Today’s Organization Skills Equal Tomorrow’s Guaranteed Success
Great Online Tools to grow your business and reach your summit
The mountain climber looks up at the auspicious summit. How does she navigate? One step at a time of course, with the best tools at her disposal.
It was easy to think that my 3 Year Plan to Financial Freedom meant I could just do a little each day. This creative approachwould surely produce results right? So for a month, I sat each morning and did what “Felt right and fun to do.” Sometime it was writing for Medium, other mornings it was studying my Youtube SEO courses and on weekends creating my Youtube videos for uploading.
In my head and on pieces of paper, I had lists and to-do’s ready to tackle then check off when done. Orignally I felt this would allow me to let my creative juices flow and magically, and I would get things done. But I realized I was wandering aimlessly rather than focused on accomplishing tasks.
My big question was: How do I set a schedule to accomplish tasks and make progress towards without crushing my creative juices?
I took one morning to figure out which tools would give me the structure I needed. These tools had to have some features I found important:
- They had to be free. I’m not adverse to paying for apps and platforms, but they add up! Keeping these costs down is always smart.
- They had to sync with my devices. This way if I am away from my computer but on my iPad I can still see what my daily task list contains and work on my goals on the go.
- It had to be simple to set up and easy to use each day. My paper tablet is always handy, but getting to my task lists and to-do pages meant flipping backwards and reading through the scratched out tasks and sticky notes. Not only were these lists revised and items scratched out, often I’d forget to check it!
I decided on two free online tools. One to create task lists and set daily, weekly and monthly to-dos and goals. The other is a digital billboard type of platform where I can organize my projects and lay out the smaller segments so I can work on them effectively.
Combining these two free online tools have given me the ability to break my big goals into smaller, simpler projects and then schedule them into daily tasks and monthly assessment alerts.
Since I’m a MAC user, I decided on Reminders. Reminders is an Apple App. If you’re of the Google persuasion, this Reminders App might work for you. With the new Apple upgrades to the reminders app I was able to create specific project lists and then reminders (or tasks) for that list. I can set them to do once, or repeat so I don’t have to enter the task over and over. This feature works perfectly for tasks like writing Medium articles. My reminders tell me to write, or publish every three days.
I also use it to remind me to send in my time sheet to get paid from my job and keep my calorie app up to date as well as exercise and call family members and friends on special occasions. I find it the best personal assistant to my smartphone and desktop for all my reminder needs.
The Second App I found was Trello. This is a great way to organize projects, add links, pictures, attachments and more, so you can organize your projects. It also allows you to share your board with others if you are working on a collaborative project. There are management settings that allow you to control who can change, view or add to the boards.
The free version has a lot of features and some interesting extras called ‘Power-Ups’ that add features like a calendar, google drive, evernote and others. Some power-ups are free and others might have a fee or have trial periods. The free version of Trello allows you to add one power-up. You can upgrade to add more power-ups if your project requires more organization.
I find that I can change the background and it makes me smile and stay focused on my goals. Find a background that inspires you or represents your project. I suggest you check it out, there’s a ton of neat features.
I spent today organizing my projects, getting the main sections in Trello and then my daily and weekly tasks in place. This way I can sit in the morning and have all my tasks outlined each day ready to tackle without trying to flip through notebooks and stickies. No more floundering over my coffee wondering what to do first or wasting time doing the unimportant.
It’s easy to get caught up in the doing and miss the milestones.
I set up monthly assessments to watch my progress. I knew I wanted to break down this three year process into monthly benchmarks. This way I could document my progress as well as view the accomplishments that would keep me in a positive mindset.
I know my final goal is achievable, just like the mountain climber looking up at the auspicious summit. I’ll get there now that I’ve added some great tools in my toolbelt.
