First, let me say that I hope everyone enjoyed a Merry Christmas, even my friends who don’t celebrate the Holiday–I hope you at-least had a great Tuesday then :)
I never make New Year Resolutions. It’s not because like most people I won’t stick to them so figure it’s pointless to make them, but rather because I already spend every day, week and month of the year setting goals for myself and just don’t want to feel like I’m working while celebrating the Midnight Madness of New Year’s Eve.
I thought this might be a useful posting for others since it opens the door for me to talk about constant goal setting, and more importantly, how I manage to focus on and achieve most of the constant goals I set for myself.
For years I kept a yellow Legal Pad of paper by my side 24/7. It was my Notebook, To-Do Lists, Contacts Reference, Personal and Business Organizer, and etc… In other words, I had everything I needed neatly printed and readily available to me, but it was in an awful mess of randomly placed and untitled pages within my notepad. And worse still, every other month I would fill the notepad and have to start a fresh one.
I realized one day while scouring through my notepads looking for something specific that there were 2 major problems with the way I was keeping all this information. First, it was obviously not indexed and easily accessible. And second–and more importantly–I couldn’t erase anything.
That’s right. Not being able to erase anything meant that when something was completed or changed I had to cross it out with ugly pen strokes, but still leave it on the page taking up space.
It may seem small and even silly, but all of those crossed out items and wasted page space really bothered me, plus only served to add to the confusion and chaos when I would be looking for something specific in the notepad.
That’s when I purchased my whiteboard. A nice, 4 foot by 3 foot piece of white metal that hangs next to my desk and allows me to make easy notes while working… and better yet, to erase them when they’re finished or changed.
This very small, very cheap little investment reduced the clutter and confusion in my life by mountains. Because as I said earlier, every day, week and month I set new goals for myself and my business, and I can keep them right next to me, at eye level as an constant reminder of what I want to accomplish; and then erase them as I go.
Paper notes have their place, but they aren’t nearly as effective in keeping you focused as having the goals boldly printed on the wall next to your desk will be. When I kept everything on paper I found it was easy to become distracted from my daily To-Do’s and goals. But when they’re literally staring me in the face I seem to remain more focused on getting them erased off the board.
That was fine for my goals and To-Do Lists, but what about everything else I kept in those notepads? Software, my friends.
Being very happy with the results of my whiteboard, I took it a step further and began using free software that also allowed me to keep a digital whiteboard and post-it type notes on my desktop. More clutter and confusion removed from my life.
I use the open source “Open Office” which comes with great spreadsheet and database programs to manage almost everything else that I used to keep scribbled in my notepads (again, more clutter and confusion gone from my life), and I’ve also found several neat little plugins for my FireFox browser that are made for storing and keeping various types of information in an orderly and easily accessible manner that I use too.
One last free tool I use, because I’m not always working at my desk and am often mobile, is Google’s Notebook. I don’t use it for a lot, and never for any information that is sensitive (nothing online is absolutely secure, so discretion and common-sense caution are my guides), but for simple notes that I feel I may need access to while away from my desk it’s a great option.
Google also has their Google Docs offering, which is a free word processor and spreadsheets program that lets you create and store your documents online. It’s another great tool to use, but again the question of “just how secure is the information?” prevents me from using it for too much.
There it is. How I managed to remove tons of clutter and confusion from my life, and focus better on my daily, weekly and monthly goals. All for the total financial investment of about $15 for my whiteboard on the wall.
Email this postRelated Posts:
Tags: goals, organized, white board
