The nature of our world tends toward complexity. The lines blur between the myriad media platforms we work with daily.
In marketing, lines are intentionally blurred. The mixture is what makes us good at we do; we work together. In such a sphere, however, it can be easy to lose sight of what’s important now.
I avoided proper organization for as long as I could, telling myself that my brain didn’t work in a way that could organize tasks. I’ve since learned that proper organization is an essential quality in marketing, and in life. Here’s a list of some organization tips that work for me to keep your head attached to your shoulders and keep your work attached to its deadlines.
3 Small Steps Towards Organization
1. Organize your thoughts first by month, then by week, on paper.
Find the broad list of your month’s goals. You can pull them from emails, conversations, etc. It’s important to start with everything in front of you. Comb through your deadlines and break them into the four weeks of the month.
You can attack this smaller piece of information much more easily than looking at it all at once. Writing them by hand helps you retain their content and you can even keep this information in its own notebook. It’s important to keep this separate from the minute tasks of your day-to-day so you can see the bigger picture of your progress.
2. Make realistic goals for the day, and give yourself breathing room.
As you begin to figure what you need to do in one day, write your tasks in a notebook set just for daily assignments. If you need to publish a blog and promote it on social media, separate those two tasks. That way, if you’re sidetracked by something after publishing but before promoting, you know there’s more to do before you move on.
Cross the items off that you have completed, and simply copy the ones that you didn’t get done to the top of the page for the next day.
3. Have certain items serve as recurring, running reminders.
These are the tasks that are never complete, because they have no goal other than to serve the completion of other tasks. Emails, phone conversations, planning meetings; these things fall under the category of recurring time slots. While they may not be tasks that directly aid in your monthly or yearly goals, they still take up time and are a part of your day-to-day planning. Be mindful of the time it takes you to complete admin tasks compared to time that it takes to develop programming for your company or client.
The above is what I’ve used to pull hard tasks from the nebulous cloud of incoming information. Trial and error will show you the true nature of your organization, so keep moving forward and find a method that works for you!
What are you doing to stay organized? Tell us about it in the box below, or on Facebook and Twitter.