On Your Way to Success? Get Organized!

Many of us have big dreams of owning new businesses, losing tons of weight, making lots of money, and becoming famous

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dancing in our heads. We are  determined and dedicated to getting it done, but then we recognize all that is involved. Yet, we never lose hope and are dedicated to tackling each aspect necessary for claiming success. After taking a quick perusal of our goal’s requirements, we draft a plan and quickly start on track. And then things start to go wrong. You recognize that you routinely forget your bottle of water before your morning jog. Your spending journal got left behind in your other purse and you are constantly forgetting who you needed to call to confirm that business meeting.

Don’t feel bad. It happens to the best of us. The truth is the road to success requires a bit of sacrifice, determination, and organization. While many have no problem mastering the first two requirements, they seem to fall behind in the organization department. There is no way you can keep track of your meetings, diet requirements, and important tasks without a little bit of organization. Trust me. I tried it and it didn’t work. So because I want all of you to succeed, I decided to let you in on a few products and strategies that have helped keep me organized on the right track towards success…

Stickies on Desktop or actual Stickies – You all know how I love using post-it notes to lift my spirits and remember motivational quotes, but what you didn’t know is that I love it for keeping track of tasks, bills to pay, etc. I usually leave them on my refrigerator or computer screen. From time to time, they’ll pop up in my wallet to remind of things. For the high-tech people, you can utilize the popular Stickies program for Mac. It allows you to type up notes and “stick” them to your desktop. You can stick them according to priority and  they dissappear as the task is completed.

Spending Tracker 1.3.1 MH Riley Ltd – We’ve all heard that having a spending journal can totally transform your financial situation. It starts out well, but then you soon find yourself forgetting to enter in a purchase when you get home or lose the receipt before you get to record it. The Spending Tracker app gets rid of that problem completely because it’s right on your phone! It allows you to record entire purchases, categorize, enter bills, and make memos for each expense by month. The best part is that you get a pie graph showing you exactly where your money is going once you turn your phone sideways! It’s amazing.

Dry Erase Calendar  – Keeping track of bills is difficult. No matter how good you are with money, it can be bit a of a challenge to stay on top of the student loan bills, mortgage, electric bill, car payments etc. And if you are like me, you probably hate making those “automatic payments” in which the company connects to your bank account. That’s why I like to use dry erase calendars to track payments. I keep it right on my refrigerator, that way I can’t miss it.

Miche Bag:  Ladies, how many times have you switched purses to match an outfit only to realize you forgot to switch your planner along with it? Or maybe it was some other important object needed for the day… Miche bags eliminate that problem. There is no need to switch purses completely for the purpose of fashion, because the Miche bag allows you to switch the outside appearance of them! Simply swatch the outside “shell” to match your outfit of choice. Now you no longer have to worry about forgetting your precious planner, cell phone, etc. in your other bag all in the name of fashion. The Miche bag is all you need!

Flexi File Organizer – Having a file folder for each important document isn’t enough. You’re bound to confuse placements of each file, and lose them. Plus, separate files folders usually result in more clutter. Instead, invest in a flexi-file organizer to keep all your important documents categorized in the same place. Things will never get misplaced, and you will be more inclined to take important documents when needed if it’s in an accessible and easy to carry file such as this.

What ways do you stay organized as you work towards success?

TERRIfic  Quip: The difference between want and need is self control.

If You Can List it, You Can Do It

There are two types of people in the world: those who thrive off lists and those who don’t. I happen to fall into the first category.  I make lists for everything! Grocery lists,

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bucket lists, travel lists, channel lists, blogging lists, networking lists, summer trip lists, wedding lists…. You name it; I’ve probably made a list for it. One might even say I’m addicted to lists. I think it’s something I picked up from my mom. Now I picked up a lot of good things from my mom, but I don’t know if my addiction to lists is one of them. My problem is that I’m never satisfied with my list. I make them to help me stay organized and be productive… or so I thought. But whenever I review them I feel as though I either don’t have enough on them, have too much, or just feel the need to add something new every time I complete something. So I never feel like I accomplish anything. Of course, that only makes me even less productive and like a loser prompting me to just dive into more work.

That’s when I noticed I was approaching lists all wrong. Instead of using it as a tool to increase my productivity, I was using it to prove my productivity to myself. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough. So my  lists became unnecessarily long and lacked focus and direction. When you have no direction, you don’t know where you are going. Naturally, the lists never got done. On top of that, expecting myself to finish so many items in a short time period was only setting myself up for failure. It was an unattainable goal but I was too blinded to see that.So I decided to make a change. I wanted my lists to make me feel like I was accomplished and getting things done.

Instead of loading my lists with as many things as I could possibly think of, I decided to limit the items on my list. Now my lists don’t exceed five to seven items per day. And it feels good! Making shorter lists allowed me to stay focused and finish each item to the best of my ability. When I kept packing my lists, I never finished anything and did everything half way just so I can get to the next item quickly. Obviously, that didn’t work out too well. Now, checking off one item on my lists make me feel accomplished.  I don’t feel the need to add another item just as a quickly as I checked one just to prove something to myself. I allowed myself to accept that my best is enough. Once I treated my lists as way to stay organized and not a way to prove my worth and accomplishments I actually felt accomplished! Turns out there is an art to doing check lists and it only took my a few years to figure it out. Now, I can check “write blog post” off my list and feel proud.

How do you organize your lists? Do they make you feel better or worse about your productivity? Am the only one who wrote lists that makes you feel like a loser?

TERRIfic Quip: I am a enough. I have enough. I do enough.