Being organised?
Discussion
I am generally a disorganised person, I take the view that I will do a task when I find the time, this often leads to things being put off for days/weeks/months, its not an intentional thing but that is often the way it works out. I recognise this as a flaw and its something I'd like to change about myself.
My question is to the organised people of PH is, how do you go about organising yourself, do you keep a diary, how do you prioritise the things you have to do today. I know it sounds like a simple thing that anyone should be able to do, but for whatever reason I'm not very good at it. Any replies and advice welcome.
My question is to the organised people of PH is, how do you go about organising yourself, do you keep a diary, how do you prioritise the things you have to do today. I know it sounds like a simple thing that anyone should be able to do, but for whatever reason I'm not very good at it. Any replies and advice welcome.
Every day you have a day off. Write a list of things you can remember that need to be done. Then be proactive and do them. I find the things i have forgotten to do normally spring up as i am doing the other jobs.
Do your paperwork twice a month, file, burn or throw away your post depending on what it is.
Thats all really, just do the jobs 1st thing, don't think oh i'll just do 50 laps on GT for that time trial thing i'm in...... you'll never start the jobs....
I'm not that organised, but better then most of my friends/collegues...
Do your paperwork twice a month, file, burn or throw away your post depending on what it is.
Thats all really, just do the jobs 1st thing, don't think oh i'll just do 50 laps on GT for that time trial thing i'm in...... you'll never start the jobs....
I'm not that organised, but better then most of my friends/collegues...
I'm not an organised person, but since I became self employed I worked out a "system" that works for me.
The system constitutes of two things:
- I'm making sure most of my "to do" comes by mail, and I have a label "to do" for those mails, I do this WHEN THE MAIL ARRIVES (on either my mobile or the computer)
- I fill in an online agenda (gmail), where I put the "to do" mails in. If anything comes up without a mail I immediately put it in the calendar.
The main advantage is that I can access all I need to do from anywhere, and I just work trough the "to do" mail folder.
The only papers I still have are invoices.
The system constitutes of two things:
- I'm making sure most of my "to do" comes by mail, and I have a label "to do" for those mails, I do this WHEN THE MAIL ARRIVES (on either my mobile or the computer)
- I fill in an online agenda (gmail), where I put the "to do" mails in. If anything comes up without a mail I immediately put it in the calendar.
The main advantage is that I can access all I need to do from anywhere, and I just work trough the "to do" mail folder.
The only papers I still have are invoices.
I use the GTD ("Getting Things Done") system, based on the book of that name by David Allen.
Essentially it revolves around getting things out of your head and into a trusted system. If you think of something that needs doing and it will only take a minute, just do it right now. If it'll take longer, record it in your system and you don't need to think about it any more. When you get an empty chunk of time, review the list and do what you can.
What the book delves into are ways of actually achieving that (applying it to email, post, jobs around the house, etc). Not many people do it entirely at face value, but it's a good starting point for establishing your own variations of the system that work best for you.
Essentially it revolves around getting things out of your head and into a trusted system. If you think of something that needs doing and it will only take a minute, just do it right now. If it'll take longer, record it in your system and you don't need to think about it any more. When you get an empty chunk of time, review the list and do what you can.
What the book delves into are ways of actually achieving that (applying it to email, post, jobs around the house, etc). Not many people do it entirely at face value, but it's a good starting point for establishing your own variations of the system that work best for you.
I use Igoogle, so it is sets as my home page and then has various list applications you can add, I can quickly add jobs that need to be done, priortise them and even seperate them into different list catergories and then its always there in front of me to remind me. Also has my email which is useful and I can star the things I need to do on that as well.
Bernard80 said:
I use Igoogle, so it is sets as my home page and then has various list applications you can add, I can quickly add jobs that need to be done, priortise them and even seperate them into different list catergories and then its always there in front of me to remind me. Also has my email which is useful and I can star the things I need to do on that as well.
As I said before, lots of things in google apps got me organised: centralized calender(s) that are easy to share with, for example, the O/H, hundreds of ways to organize your e-mail and a simple task system,...
Agree with writing things down. A list of the stuff you need to do. I usually find just the act of writing things down makes the priorities obvious to me.
At work I also find it useful to allot a certain amount of time to certain tasks, otherwise they can drag on for hours, especially email and internet. I literally used to have an egg timer on my desk for this. Also pick the best time to be doing different things. Eg admin stuff before 9am and after 5pm, sales calls 9-12 and 2-5, meetings and internal stuff between 12 and 2. External meetings when possible should not be in the middle of something else. Eg a one hour meeting at 10am will mean the whole morning gone, so better to have it at 9, back in by 10:30 and get a solid hour and a half on the phones.
I am a disorganised person by nature, so I find that I need to do this to get anything done. If I try and do it all by memory or at random then I will end up working like mad and achieving nothing!
At work I also find it useful to allot a certain amount of time to certain tasks, otherwise they can drag on for hours, especially email and internet. I literally used to have an egg timer on my desk for this. Also pick the best time to be doing different things. Eg admin stuff before 9am and after 5pm, sales calls 9-12 and 2-5, meetings and internal stuff between 12 and 2. External meetings when possible should not be in the middle of something else. Eg a one hour meeting at 10am will mean the whole morning gone, so better to have it at 9, back in by 10:30 and get a solid hour and a half on the phones.
I am a disorganised person by nature, so I find that I need to do this to get anything done. If I try and do it all by memory or at random then I will end up working like mad and achieving nothing!
ZesPak said:
Bernard80 said:
I use Igoogle, so it is sets as my home page and then has various list applications you can add, I can quickly add jobs that need to be done, priortise them and even seperate them into different list catergories and then its always there in front of me to remind me. Also has my email which is useful and I can star the things I need to do on that as well.
As I said before, lots of things in google apps got me organised: centralized calender(s) that are easy to share with, for example, the O/H, hundreds of ways to organize your e-mail and a simple task system,...
Mrs Arese and I shared calenders on our Google 'phones. It put an end to the 'No, you didn't tell me you were going out with the boys tonight' moments too.
Arese said:
ZesPak said:
Bernard80 said:
I use Igoogle, so it is sets as my home page and then has various list applications you can add, I can quickly add jobs that need to be done, priortise them and even seperate them into different list catergories and then its always there in front of me to remind me. Also has my email which is useful and I can star the things I need to do on that as well.
As I said before, lots of things in google apps got me organised: centralized calender(s) that are easy to share with, for example, the O/H, hundreds of ways to organize your e-mail and a simple task system,...
Mrs Arese and I shared calenders on our Google 'phones. It put an end to the 'No, you didn't tell me you were going out with the boys tonight' moments too.
Also has hangman, word/phrase of the day, the weather and the current moonphase on mine. (not really sure why I have the last one..I think its to be ready for the crazies come full moon).
Gmail itself though I find is rubbish as an email system.
Bernard80 said:
Arese said:
ZesPak said:
Bernard80 said:
I use Igoogle, so it is sets as my home page and then has various list applications you can add, I can quickly add jobs that need to be done, priortise them and even seperate them into different list catergories and then its always there in front of me to remind me. Also has my email which is useful and I can star the things I need to do on that as well.
As I said before, lots of things in google apps got me organised: centralized calender(s) that are easy to share with, for example, the O/H, hundreds of ways to organize your e-mail and a simple task system,...
Mrs Arese and I shared calenders on our Google 'phones. It put an end to the 'No, you didn't tell me you were going out with the boys tonight' moments too.
Also has hangman, word/phrase of the day, the weather and the current moonphase on mine. (not really sure why I have the last one..I think its to be ready for the crazies come full moon).
Gmail itself though I find is rubbish as an email system.
) me somewhat.I don't like Gmail through a browser either, but the client on my HTC Hero is really quite good.
Bernard80 said:
Arese said:
ZesPak said:
Bernard80 said:
I use Igoogle, so it is sets as my home page and then has various list applications you can add, I can quickly add jobs that need to be done, priortise them and even seperate them into different list catergories and then its always there in front of me to remind me. Also has my email which is useful and I can star the things I need to do on that as well.
As I said before, lots of things in google apps got me organised: centralized calender(s) that are easy to share with, for example, the O/H, hundreds of ways to organize your e-mail and a simple task system,...
Mrs Arese and I shared calenders on our Google 'phones. It put an end to the 'No, you didn't tell me you were going out with the boys tonight' moments too.
Also has hangman, word/phrase of the day, the weather and the current moonphase on mine. (not really sure why I have the last one..I think its to be ready for the crazies come full moon).
Gmail itself though I find is rubbish as an email system.
Can you elaborate what is it that you don't like on the mail system?
Sure 
The way it groups the emails into ‘conversations’ drives me mad as when you reply it makes it another ‘in’ item which is unwarranted, I want to be notified of when they reply not when I reply. Also this means its groups all emails with the same header. I put an advert on the Freecycle network recently of course the header is an automatically entered so when I got replies I just had one large email and struggled to decipher what I had replied to. I did find the general layout to it a bit confusing initially as well, am used to it now but it was taking me far too long to work out how to print etc and I am not exactly a luddite when it comes to computers. And the layout of it changes whether you are in full googlemail or one of the app type packages which doesn’t have the full features which gets annoying.
It did however the other day say to me the other day “You wrote ‘please see attached’ with the email you are trying to send and there is no attachment would you like to add one?” which I thought was most excellent as it was my CV that was missing
The way it groups the emails into ‘conversations’ drives me mad as when you reply it makes it another ‘in’ item which is unwarranted, I want to be notified of when they reply not when I reply. Also this means its groups all emails with the same header. I put an advert on the Freecycle network recently of course the header is an automatically entered so when I got replies I just had one large email and struggled to decipher what I had replied to. I did find the general layout to it a bit confusing initially as well, am used to it now but it was taking me far too long to work out how to print etc and I am not exactly a luddite when it comes to computers. And the layout of it changes whether you are in full googlemail or one of the app type packages which doesn’t have the full features which gets annoying.
It did however the other day say to me the other day “You wrote ‘please see attached’ with the email you are trying to send and there is no attachment would you like to add one?” which I thought was most excellent as it was my CV that was missing
Bernard80 said:
Sure
The way it groups the emails into ‘conversations’ drives me mad as when you reply it makes it another ‘in’ item which is unwarranted, I want to be notified of when they reply not when I reply. Also this means its groups all emails with the same header. I put an advert on the Freecycle network recently of course the header is an automatically entered so when I got replies I just had one large email and struggled to decipher what I had replied to. I did find the general layout to it a bit confusing initially as well, am used to it now but it was taking me far too long to work out how to print etc and I am not exactly a luddite when it comes to computers. And the layout of it changes whether you are in full googlemail or one of the app type packages which doesn’t have the full features which gets annoying.
It did however the other day say to me the other day “You wrote ‘please see attached’ with the email you are trying to send and there is no attachment would you like to add one?” which I thought was most excellent as it was my CV that was missing
Agree, the grouping does take some time to get used to, but I for one think it's brilliant.The way it groups the emails into ‘conversations’ drives me mad as when you reply it makes it another ‘in’ item which is unwarranted, I want to be notified of when they reply not when I reply. Also this means its groups all emails with the same header. I put an advert on the Freecycle network recently of course the header is an automatically entered so when I got replies I just had one large email and struggled to decipher what I had replied to. I did find the general layout to it a bit confusing initially as well, am used to it now but it was taking me far too long to work out how to print etc and I am not exactly a luddite when it comes to computers. And the layout of it changes whether you are in full googlemail or one of the app type packages which doesn’t have the full features which gets annoying.
It did however the other day say to me the other day “You wrote ‘please see attached’ with the email you are trying to send and there is no attachment would you like to add one?” which I thought was most excellent as it was my CV that was missing
Also, the changing of the title only ever bothered me once!
Oh and that last bit: that's brilliant! I didn't know it did that (going to test now...)
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