My organization system
It's not what you think...
Happy new year! 🥳
In my last post, I used a few terms that you might not be familiar with. Today, I’ll explain some of them and use that excuse to talk about my organization system. One thing I’d like to make clear before we start:
Organization is not the same as planning!
Organization is about how you process and store information. How do you decide what is important to remember and how do you actually remember it? If you’re like me, the systems for storing information involve planners, but they don’t have to. Maybe you email important files to yourself. Maybe you take pictures. Maybe you have the world’s biggest mind palace, and you actually know how to find stuff by imagining a house. I do not.
My organization system is split into 4 categories: work versus personal, permanent versus temporary. Work versus personal is kind of obvious. Permanent versus temporary means stuff I want to reference months or years from now versus stuff that only matters in the current says or weeks.
How I process information:
My short-term memory is terrible - basically if I don’t write it down, I will forget it. So, I start by writing down pretty much everything. You can’t always sort information right away anyway, so the simplest approach is just to write it all down in one place. This is called “quick capture”. My quick capture methods are paper notebooks and my phone notes app. If I’m at my desk or talking to someone, I prefer to write on paper (it also seems less rude, or maybe I’m just old-fashioned.) If I’m out and about, I will usually jot stuff down on my phone. Some people carry notebooks with them everywhere instead of using their phone, but that hasn’t worked for me in the past. If I’m at work (or thinking about work…) I will jot it down in my work planner or my work OneNote app. For everything else, there’s I use a different notebook.
How I store information:
If it’s temporary or unimportant, I don’t store it. I just move on. Usually, these are items like reminders to do something later, brainstorming, or doodling. I can leave it in my quick-capture notebook and cross it out or set a reminder then delete the note when I’m done with it.
If it is important, I store it. Meetings and appointments go in my calendar app. When I worked in a research lab, I would store lab protocols and notes on papers in my digital lab notebook or a citation reference manager, like Zotero. Manuscripts and shared documents would go in our team’s Dropbox folder. Of course, our actual experimental data was stored on servers, with tape backups (as it should be!) My teaching set-up is similar, with most documents stored in the cloud (Box). On the personal side, I mostly keep records of certain running categories in my life. This includes personal finances and hobbies, like reading books or crafting. I think it’s important to see how my finances change over time, and I enjoy keeping track of what I learned or which books I enjoyed. Because I want to re-read these records in the future, I keep them in a separate notebook. (Actually, two notebooks because I use a separate one for my foreign language lessons.)
A note about journaling:
A lot of people treasure their journals as keepsakes, to be stored and re-visited year after year as a record of their life. It is important for them to keep a separate journal. For me, journaling is more about de-stressing and seeing what really happened in my day (versus what I planned to do.) It can be interesting to look back on, but I don’t feel obligated to archive it. If you keep a journal, paper or otherwise, do as you like with it. It’s yours!
Organization inspiration:
Parker's Ponderings (ParkNotes on Youtube) - I liked his explanation and approach to commonplace books.
Answer in Progress (here and Youtube) - Informative, even when they aren’t talking about organization and learning, and they really get to the heart of the matter.
The Organized Money - Her multi-planner system might seem complicated at first, but there is ultimately something very practical and satisfying about her approach.
Marie Kondo - I will always recommend her book, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up. I promise it’s not really about how you fold your pants, but rather how to find out what makes you happy and what serves a purpose in your life.
Let me know who or what inspired your approach to saving stuff!