blog.rimann.org

Via del.icio.us I found the article "27 Great tips to keep your life organized" that contains a compilation of ways to improve your personal organization. All the ideas were sent in by users of that blog and just compiled to a list of 27 points. I'd like to comment some of them here:

• Delegate
  It's a good idea to share work with others - no one is able to do everything on his own. So where possible, I try to delegate. At work we use a ticketing system to handle our support requests wich makes it very simple to handle a certain job to another employee. Through the ticketing system we still keep an overview and we can be sure that nothing get's lost or forgotten.
• 3 Most Important Tasks
  I don't count them - but I use the same recipe for organizing my workdays: In the morning, my first task is to collect the tasks that I want to finish today. For that I lookup my mailbox, the ticketing system and my current projects. There are days where I spend much time on fixing many small things - other days are filled with just one or two big tasks. It's a good feeling to go home with the "I've achieved my personal goals for today"-feeling!
• Choose one tool and stick with it
  And also use it your way! There's no need to use Outlook just because it's an so-said "standard". By the end of last year I thought about improving my personal organization and ended up with an old-school filofax tool (wich still some persons find strange as I'm working in the IT - they expect me to use a PDA or online calendar system). But it has proven for me, that this is how I want to organize myself. Another important point is, that I have exactly one calendar for myself. So I have an overview about my business- and also my private appointments and I can have it with me all the time.
• Make use of the word no.
  That's a point I had to learn in the last years: If you have no time, just say no! Don't expect to be blamed by others - they will accept it and either search for someone else to do that particular work or change their schedule.

If you are looking for ways on how to organize yourself better, I recommend you to have a look on that blog article.