I like organisation. This is no big surprise for those who know me well. In fact I like organisation so much I’m often asked for advice on organisational skills. I personally use Microsoft Outlook in order to keep my life in order. This is partly because I’ve always used Outlook and partly because this is what I use at work. I like to organise every minute of the day. I like to categorise every part of my day. I feel like I am in control when my life is colour coded and organised. Some people would suggest that this would mean I am OCD and perhaps I am.
Lately I have felt that my organisational skills have been failing me as I’ve been bogged down in email and my to-do list has been getting ever longer and not shorter. So after doing some thinking and some reading I thought I would share some of my thoughts and findings…
- Read emails 3 times a day (first thing in the morning, around lunch time and at the end of the day)
- Read the subject line and first few lines of the email and decide to…
- Delete it
- Deal with it
- Flag for Follow up
- Make it a Task
- Spend a set amount of time dealing with the emails you Flagged for Follow up – make it a task or appointment in your calendar
- Reduce your email to zero or as close to zero as you can (sometimes you are waiting on other people to give a response)
Tasks
- Make big tasks into lots of little tasks
- Categorise your tasks
- Order the tasks based on importance and urgency
- Realise that some days you won’t get through as many tasks as you would like
Calendar
- Colour Code it by importance
- Make Appointments out of tasks
- Over Guestimate the time it will take
- Take the time to plan out the day
Would love to hear your tips on how you keep your life organised and your inbox close to zero.
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