Oh Those Endless “Scraps of Paper”!
Musings—May 24, 2010
Lots of us are overwhelmed by those endless scraps of paper on our desks and kitchen counters. Have you ever wondered how you can tame all those scraps of paper with all those fabulous ideas you’ll do someday, those reminders you write to yourself for things you want to do/check out later/don’t want to forget, those elusive and exhaustive To Do Lists, etc.?
Here are some ways that help me reduce a lot of those scraps of paper so they don’t take over every surface and area in my home—and my home office.
Instead of keeping all those little notes scattered everywhere, write them in a spiral notebook. Divide the notebook into sections or use the kind that are already divided into “subjects” (similar to the ones we used in high school). I find it helpful to have a section for each general topic. (e.g. “blog article topics”, “presentation ideas & topics” (so I don’t lose all those wonderful ideas I get in the middle of the night or when I least expect it!), “websites to check out”, “general to-do list”, etc. When I want to spend some time checking out some websites, I just turn to the section “websites” and the web addresses are all right there. When I write another blog post I just refer to the growing list of ideas and pick the one I’m inspired to write at that moment. Everyday I look at my ongoing general to-do list and select the ones I’ll do that day or that week from this list.
For any notes for appointments and meetings write them in pencil on your calendar. The key, of course, is to actually look at your calendar routinely and don’t use more than one calendar (there are some exceptions to that though – which I won’t go into now). Write in pencil so you can easily erase it when a change needs to be made. I once had a colleague who wrote everything in pen, and then when a change was made would mark over the initial notation in pen and write the new information over it, above or beside it, or in the margin with arrows pointing to it. The calendar soon became a mess and only added to the disorganization and stress because it was nearly impossible to decipher it.
I hope this has helped you save yourself from ‘drowning in paper’! It sure helps me.
