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Organizing your life
Hello world,
My name is Dave Koster, and I’m the Saunders College of Business Senator for the 2008-2009 academic year here at RIT.
This is my first blog post online, well, ever, and what inspired me to finally do so was the fact that I am so drastically stuck in Thanksgiving mode. It seems that my turkey dinner is still wallowing around inside my ever growing stomach (the holidays can do that to a guy) and making me a very lazy senator. Nobody wants a lazy Senator, so for the past day I’ve been reorganizing myself, both physically and digitally. I essentially took the past 24 hours and dedicated it almost entirely to making sense of my workload/priorities. After all of it, I feel much better, and the purpose of this blog post is to post just a few short tips on how to get yourself organized.
1) Orgaize your personal space – This one seems relatively simple, but it does an amazing job of keeping you focused. If your books, documents, tools, collection of cheese memorabilia, whatever is organized, then there will be no need to stop and muddle around in whatever size mess you’ve created around you to find the resources you might need. No one likes digging through a mountain of notebooks for a single piece of paper that you saved months ago. Start by cleaning your room, maybe doing some laundry. Personally, I went through some old notebooks and got rid of anything I knew I didn’t need for the future. Suddenly I have shelf space! Who knew? Change your bed sheets, do the dishes, and sort through all those assorted DVDs and CDs laying around. You’ll be really glad you did.
2) Organize your digital space – Yes, this one is again pretty straight forward, but isn’t organization a pretty straight forward task to begin with? Organizing your digital life is just as important as organizing your personal space. Sit down and finally answer some really old emails. If you’re a little reluctant to get started, do something fun. Organize your music collection, for example. This is exactly what I did. I downloaded a new music program called Songbird (from the people who brought you Firefox) and finally took the time to take what music I do have and get it all in one place where I could fix any gaps in my collection. I adjusted artist names, album catagories, and made sure every song I have has an embedded picture of its associated album art. Another alternative is organizing your social circle. I bet your facebook is a total mess. Remember when facebook was a cool tool? Go through and ignore those 3,000 group invitations that you keep getting from that one really annoying frined, in fact, unfriend that kid, he’s just annoying. I recommend downloading Digsby, developed right here at RIT. It brings together your email, facebook, IM, twitter, and other social networking programs together in order to simplify your digital social circle.
3) Keep going! – This one’s a cop-out, I know, but that’s the whole point of this blog post. The idea is that once you’re moving, you’ve managed to get yourself focused. It feels good to have a perfectly clean inbox, doesn’t it? Well, wouldn’t it feel just as good, if not more, to have all that homework out of the way for the night? Your mind is active now, you’ve got momentum, use it! Start that paper, create a work schedule, maybe even go to the gym! (I know, now I’m just crazy) By starting with something as silly as fixing your music collection, you can get into the swing of DOING things. Thanksgiving is a time to sit down and eat TONS of food so you can sit down and enjoy the feeling of being so very full afterward (in other words, doing nothing). Any extended break can make us generally lazy, and by doing even the simplest of tasks, we get back into the groove of getting work done, instead of spending 3 hours on facebook or watching reruns of Friends on TBS or something of that nature. Plus, its a huge bonus when you realize that all that stuff you’ve been “meaning to do” is suddenly done. For example, I now have the lyrics to every song in my entire music collection! How cool is that? Who wants to hear some ABBA? *clears throat*
