Maybe it’s a result of being a librarian for almost a decade but I have a fairly low tolerance for disorganization. This isn’t to say that I never become disorganized, but I’ve learned that being highly organized is key to working efficiently! I love to multitask & my organization systems allow me to do that happily.

Everyone once in awhile the intense desire to organize strikes me! It’s not a bad thing because I know that after an hour or two of focused effort my work areas will be much greatly improved. Once I’m done it’s like a breath of fresh air for my mind!

I’m curious to hear how you stay organized? Do you have a system? or do you just leave things to fate? I have been working from home & that has affected the high level of organization & routines I had developed at the library. But here’s what I need to do:

Evernote – I absolutely LOVE this free desktop organizer! I can drag URL’s & images into this so fast & it makes them hotlinks for future reference. It’s category structure is the same as ACDSee’s & allows one to tag entries & then just click on a category to pull only those entries. The secret is to periodically go thru & tag. And I put my to-do’s in there also. Now it’s fun to go back & delete the items that are completed.

Copernic – This is fast becoming one of my most valued tools because it’s saving my life (& SO much time!). It’s a free software that catalogs your desktop files & then you can search for an abstract term & it will search all files, images & email. I’m feeding 6 addresses into Thunderbird, so it’s imperative to use this to find things quickly. I don’t have it on my ACDSee laptop yet & I’ve already felt the need!

Outlook (replacing my Palm) – I’m learning to use this. Yes! at 41 I had never used it before. It’s fairly intuitive & I know that once I engage in using the tasks functionality completely I’ll be cruising!

Thunderbird & Firefox – two more essentials! Thunderbird is just my favorite. (did I mention I’m learning Outlook? How did THAT get ahead of these two?! *shock*). I have so many Add-on’s in there (21 – I just counted). And it looks like I need to do some purging there to lighten the load!

New ACDSee laptop with Outlook. It’s pretty blank. So I need to get busy this weekend & add the above items. Evernote is cool because I can transfer the database. I’ve been working on my personal laptop for five weeks so I need to shift some doc’s over too.

Soon I will share a photo of my workspace at home. So how do you stay organized?

  • How often do you stop & consciously get organized? or don’t you?
  • Does disorganization bother you? a certain level motivates me to action!
  • Can you accomplish more if you’re organized? or doesn’t it matter?