If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. ~Author unknown
The problem:
How do you organize your life? How do you remember what needs to be done? Do you have a "to do" list? A calendar?
Goal: To put order into my life
Over time, I've put together a method that works for me--as much as possible. I use a calendar, an Excel spreadsheet,and a couple of notebooks.
The calendar hangs in my kitchen and everyone is required to put activities on it so that we can plan who gets the car and work out any other conflicts.
The Excel spreadsheet has a list of activities that I try to do daily and weekly. I have the day's activities organized according to the order I do them--as much as I can, followed by the weekly activities that I do if I have pockets of extra time in my day. I include in my list anything I want to be sure I get done and things I always forget to do--like pick up the mail at the end of the lane (my daughter always did this, but now that she is in college, we keep forgetting to do it). I print a new sheet each day.
On the right side of the paper is an hourly grid which helps me see the overview of the day--when I realize I must be in the car by 6:00 in the evening, then I also know that we cannot eat supper at the same time! My mind is perfectly capable of having 2 schedules running side by side in my head without realizing that the two will NOT work together. This grid helps me to visualize my day so that I will not have this happening.
At the bottom of the page I have enough room to write down my menu and any other notes that will help me.
My larger notebook is a new addition. I open up the page and write the days of the week down the side of the left page. I copy out items from the calendar and add other items I will need to remember. The right side of the page is the "to do" list that I'd like to work on throughout the week.
The little notebook is what I am currently using to track what I eat and what I do for exercise each day--a means of being accountable to myself.
So what do you do?