time. I create mine on the page facing my daily lists:

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Accountability to others is me sort of gaming myself. I’m more likely to fritter away my time & be laterally productive (“I know I have to read that article, but I would feel so much better if my desk were tidy!”) if I’m beholden only to myself, but when my responsibilities involve letting other people down if I fail to complete them, I will get right on them. So I keep my workflow as transparent as possible for my colleagues by using a shared Google Calendar and shared docs on Google Drive, many of which are checklists for the various webinars, workshops & meetings I’m involved in planning. This is also really important, because I telecommute most days, so the opportunity doesn’t exist for the usual office chit-chat about what’s on my plate. 

Finally, I talk to myself. Not constantly, but enough. I have been known to pull a Coach Taylor or two to keep myself on track.