I’m pretty obsessed with organization and productivity systems, and regularly try to upgrade mine. Of course as my life situation changes my organizational needs do too. Currently I’m working with:
- Binder for 5.5″x8.5″ paper with monthly calendar, week-in-view pages, and a section for ongoing and long-term to do lists
- Staple-bound two-year calendar (monthly, small) for carting around if need be
- Asana for business projects and some individual items: programming and blog post ideas and relevant links, gory details of large programming projects
- Assorted notebooks and looseleaf for meeting notes and to do items to be processed
It is rather a lot, but there is a lot to keep track of. The hub is the binder, which holds all the scheduling and long-term to do lists (not necessarily with all their details, of course). Asana is the equivalent of the binder for my team; we stash everything there. Everything else is supplemental.
Here are some comments on why I use the items I do.
Asana is a system we learned about through my business partner’s husband, who uses it at work. It’s a great way to coordinate a team. We use it for to do lists, idea lists, running conversation, and sharing files. Like any system, it has its drawbacks (in particular, I wish I’d known before I got embedded into the built in “Personal Tasks” workspace that I wouldn’t have the ability to rearrange the project list there), but it makes it pretty easy to stay coordinated and get necessary information back and forth.
The to do list section is a recent addition to the binder. I realized the binder wasn’t really the centerpiece if it only had scheduled items and daily to do lists, which of course can’t be made terribly far in advance. When I was first getting myself organized post-professorial-life, I tried Getting Things Done, the system in David Allen’s book of the same name. I still haven’t read the book; that first link is a summary, and you can read GTD information on zenhabits and 43 Folders sufficient to get going.
The takeaways at this point are Inbox Zero (which is never literal for me, but I try to keep my email inbox to one screen and keep my paperwork under control) and emptying my brain. I’ve started a weekly brain dump, writing down everything I want or need to do, regardless of deadline or importance. That information is then parceled out onto lists by category. Note that this doesn’t necessarily help you prioritize or select things to focus on, or give you any benchmark for “enough” work in a day; when I was attempting to be a professional crafter, I used a version of David Seah’s Printable CEO to score points for various activities. I’m not doing that right now, but if I were to try to be a freelancer I would probably turn back to it.
The binder itself stemmed from the realization that one reason my hardbound planner wasn’t working was that when I am really busy I turn to looseleaf to organize myself. I thought with a binder I could have my cake and eat it too, with pages that could be left out but then be put back. I still use looseleaf sometimes, but far less often.
Most of the binder is Scattered Squirrel printable planner pages, in case you’re looking for such things. I also crafted some items for it, which you can see in the craft blog post that shares a name with this one.
The staple-bound calendar was intended for my purse, but I’ve downsized the purse situation past where it fits. However, if I’m going somewhere where I’ll want to know my schedule, I can take it along. Once a week I synchronize my calendars.
I love notebooks. Paper is my friend. To make sure my notebooks love me back I try to use the Bullet Journal system. Mine’s a weak approximation, but I mark to dos with a checkbox, points of information with a bullet, and things I need to look into with an eye, and number all the pages and leave space at the beginning for a table of contents, which I try to update regularly. The Bullet Journal system doesn’t work at all for my day to day random jottings, but it’s terrific for meetings. I also find the right-arrow notation for to do items that have been rewritten in a different list extremely helpful.
This notebook, others, and random bits of paper I’ve written on are taken care of during the weekly GTD brain dump.
Finally, a note on something I don’t use, but have tried out in the past: a blog editorial calendar. I would write plans in and then change 90% of them, even multiple times. It works far better for me to keep lists of ideas, then text files for the baby steps (despite my love of paper, I most often blog entirely electronically), and then draft posts once they’re reasonably close to ready. The only scheduling I do now (aside from scheduling finished posts for future publication) is via putting specific posts on my to do lists.
When I was preparing to change careers from being a math professor, I considered professional organizing, and looked at their professional development to see what I could learn. There I had a general principle articulated to me that I’ve tried to abide by ever since: suit the system to the habit, don’t try to change the habit to suit the system. For instance, if you do something at the dining table that “should” be done at a desk, you’ll be more successful in staying organized if you give the necessary materials tidy homes in the dining room than if you try to force yourself to start working at a desk. All planner systems should abide by this principle – they should work with you, not force you to change yourself to work with them. I’m sure mine isn’t fully tweaked yet, but using a planner with removable pages and not using a blog editorial calendar despite all advice to do so are both ways I’ve tried to make working with my system a downstream swim rather than against the current.
Notebook photo by jarmoluk on Pixabay.