How do you stay organized at work?

Not a poll, but I'd like to hear how you guys manage all your workday and all those little tasks that can pile up and ruin your day. PDA, paper organizer, sticky notes on the cubicle, dry-erase board, File 13, etc.?

I have several categories of things that take over my day and make it much harder to be effective.

Personnel actions (taking up, by far, the largest portion of my time), training, property accountability, day-interrupters (those little tasks the boss e-mails to you right before lunch that MUST be completed by COB), etc. Lately I've been dropping the ball on a few things, which is obviously not the way I want to do business. Letting things fall through the cracks, even though they may not be the most important in the world, just isn't acceptable.

Just curious how you guys get things done.

 

I don't. I just keep everything in my head, which is already cluttered enough. Probably explains why I made a pot of coffee during work the other night, forget to put the coffee pot back on the burner and fucked up a decent-sized portion of the carpet and the newsroom went without a coffeemaker for a week.

In all seriousness, I make lists for stuff outside of work all the time. But I have an aversion to doing that at work. No idea why. I sort of forced myself into making lists at my last supervisor's job, and while I hated it, being able to systematically cross things off them helped keep me focused on the day-to-day stuff even when I was working on big-picture stuff.

 

I do the list thing too, when I know I have a lot of things to do. Even mundane tasks like eating lunch or dropping a bill in the mail go on there. Helps keep everything on the brain, plus there's a certain sense of accomplishment as that list turns into a page of black pen marks. By the time I cross off the last of 10 things to do today, I feel like I've done something.

 

I make lists. I also make heavy use of the calendar function in Outlook--not just for meetings but for tasks I have to do.

 

I have one of those giant desk calendars. Everything goes on it.

For papers, I simply know that the longer it's been since I've seen it, the deeper it is likely to be.

 

I have an at-a-glance planner I carry around with all the things I have to be at to cover as well as appointments, planned outings and things like that.

At home, I have a dry erase calendar with all the stories I'm writing that month on the day I'm writing them. It allows me to figure, as best I can, off days, weeks that will kick my ass or I need help on and my general story load.

Sticky notes for all other functions.

 

I don't. Chaos is quite inspiring.

 

Very few things in life MUST be done today/tomorrow/this week.

People make life more complicated and stressful than it really is.

 

When you work with as many moving parts as we deal with, yeah, lots of things MUST be done at specific times.

Not trying to be a dick, but that's just the reality I'm dealing with.

 

I try that, but my boss sent me an invitation to her calendar (and, in all reality there are tons of things on it that I need to be aware of), and when I try to use mine, it's really hard to separate the two. So, I wind up not using it.

I guess it's just a discipline problem. There are lots of ways I could stay organized, like my iPhone, Outlook calendar, desk calendar, personal organizer, dry-erase board, etc., but I need the sticktoitiveness to keep on top of it.

 

I still use old-school Filofax calendar for work sked, important dates, vacation requests, etc. I also keep copies of important e-mails at work in save mode. And I carry a legal pad around with me to jot down ideas, phone numbers, important meetings, etc.

 

I use my gmail contacts and Google Calendar (both synched to my Blackberry), which has made my life a whole lot easier.

Beyond that, I use NirvanaHQ for time- and task-management. It uses the sort of cultish Getting Things Done]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_DoneGetting Things Done system, but it helps me stay organized.