I've posted here a couple times about my organizational systems. My whole life, it's been an ever-changing process to find a system that works. Partly, I think the system changes because my circumstances change. It's good that I roll with the punches and adjust my system. But I'm also thinking that there are other, underlying issues that make me swamp any (and every) system I adopt. First I'll talk about my system, then I'll talk about keeping it from failing.
My Organizational List SystemThere are three parts to my system:
1) Daily To Do List
2) Upcoming Calendar
3) Category Lists
My categories (as of now ... they change) are: Research & Development, Futuregirl Shop, Other Crafting, Web Updates. I have a couple non-crafty lists, but I'm leaving them out for this discussion. Whenever I have a new idea, I put it on one of the lists.
My Upcoming Calendar lists birthdays, concerts, vacations, and stuff that's more than seven days away.
My Daily To Do List is what I use every day to keep track of stuff. It's basically a notepad text document. It has 7 days on it: today and the next six days.
Each day has some scheduled stuff on it that I do every week on that day (for example, Monday I do laundry) and other things that need to get done (like mailing out the poison invites, which I finally did yesterday).
At the top of my Daily To Do List I have one item from each of my Category Lists to remind me to work on that item if I have the time. The important thing is that I pick only ONE ITEM from each Category List.
This means that I'm only juggling one thing to sell, one development project, one other crafty item, and one update to my website. It turns 4 HUGE lists in to a tiny list of four things.
When I finish something from a Category List, I go back to that list and see what should be next. I try not to spend any time prioritizing the Category Lists because who knows what will be the priority when it's time to pick the next thing.
At the end of each day, I move the unfinished items to the next day, delete today, add a seventh day on the end of the Daily To Do List, and check the Upcoming Calendar. Even though I have a ton of things to get done, my daily lists are pretty small, so it makes me feel less overwhelmed.
Making The System WorkOne of my big problems is checking the Daily To Do List. Obviously, it is useless if I don't look at it. It's fine if I let things slide for a day every once in a while, but it happens more than I would like it to.
A lot of the time, I abandon a system because I get frustrated that everything isn't getting done. The last time I decided to revamp my system, I had a huge realization ... no system, no matter how elaborate or how simple will fit 5 hours of crafting into 2 hours of time. I can color code, chart, graph, and make lists all day long, but I still live in a world which gives me only 24 hours in each day.
I realized I need to focus. I need to cull. I need to say no.
This is going to be hard for me. What do I put off? What do I focus on? These are the questions I'm still trying to answer. Before I can answer them, though, I think I need to answer the bigger question: How do I define success? That will be the next post about this subject.