Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Tricks of the Trade


As your Early Career Spirit Guide (as I've just decided to call myself) I'm here to pave the way for your success. I am here to figure things out for YOU! No need to thank me, I do it all for my country...or you know, something heroic like that.

ANYWAYS...enough about me, let's talk about my newest discovery of productivity. I work from home, which means that the worlds of work and relaxation can get blurred for me. I find that I'm pretty good about being able to switch my work on and off but that also means that when I start working in the morning there are no cues for me about where I left off because everything just seems like my home to me. When you work at an office you can walk in, see your desk with all of your papers strewn out and think "oh yes, that's where I left off." For me, I'm just looking at my bedroom.

My problem was that I would get to the end of the day and think "I can get that done tomorrow." By the time that tomorrow came around I had already forgotten what I had planned on doing. To solve this problem I came up with a simple solution: at the end of each day I open a new page in my notebook, write tomorrow's date at the top and begin a to-do list for the next day. It's a simple idea that has gone a long way.

There's nothing worse than remembering you needed to do something the moment that someone is looking for it! This has also made me more productive. Instead of spending the morning trying to remember what I was going to do or planning out my day, it's already been planned out for me.

Moral of the story: always, always, always write down a to do list for yourself. Your memory will fail you but the ink on the paper will not.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Self-Appointed Early Career Spirit Guide

No comments:

Post a Comment