By: Ranim Elgabakhngi
Keeping yourself organized may seem like a huge challenge. With an infinite number of obligations, due dates, and personal aims, organizing yourself turns out to be an essential skill necessary for both the increase of productivity and the keeping of the balance.
The mentioned tools can change a disordered state into one that is clear. These tools may improve self-organization, giving you efficient and easy methods to simplify your work and increase your productive capacity.
Mind Maps
Mind mapping is one of the creative visual ways that enable people to organize, structure, and gather their thoughts and ideas. It is a method/technique of showing the relationships between different tasks or ideas which start with a central concept and then branching out thus allowing one to see the whole thing and at the same time breaking down complex projects into manageable parts.
A student, for instance, who is writing a research paper can use a mind map to break down topics, subtopics, and citations, thus, the task will be less daunting. With the help of XMind or even a simple pen-and-paper sketch, mind mapping can be done anywhere and anytime thus making it a handy tool that also encourages one’s clarity and creativity.
Sticky Notes
Sticky notes refer to a handy, old-fashioned, and low-tech means of writing short, momentary ideas or tasks that easily come to one’s mind. The fact that they are physically available on the table, wall, or digital desktop is a kind of manifestation of the presence of these priorities in the person’s mind.
Color-coding the sticky notes by urgency or topic, e.g., work, personal, or urgent, can make them more effective. For example, putting a sticky note on your monitor with “Call client by 2 PM” is the surest way to keep the task at the forefront of your mind. Programs such as Microsoft Sticky Notes also facilitate this notion to the digital world, thus providing the possibility of having the notes on different devices and thus being easily accessible anytime and anywhere.
Alarms and Reminders
To be able to keep track of time-bound duties, alarms and reminders are two of the most useful things. By setting alarms for meetings, deadlines, or even short breaks, it becomes impossible to procrastinate and also, everything that is done remains in the record of what has been done.
Smartphone apps such as Google Calendar or Todoist give the facility for users to set recurring reminders or one-time alerts which are perfectly suitable for their schedules. Just to give a worker-at-home an example, the setting of an alarm daily at 9 in the morning of reviewing the task list will create a habit of starting the day with focus. Such devices become the user’s external memory and they cut down on the user’s mental capacity.
Schedules and Task Lists
An effectively planned schedule is essentially a time-sharing of different activities such as work, personal life, and rest. Users of tools like Trello or Notion can create very detailed task lists that include due dates, priority levels, and progress tracking.
A large project becomes manageable when it is divided into smaller tasks each with its own deadline such as “Draft report by Wednesday” and “Review feedback by Friday”. Keeping your schedule in check through regular reviews and modifications guarantees that it will stay at the same level of your priorities.
Self-organization is a revolutionary approach to handling the many challenges of life, and devices such as mind maps, sticky notes, alarms, schedules, tasks, plans, and reminders are means by which the process can be made easy to any individual. These are the ways by which, you can turn your heavy load of duties into simple, manageable ones.
Try to put to use one or two tools from your daily routine and little by little create a system that suits you. Keeping yourself organized will be almost like a habit, hence, you will have a more productive and balanced life.
