How to Be More Organized

My father is a wise man. As time goes by and I’m getting older, I’m starting to realize he is even wiser than I thought.

When I was a child, he always used to insist that I should not leave my things laying around, and that I should always set a place for them and place them there.

 

If you learn to put one thing in its place it’s going to help you a lot, on the long run, because you can always go fetch it and find it there. And you can do that even with your eyes closed.

 

This is true, actually. I took his advice and it turned out to be very useful.

I reckon this is how I developed my organizational skills. By simply applying his piece of advice, I was efficient. Then, I started feeling the need for clarity and planning. A need that I always try to fulfil in my professional and personal relationships.

If things are not clear and well defined for neither of the parties (or even only for one of them), the standstill occurs. And standstill cannot be surpassed by only one party’s efforts.

 

Until recently, when talking about organizational skills, a reference was always made regarding multitasking. There hardly were job interviews without the parties (interviewer and interviewee) making a reference to this magic element.

Fortunately for all of us, in the meantime, researchers have found that multitasking is not quite a great skill. And that, actually, the human brain can only focus on one task, while multitasking means that efficiency and performance are at risk. Regardless of the country of origin of these researchers, I am glad to hear about this discovery and I support it.

If you come to think about it, the truth about multitasking was right in front of us, on American highways (I guess there were on other countries’ highways too, but the first that I heard of were the American ones) – Don’t text and drive! We just could not believe it.

 

Tricks for being more organized

 

Take notes.

It’s good to take notes about what one considers to be important. But keep in mind that we have a particular way in which our brain processes information. When things are not clear enough, the brain has the tendency to fill in the gaps (for unclear or missing details).

Thus, be careful how you take notes!

I am truly comfortable with using Word, and I love to take notes on such a document. But I have friends and colleagues that use all kinds of applications. The important thing is to find what works for you.

 

The calendar

Try taking notes on a day-follows-day approach. That is, write the task to be done tomorrow and continue by mentioning those to be done the next day after tomorrow and so on and so forth. Do not forget to include the date. This really helps me not to forget a task.

For example:

05.02 – must sign document X.

 

At the end of each day, I delete the notes entirely in order to have a better visibility on what’s next. But if I was not able to deliver on one task, I move it to another day.

You can keep them, if you think that’s helpful. My recommendation is not to keep them together with the days yet to be delivered because it may create confusion.

 

I hope this inspires you to better organize your tasks!