"Ask forgiveness, not permission."

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:55:00 -0500

“Ask forgiveness, not permission.”

- -Proverbs

Note: Sometimes trickier is knowing when to apply this. Kids, don’t take the parents car when you are 14 and expect a “sorry” to get you out of it :)

Organize Yourself Now, Save Your Sanity Later

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:39:30 -0500

Well that title’s awfully vague, isn’t it? Yep. That’s because the idea of how to organize yourself is just about equally vague. My general philosophy on the subject tends to be this, though: those that don’t have systems to organize themselves probably need them more than they think. Constantly find that you forget things? Bills get paid late? Never know how much money is in the bank, or when you are supposed to pick up the kids? You probably aren’t a good organizer.

So how you get to be one of those witches/wizards that never forgets a birthday and has an 800 credit score and never seems stressed or worried? You create systems, and you fine tune those systems. You work those systems and improve them so that they need as little intervention as possible.

My number one rule with organizing myself and creating systems is this:

1. Make it just complicated enough to work.

Do not read this post and then go order today’s equivalent of a trapper keeper, or a $300 personal organizer. Don’t go grab a label maker and start labeling everything. Don’t create a 70 step system that requires you to spend 3 hours a day organizing your organization strategy. Why not? Because anything that requires that much maintenance probably isn’t going to get done. All those fancy organizer gadgets and self help books are likely going to end up at the bottom of a box buried in a garage.

Alright, so here comes the part of the post where I contradict some of those things I just said and tell you what I do. The next few paragraphs will tell you a bit about how I organize myself, and I fully concede right now that they may not work for you. My point is to explain how I try to solve some of the problems that crop up from day to day. Also note that I don’t consider any of my solutions “perfect”, even for me. I revise the systems and things I do as I realize their effectiveness.

First off, I have no memory. If you tell me I need to pick up something on the way home, or there’s going to be a meeting on Tuesday, I’ve probably forgotten by the time we hang up. So, a la David Allen and GTD, I use a capture tool. I started using a Palm Pilot. But I honestly hated the handwriting recognition, and most often I would find myself saying “I’ll write this down later” and forget something. I moved to pen and paper. A simple little $0.40 pocket notebook and a pen. Anything that I needed to remember gets written down there, regardless of how small. Unless I decide then and there that I can blow something off, it goes into the pad. Now days, I use an iPhone 4 as a capture tool. The reasons for this are simple: I always have the phone on me so I don’t need to carry the paper. There are multiple input methods; I can dictate something or record a voice memo while I drive, tap out a note, etc. I’m also carrying my calendar and email while I drive, so it’s easy to file things as they happen. Add to that the dozens of apps that will create reminders and repeating reminders or events, and it means less thinking for me. I know plenty of people who would absolutely never use it this way, however, so as I said, use what works.

Second, I review it each day. Actually, a few times each day. In the morning, midday, and before I leave work. Those times tend to work for me because it helps me structure the morning, afternoon, and evenings. It also prevents me from leaving that thing undone at work, or forgetting to pick up milk on the way home.

As I mentioned, I like to use technology to make up for the faults with my brain. I heavily use calendars and repeating events across my phone, and apps like ToDo, from Appigo. Again, it’s because I can set it up once, and not think about it. I create a reminder event that tells me I need a haircut every 30 days. Or a reminder that it’s time to replace the water filter in the fridge. And given the pervasiveness of smart phones, I always have these tools available, so I can put it in there as it happens.

Once a week, I plan a menu, and go shopping. This stops me from making repeat trips to the store because I forgot something, or from just hitting a drive through because “there’s nothing to eat!”.

I spend about 20 minutes a day cleaning around the house. I use the ToDo on the iPhone to create a set of reminders about what I should do each day. This took about 30 minutes to set up, and now I don’t worry whether or not my fridge is clean. Laundry gets done of specific days so that I make sure I have clean clothes. Again, reminded by ToDo.

I use a system with incoming mail. Bills that need paying go in one section, junk mail goes straight to the trash, any of those things that need action get a reminder scheduled, and the rest goes in a pile to get shredded. Once the bills are paid, they get archived in a file cabinet, and I throw them away usually about once per year.

As much as possible in a house with my wife and two kids, I try to have a “home” for everything. I virtually never lose my keys, because they go in the same spot each day. My computer peripherals go in a particular drawer. Software license keys get stored in a text file on Dropbox.

Another big part of my digital workflow is centered around the Mac. I use Automator to automatically organize some files (movies that get downloaded go to the Movies folder without my intervention). With Spotlight I rarely spend much time organizing other than simple categories - music, movies, documents, pictures, etc. When I get home from taking a bunch of pictures, they get dropped into iPhoto, organized into an event, I tag a couple of faces, and then send them off to flickr so friends and family can get to them. Time Machine and Carbonite automatically handle backup. And I try to avoid over complicated tools that I do have to work around. I wrote posts and things in WriteRoom. I keep a fairly minimal Chrome installation. Usually, I use about 5 apps at a time - Chrome, Mail, Notational Velocity, iTunes, and WriteRoom. I like to keep things simple, because it means less time making a tool work for me, and more time doing.

Alright, so after all of that, what’s my point? It’s not that you need to do things as I do them, it’s that you should use tools that work for you to organize yourself. Most people don’t have steel trap memories, and need a tool to help where the brain is deficient. And need systems set up to avoid dealing with the day to day activities in life. Pick some tools. Start cheap. If it doesn’t work for you, change it.

Final piece of advice - never deal with the same problem twice. The way that I got to my system is by working through my failings. I plan meals because I got sick of seeing how much was coming out of the bank account for food, or eating ramen because it’s all that is in the house. I use digital reminders because I know my brain will never remind itself. For similar reasons, I started using a capture tool - if I don’t write something down, I probably won’t remember it. But in any case, I try to create these systems so that I don’t have to have the same issues all the time. If I spend time searching for something, I create a rule for myself so I don’t have to search the next time (bills go in a “Bills” file, for example.)

In any case, you get the gist. Go forth, and organize!

Advice For the Kids

"Ask forgiveness, not permission."

Organize Yourself Now, Save Your Sanity Later