Thursday, June 8, 2017
I’ve been asked to do a workshop helping people schedule and put together a plan to get things done. Organizing my thoughts and putting them into action is something I’ve always thrived on. The satisfaction of crossing something off the list was all the motivation that I needed to then move on to the next thing. When I was in school, they required us to have planners that most of the kids complained about because they felt it was thrust on them. Not me, though. I embraced that planner and used it for all it was worth!
There are multiple tools that I use to now stay organized. A mix between online and offline methods that I’ve grown accustomed to over time. Here’s a list of my favorites and how I use them. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comments! I always love exploring new tools to help me organize!
Tools4Wisdom (Amazon, $35)
This is my planner that I found on Amazon. I love it and it’s what keeps me most organized! I use the monthly planner to list all of my activities throughout the month. As soon as I know a specific date and time, it goes in the monthly section. Then each Sunday, before a new week starts, I pull what’s on the monthly calendar for that week over to the weekly section and schedule it in. I list all of my goals along the bottom to work in tasks related to them throughout the week. Then I plan out three tasks to tackle each day. I also schedule in chores and cleaning each day, so that there’s not a lot to do on any one day in particular. Here’s a sample week from my planner:
Trello (Free mobile app and online website)
Trello is amazing because I can take all of the projects that are on my list and organize them in a way that I can create to do lists, deadlines, set reminders, and prioritize my tasks in a way that I can’t do on paper. On Trello you create cards (as many as you want!) and then you can easily move them around, set goals within goals, and share with your coworkers even! This is a great tool for project management.
Our Groceries (Free mobile app)
This app is amazing because you can share it with your spouse and it’s in your phone for easy updating. Not to mention, it’s free! You literally add the things that you want at the grocery store (you can categorize them based on meat, dairy, etc.) and then when you put them in your cart, you mark it off the list. Within the app it will save your items that you’ve put in, so that it’s easy to choose those options again without all the input.
Teacher Planner (Amazon, $7.75)
I’m no longer a teacher, but using this Teacher’s Planner to organize my social media planning is amazing! It’s great because where the subjects would be for school, I’m able to put in each of my clients. Then there’s plenty of room for me to write in the posts that I will plan for them throughout the week. I take Sunday afternoon/evenings and plan out an entire week’s worth of content for each of my clients. Then I go and schedule all the posts, so that I don’t have much to maintain throughout the week and can focus on my other work. I make part of my routine on Sunday’s to go back to the previous week and track all the analytics from the results of each post. Then I tweak what I’m doing in the next week to what worked the best before.
Ampad Project Planner (Amazon, $6.59)
The Ampad Project Planner is probably the planner I’ve used the longest to stay organized. I absolutely love the way the layout inside is set up for taking notes, making reminders, and setting goals. I literally have years worth of these and each serves as a great representation for where my brain was at at the time! I’ve kept them all as journals of sorts. I have all my meeting notes listed out in these books and refer back to these books for all kinds of projects that I’m working toward. I love that there’s a side column where I can list out action items I want to take, research topics that I want to look into, or side notes that I want to stand out, such as phone numbers, emails, etc.
What do you use to stay organized? What methods do you have in your life that keep you motivated and moving toward progress? Feel free to leave your comments below!