I’ve played with a number of organizational systems and after many years and created one that really works well for my life. There’s a short history of how I got here but if you’re anxious to see how I organize my life, you can skip right to the process here.
How I Got Here
In early education I took no notes, and did not establish goals nor try to achieve anything. I remember sitting with my 4th grade teacher talking about goals and I didn’t understand why creating goals was a good idea. Still don’t believe in traditional goals but I have a type of goal that works for me (no timeframe, loose directional goal).
Once I started working, I developed a system to record my work and make a list of tasks that I felt I should accomplish. I worked for a startup company out of college and was 20+ years younger than everyone else and so this system was necessary. I took a single lined notebook and broke up tasks into blocks where I recorded my work as I had to refer to it later. This system was very helpful but I found that by recording it, most things were top of mind, and if not I could easily go back and look up what I worked on in the past. I also made a simple list with check boxes for all of the things I wanted to accomplish each day. Here is a page from my original organizational system.
Later on I augmented my paper system with a digital counterpart to record tasks and longer arch projects.
How I Stay Organized
I dump all of the things I feel I should accomplish into a daily list in Bear and a second list of longer term projects in Things. These are both Apple specific applications. I have used alternatives on Linux and Windows but prefer this stack. If you’re in Apple’s little garden, things are good. If you’re forced to fend for yourself its more work but you have more options, things just break more.
I also maintain notes in Bear for networking, things I’ve leant to friends, notes from meetings and other specific projects.
I also journal daily on 750words which helps me put distance between my thought and my actions and organize what is truly important. I find that when I am emotionally blocked, digging into what is upsetting me yields a quick list on Bear that I can hammer through which results in mental peace.
Organizing without Apple
I recently had a corporate computer where iCloud was disabled. I transitioned to Dropbox Paper for my daily list of ToDos and Google Sheets for longer term projects. Migrating back was a pain and my Bear notes are still unformatted for the period where I used Dropbox Paper but it was fairly painless and worked well.
Final Thoughts
A system is important to help you stay in flow and declutter your mind. I find that writing down my tasks each day does two things. First it allows me to empty my mind and relax, knowing that all of the things I want to do are organized and enumerated in a safe place. Secondly, it allows me to build momentum as I check off things on the list and have a sense of accomplishment. Finally it serves as a searchable audit log I can use in the future to figure out when I did a certain thing. I rarely go back very far but I routinely by last week to pick up things I didn’t accomplish and move them up and follow up with people that haven’t gotten back to me over text or email.