Organization, how do you get it done? (Ps welcome)

[miked277]

what works for me (and it works well):

1. having an unrelenting feeling that i need to live up to my potential, otherwise i'm not only disgracing myself but all of humanity
   
2. asking myself, "why am i doing this?" ... a lot (as a way to continuously ensure my actions are moving me toward my goals).
   
3. when given a choice between being productive and not being productive i remind myself to "just do the right thing."
   
4. reminding myself of those who had to bust their asses to achieve greatness and ignoring the proverbial lottery winners (i.e. those who barely had to work for success).

so far so good. i'll be able to report more fully on the results in about 5-6 years.

edit: a pre-requisite for this type of list i should add is having a goal or a series of goals; the absence of which we just end up chasing instant gratification and transient needs.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

I'm curious about other people. How do you keep yourself organized? This can span from finances to your daily life. You don't have to get too detailed if you don't want to.

For me, I keep track of all of my finances in spreadsheets. I just got a new day planner right before this semester started that was very simple. It has a calendar for each month, and then a column to write notes for each day. That's all I want. I only wanted a place to write down things that pertain to each day. I didn't need an appointment listing. I don't need a to do list.

I think I'm not as high of a J to really make use of a day planner. My problem with planners is that I am so used to just....remembering everything I need to do, that I don't want to write it down. I feel like I'm making note of something twice. It's redundant. It's still useful, though, since I found a planner that works for my style.

How do you guys do it?

If a task is important, then I try to find or create a system that is as simple as possible to implement. For example with finances I've found that putting money into envelopes is the easiest thing. Then I don't have to track where the money is going. I simply stop spending when the envelope is empty. I also hate to excersize, so to motivate me to do that I hold a monthly contest with my wife, and the person who excersized the most days wins some money.

For most other things I either try to avoid organizing or let my wife handle it. For example she is much better at scheduling things, so I just let her handle our schedule.

 

[ygolo]

Financial:
Basically all my bills are on auto-pay. I also have my prtfolio from bank of america instead of using quicken, and turbo-tax keeps a reconrd of prior year stuff for tax purposes.

School:
I try to keep everything electronic if I can. I have a folder for schoolwork in both my work and home computers, and all the school stuff since a year or so after I started grad. school is in one of the two folders. At some point, I am going to copy all the school stuff from work and put it at home.

Work:
I use one-note as a journal, and again I do almost everything electronically if possible. I paste in useful information or tables into my one-note as if it were a journal.
Also, I use a spread sheet to make estimated schedules for wotk, but I am horrible at estimating the time it takes for stuff.

Home:
My home is a mess, but I have found that only my own bedroom is difficult to clean. After, I throw out all the junk and put the books onto bookshelves, the main thing I have left is my mail. I hate paper mail, and I have stuff "to-be-organized" from over a year ago.
My bedroom looks like a disaster area, and in addition to junk, books, and mail, there are clothes all over the place.
I still have some stuff (books, electronic projects, and old school-work mainly) in boxes from when I moved over three years ago.

Personal:
I'm trying out the to-do list thing. I've done it for short bursts before. But I hate being a slave to a list I made arbitrarily. If I can find a way to align my lists to what I actually want to do, I may be more inclined to follow it.
What I wanted used to be clear at on point, but now it is all murky. I like the idea of having 5 year-long gaols, and life long goals as well. But I am too chicken at this point to commit to what I feel I should do.