Sunday, August 6, 2006
out of touch
i have been out of touch and not keeping track of friends and loved ones for a long time now. For whatever reason, i just can't seem to stay on top of things like birthdays, thank-yous, anniversaries, general phone calls and emails, or pretty much anything. I feel like the days fly by and there's never enough time to keep up with it all. When i do make the time to stay home and try to catch up, i spend the entire time trying to get myself organized and end up not making as much progress as i hoped. This is all post-Giant Organizational Project. I just can NOT stay on top of the correspondence and all the papers that come into my life.
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Maybe you should start putting things into the "special grey filing cabinet under the desk", as Michael from the Office told Pam concerning corporate notices.
ReplyDeleteNice! I also like the pile o' crap technique. Start a master pile o' crap and go through it once a week instead of a) knocking yourself trying to organize everything every day or b) letting everything pile up for a month.
ReplyDeleteI'm feeling the same way, Erin. No worries. Most everyone you are not staying in contact with is probably experiencing the same madness and so forth themselves. It still sucks to feel out of touch though.
ReplyDeleteI think I use the master pile o crap technique. I just leave stuff out which reminds me i have to deal with it someday. i wish i could simply just file mail as it comes in. that would be great, but I just can't do it.
I hit the same problem a while back. I had used the pile-o-crap method for years just fine, but now found myself forgetting things I needed to remember. I decided to try and get myself organized, but I knew that trying to keep everything organized as it came in would never work. It's simply not me. So, I split the difference. I've kept the pile-o-crap, but I've added a little yellow note pad which sits on top of the pile-o-crap. As something comes in, I make a note of it on the pad and toss whatever it is in the pile. If I get to that thing before the end of the day, I cross it off. To make sure I don't get too far behind, I take about 30-45 minutes at the end of my work day to go over the list and get as much done as I can. If anything is left over, it slides to the next day. I just make a note of it on my PDA, so I see first thing the next morning. Is it a perfect method? No. I still miss things every now and then, but it's far less frequent and adding the PDA lets me plan things further out so I no longer double-book myself.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are still the days I just want to take the whole pile-o-crap, douse the whole damn thing with some flamable liquid, specifically the flamable liquid from a bottle of Jack, light the thing, and down the rest of the whiskey!
Wow, the above comment made me think I was reading Real Simple. I say, if its not important enough for you to remember in a month, throw it away, cut your losses and move on.
ReplyDeletetee hee. Was it the pda part, or the part about dousing it in whiskey and setting it on fire that reminded you of real simple?
ReplyDeletei wish i could follow the one month rule. But seeing as how i haven't filed my taxes yet and they are way more than a month old, i think i'm gonna need something a little more...flexible. For me. Or a bigger bottle of jack. :-)