Getting Organised
Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” was one of the most important books I had read about being organised. When I read it ten years ago, I knew that this was a Good Way of getting things done and have applied this with increasing conviction in recent years.
Using a variety of tools, I have tried many times to make this a habit - first with a Filofax organiser, then with a clipboard, and other forms of electronic calenders, documents and spreadsheets. Once I was partially successful with Outlook, but that tended to be a tool that lent itself more to prioritising lists and making appointments, rather than to focus one on looking at the weekly view.
Tools define how we approach a problem. This was something I’ve discovered since I starting using Powerpoint - while one may compose detailed diagrams with more sophisticated software, that does not necessarily make them any more efficient than a simpler tool. One example was styles and layers - it was one feature that those familiar with Word or Photoshop found sorely lacking. Why can’t I change all the styles in one go? Why can’t I hide/show different parts of the presentation as I wished? These “features” were missing! It was after much more experience that I realised that Powerpoint was a tool for expressing broad, general ideas. It was not for communicating detailed information, or for managing complex data structures. For capturing and communicating ideas, it was eminently suitable.
Since I spend most of my time in front of a computer, my organiser had to be in an electronic form. I must be able to edit them quickly. So I settled on an Excel spreadsheet, formatted very much like the weekly view. It shows my roles and goals to the left, and a seven-day plan in the middle. I filled in items in one hour blocks, but it is not detailed enough to be a proper organiser, but more akin to a notepad for capturing goals.
I fill these out at the beginning of the week, and mark the items out when I complete them, or move them to a later period. At the end of the week, I make a new sheet and archive the old one. When I have to be away from the computer, I print out a hardcopy - don’t need to be tethered to remain focused!