Sticky notes save my life. Quite literally. Without my sticky notes, planners, and lists on lists I would be lost. It would be nearly impossible for me to complete my million and one to-do's, because I for one simply cannot remember it all!
Our readings of organization and teachings on how to excel, as well as red flags for failure was very interesting to me.
The first article I read by David Allen who asserted the Power of the Next-Action Decision. I never thought about how easy it could be to accomplish the huge list that is always staring at me in the face by asking myself the simple question of, "what's the next action?"
I recognize that when having an action plan, and making a decision, can be the difference between things simply "showing up" or "blowing up."
I've experienced the moments of panic when I completely overlook an important deadline and realize it in the knick of time. I become complete and utter chaos.
I am the type of person who transitions very poorly. Ask any family member or friend...or past boyfriends for that matter...of mine and they can testify to my claim. I need time to process, think, and prepare myself for an event or switch. If I haven't sat on it long enough or if it is thrown in my face out of the blue, I shut down. I break down and feel as though I have no control of what is happening. This is why I need list, deadlines and specific plans of how I will meet each of my individual deadlines.
Which is what leads me to the next article I read, by Steven Covey. Covey laid out a very understandable and relatable matrix of our time management and how our different responsibilities may lay in the "Urgent and important, not urgent but important, not important but urgent, and not urgent and not important."
Covey also talked about breaking down each of our tasks so that each sub task is not as scary and daunting as just a single word written down in the midst of our list. I realized this could really help me in one assignment that I've been meaning to- or trying to- tackle for about two weeks now.
In one of my nursing classes I am raising a virtual baby. Easy right? Not so much. The first steps are pretty easy, you plug in personal traits of yourself and the site spits out either a boy or girl for you. I got a baby boy who I named Keegan and gave dark hair, olive skin and blue eyes. All that was no problem. Then came the actual raising part. Based off of my parenting decisions Keegan could either turn out to be either a great child, or a rather terrible one. Along with these decisions you have to do miniature write ups as the baby develops. That's where I am stuck. Lately I've just been writing "Virtual Baby" on my to-do list, hoping I'll be able to sign in and just jump right back into it.
Now, after reading Covey's advice, instead of writing "virtual baby, " on my to-do list, I'm writing "Complete 18-month write up on Keegan." According to Covey, by specifying this task, the job will be easier to tackle, and quite honestly, when I think of it this way the task isn't nearly as daunting.
The final reading was written by Ellen Van Velsor and Jean B. Leslie. In their article, titled "Why Executives Derail, they talked of the universal themes of why some make it to the top and hit it big, and why others who looked as though they had great potential crumble and burn. The four themes of derailment include problems with interpersonal relationships, failure to meet business objectives, failure to build and lead a team and, the inability to change/ adapt during a transition.
The re-occuring theme I saw between this article and Covey's and Allen's was organizational skills. When an individual utilizes good organizational and delegation skills, the chances of you falling to performance problems and crashing are greatly reduced.
In this article they single out women in one particular study. In this study they found that classic derailment themes were that women were unable to adapt to a boss/ culture, had experienced performance problems, came across as overly ambitious, and/ or did not have the ability to lead subordinates or to be strategic. Did you know that only 12 Fortune 500 companies are run by women in 2012? And this is down from 15 last year.
Why is this? Is it because we're not as organized and lateral in thinking? Because I think it could quite possibly be the opposite. Of all the male friends I know, only a very few of them actually carry a planner, make lists, much less take notes in class. I'm sure there are plenty of outside factors in the success of an individual, and the success of a women versus a man but could organizational skills be the bottom of the problem? Or is it simply an outlier?
Questions aside, these three readings were exponentially beneficial for me in my personal vendetta of organization and time management and I will definitely be utilizing the tips I gathered!
Now i'm off to cross off yet another thing on my never-ending to-do list! Yay!
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