So its been a couple of weeks since I posted anything here. Sadly I have NOT been lounging on a tropical beach somewhere. Work and life in general has gotten a little bit hectic of late. And hectic is not a bad thing. Busy is good as long as its busy in a positive and productive direction. Which it mostly has been. It has gotten me thinking about ways to organize and prioritize things in my life better though. The more things that I have going, the more important it becomes to keep things organized and on track. The question becomes, how to do that.
Currently I’m looking at keeping the following things organized*:
- Current projects under contract
- Upcoming projects not yet scheduled but agreed to
- Short term business goals
- Several online technology courses that I’m developing
- The general day to day business stuff that needs to be done to keep current
- Online education to allow me to expand my available service offerings
- Growing the business to include some 1:1 consulting and coaching
- Networking locally to expand my client base
- Leveraging my existing knowledge base to expand my current business offerings
- Home stuff. (Keeping the house running and in good repair)
- Family stuff. (Especially with the holidays coming up)
- Some hardware testing that I’m trying to get squeezed into my schedule with an eye towards offering a custom hardware solution to others in my industry.
*I’m sure I’m forgetting something in this list. And the list will probably change by tomorrow anyway.
So, in addition to all of the stuff that I’m juggling on that list, I’m also trying to figure out the best way to actually organize all of that stuff into a logical, and not quite so overwhelming path forward. Which brings me to my current dilemma. I’ve embraced Trello for long term strategic planning and also “week at a glance” scheduling of sorts. And its working fairly well so far. I can organize in the office, and have access to the app on my phone so I’m always current. But I still don’t feel like everything is in its place and “handled” quite yet. There are still some things that are longer term than this week, but not really “long term” projects. So I’m trying to figure out how best to handle those things.
I’ve looked into a bunch of the most popular planner systems out there. And there are a few that seem like they *might* help. My main problem is that I’m not really a paper planner sort of person. Aside from the issue of the planner not always being where I am, I just haven’t really found any paper planner system that really clicked with how my brain works. They always end up being something that just sits on the desk and collects dust. I haven’t found anything that’s been compelling and useful enough to stick with long term. I don’t currently have the luxury of having a bunch of time in the morning to really sit and plan my day out on paper. Nor do I really have the time or motivation in the evenings to sit and reflect on the day and plan for tomorrow. I’m sure that some would say that I have to commit to the process and make time. I’m just not entirely convinced that’s realistic for me. I’ve found a couple of planners that look interesting, but they are still paper planners. And they are pretty spendy as well. I’m hesitant to spend the extra on something that may not end up working out for me.
Sadly I don’t have a solution yet. This is mostly just thinking out loud here. So if anyone reading this has any ideas, please don’t hesitate to drop them into the comments.