Organization, for me, seems to be one of those things that morphs, changes, and never really settles in to a nice Zen state that crackles and hums with calmness and wonder. But i want it to…
My Organizational History
In high school the school-printed an “agenda” book w/ school policies, handy conversions, school closing information, and at 8″ x 11″ it had a week per page and plenty of room to write all my assignments and after school activities. I remember having a lot to do in high school, but it was all related so it was easy to remember. Life was simple back then. ;-)
In college and for a few yrs after, I had a paper calendar, 2 pgs/week, were my ToDos and appts lived. The book was small enough to fit in a small bag, or hook it into a binder, or whatnot but had enough space for most of what i needed to do. I used post-its to supplement (if it was a task or appt that might move) and at that period in time, i had no devices to sync to or anything digital. This was my guide that made sure i did what i needed to and it worked so well i used it for 4+ years. (I may have had a Yahoo! calendar somewhere during this time, but it was mostly for birthdays and holidays.)
Grad school was where i really started using paper + digital to keep myself organized. I started using G-cal while keeping my paper book (the same type i had in college) for both tasks and appts. I manually synced both but inevitably the digital calendar was missing information.
April 2007 i bought a wirebound, page a day, Franklin Covey and started using that- i had found that my previous datebook didn’t have enough space. It worked mostly, but was hugemungously thick and annoying.
Jun 2007 i bought myself a Palm Treo to be able to access my work email remotely and started using the task lists, note area, and calendar exclusively.
When my work migrated to an MS Exchange Server it was easy to sync my phone and Outlook, but the problem was my phone had a problem and wouldn’t do it right. Plus, it like deleting data randomly. Plus, I was finding it hard to figure out how to keep seperate my personal and work contacts and calendar items in work outlook. So before i got a new Treo, i manually backed up my calendar to my long-ignored gcal and started using that exclusively.
Now i’m really having trouble. Currently I have a ToDoist.com acct (which i’ve been ignoring for my paper list the last few weeks), i have 4 calendars on Gcal- the primary of which is my personal, so i can’t use their Outlook sync bc i don’t need my personal items on my work calendar… (why don’t they let you change which cal is primary? seems simple enough to me)… and i’m looking into going totally paper again (which i dont really want to do) I always have my phone w/ me but instead of using it’s calendar feature, i use the internet to access gcal mobile- which only ever gives you 4 days at a time and doesn’t let you choose which calendars you can look at (whichever was the last you had “turned on” on your comp seems to be the ones that will show on mobile).
How do i keep my work outlook (which i currently ignore), gcals, lists, and ubiquitous device synced? No idea.
Things i like:
- I like having things with me- its easier to run into someone and answer a question or plan a meeting right there on the spot rather than saying, “i’ll email you dates” which just adds another thing i have to do. And the smaller things are, the more i keep them with me.
- Pink highlighters. My first job as an artist in a kids personalization store taught me this trick. Every time a job got done, it got highlighted. That way, we knew it was done, but could always read the details later if there was a discrepancy. There might be nothing more satisfying to me than seeing an entirely highlighted list (okay, maybe the highlighting itself). I might be holding tight to paper-tracking because highlighting is more satisfying to me than clicking a check box on the computer.
How do you guys stay organized and on track?
Please share- I really would like to know how you keep track of things. comment on this post or email me directly at julie dot strange at gmail dot com. Thanks!!
Thanks for this post! It’s neat to see other’s evolutions in organization. When I was in high school I used one of those binder systems, the type that you can buy replacement week/notes/address book pages to keep using it over time. In college I was introduced to the wire bound daily calendar with a good inch of space per hour to write in. Post college I’ve gone back and forth between some form of the daily paper calendar and online, ending up with an entirely online system.
Calendar: Google, synced to Outlook for work and to iCal for synchronization with iPhone
Todos: Remember the Milk, using a GTD system
Project notes: Evernote, in folders designated by area of life
Reference Notes: Evernote, in folders designated by area of life (but separate from projects)
Contacts: Apple address book, though a lot of email addresses are in Gmail. I’d love to sync these two.
Email: Work address, Gmail (for listserves and shopping), personal address (for friends and consulting) using IMAP to Thunderbird on work computer and Apple Mail on personal computer, in order to have one inbox.
RSS: I have folders for subjects, a MUST READ folder, and a DELETE (with no guilt) folder.
Thanks for giving me an excuse to think through this. I look forward to seeing what other folks are doing, too!!
My key suggestion is to let go. Don’t freakin’ worry about it so much. If it’s really important, pick one tool that you’re always using anyway and make sure things show up there.
Of course, I’m not trying to make my work any more mobile than it already is, so I don’t face the same issues.
But I’ll comment on some of the categories, since I’m oversimplifying.
Calendar: I just use Outlook at work. I use Google calendar, but only to make sure I get email reminders for recurring events, such as birthdays or to give the dog her heartworm meds every month. I rarely put any planned activities on it. I just remember those. And if I forget something, I wasn’t that excited about it in the first place.
Email: Work addy and Gmail. I also have an old Hotmail account that I check a few times a week that some of my old friends still use.
To do list: Basically, two folders in Outlook – Action and Follow Up. In Gmail, I just keep either category in my Inbox, which currently has all of 13 items in it. Review those folders regularly.
Contacts: Gmail, unless it’s work, then Outlook. Wouldn’t want to sync those.
Just don’t let retooling and fussing about your organizational systems keep you from actually doing things. And try minimizing the amount of work you can do from your ubiquitous device. You need a buffer.
Julie, you can probably guess this about me, but I don’t stay organized.
A whiteboard lists just about everything I’m not supposed to forget, and now I need another whiteboard.
Piles of papers, sorted by category or project, overlap on my desk.
Documents (or aliases for them) clutter my computer desktop, organized by document type, leaving a space where I know a new downloaded file will appear.
My work e-mail account is a to-do list. If it’s in the inbox, it needs my attention. There are 303 messages in my inbox.
Anything I’ve read online that I think there’s a chance I’ll want to find someday, I put in del.icio.us, and I tag things with words that I think I would use to find it. del.icio.us is very much a junk drawer for me, but sortable.
My Palm Pilot is synched to my Outlook calendar and address book. I try to enter everyone into my Outlook address book as possible, but I’ve slacked lately. I don’t carry the palm pilot unless I’m going somewhere for work without a laptop or if I think there won’t be wireless.
I never delete a sent mail.
I can generally always find what I need, but sometimes it takes 5 minutes or so.
I think it was Stephen Abram who wrote not that long ago something like “do the important things first”. Even as a librarian, organizing my work is not an important thing. Most often, writing people back and following up with them is most important to me.
@Lauren
Do you like Evernote? I heard about it a few wks ago but was reluctant to try yet *another* thing.
@Greg
I hear ya on the “simplify” mantra. That is the ultimate point. It’s quite possible that my attempt at high connectivity and everywhere-access has made things more of a frantic buzz than a calmer crackle and hum. I tried to keep things separate but together as i don’t see “work” being different from “life” but something about your separation whispers calmness.
@Caleb
I always picture greatness as either really *effortlessly* simple or really *effortlessly* classically disorganized, as you describe yours. I think it’s the differences between what the Buddha and Einstein’s desks might look like. And you’re right- the “organize” thing on my ToDoList is always in my mind, but ever the first thing i do since there are always more important things to do- like maintaining relationships.
*MORE ON WHAT MY LIFE LOOKS LIKE*
Email: 2 for work, 1 gmail, 1 old yahoo for mostly spam and random things. Like Caleb, I don’t delete SENT emails- delete like crazy completed action emails and emails that i don’t see needing for reference.
Desk: Someone said they were jealous of my desk being so clear yesterday. I then held up the giant bag-o-desk that i had put together to take home and go through on my week off. Never did. Still in bag.
I do like Evernote! I mostly like it because I can see the information from both my computers and my phone, so I am never left wishing I had brought home a file. I create a folder for each thing I have going and put a “+” in front of the name if it’s ongoing, a “=” if the project will end at a definite time, and a “?” if the project has potential but can’t happen now. All of a sudden I’m getting rid of paper files, deleting email, taking snapshots of whiteboards and erasing them, and generally getting rid of clutter. I email all kinds of things to the system, as they come up, so that I don’t have to keep little lists all over the place. If you want an invite to poke around, just let me know!
I don’t delete sent emails either.
There’s some irony to me talking about separating work and life, because I’m on call all the time (other than Derby Day tomorrow, when the library is actually closed). But I can remote into my work PC from my home PC or my laptop, so I don’t need every device to have all of my work info on it. And I prefer that they don’t.
I don’t want to know what’s going on in my work inbox when I’m not there. Nothing THAT important is communicated over email. I want as few reminders of work when I’m not in the office as possible. I get too many calls at home already. There need to be times where I can say “I can’t help you with that right this second. I’ll be home in a few hours and will take a look at it then.” Or “let me call my systems engineer to look into that.” But if you are connected to your work all the time, then the expectation is that you are available all the time. I can’t have that. Your mileage may vary.
You sound exactly like me! I have gone through the same evolution. I’m pretty happy with the system I have now. And actually I was thinking about posting some pictures to my site. Maybe next week.
I use Outlook and use the GTD system and highly recommend the book Take Back Your Life. It combines GTD with Outlook. It’s become my bible!
But I only use Outlook for the calendar and contacts. The task list was too cumbersome to keep up with. I am a visual person.
So I plan everything in Outlook. Then I have a wall in front of me at work covered in post it notes for project managment. Each column is a project. Notes go down the wall with tasks, note, and dates. I also use a paper daily planner to take notes during the day and to write down ideas or project info that I need to transfer to my wall of post its.
It sounds like a lot but it’s really not. Good post!
I was using my Mac and iCal as a planner, and then I used my mobile phone to sync with that. But I didn’t really feel like being in control of this system somhow. Since this year I’m using a nice Moleskine weekly planner, and I’m very happy with it! Somehow it keeps my thoughts organized much better!
I just wrote a post yesterday about organizing your paperwork on my own blog. Feel free to have a look :)
I’m working my way through the Getting Things Done book, and one of my favorite items in it was the tickler file by date, so you can just file things and forget about them.
But one other little handy tool I’ve found is called “stickies”. (for the pc–I know the Mac already does this).
It lets you create sticky notes on your desk top with those little niggling things you need to remember to do. What reminded me of it was your satisfaction marking things off with the pink highlighter. You can mark things off the sticky and delete it entirely when you’ve finished the task. You can organize the stickies and stack them up as well, so you can have different stickies for different categories (like books I need to buy, people I need to call), etc.
I find my iPhone calendar really helpful too, because I can set it up to ping me a day or a few hours ahead of a meeting or event to remind me, then I can forget about it until the phone reminds me.
Farfield, I’ll be interested to read your post on organizing paper, since that is my personal bugaboo!
I was very happy to be once again working for an institution that uses MS Exchange. As much as I get frustrated at times with MS products, Outlook is a very functional tool for communicating, coordinating, and keeping track of my tasks.
I use the calendar for everything, even personal stuff, which I tag appropriately. I create tasks for my to-do list, with due dates and reminders for short-term items, and no due dates for ongoing projects. I also use the tasks function to create reminders for regular things like the coffee shop closing early on Fridays.
And, it syncs fine with my cheap-y Palm Z22 for portability, so you may want your tech folks to look into why Outlook isn’t syncing with your Treo.
For non-work stuff, I use Remember the Milk to keep track of my review assignments. I like the time-management aspect and the RSS feed that allows me to post it to my blog sidebar.
Great post, thanks for the info
Being organized is a life long struggle. I find if I use just one system and one calendar for EVERything , then I get work to get it together. Look at
The organized librarian.blospot .com/ It is work in progress, but it is slowly working.