Over the course of thirty-three years, I’ve owned three companies, run two others, and have had to manage anywhere from two to fourteen people. During this time, my personal methods of organization have gone from nonexistent to massively complex, from offline methods such as “remembering everything in my head” to using large dry-erase white-boards with calendars, to hundreds of sticky post-it notes around the frames of CRT monitors, to monthly planners (which I hated), and then on to online methods like proprietary software, calendar programs, Microsoft Outlook, and various spreadsheet. I’ve filled up many file cabinets over the years with all sorts of sheets and forms I designed as parts of systems to ensure things ran smoothly and mistake were minimized.
None of them were every perfect.
The key to organization is SYSTEMS. Ironclad, religiously followed systems. If you create a system and stick to it (you along with everyone else), you’ll rarely have problems. When the problems do arise, it will inevitably be a result of someone not following the system (either they forgot, or had to compromise due to (usually) time.)
These days, I use a combination of my smart-phone calendar that is synced with my Google calendar which is then synced with my Microsoft Outlook calendar to keep track of my personal schedule. Outlook works really well in terms of helping me keep track of important dates, meetings, bills to pay and so on. The combination of email with the calendar covers about 99% of my personal life.
I use Google Sheets and a variety of custom-built spread-sheets to keep in constant sync with my business partner as to our accounts, our finances, our tasks, our deadlines and so on. We pretty much do an online Skype call every day for about 15 minutes and review our sheets. We keep in touch with all our clients via email (again through Outlook which we both use) as well as text messages and (grudgingly) Facebook. We try to encourage clients to ONLY use email, but some insist on texting or using Facebook Messenger. Such is our world today.
Billing is all handled through credit cards on autopay, so that’s pretty maintenance free. We do some trickle-email campaigns with some of our projects, but nothing crazy. We’re still kinda building up the business, but we haven’t gotten close to outgrowing the available tools we’re using.
I try to avoid as much “real-life” paperwork as possible. I automate my bills, and do everything paperless, so I don’t really worry about checking the mailbox. It’s usually either junk mail, or stuff from the IRS, or DMV or a court, none of which I want to see. They’re all still trapped in snail mail land.
As far as personal discipline, setting goals, sticking to them, seeing them through, that’s a totally different animal. For that stuff… I use two things…
- My decade of martial arts training
- A book that changed my life - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey.
- Be Proactive
- Start With The End In Mind
- Put First Things First
- Think Win-Win
- Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen The Saw
In my experience, most people in life never even master the first three, which represent Independence. The next three are about working with others (interdependence) and the last one is about continuing to improve. There is also an 8th habit (a second book) which involves mentoring others.
So the way I personally get things done is I make concrete goals. This means not just saying, “I’d like to wash the car Sunday” but rather, writing down (on paper or in a computer calendar) an actual task with a date and time blocked out… Sunday, 11/25/18 - from 1:00-3:00 PM wash and detail car. Then I go and make sure I have the supplies I need - bucket, sponge, soap, hose, rags, etc, and put them aside. So in doing these things I’ve…
- Been Proactive - I’ve set a date and time, in writing and assembled the materials.
- Started with the end in mind - I decided what I want to happen in detail and by when
- Put first things first - I’ve made sure that I’ve scheduled my task so that nothing more important is being neglected first. If I was missing a sponge, then I’d know I needed to go buy one before Sunday.
This is a simple example, but when I’ve really gotten a lot of stuff done in life, this is how I’ve done it. When I was running my graphic design company 15 years ago, and I had two full-time designers, we were banging out 20-30 pieces of art a day for 10-15 clients, while also picking up and delivering completed jobs. It was pretty fast paced because a lot of companies were depending on us to have stuff ready so they could go into production. I had a lot of systems, a lot of routines, and a lot of pressure, but without the systems and routines, the pressure would have been impossible. Over the course of 15 years, we produces well over 30,000 individual pieces of art for screen printers, all categorized and organized in such a way that they could be located and pulled up in seconds if edits were needed. It ran like a well-oiled machine for many years, but it was also exhausting, and I wouldn’t want to do it again. But it was great to know I could do it.
as can you. Simple plain text files, with funky folding.