{"id":2481,"date":"2008-05-16T08:20:30","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T15:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/16\/career-tips-how-i-stay-organized\/"},"modified":"2009-10-23T06:52:01","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T13:52:01","slug":"career-tips-how-i-stay-organized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/16\/career-tips-how-i-stay-organized\/","title":{"rendered":"Career Tips: How I stay organized"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Above Image: I use the Large Ruled Notebook<\/a> by Moleskine.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a pretty intense schedule, in the past I’ve written about the many tasks of an analyst in the day job<\/a>, and I also spend time being in the conversation by maintaining this blog, being active on twitter, maintaining communities in Facebook, and attend many events. I’ve got a personal life, spend time at the gym, am a husband, and have a social circle that’s not even connected to the tech world.<\/p>\n

Technology isn’t always the answer to everything, in fact I actually don’t use a digital device as they take too long to input, aren’t always available, are fragile, and there are risks of battery life limitations and data loss, so I use paper.<\/p>\n

Here’s how I stay organized:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I use a Moleskine, the medium size in fact, but any book will do.<\/p>\n

I use two pages each week (or more often) to organize my tasks.<\/p>\n

For every task, I create a small checkbox, for items that are urgent, Ill mark with an “!” mark. As I complete tasks, I’ll check them off. Just about every week I’ll recreate the list, reprioritize, and consolidate. I find that writing the tasks down actually helps with me subconsciously brainstorming, and reviewing you go to bed at night is a great way to put your internal employee (your unconscious mind) to work. This is why you’ll often notice my blog posts come in the early morning, I sort my problems at night.<\/p>\n

On the top left column, I list out all of my personal tasks to take care of, house, car, bills, important dates, medical issues that need to be dealt with.<\/p>\n

On the lower left I list out blog ideas, (you never know when you’ll get them) it’s important I write these down, as sometimes I’ll forget, and that’s very frustrating. Both of these rarely exceed the whole page.<\/p>\n

Now on the right hand column, this is dedicated to my work requirements, and it quickly fills up the half of the page in no time.<\/p>\n

When I see more than 10 tasks, I know it’s time to start to really focus by prioritizing, turning off distractions, and hunkering down to get my work down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This process has been working well for me, although I’m not a star analyst, I’m meeting the requirements of a new analyst, and so far, I’ve not dropped too many personal tasks.<\/p>\n

Related:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
  • Pay yourself first, one thing leads to another<\/a><\/li>\n
  • Manage your time as you do money<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    I’d love to hear from you, how do you keep organized?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Update: Ran across this related video
    \n<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Above Image: I use the Large Ruled Notebook by Moleskine. I’ve got a pretty intense schedule, in the past I’ve written about the many tasks of an analyst in the day job, and I also spend time being in the conversation by maintaining this blog, … Continue readingCareer Tips: How I stay organized<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analyst","category-career"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}