I love to organize and I want to make it easier for you to feel, stay and be organized.

I’m ready to share my secrets of how I remember to do everything.  And how I usually get everything done in record time with personal, detailed follow-up.  It’s not rocket-science, it’s literally one simple tip: I write it down.  This strategy will revolutionize your tasks, make you more accomplished and remove so much stress from your mind – it will change your life.  I’m going to share my best ideas with you for how I make this happen in any instance to ensure I get the job done.

Simple tips when you’re trying to organize anything:

• Use the strategy that works best for you.
• Be clear with what you write down – you need to understand it when you reference it again – even if it’s hours, days or weeks later.
• Have a start-to-finish system to turn your task from an idea to a completed success.

Here is what I do every single time I need to get something done, but I have to do it later. I encourage you to try these simple tips:

1. When I’m at work and I find something that I need to remember to do later, I write it down on a sticky note, put it in my bag.
2. When I’m at home, in a meeting or traveling and I find something I need to remember to do later, I send myself an email.
3. If I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of tasks (and everything I’ve ever done), I write down the tasks or email them to myself, and then go back to sleep.
4. If I’m in a meeting with someone else and they ask me to do something, I ask them to follow-up in email with the task details.
5. When I need to set a meeting to accomplish a task, I put task notes in my meeting invite so I can remember the topic and details later.
6. When I’m planning for an upcoming meeting, I detail tasks and discussion points on an informal agenda so I know topics I need to discuss when I’m in the meeting.
7. I prioritize my tasks into three areas: Do Immediately, Do Soon (like this week or this month) and Do When I Have Time.
8. When I get home, I clean out all of my bags, get out my saved notes and put my task notes on my home task list.
9. When I get to work each morning, I put away my things, open my email and (first-thing) review messages from myself to put my task notes on my work task list.
10. When I’m having a conversation with someone and they make a comment I need to remember, I take a break and write it down so I can follow-up – even if they weren’t expecting a follow-up.

People regularly comment that they’re impressed with how much I’m able to accomplish.  Let me be clear, I spend very little time remembering what I need to do.  I have too much to think about to fill my brain with tasks.  This is exactly why I write everything down.  If we depended on my memory alone, nothing would get done.  But I am confident in my strategy to ensure tasks are always accomplished, because I know it works.

If you haven’t been writing down your tasks and effectively getting them done, I encourage you to start or refine your system today.  I promise that it works and it will reduce the stress (and the need to remember!) surrounding what you need to do.

I encourage you to spend time this week – 15 minutes to one hour – writing down your tasks so you can get more done with less (mental) energy.