A Little Off Blog

Taking care of tasks April 18, 2009

I see people every day who seem to not have a method to organize their activities.  I can’t understand how you can go through your work day let alone your life without a calendar and task list.  What I don’t understand is how can people remember what to do if they don’t have some kind of organizational method and tools.  I know for sure that I can’t do it.  I have to have a system in place to capture, track and manage all of my activity.  When I don’t, I suffer from lack of focus, I feel lost and I have a sense of feeling utterly unable to accomplish anything.  I simply feel unorganized.

There are a number of examples of people with good and bad organizational methods.  My wife is a good example of a bad organizer.  She isn’t always able to remember things.  I think it’s because she doesn’t write everything down.  Only recently has she started to use a calendar to keep appointments, but even then she doesn’t always remember to put reminders into it.  It kills me.  In her defense, she always remembers the important stuff, it’s the little stuff that she forgets.  For me, forgetting the little things is what destroys my productivity and without an organizational system I am lost.

Keeping yourself organized requires a method.  I’ve seen many and I have used many.  There are those methods we  invent on our own as well as those that we can learn.  “Getting Things Done” http://www.davidco.com is my current method of choice but there are many others including the “Post-It Note” method, “Index Card on the Wall Nail” method, the “Franklin Day Planner” method, “Pen and Paper” method and others.  None of these methods are the best for everyone.  Usually one of them is the best for you.  Also, none of these methods are 100% perfect.  You will have to adjust them no matter what to find a method that works best for you.

Tools are an important part to keeping myself organized.  I frankly don’t think I could get or stay organized without them.  There are numerous tools that can help you.  There are Blackberry Devices, Palm devices, the Microsoft Outlook client, the  Lotus Notes client and the good old standby…pen and paper.  I have personally used all of these and many more.  Frankly, all of them fall short in some way or other.  I’ve learned that no matter what tool or tools you use they will never be perfect.  It’s all about finding the best way to make these tools useful to you and that work with your method.

For me, keeping my activities organized makes me feel secure.  I’m focused and I’m not losing stuff no matter if it’s ideas or pieces of paper or electronic documents.  Everything is organized.  When that happens, I have found that the single most important benefit from getting and staying organized  is an absolute sense of accomplishment each and every day.  When my days are organized, I focus on the tasks that need to get done and at the end of the day I can honestly tell my self that I was successful today.  I’ve never slept better.