Jason's Productivity Tip #2

Okay, so I am generally considered a somewhat organized person. People admire the organization of my office, of how I keep things, etc. And because of that I was recently able to help a mom of a student out. She was overwhelmed trying to keep up to date with all her kids' stuff, etc. So I shared with her a key element to being organized and keeping things together:
One list and one calendar.
Now, I am certainly not the first person to espouse this idea but the best way to be organized is to limit yourself to these two key ideas.

What do I mean by one list? I know of tons of people who try to manage their lives by listing out all the things they have to do. And then stockpiling lists upon lists and can't manage them. You need one list.

What do I mean by one calendar? Simply put, one calendar. Your life doesn't really have compartments. Your work, your kids, etc. all exist in the truth of your time. Trying to manage life with multiple calendars is a terrible idea because you can never juggle or manage them all. You will ultimately lose something. So you need one calendar that contains it all.

So how do I do this? I use Microsoft Outlook, not because I think it is the best option but because it works with my phone, which makes my list and my calendar mobile . There are some great other tools out there to use if you are just starting.
For example, you can set-up your own Google Homepage: www.google.com/ig and then use various "To Do" lists and Google Calendar and set that as your homepage for your web browser. Or get a nice moleskine notebook and divide it into two sections. Like I said, there are many, many ways of doing it but you want to get it down to this: one list and one calendar.

So I helped a mom learn that principle and she reports it is really helping her and her family manage all that they have going on. One list, one calendar and way less headaches!