How do you organize yourself? I mean this in the broadest sense possible? Do you have a weekly checkin, kitchen calendar, monthly reset? How do you plan your year? Trying to re-evaluate my tools for a more gentle goal setting approach.

Question

Jess · Answer

Year Compass: An exceptional reflective tool for thinking about your past year, and imagining the year to come. I've been doing it every year for a decade and I still find it extremely valuable. It's even more fun when done with friends!

Pro tip: start about a week before NYE if you want the full experience. Or skip around and just answer the questions that speak most to your heart!

Anna · Answer

If it takes 30 seconds, do it now: If you see or think of something that needs to be done, no matter how much you don’t want to, do it right away if it would take 30 seconds or less. Everything else goes on a written list. See a dish in the sink? Do it. Cut flowers are done? Toss them asap. Remember a call you need to make? Get it over with. The more you procrastinate, the bigger the task feels and the longer the list becomes. In 30 seconds, you won’t feel like you disrupted your day for anything but somehow things got done and you don’t have things to do later.

Liz Corkery · Answer

Teux Deux App: Been using since it was…invented? Developed? Love arranging my week each Sunday evening and anything you don’t get to automatically rolls over to the following day. As a big dreamer with currently limited capacity the “Someday” tabs are also perennially being filled up.

Dawson White · Answer

Establish a single source of truth: This is more of a broad system than a tool, modified from Getting Things Done, but the idea is to clear your mind by putting all your tasks/commitments no matter how small onto an external list. Goal is to achieve 100% capture so you can trust the comprehensiveness of the list. Then, if the line item you’ve added takes less than 2 minutes to complete, do it right then. Work through the others as you can

I am not naturally organized and I hate it when things that are meant to make my life more efficient get too granular. This has just the right amount of structure for my brain and really freed up my mind for the stuff that actually requires deep work/consideration and has virtually stopped things from falling off my plate.

(IMO, you don’t need read the book. The principles are summarized all over Reddit, etc. and it’s just no that deep™️. But it IS helpful.)

Sarah Beck · Answer

Kitchen command center: Basic, but took us 5 years to really get our family system down. We've never had a digital planning system / shared Google Calendar /etc. This works well enough:

wall calendar, all activities listed with the time and initials of whose activity it is.

Hanging paper pad for weekly grocery list - inside aisle stuff on the left, outside aisle stuff on the right. At the bottom of the sheet, list out the days of the week and the dinner plan

After you go to the grocery store, cut off the meal plan, tape it to the bottom of the calendar

we take both docs off the wall and sit down for 15 min on Sunday night and go over the week.