My father is a wise man. As
time goes by and I’m getting older, I’m starting to realize he is even wiser
than I thought.
When I was a child, he
always used to insist that I should not leave my things laying around, and that
I should always set a place for them and place them there.
If you learn to put one
thing in its place it’s going to help you a lot, on the long run, because you
can always go fetch it and find it there. And you can do that even with your
eyes closed.
This is true, actually. I
took his advice and it turned out to be very useful.
I reckon this is how I
developed my organizational skills. By simply applying his piece of advice, I
was efficient. Then, I started feeling the need for clarity and planning. A
need that I always try to fulfil in my professional and personal relationships.
If things are not clear and
well defined for neither of the parties (or even only for one of them), the
standstill occurs. And standstill cannot be surpassed by only one party’s
efforts.
Until recently, when
talking about organizational skills, a reference was always made regarding
multitasking. There hardly were job interviews without the parties (interviewer
and interviewee) making a reference to this magic element.
Fortunately for all of us,
in the meantime, researchers have found that multitasking is not quite a great skill. And that, actually, the human brain can only focus on one task at a time, while
multitasking means that efficiency and performance are at risk. Regardless of
the country of origin of these researchers, I am glad to hear about this
discovery and I support it.
If you come to think about
it, the truth about multitasking was right in front of us, on American highways
(I guess there were on other countries’ highways too, but the first that I heard of were the
American ones) – Don’t text and drive! We just could not believe
it.
Tricks for being more
organized
Take notes.
It’s good to take notes
about what one considers to be important. But keep in mind that we have a
particular way in which our brain processes information. When things are not
clear enough, the brain has the tendency to fill in the gaps (for unclear or
missing details).
Thus, be careful how you
take notes!
I am truly comfortable with
using Word, and I love to take notes on such a document. But I have friends and
colleagues that use all kinds of applications. The important thing is to find
what works for you.
The calendar
Try taking notes on a
day-follows-day approach. That is, write the task to be done tomorrow and continue by
mentioning those to be done the next day after tomorrow and so on and so forth.
Do not forget to include the date. This really helps me not to forget a task.
For example:
05.02 – must sign document X.
To have a better visibility on what's next, as soon as I solve a task from the day I delete it. But you can delete them all at the end of the day.
And if I was not able to deliver on one task, I move it to another day.
I hope this inspires you to
better organize your tasks!
