How I stay organized
Staying organized is never a one size fits all item for people. For me I have to use quite a few different pieces to keep everything together.
The first piece is I read a book called Time Management for System Administrators (direct link to Amazon). Using some of the practices in this book, I was able to take a lot of chaos out of my last job. I worked for an MSP and every day was crazy. I started listing everything I needed to get done in a day. I used a giant white board and worked with my manager so that they could see what I was doing for the day at a glance. They would re-prioritize things with talking to me at times and we would all stay on the same page. The book talks about writing down all of your tasks and then ranking them. Since at times I would have different priorities than my manage, it was important for us to stay on the same page. A lot of times a good ticketing system would take care of this, but we didn't use our ticketing system for project work at the time.
The second big piece was starting to use a Bullet Journal. What this allowed me to do is use an analog system for everything in my life. I write down everything now and because of this I carry my bullet journal everywhere with me. I create lists, reminders, to do items, and review it multiple times a day. Since changing jobs and now working with a team that expects me to know what I'm doing with minimal input from my manager, this is my sole source of what I'm doing. I of course log everything in a system at work or home, but my day to day notes and lists are in this. It helps me remember to do things and it goes with me to the grocery store. I recently found out there is a whole community of people that use this method heavily and like to decorate them. Check out the reddit community https://www.reddit.com/r/bulletjournal/. While all of the decoration isn't for me, the system works for a lot of people. Additionally, while I have the branded notebook, all you need is any notebook to get started. I just wanted to support the creator.
Lastly, I use multiple calendars. I have the one on my phone that syncs to google and a wall calendar that both myself and my partner can see and update. These are used for long term reminds and the month at a glance. I can't tell you the number of times I have forgotten something just because I didn't throw it on my calendar.
These items combined have helped me to create a system that works for me to stay organized and on task. What do you do?
The first piece is I read a book called Time Management for System Administrators (direct link to Amazon). Using some of the practices in this book, I was able to take a lot of chaos out of my last job. I worked for an MSP and every day was crazy. I started listing everything I needed to get done in a day. I used a giant white board and worked with my manager so that they could see what I was doing for the day at a glance. They would re-prioritize things with talking to me at times and we would all stay on the same page. The book talks about writing down all of your tasks and then ranking them. Since at times I would have different priorities than my manage, it was important for us to stay on the same page. A lot of times a good ticketing system would take care of this, but we didn't use our ticketing system for project work at the time.
The second big piece was starting to use a Bullet Journal. What this allowed me to do is use an analog system for everything in my life. I write down everything now and because of this I carry my bullet journal everywhere with me. I create lists, reminders, to do items, and review it multiple times a day. Since changing jobs and now working with a team that expects me to know what I'm doing with minimal input from my manager, this is my sole source of what I'm doing. I of course log everything in a system at work or home, but my day to day notes and lists are in this. It helps me remember to do things and it goes with me to the grocery store. I recently found out there is a whole community of people that use this method heavily and like to decorate them. Check out the reddit community https://www.reddit.com/r/bulletjournal/. While all of the decoration isn't for me, the system works for a lot of people. Additionally, while I have the branded notebook, all you need is any notebook to get started. I just wanted to support the creator.Lastly, I use multiple calendars. I have the one on my phone that syncs to google and a wall calendar that both myself and my partner can see and update. These are used for long term reminds and the month at a glance. I can't tell you the number of times I have forgotten something just because I didn't throw it on my calendar.
These items combined have helped me to create a system that works for me to stay organized and on task. What do you do?