How Do You Stay Organized?

I absolutely agree with this tip. Get rid of the clutter and its a lot easier to keep the rest organized. This includes not just things but "busy work" type tasks.

time management and pre planning skills play an important role on how to stay organized.

last time my ex-manager also said: if you don't know how to plan then you plan to fail

Planning is important to let us stay organized and improve our productive

I have a friend who considers herself very organized and writes paper notes to herself all the time. "Wait! Let me write that down.."

It goes without saying that those notes sometimes get totally lost, get misplaced or get slipped into a "need to check someday" drawer. Her computer screen often looks like a flower what with all the postit notes.

Not all is well though. The problem seems to be that when she writes something down she also frees her mind from it. She replaces the need to remember the original topic with the need to remember to check the note at a later point. It´s like a Memento thing which doesn´t work. He carried all his memory tags within reach, tatooed to his skin. Her notes are all over the place. I have seen her write memory notes about other notes. No joke.

Each to their own ways of course but all this just reinforces my own aversion against writing notes and postits

Anyway, I have a pretty scrambled workspace with loads of mags, research stuff, bills, coffee cups and computer hardware in a cozy and utterly hazardous mix. Computer is the same, but I do "organize" each idea or project with their own folder. Everything pertaining to that project goes in there.

I do the same for all my domains. Each one has a folder and everything, including keyword lists, reserach, links, articles, images, the works.. go in there and in suitable subfolders.

On my desktop I have a bunch of bookmarks but also 4 folder shotrcuts at a side.
One goes to projects (products, client stuff, in general everything that is not domains/IM related)
nr 2 is domains (contains a folder for each domain with above stuff)
the third is prospects (idea mashup lab, notes, ongoing research, domain lists, anything that is actively being considered to move up the ladder). the last one is "stuff" (includes purchased IM products, ebooks, software, tools, templates etc etc)

I was online on day 1 so the "stuff" that isnt being used is on separate harddrives and has been accumulated from uncountable computers through the years - lots of undeveloped ideas and lots of stock photos since that's what I used to do. those harddrives are reassuringly unorganized though so whenever I feel the need to waste hours I dip in there in search of something :confused:

The good part about that is everytime I emerge, flustered and angry, I swear to become more organized, and that often does lead to some new way to get things straight

On content project / product organisation I always try to write all the headlines, or chapter titles first then flesh out from there.

I´m working on a product about these topics so you might be seeing some of that soon.

A bunch of great programs were mentioned. One I like for day to day stuff that is super light weight is doomi. doominow . com

Just a simple to do list. You can set it to remind you to do something in X amount of hours. That way when your working on stuff and forget to do something it pops up and tells you to do it.

I use a few tools to help me stay organised:

Notebook (paper) - write down things that come up during the day, little reminders to self, notes of telephone calls and people to ring etc. I find this really handy as it doubles as a "To-Do" list for the next day. Once everything is crossed off on a page I can tear it out and throw it which always feels good!

Salesforce - online software to enter prospective client details and set reminders to call back, meetings etc.

Lifetick - for goal-setting and future planning. Helps with everything from short-term to medium to long-term planning.

Google Docs - for fleshing out ideas, creating content, articles, anything creative.

Mindmeister - mindmapping tool I use as a "brain dump" for new ideas/projects - once I have the ideas I just go back over time and keep adding to them until I have something actionable

Teamworkpm - project management software for keeping a JV partner up to date with what work I've done, what he's done, and setting out a framework and action items for its development.

Excel - I create a folder for each client and each one get a unique Excel spreadsheet for any details I must remember.

I also agree with what Hulbert said above, being organised externally can really help. Keeping a fairly uncluttered desk and having a solid daily routine feels good mentally.