how to get on top of life admin
If you find that it is a relatively common occurrence for you to forget to do something you were meant to do, forget to organise something you were meant to organise, or attend something you were supposed to; until its either too late or so close to the wire that you end up running around like a headless chicken - this one's for you!
There is so much going on in everyone's lives that it's impossible to remember everything - we need somewhere to keep a record of what we have on. Most of us have a calendar or diary of some sort for exactly this purpose. I use Google Calendar for my home life because I can share it with the rest of my family and it's easy to use. Do you have a digital calendar? If you still have a paper diary I strongly encourage you to make the switch to digital - you wont look back! The many advantages of a digital calendar over a paper one are:
- It's sharable at all times with others in your household
- It can notify you with a reminder of upcoming events
- you can add in recurring events which is SOO important to lightening the mental load
- you can let others know using the "invite" function of appointments in one move while adding the appointment to your calendar
Try really hard to get into the habit of adding everything and anything to your calendar. If you get an email telling you about an event, an appointment, a deadline - ANYTHING in the future, add it to your calendar.
Set your calendar settings to remind you of all events with a notification that works for you.
Is that job done? Not exactly! Even WITH a calendar in place, without a robust system to review it - it's as useless as chocolate teapot! So here is where Throw Forward thursday comes in ( FYI - I made up this catchy name and now I forget that I made it up and it isnt an actual dictionary concept!).
THROW FORWARD THURSDAY!
Here's what to do:
1. Set yourself a reminder every Thursday
2. spend 30 minutes looking ahead at your calendar - I suggest look at the next 10 days to capture 2 weekends. This means you will be reminded of things you have coming up
3. spend your 30 minutes preparing for your upcoming events online if they can be done online, or, you can plan WHEN you will do anything you need to do to be ready - eg, are there 3 things that need you to go to the supermarket? batch them together for maximum efficiency and decide- when will you do that?
By doing this each week you will be more prepared and this will help you not be interrupted by either last minute thoughts or activities - win for home life and win for work life! What do you think? Will you try Throw Forward Thursday?
