Day 9: e-Organizing Simplified

Organizing used to mean having an orderly house and desk. Papers needed to be filed, pencils needed to go in their containers, and your rolodex needed alphabetizing. Today, most people's organizing takes place electronically. The trouble is that many people feel more weighed down by all of the options for computer organizing than liberated. Here are a few tips I've found that will keep you organized without fail:

1. Pick an organizing tool you like and stick with it. The number one way to confuse yourself and inevitably get off the organizing bandwagon is by having information in too many different places. My favourite calendar tool is Google Calendar. By using this, I can access my calendar from any computer and sync wirelessly to my phone using the Google Sync app.

2. Once you have a base program for keeping your days organized, have some form of backing up your calendar. This can be done by creating a zip file, which will ensure that your calendar is not totally lost. Your contact list can also be incorporated into your calendar so that you can add a person to a meeting or event.

3. Students should include any homework into their calendars. If you mark assignments as an all day event, they will appear at the beginning of a day on your calendar. Some people prefer to write assignment down in a school agenda but I would caution that if this is what you are going to do for assignments, you may want to stick with the same agenda for day planning in general. Once you begin marking different parts of your life in different places, you increase your chances of forgetting an event or assignment. Simplify your life by keeping one place for all tasks.

4. Another positive of e-organizing? You can sync your Facebook account to your calender. The result? Facebook will take the birthdays of any "friends" that you also have in your contacts and put their birthdays on your calendar.

One of the big reasons I've converted to only using this form of organization is that you can visualize your days, weeks, and months. Rather than flipping pages, at the click of a button you can adjust your view of your  days ahead. Patterns will start jumping out at you in your schedule; you will be able to visualize how you're not making the most of certain time and how you're overextending yourself in other places.

One of the great features of e-Organizing is that it's environmentally friendly. Going paperless reduces your clutter and your footprint on the Earth.

Find out more about Google Sync. It's free!