Organization Tips and Strategies?

[Badgersaurus]

Hello Melonland! It has been a while. I have been busy but mostly well. I am always glad to see this place has kept kickin’ around!

Anyway… I wanted to ask everyone here how they stay organized! I have been really interested in organization and productivity tips lately. I already have a system that works pretty good for me, but I like seeing how everyone else does things.

In a way, your organizational methods and structure (or lack thereof!) are almost like a fingerprint of your brain, I think. They reflect how you think about your projects and pasttimes and how you go about doing things, to a certain degree. So I’m curious to see how all of you guys think about this stuff! Especially since this forum is mostly artsy types and not tech- or work-focused, which is where most of these types of discussions happen. How do you plan, organize, prioritize things? Or do you bother at all? Sometimes these strategies are more trouble than they’re worth.

As for myself I use something probably pretty typical. I have a few digital to-do lists; one for general ‘stuff I have to get done’, one for my website and adjacent projects, one for drawings I wanna do, and one for repeating chores (daily studying, laundry, cleaning the house etc.), which is split up into sub-tasks (so ‘clean the bathroom’ is split into ‘clean sink’, ‘clean toilet’, ‘reorganize shelf’, ‘wipe down mirror’, etc. I get overwhelmed otherwise.) I sort through them via a ‘have to/should/want to’ strategy but I’m not sure how useful this actually is considering 90% of my to-dos end up in the ‘have to’ category… I also use a ‘habit chart’ to try and get myself to do general self-improvement stuff (avoiding unnecessary phone usage, making more art, working out every day…) which works surprisingly well for me. I am easily motivated by filling in squares with bright colors I guess. Fits my whole ‘low-brow art’ shtick :b
I also take lots and lots of random notes. (As I type this I am hammering it out on my phone waiting for English class to start lol.) Sometimes they end up turning into other useful things but sometimes they just languish in my notebooks and loose papers and phone forever…
Anyway. Yeah. How do you guys do it?

[Lyonid]

BEING ORGANIZED IS SO HARD and I commend you for having an actual strategy that helps you with that!!

As for myself, I started embracing being a bit of a messy anything-goes person. For chores I am very strict about my laundry/cleaning/cooking days and it has worked pretty well lately! I used to have a lot less control over my daily life, so with my life changing, I had more room to take those things more seriously.

Staying organized at work is something COMPLETELY different. My work is full of projects and staying on top of it wasn't easy at first. Obsidian has been invaluable for me for keeping up with my work and knowing where all my writings and ideas are. I also have a huge whiteboard which always features the things I need to focus on. If I have to write something with a certain focus, I write that focus down. When I get distracted, I just look at that board and get back to it. It helps that I just love that stupid whiteboard because I drew a bunch of pretty things on it, so it has some sentimental value to me.

I also started a very rudimentary Zettelkasten! This article is kinda meh in explaining it, but I try to link anything digital I have to the Zettelkasten to not forget where it is. Instead of writing all the information in there, I just make a little note in the Zettelkasten and link it to wherever more detailed information is. I do that for aallll the projects.

A friend of mine also gave me The Anti-Planner which has a lot of fun helpers for when you get anxious or overwhelmed with stuff. It's pricey, but it's neat.

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY it really depends on your personal way of thinking and what works for me personally. I have ADHD and especially organization is strongly impacted by it. If something doesn't work, it's fine. I have the privilege that even when I am messy and don't have all the things together, I won't get in much trouble. I am in a position where I can accept being someone who forgets things and that in itself helped me A LOT to not be stressed, overworked or utterly anxious all the time.

[shydeer]

as a person with moderate-to-severe adhd i simultaneously require and yet REALLY struggle with consistent organization lol, but right now i've found a system that follows the general guidelines of "a place for everything and everything in its place" and "break down big things into smaller things" that more or less works for my needs:

• for graduate school: i use a standard weekly planner (i used to do bullet journaling but i tend to lose interest in things like this after a while. i imagine i'll cycle back to it someday since i enjoyed the unbound creative/flexible aspect of it) and instead of planning things out per day like the planner is designed for, i just write out a big checklist of assignments/tasks for the week and whittle away at them gradually. i find that if i say "i'm gonna do x on this day and y on that day" it doesn't allow for a lot of flexibility for good and bad days, so instead i tackle things one by one as it makes sense to do so and just make sure it all gets done before the week is over. it works surprisingly well for me
• (additionally for school: i use the pomodoro timer system to make sure i both stay on track throughout the day and also don't burn out by working too long either. it works shockingly well!)
• for meal planning: i use a big whiteboard stuck to the refrigerator that has a month calendar format on it to plot out what meals each household member contributes, and we plan and add to the calendar week-by-week instead of monthly because lots of unforeseen stuff can happen that throws off the plan. i really love this system because it makes sure i pull my weight and don't forget to eat lol
• for most ideas, lists, and other things i need to jot out in note form: i use windows notepad and carefully label each file for ease of use later on. i also do a bit of my website coding in notepad. if i'm away from my computer, i don't really have a system for note taking and keeping. i just try to remember what i need to write down for later when i'm at my computer (and then usually fail ghsdhshdghs)
• for physical documents: i have a dual system for storage. for active documents (i.e. medical stuff, job stuff, school stuff), i keep them in what is technically a magazine box for easy access and so i don't forget about them. for records (documents that are no longer active but still important), i keep them in a file box organized by manila folder
• for books and other media: i organize my shelves in a sort of weird way, especially considering i'm studying to become a librarian and i even have a favorite classification system for use in libraries that for some reason i don't apply to my personal collection. i simply sort by genre and size only instead of by author or title (or color, a popular system which makes me shudder to think about) and also keep my to-be-read books on a complete separate bookcase
• for general computer files: um. it's a mess. don't look. i still have yet to find a system that i can stick to consistently
• other miscellaneous organizational systems: for plans for my website, i just maintain a list on one of the pages of the site. i also keep a post-degree list of things i wanna do, mainly for fun and self-development, on the same page. i also record changes to the website and various thoughts related to them in a rudimentary blog on the site

i still need a good system that keeps me on top of things like dishes and laundry :^/ that's a real problem for me (and my annoyed housemates......)

[littlesecret]

A lot of this sounds like me too!! Im still trying to figure out my organization style. The things I'm doing work right now, but it still feels messy and spread out. I love mini lists, notebooks, and calendars. I used to always keep lists in my physical journal, but lately I've been making digital notes cus it feels good to spam type and I like how the stickies decorate my desktop and I can color code / decorate events in my life. I keep lists of: bigger long term tasks/things to remember, one for home/logistical stuff, one for secret missions, for hobby stuff, for daily todos, things I want to buy. Im still unorganized and every day is different, but I think thats just the nature of the stage of life I'm in - I just finished college and am trying to work on small projects and search for a job/next move. But also thats just how I work..Im comfortable with the mess.  It's hard to keep up with everything I want to be doing especially when I'm the only one holding myself accountable, but thats literally just life and I feel me and my brain getting stronger as we go   There are things that I just forget and then remember later and then say oh shit and I do it. So it all works out. Everything works itself out at some point.     That is like a fingerprint of my brain aw thats very cute 

Oh another thing - since I have a lot of stuff that Im trying to do all at once(I'm sure so do all of you), its hard to  give everything enough time every week or day or something. I make a list of things to do and for some things, I'll set a timer for how long I want to do that thing. This helps me move on to something else after the time is up and forces me not to f around for that 2 hours cus Im on the clock!!!! It sometimes works but other times I'll get really into something and just like turn the timer off and keep working and then not do the other things I need to do. I kind of also turn off the timer cus I know the task I'm putting off requires more brain power. How do yall deal with this?

[BlazingCobaltX]

For work: I have a erasable notebook on which I maintain a bullet list of things to do. Additionally, I also write down thoughts and not fully crystallised plans that I know will come to use later. This is more convenient than having to swap paper notebooks ever so often. When I need to do a longer task, I block time on my Outlook agenda. That way I get an alert and I am less likely to forget.

For errands: I used to keep lists for all sorts of things but I found them quite suffocating, and then would promptly ignore them. Currently I am trusting my brain to remember things, which goes as well as you'd think. This system is really based on me taking immediate action based on a thought, and otherwise waiting for the thought to spontaneously re-emerge. For pretty serious things I make reminders or tasks on Google Agenda, but I can easily reschedule those. I only maintain two lists now: Things to pack for a trip, and how to distribute my salary each month.

For creative stuff: If I'm smart I immediately write down my plans or ideas, otherwise I also have to rely on my brain remembering things spontaneously.

Now that I think about it, I should probably get a whiteboard for my room. What I like about my notebook is that I can erase a task once it's done, which feels very satisfying.

[Dibs]

Organisation has always been a bit haphazard for me. I've always put important things on my phone calandar, but other than that I've trusted myself to remember or for my friends to mention it in the preceeding days...

This semester I tried out Notion, which was going very well, although I have a tendency to immediately overload any task app with the million things I always want to do, so I was going to streamline it a bit after exams were over, and then, of course, my laptop died. Typical. I do have Notion on my phone but it's quite heavy for my phone to run without big loading times, so a few days into my laptoplessness, I went and bought a big chunky dot-matrix notebook.

Now I'm trying out a bullet-journalling approach, which is so far going well. The big test is if I can stick with it for more than a month or two, but given I use it for just minimalistic to-do lists with enough colour to be engaging, I'm optimistic. In the completely non-structured landscape that is my summer, having a list of three or more tasks to do in the day helps me actually get moving and not waste an entire day and be miserable...
The journal will also hopefully be able to help me keep tallies for my progress in various projects, which I am quite excited about.