HOW TO STAY ORGANIZED

Writer: Jess Schultz

When you own a small business, you wear ALL the hats. You are often the manager, merchandiser, sales person, marketer, and more. It can be hard to stay on top of all the tasks required of you.

In my experience, there is no one organizational system that works for everyone. Some people love paper planners and lists, others swear by digital calendars and reminders.

I always advocate that the best system is one you will use. If you find that your day planner is collecting dust on your desk, it might be time to re-evaluate your system Take a moment and reflect on your habits

Digital, physical, or both? I’m a big fan of writing things down on paper, but I hate lugging around physical planners I do, however, always have my phone with me Because of this, I use my phone to plan anything I will need access to when I’m out and about When I’m at my desk making a task list for that day, I will write it out on paper

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1 Is it a task/event that requires a reminder at a specific time? If I’m needing to remember to do a task or attend an event at a specific time, I will put those in my phone and set reminders for appropriate intervals If it’s a task/event that simply needs to be attended to at some point, I organize those items in list format in an appropriate location (my office, a calendar in the main living area, etc )

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3 Be flexible! Most importantly, understand and accept that it’s unlikely for any one system of organizing your personal and/or professional life to last forever. In each season of life we need to be reflexive, assessing what’s working and what’s not and adjusting accordingly.

How frequently does it need to be used? Chances are you will need to have multiple check-ins at various points. For my business, I like to set annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals and tasks. In my personal life, I like to plan most things out weekly (meal plan, chores) but also keep a calendar of each month’s events.

As in all parts of life, I would encourage you to approach creating organizational systems with plenty of grace. It might take time to figure out what works for you, and that’s alright. The only time we really fail at something in this life is when we choose to give up Keep going ��