Clients often contact me inquiring what tools I use because they see me as organized and they aren’t. I respond with a question: “What is challenging about their current system?” and the most common answer always surprises me, “I’m not actually doing anything.”
While there may be features of a system that are incompatible with you, if you don’t start you’ll never discover what works or doesn’t.
Something will always try to cause you to delay starting a new habit or project. I was very close to pushing off pen at work because I didn’t have 3 months of everything completely worked out yet.
So I began.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I still don’t have everything ready, but that’s ok!)
If you keep systems simple and set yourself up for success … you will.
Yes, it’s nice to have the current trendy planner and a nice notebook. They can add to your happiness and improve chances of long term success, however they aren’t essential. There will be posts discussing perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and evaluating both stationary and software.
Here’s a secret, it doesn’t truly matter the exact tools you use, what is essential is that you need to be consistent and diligent about using them!
How do I start at the very beginning?
I often use this method to restart when I’m stuck!
When I’m struggling to make heads or tails of everything on my plate, I find a piece of paper and simply begin writing down a list of all the things in my head. It doesn’t matter if some are projects and others are tasks. If cleaning the litter box comes between sending out an invoice and on-boarding a new client, that’s ok. It’s going to be a jumble of work and personal stuff. I can’t start until I know what I need to be doing.
This is the beginning of a brain dump which is a foundation piece of my systems.
Ready? Let’s start!
