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Yesterday, I posted a lengthy intro in my process of organization. I went a little into how I came to the conclusions I did about the subject, and why the articles/books/etc. I found didn’t seem to help me much.

In today’s post, I’m going to tell you what I did with those conclusions.

It’s actually pretty simple: I had a lot of stuff I needed to get organized. I wanted a simple system that would allow me to do what I needed to do. (I’m all about the KISS Principle.) So what I did was take some of the more reasonable suggestions from different resources, and compiled them into one that works for me.

Now, you have to understand that the system I came up with has some really simplistic (and in some cases very mundane and/or silly things) – but that’s because it’s what fits me. I’m notorious for “keeping things in my head” and “wanting to do it all NOW” (which I explained a bit about in the last post). This is how I got it all out in a format that has helped me quite a bit in the last couple of months.

For starters… I took a day off. Now, I didn’t think I could. I know I was on sabbatical, so you’d think I’d've had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. But – as mentioned before – I’m the worst sabbatical-taker ever. I actually had a lot of work to keep my busy last year. Taking a day off wasn’t an easy option. But I forced myself to do it.

I sat down at my kitchen table with a nice cup of coffee, some paper, and a pen. It was after I sent my son to school, and my youngest was enjoying the wit and humor of Spongebob Squarepants. What I did was what pretty much any writer does – I let it all spill out of my head onto paper.

Initially, I started out easy. I wrote down he stuff I knew needed to be done. Then I pushed myself, and started to think of the things that didn’t need to be put out like a wildfire – just other stuff that eventually needed done, and would be nice to get done before it HAD to be finished. I pushed a little more and started adding in the stuff around the house that fell into these categories. Then I started writing down the stuff I do (or needed to be doing, anyway) every day. Every week. Every month.

I didn’t go beyond that. No “five year plan” was involved in this.

Then I started writing down all the stuff that annoyed me – stuff that stressed me out because it should be done, but it wasn’t. Stuff that should routinely be completed, but always got pushed off for something else, and left me seriously stressed because it was left alone. Stuff like the dishes that hadn’t been done since yesterday. Or the fact that the toilet (as well as some of the old leftovers in the fridge) looked like some sort of science experiment. Stuff that made me feel really embarrassed when people “popped in” for a visit, because it wasn’t done.

When I was finished, I have to say, my head really felt like I had emptied it of rocks that were weighing me down. The fact that I didn’t have to constantly think of this stuff so I wouldn’t forget it just made me feel so much happier.

Then I organized it. Yeah, I know I said that I didn’t want to have to organize my organizational system – but to be honest, you kind of have to. At least a little. I was willing to do a little. Because now, it was all out of my head and sitting there on sheets of paper like a bad meal that decided to come back up. I separated the items into “work” and “personal.” And as I looked I saw things that were associated with each other. But I didn’t get too far into it. I wasn’t looking to start color-coding tabs and using sticky notes and filing systems. That’s just crazy to me.

Now, for me, it’s very difficult to separate my work life form my home life. I work from a home office, and one of my children is with me all day long – the other is with me half the day. I can’t have a split personality – it doesn’t work well for me. So I decided to quasi-mesh the two together. The two largest inspirations for my little system were GTD and FlyLady.

What I did was buy a packet of “Getting Things Done” sheets at Staples. I already owned a little “organizer” (that hasn’t ever really seen much use) and made use of it. The GTD filler paper was pretty neat – all it contained was tabbed sheets that you could name whatever you liked, some blank paper, some graph paper and these neat sectioned papers. Being a designer, I felt the graph paper and the blank sheets would be really useful in drawing/sketching out ideas. The lined paper was for note-taking, and roughing out ideas – getting things out of my head that were simply ideas, but not full-fledged projects. The other papers – which contained a tall-but-narrow column on the left and sectioned rows on the right – were for my projects.

The actual Day Runner I have is no longer being made, but it held 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ papers, had pockets and pen holders on the inside, as well as a big pocket on the outside. I also bought a package of 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ sheet protectors, the kind that was top-loading, made of clear plastic and had hole punches in the side.

I’m also notoriously bad at keeping track of cards – i.e. my credit cards, insurance, driver’s license – stuff like that. This organizer had card-sized pockets just for this purpose. (Actually I think they’re supposed to be for business cards, but whatever.) I haven’t “misplaced” my license in months, nor has the magnetic strip on my new ATM card been washed away because I left it in my pocket…again. That’s saying something.

So first, I made myself an hourly calendar. Basically, it just had 24 squares that went around the edge of the paper, each square repsenting an hour of the day. In the middle, it was lined for notes. Then I created a checklist: a daily checklist of “house” things I wanted to be sure I did every day, a monthly list, and a weekly list.

That seems like a lot, right? but it’s not.

There’s very few things, actually, that need to be done around the house at any given time to keep it “presentable” and “livable.” if you can keep on top of a few little things on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, your life will go a lot smoother, and when it omes to the bigger stuff, you can knock it out relatively quickly. I cannot tell you how much stress has been lifted from my days simply because I’ve made this routine for myself, and my household has just been chugging along without an issue.

I use the “hourly calendar” to write down what should be happening at each hour, and in the middle, I write down my projects for the day – work related.

And the GTD stuff? Those sectioned papers are awesome. I actually numbered each right-handed paper (odd or even – your choice) in the bottom right corner. As I start writing projects, I numbered each gray square, and put in the overall project name. In the lined sections next to it, I broke the project down into bits (tasks), and marked each task with a letter.

Now, at the end of the day, I would look at my iCal and see what appointments are coming up tomorrow, and I’d write those down in the hourly squares. In the middle, I would choose the largest 2 or 3 projects I needed to work on tomorrow. I would write those down, and make an association. For example, if I had a project listed on page 3 that I needed to work on, that was the 5th item on that page, and I wanted to knock out tasks d, e and f; then I would write down “Project name, 3:5:d,e,f” on the list.

Oh yeah, and how did I keep this from wasting paper/having to reload paper every single day? That’s where the plastic sheets came in. I got a dry erase marker and kept it in one of the pen-holders. I use it to write the stuff down, check off what I’ve done, etc. and at the end of the day I just wipe it off and start over.

This has been most excellent. It’s simple – perhaps too simple – but for me, it’s been really effective. When I have a new project, I just dump it into the projects section. I’m not a stickler for details. It’s there, and if I need to reference the project to one that already exists, I note it like I do in the middle of my hourly calendar.

Now, I can’t give you a day runner and plastic sheets to download, but I can give you my hourly calendar and daily/weekly/monthly checklists. I’m putting them here to use in Word and PDF format, so you can open it up and edit to fit YOUR needs. The existing checklist is what works for me, and it should give you a good example of the kids of things you should have in there. Edit as you like. They are made to print, then you fold them in half and pop them in the sheet protectors at the front of your day runner, so the calendar falls in the middle. Use and abuse them

bb-organization.zip