Self-Management and Organization
How do I stay organized and manage my work tasks?
A big change in my work world has been how to manage all of my different projects and deadlines. As a teacher, the deadlines were obvious. My lessons had to be planned before the students showed up, and their grades had to be published by the due date.
As an instructional designer, I do have hard deadlines for projects. For example, I’ll know I need a draft of a course developed by a certain date so I can send it off to the project lead or business for feedback. But in the weeks and months leading up to these big deadlines, how do I pace myself?
It took some experimenting but I’ve come up with a system that really works for me. I stay organized through a combination of the following:
Daily To-Do List - At the end of each day, I write a checklist of 5-6 items for the following day in my agenda. This way, when I start work each morning, I know exactly what I need to tackle. As I cross items off the list, sometimes I need to roll over an item to the following day if I didn’t get to it. This is actually something I used to do as a teacher as well.
Work in Progress Folder - All of my materials go into highly organized folders on my computer, and the minute I’ve implemented feedback, I upload everything to my department’s shared doc library for future use. Keeping organized digitally is super important for being able to edit content without having to search high and low for old files. The basic hierarchy is Project > Course > Lesson.
OneNote for Notes - My OneNote is divided into categories: project notes, meeting notes, brainstorming, etc. I record everything. I can then highlight action items so I remember the important takeaways after meetings. I would be lost without OneNote; it’s open on my computer from the minute I log on in the morning to the minute I close my laptop at the end of the work day.
Email Inbox Sorting - Surprise, surprise, my email is freakishly organized as well. When I leave work each day, the inbox is at 0. My most important folder is called ‘Deal With.’ This is when an email comes in that requires some action on my part- a response, a task, etc. Once I’ve dealt with it, I then move those emails to the corresponding folder for each project I am on. Beyond that, I have a professional development folder, an FYI folder with company wide announcements, and a temp folder for emails I need to reference in the short term.
So that’s how I stay organized in a nutshell! It takes all of these techniques working together to stay on top of my assignments.
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