Trying to be organized

Posted Aug 16, 2023

TL;DR, it’s hard AF and I’m bad at it

I’m a person who likes to do things and plan things and list things and remember things. I’m also a person who forgets things and spaces out tasks after a direct reminder and puts things in illogical places so that I’m sure I will remember and (predictably) loses things. Naively, probably, I do still think I could become a person who remembers things and knows where things are and attends things and accomplishes things, if only I had the Perfect Organization Tool(s)™.

What do I want an organization system to do?

I want it to be able to:

• Manage my time
• List all my tasks so I don’t forget them
• Have a centralized place for reminders that are not necessarily tasks
• Be easily accessible to me
• Keep track of important dates, birthdays, appointments, etc.
• Trick me into good behaviors by tracking my habits in a way that feels fun and motivating

I’ve long believed that, if I could come up with a system like this, I would be Supremely Organized™ and prevent myself from forgetting/losing important things. Unfortunately, this optimal organizational setup has proven quite elusive. Here are some of the things I’ve tried and my experiences with those methods.

Sticky notes everywhere all the time

I’m a person who can very easily forget things that I don’t have a visual reminder of — “out of sight, out of mind”, as they say. I think this is an ADHD-like tendency¹, and while I’m not formally diagnosed I do suspect I have it; although that’s a topic for another day, it does inform a lot of the ways I’ve tried to organize myself. In any case, I tried writing lists of tasks/reminders on sticky notes and putting them in the places they would become actionable, e.g. sticking my work to-do list to the screen of my computer, or a grocery list to the handle of the fridge.

Pros:

• I like physically writing things down
  • Sometimes just the act of writing something down helps me to remember it better
• Sticky notes are more fun than a regular piece of paper, like stickers for adults
• Satisfying to rip up when tasks are completed

Cons:

• Sticky notes everywhere became the norm…and thus became invisible to me, no longer working as a visual reminder
• Sometimes I would get stuck (hehe) trying to figure out where the best place to put a reminder would be, and would spend unreasonable amounts of time reorganizing the stickies rather than doing the tasks they represented

Structured daily planner

I am such a sucker for a beautiful, gilded, patterned planner². Hard cover and spiral binding and a little piece of elastic to hold a pen? Yes, please! I’ve tried variations of this method several times, hoping that the neatly lined and categorized pages with dates and sometimes even time breakdowns would help me to manage my time.

Pros:

• So pretty! Makes me want to use it! Makes me feel put together and adult!
• Good for helping me remember what day of the week it is
• Not only writing things down, but not having to look for a pen because it’s attached
  • Related to 👆 feeling ok using a special pen because it’s dedicated for an important purpose (yes, I have special pens, and notebooks too, I save them for special purposes, I am an office supply goblin, don’t @ me)

Cons:

• Having to physically bring it along is a big blocker; can be fine for work, since I have to bring a bag for my laptop anyway, but for personal things I usually want to carry as little as possible
• Felt like I had to know everything that should be on my to-do list for the day at the beginning of the day
• Since the pages are structured, sometimes there isn’t enough space in a block for a day with lots of to-dos
• When I inevitably fall off and forget to write in it for a while, I feel bad paging past all the days I missed and wasting them

Unstructured daily planner

Based on the last item in the “cons” list for structured planners, not wanting to waste pages, I’ve also tried to use blank notebooks and create my own version of a planner. Typically I try to come up with a general outline for how I want to depict the days. Usually this is as simple as the day of week and date, underlined, then checkboxes for each task, but on a few occasions I’ve tried to write out the hours of the day and schedule my time that way, and leave some open space for tasks that aren’t tied to a specific time block.

Pros:

• Very freeform, in theory should be flexible and iterable enough to figure out what works for me
• I don’t waste any pages if I forget to use it for some number of days/weeks
• Some regular non-planner notebooks still come with the elastic that holds the pen!

Cons:

• Very freeform, makes me feel like there are too many possible outlines/options and I don’t know what to include or not include, and I feel like I need to stick with the system I picked at the beginning of the notebook or use another notebook if I change the system
• For some reason, not having a structure with all the days pre-printed makes me less likely to get into the habit of using it daily
• Also a physical journal to bring places

Structured or unstructured online planner

I’ve tried creating online planners both with and without structure but honestly, any kind of planner that is based on a screen is just a no-go for me. I really like to write things down. Losing that aspect makes it way less fun and therefore I never last more than a few days with any screen-based method.

Bullet journal

This has been my most recent attempt at becoming an Organized Person™, and was what I was thinking about when I decided I felt like typing a bunch of characters about my weird brain into the internet void. Bullet journals (or BuJos, a shortening that I kinda hate tbh) are a mix between structured and unstructured planner. I won’t waste paper or space on days that I don’t have tasks or that I forget to write in the notebook, but it does require a bit more structure to be effective. I’m still testing this one out, so the pro/con list may not be fully fleshed out or I may change my opinion later.

Pros:

• Lots of online resources³ about how to set up the journal
• Very Pinterest-y and cute⁴, it seems to be encouraged to use multiple colors of pens/highlighters, make some doodles, whatever
• Pretty well suited to task and habit tracking due to the grid of dots helping to make boxes, charts, etc.

Cons:

• Again, physical journal that needs to be brought along to be useful (but I should stop complaining about that since I really dislike digital planners, huh?)
• So many ideas available online that I started out adding way too much stuff that wasn’t actually useful to me just because I thought it looked fun and cool

So, I mean, yeah.

I have not yet achieved Peak Organization™ and am not likely to anytime soon. This has mostly just been a peek into my strange little goblin brain and all the unreasonably strong and specific opinions it hoards 🙃 And if you read this far…why?