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Get Organized

  1. First, get your office clean and organized – it’s difficult to be productive among stacks of papers and a disorganized mess. You may feel you don’t have the time for a big cleaning and organizing project. But, the little bits of time lost each day that you struggle to be productive because of the mess will add up eventually to more than the amount of time it would have taken.
  2. Second, organize your projects into folders or files that allow you to easily pick up where you left off. If possible, leave everything out for a project you’re working on (eg chapter, article, grant, lecture). If you have to find everything you need, lay it all out, and get yourself reoriented each time you resume work on a project, you lose valuable time.
  3. Third, use apps to help keep yourself organized
    • Use a note-taking app to organize notes and more. For example, with Evernote you can organize text, scanned documents, images, clipped web pages, screen grabs, sketches, infographics, recipes, and more.
    • Use a trip-planning app to organize everything related to travel, both work & pleasure
    • Use a password manager app to remember all your logins and passwords, both for work-related sites and for your home and financial sites
    • Use cloud storage so that all of your documents are always available from any computer, and everything is always backed up
  4. Use a family calendar that syncs with everyone’s mobile devices and work calendars – you can use Outlook, Google, or a separate app
    • Enter everything in the calendar as soon as you receive the dates: ED shifts, work obligations and meetings, kids’ school events & sports games & activities, etc.
      • You will save time by not messing up your schedule requests and having to try and trade shifts later!
      • Be pro-active with schools and organizations that aren’t used to dealing with working parents – ask to see the school’s Master Calendar in the back, if you know an event always occurs (eg end of year sports banquet) check with the coach/teacher/person in charge early on to get the date.
    • Color code / tag by family member (they can then filter to see only their own events)
    • Consider also filling out and keeping a weekly or monthly dry-erase calendar where all family members will see it
    • Schedule “dates” with spouse and with children – if it’s not on the calendar it won’t happen
    • Make a bucket list of fun weekend activities to do with family and put them on the calendar so your weekend doesn’t get eaten up with errands, chores, TV, and video games
  5. Make lists and checklists for work
    • Make a master list of the large projects you’d like to achieve over the next months to a year
      • Break each project down into small do-able steps
    • Plan out your week on Sunday night with all you hope to accomplish each day
    • Each night, make a daily checklist for the next day consisting of several small do-able items (and add on anything not completed the day before)
    • Cycle of productivity: checking things off gives you a feeling of accomplishment and positive self-esteem, motivating you to keep achieving
  6. Keep lists and checklists for home use
    • Grocery lists, other needed items lists (including any deadlines for obtaining them)
      • Plan your bag lunches, school lunches, and dinners for the next week on Sunday; do the grocery shopping, even consider making and freezing some meals
        • Freeze a reusable bottle of water each night to include with lunches – it will serve as an icepack to keep food cold as well as melt in time to be a drink with lunch
    • If one partner is less likely to “see” what needs to be done around the house, avoid resentment and arguments by having the other partner make a To-Do list to delineate things that need to be done
    • Keep a list of dinner ideas everyone likes (and the ingredients needed) so you can quickly answer the age-old question, “What should we have for dinner?”
    • Get an old diaper wipes or other box, several white poker chips, and a list of activities – write one activity on each poker chip and put them all in the box; when kids say they’re bored, direct them to the box to pick out a poker chip or two. Consider having two boxes / lists – one with “high-value” activities that you wish to limit such as playing video games for a certain amount of time or watching TV, or activities that incorporate parent participation – the high-value box can be selected from only after an hour or two of activities from the other box.
  7. Stock up
    • Keep ingredients for quick, portable breakfasts and healthy snacks in the house / fridge
    • Make a homework basket with everything needed (pencils, pens, erasers, highlighters, colored pencils, markers, ruler, stapler, correction tape, index cards, post-it notes, etc)
    • Make a bill-paying basket with everything needed (checkbooks, calculator, envelopes, stamps; also a good place to keep an organizer for business cards for household servicepeople)
    • Keep some school supplies in a closet so you don’t have to run out when your child tells you he/she needs them last minute (eg binder paper, graph paper, construction paper, composition notebooks, binders, presentation folders, and especially, posterboard)
    • Keep a “gift closet” for when a birthday party sneaks up on you, or you need a “new, unwrapped gift” for your child to donate
    • Consider ordering double of any uniforms (especially the socks) so you don’t have to worry about them being washed
    • Use a daily outfit closet organizer to set out kids’ outfits for the week: saves time in the morning, saves fights over what to wear, helps you remember special days like wear PJs to school day