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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

To-Do Lists and Other Organizational Methods

Friday will be my last day of work for the year. I'm always stingy with my vacation days, since I never know when my son will get sick or if something happens at school or daycare. That means I still have a lot of time to use up. I'm not planning to go anywhere; instead, I'm making a master list in Word of everything from chores to do around the house, writing/publishing tasks to work on, other personal project, and even fun things for me and my family to do. By the time I finish this list, I'm sure it will be overwhelming and probably more than I'll realistically be able to complete in two weeks. I'm not going to plot out a timetable for all these activities either. After all, my productivity is going to depend in part on whether my son is home (and yes, I have activities with him on the list too). It may be a very informal way to manage my tasks, but as long as I complete a good amount of them, that's all I need.

How do you organize your tasks? Do you create to-do lists, or do you use another method? Do you use paper, apps, or a combination of them? Feel free to share your method (or madness, if you prefer) in the comments.

4 comments:

  1. Enjoy your two weeks off. I'm taking the week off in between the holidays, which will equate to eleven days off.
    Sometimes I make a list. Often I got things down on my iPad though.

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  2. Merry Christmas! Enjoy your time, Sandra. You deserve it.

    As to organizing, I have been using a paper notebook converted to a bullet journal to keep me on track. I keep my writing tasks of the day there and check them off as I complete them. I have collections of ideas for research, travel and other things that I do in connection with being an author. It is a great place to sketch in my off time, practicing the patterns that I use to illustrate my poetry. No sense in wasting fountain pen friendly paper! :)

    I don't keep my calendar of events in the bullet journal, except to note them on the day they arrive. I use various calendars, both paper and electronic to track my activities based on type. This is the one way that I deviate from a traditional bullet journal.

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  3. I remember vacation. Good times. Have fun!

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  4. I use paper for daily to-do lists, but for yearly projects I like to keep those on a Word document.

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