Thursday, April 28, 2016

Organizing Tasks

There are many different ways to organize our task lists. I like my system because it groups things together in ways that I can see where I am spending the most time and energy and if I am a little too light in areas that truly are important to me - i.e. me and my own growth. 

The current way I have things organized:
Amber

Family & Home
Learning - this includes all reading to kids, school related tasks, and my own personal reading and studies. 
Others - extended family, neighbors, church members
Errands
Create the Life
Church Work - I struggled for a long time to figure out how this worked for me to be able to keep track of things I was responsible for. But I now divide tasks up by due date and put them in this folder. I am even better about completing my assignments now than when I would just write things down on paper. 


Just in case you are wondering, I have 18 folders on my app. The first 7 are the ones listed above. 
The rest are: 
Grocery
Walmart
Costco
Holidays
Recipes for Home & Beauty - DIY face masks, stain remover, shower cleaner, dry shampoo. I wanted a place to organize things I was pulling off Pinterest, so I would take a picture or write it down and add it to this folder. I actually have not been in this folder for awhile, but I do know where my favorites are located. 
Journal - I have not used this in a few years since starting a new system, but when I am traveling or when I was in the hospital having a baby, it was nice to add pictures and write down feelings. Once I synced the folders, I just pulled the entries onto my hard drive. 
Passwords - in the app I use, you can lock certain folders. I used to also have all my gift ideas locked up. Maybe if kids get snoopy I will go back to doing that. 


Amber
Family & Home
Learning
Others
No, I didn't forget I already wrote these. I have another folder for each of these categories. Tasks that do not have a due date get put at the bottom of the folder. In each of these folders I can keep things I want to have access to, but none of these have due dates. 
Amber - prayer list, gift ideas, easy exercises to do when I travel
Family & Home - air filter size (I seem to forget this every time), gift ideas for family members, things we want to plant in the garden, pictures of hair dos I have done on my girls that they liked (I got this idea from my friend who kept a picture folder for her daughter so she could pick out a hair do - helpful when coaxing an unhappy child), family sizes and measurements, printer ink numbers, packing list, etc
Learning - books to read to kids, books to read to myself, book group lists, quotes I love
Others - borrowed/lent lists, extended family gift ideas


Some other ways you might organize could be by tasks - cleaning, phone calls, errands, etc. I have done this before, but I could never find the perfect place to plug in things like "set up date with hubby" or "read 15 minutes".

Using the grouping that I do I am able to easily see who needs my attention that day, where my focus is and prioritize things that are important to me. Grouping things in these categories also has helped me succeed in creating and maintaining some personal daily habits, such as personal prayers and helping my 3-year-old complete her chores before play time. 

How do you organize your lists and tasks? 

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