This week I am taking on being organized. And I mean seriously organized. My room is still a little messy and my closet could probably do with a once over but my calendar? My calendar is spotless. I know what I am doing for every minute of the day (and I’m a fly by night person!) Instead of hampering me and making me feel like I have no choices I actually have tons of freedom and I am getting everything done. Seriously. Everything that matters to me is getting done. Best of all it’s easy!
Ingredients for an organized and highly productive life:
A capture tool – Something that you carry with you ALL the time that you write down all the things you come across during a day you have to do. It can be your phone or it can be a note book. It just has to be really easy for you to carry everywhere. You use it, for example, when you meet an acquaintance while you are out and you suggest lunch. You write this down in the capture tool: “Schedule lunch with x”. You keep a running list throughout the day of anything that comes up. And trust me, you will not remember. So write everything down. It de-clutters your mind and lets your keep your mind on more important matters.
Doing Now/Doing Later/Never Doing List – This can be on an excel spread sheet or a note pad. Here is where you categorize everything that you have written in your capture tool for the day. Things that are “Doing Now” are tasks and events that are projects that you are working on right now. For example, planning lunch with the acquaintance would be something that you would work on now to set in stone. Things that are “Doing Later” are tasks or events you will do in the future and have no relation to the tasks that you are currently working on. For example, planning a birthday party 9 months down the road is a “Doing Later” task. Things that are “Never Doing” are those awesome ideas that always bounce around in your head but in reality you will never do it. For example, you might have always bounced around the idea of moving to a different state but what’s most important to you right now is living next to your parents. This idea would currently reside in the “Never Doing” column. When you categorize an item it is not set in stone. Life changes and so something that might be a “Never Doing” becomes a “Doing Now”
After these items are categorized you begin to put the “Doing Now” items in your calendar. Give them a specific space and time. You will do the same with the “Doing Later” items.
Viola! You are about to have everything that is important to you done. And while I am incredibly smart this is not something I came up with all on my own. It’s a system called Mission Control. Check it out if you are curious.
While these fabric are incredibly organized that have a beauty about them. Which do you like best? In a perfect world how organized would you be?
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