What To Do When There's Too Much To Do (8 page)

When your mind does solve something, it may present you with those new ideas, associations, and connections unexpectedly. Don't forget to capture new thoughts and ideas immediately.
Ideas are like slippery fish: You have to hook them with some easy-to-carry recording method, or they'll get away. Where do you put all those great ideas?

If you lack pen and paper to hook a slippery idea with, leave a voicemail on your work phone.

Look at your desk right now. Are there piles of paper everywhere? If you're like 90 percent of office workers, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” So, whatever happened to the paperless office all the business gurus promised us? We're getting better, but clearly it hasn't come to pass quite yet. So we still need places to put all our paper.

If you're swamped with paper, then you're in dire need of an effective filing system. Personal filing and time management systems are very personal decisions; my needs may be different from yours, so tailor this system to your requirements.

Here are the categories I recommend considering for your filing system.

•
Active/Dynamic files.
Accessed daily. A tickler file (see below) is a prime example of this category.

•
Project/Client files.
Accessed at least once a month. These may include meeting notes, committee paperwork, newsletters you write, etc.

•
Reference files.
Accessed at least once a year. For example, completed project files, tax paperwork, personnel information, and budgets.

•
Archive/History files.
Accessed less than once a year. Store these somewhere clean, dry, and away from your office.

While these are the standard categories, you can also add any others you find useful: for example, Product Sheets, Topical Information, Research, Ideas, etc. Again, whatever works best for you is fine. Just use an easily-remembered noun as the first word in each file title; use subcategories to better organize your files; add information in a consistent manner; and, most important of all, file your paperwork a few times a month at the minimum! You can't afford to have your files pile up until they're a mile high.

Don't create just a paper-based filing system. Develop a logical system for your electronic files as well, using folders and easily remembered naming conventions.

In my opinion, the tickler file is among the most important components of any paper filing system; it allows you to retrieve specific items related to a specific day. For example, if you receive a meeting request via e-mail and accept it, the appointment moves to your calendar for you. But the invitation might have an attachment you wish to print and take to the meeting with you. That hardcopy piece of paper would be filed in your Tickler file, in the folder corresponding to the day of the meeting. Outlook maintains your calendar digitally; however, it can't hold a physical piece of paper.

Think of a Tickler as a rotating annual calendar for paper. To set one up, start with forty-three hanging folders (Pendaflex style, not file folders): thirty-one folders for the days of the month and twelve for the months. Hang your folders somewhere very convenient; a desk drawer is your best option, or you can set up a rolling file or a rack on your desk. Anywhere is fine, as long as you don't have to get up to reach it.

Arrange it so when you open the drawer, the first folder you see is the folder for the current month. Hanging behind it is the folder with the number of today's date, followed by the folder for tomorrow, and so on through the days. The rest
of the months hang behind it. In your drawer, it might look something like this:

March

15

16 …

31

April

1

2 …

14

May …

February

Next, file all the papers requiring some future action. Let's say you receive an invoice due on the 14th of a particular month. You wouldn't want to file this in the 14 folder, because the payment would arrive late. File things on the day you need to see them again. You might file the invoice in the 7 folder, so it comes up soon enough for you to pay it before it's due. Always ask yourself, “When do I need to see this again?”

Each evening, pull the next day's file, preferably as the last action before you leave the office. Hence, if today is the 28th, before leaving for the day, pull the contents of the file marked 29. The agenda for tomorrow's meeting will appear as if by magic! Then move that folder behind the 28th of the following month. So dated folders move to the next month, and monthly folders move to the back of the drawer.

You can still use the tickler file concept even when trying to go paperless. Use your e-mail tools to create reminders on Sent Items or set Start and Due dates in Tasks.

You'll also want to track all the basic information required to keep your life and schedule moving along smoothly. To a large extent, this will depend on the personal time management system you adopt—paper-based, electronic, or some hybrid method of both.

Personal information arrives and gets stored in myriad ways today, due to all of the shiny new technologies available in our world. Most people track contacts, communication, meetings and appointments, Master lists, HIT (daily) lists, and notes within their personal systems. Today, your system could include:

• Information-capturing methods, including software such as Evernote or Microsoft OneNote, or paper methods such as a Day-Timer or notebook

• Customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as ACT, GoldMine, or Salesforce.com

• Social media channels, each with its own inbox, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Foursquare

• Information delivery software such as e-mail, intranets, and instant messages

• Texting and apps using your favorite smartphone or handheld (e.g., iPad), such as Plan2Go by Day-Timer

• Web services to help you stay organized, such as Nozbe by Michael Sliwinski, or Remember the Milk

Obviously, there's no single “correct” method here. Your personal time management system will evolve over time to fit your requirements. The challenge is that effective time management actually involves three separate functions:

1.
Capture
inputs as they occur to you or are received.

2.
Organize
the information into tasks and start/due dates.

3.
Reference
what you need to do.

Many people use one tool for all three functions; however, three different methods might actually be more effective for some people. Some people are trying to go “paperless” and use a handheld that syncs to their e-mail and calendar, which is just fine, and they enter new tasks directly into their handheld. But if you're a “paper” person, this might not work well for you. If you think of something to do, your first instinct might be to grab a piece of paper and a pencil, not your phone. So, you could use paper for your capture method and the phone for your reference tool, and that would be perfectly organized as well.

For example, I love my handheld but hate tapping tasks into it. When I think of something to do, my instant reaction is to grab a pencil and write in my Master or HIT list in my Day-Timer. Anything left over at the end of the day gets entered into my Task list in Outlook. My phone syncs up and then acts as a reference tool for contacts, calendar, e-mail, and tasks, so I can scan it at any time, even when I'm not in front of my computer.

So my time management system looks like this:

1.
Capture:
Productivity Pro
^®
Day-Timer

2.
Organize:
Outlook Tasks

3.
Reference:
Droid handheld

What's yours? Other people capture on their iPad, which is just great, if you are willing to do that consistently, every single time you think of something to do, and not just “some” times. What if you're on a plane, with all your electronic devices off, or in a meeting, where it appears you are texting if you type yourself a note? Personally, I find entering tasks into my handheld tedious (the buttons are small and I hate typos). Needless to say, some methods work better than others.

Regardless of the time management system you choose to organize your life, there are a few foundational principles for
maximizing any system's efficiency. I call these the “HUG” criteria.

H—Handy.
Is your system available at all times, or are you what I call a “scrapper”? Scrappers are easily identifiable by all the little scraps of paper everywhere. What happens when you go to a restaurant to meet with a friend or client, and you need to write something down, and you don't have anything to write on? What do you grab—a napkin? A dry cleaning receipt? An envelope? The back of a business card? Have you ever written on your hand in desperation? (I call this the original PalmPilot
^®
). Well, if you're a scrapper, it's simple to fix. Whether you're using a handheld, iPad, notebook, or the Productivity Pro
^®
Day-Timer, carry your system with you at all times. It
must
be available, because scheduling meetings or checking due dates can happen in the oddest of places. If your system is too cumbersome to keep with you all the time, then you'll want to switch to something more portable—something more “Handy.”

A contact file should include the person's company, main office phone number, cell phone number, e-mail address, personal office number/extension, and physical address.

U—Usable.
To be truly usable, your personal time management system must bring together the personal and professional aspects of your life in one place, making it easy to switch between them. Everything needs to be included: calendars, to-do lists, work schedules, private schedules, family schedules, kid activities, personal appointments, vacation plans, professional and private contacts—the works. In particular, all your calendars should be included (such as syncing your Google calendar to your work calendar on your phone); otherwise, conflicts are
inevitable. For example: If you can't check to see if your son has soccer practice on Thursday afternoon, because you've left your family calendar at home or on the refrigerator, then you might inadvertently plan a business meeting at the same time—and end up with a conflict. It's better and easier to keep your entire life in one place, in a format you can easily reference at all times.