5 Ways to Stay Organized

Starting a business is no easy task. You are constantly pulled in multiple directions, and it becomes difficult to remain focused and organized. If it weren’t for the goals I set, I would probably be so strung out that I wouldn’t complete anything. So my learning is your learning, because I decided to set a new goal as well as help myself remember tricks in learning to stay more organized.

Timing is everything

We all know that time is money, but I found that it’s also important to make sure that you’re designating time appropriately. For example, my website was at the old domain of new-age-design.com and my color scheme was quite nasty. I knew that I needed to change both qualities if I wanted more traffic and visitor loyalty on my blog, but I prolonged making the changes because I wouldn’t directly make money from them. Recently it struck me that my logic was flawed, however. My website is a direct representation of me, and if I don’t allocate time to take care of myself, then I’m not going to be appealing to new clients (this relates to hygiene as well). Therefore I realized I needed to spend some time and take care of my site.

This is where timing is everything. The best way to find time is to treat time like a budget. Figure out what you have, what you need and what you want. Start a calendar and populate it with the needs first, and then pencil in and allocate time where you can for wants, to-do, and other tasks. I did this on a white board and now everyone in Chosen is following this practice.

Task Management

When we first started Chosen, we didn’t realize the importance or need for a task manager. We got by sharing information and collaborating via Google Docs, instant messaging and email. Over time we began to lose information and our attempts to stay organized by using folder and file naming conventions failed miserably.

We decided to make the switch and installed Active Collab on our server. Once we did we immediately saw amazing results and improvement in organization. I highly recommend getting a well developed task manager, whether you’re a freelancer or large business. Some of the better ones that we have worked with are Active Collab and Basecamp.

Peer Accountability

It’s easy to lose track or managing yourself. Even if you’re self-motivated and have a lot of drive, everyone may lose site of the goal at hand and get off track, or disorganized. An easy way to fix this is having someone or something remind you of your plans or tasks. Ideally its best to have a business partner, friend, family, or any other sentient being play this role in holding you accountable. However, if you’re like I was at one point in my life, reliable friends or business partners can be hard to come by, so do some searching and see if you can find a good application or tool to achieve the same result. Maybe having a task manger or automated to-do list that send you alerts and reminders? I’ll leave that up to you, feel free to comment and let me know if you know of something useful.

Note-taking, wherever, whenever

This is a must. We can all relate to having a great idea, or hearing something useful, or remembering something we need to do later.. if you don’t jot it down, then and there, you’re likely to forget it. Plain and simple, get something that fits in your pocket to take notes on. I use my iPhone, and there are many other phones that work great for writing notes or voice recorded notes. If you prefer pen and paper, grab a little wallet-sized notepad from the dollar store or elsewhere and take it with you all the time. Heck, even a little folded piece of paper that you keep in your wallet works better than your memory sometimes.

Think it, write it, say it

I started blogging to stay more organized. There was a time when I would try and store and categorize bookmarks of web pages and refer to those bookmarks whenever I needed to recall something I read. Then I read a book on the human brain and memory, and discovered that if you follow a process of learning, writing, and doing you will remember it at least 10 times easier than you would have just forming the thought or reading an article. I try to make a habit now of using bookmarks as a sort of “short-term” memory, in which I bookmark things of interest, and then when I schedule some free time, I collect those thoughts and bookmarks and write them down and share them in a blog post, and then delete the bookmark. This has helped me learn SO MUCH in such a short amount of time, as well as helped others find and reference information. As an added bonus, if you forget it, you just search your own blog, and it’s there, like having a second memory!

So that’s a quick look at 5 Ways to Stay Organized. Let me know if you have any other ideas or suggestions for better organization.