Getting Organized…

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO GET ORGANIZED?
FOR ME, LONG BEFORE NOW.

When it comes to the house, I’m on top of it. Between me and the hubs, we clean every week, change sheets every Sunday, wash clothes on Monday and Thursday, and we mow the yard every weekend. I even have a Shark Robot that vacuums my floors several days a week. So like I said, the house is covered.

No, the type of organization I’m referring to here has nothing to do with my home and everything to do with my business, because that is where I tend to fail.

Admittedly, I was used to having assistance when it comes to various aspects of my business. When I started out, I employed my husband and my two oldest kids to do a variety of tasks. However, I’ve been forced to scale back over the years, and now I’m a one-woman show when it comes to the business. If writing was the only thing I had to worry about, that would be one thing. While a well-written book is the key to success, there is a lot that goes into it behind the scenes, a lot of steps necessary to sustaining that success. 

I think my biggest obstacle is that when I am in writing mode, I want to write. When I’m not, I’ll come up with a million other things to do that don’t involve getting my business organized. So I’ve spent quite a bit of attention to that this year and I’m well on the way to establishing routines and setting up processes to automate and make things easier, if only by small degrees.

I thought I would share a couple of tools I’ve recently started using that are proving to be crucial to streamlining.

Note: I do not have an affiliation with any of these applications, I simply find them useful. 

Todoist

This is an online to-do list that is so much more than merely a list of action items. It allows you to group your tasks into projects, add reminders, deadlines, even tags. The image to the left is a sample of my project list. As you can see, I use this each and every day for both personal and business action items. I love the fact that I can use it on my Mac, my iPhone, and my iPad.

This app is my most recent find and let me tell you, I’m not sure what I ever did before it. This is an automation tool that allows you to automate tasks through a wide variety of other tools, including Google Sheets/Forms, Excel, and yes, Todoist, Mailchimp, and Powr. I am still learning my way through, but it’s relatively simple to create your own automations and has significantly reduced the time it takes me to do things.