Overwhelmed.How to organize everything and what I need to do

[wen]

Thanks for all the feedback!!! It was very helpful and as always I'm so grateful to have access to this kind of feedback from people who are dealing with the same stuff every day.

In particular, I'm going to check out Evernote, and using iTunes for a master playlist of finished masters is a GREAT idea!

As an aside, I am also going to check out LastPass for password organization (symptomatic... I don't remember where I wrote my notes about this.) pathetic. Anyway Keepass was my first line of inquiry but I read some people had major problems with it.

Cheers
Wen

[coachdebra]

Inevitably, I'll get interrupted in the course of the day. At which point the difficulty is, day after day, to get back on task. This is my biggest challenge by far, every day, given the rest of my life outside of this discussion.

Ahh, interruptions - the biggest bugaboo of our connected life. My recommendation - silence your phone. Close your browser windows. Go invisible to IM and SKYPE. Close your email program and don't let it ping you to let you know you have mail.

As far as people interruptions - that's a different issue. That's called setting boundaries. And it's possible to do even with medium small children (really small, like infants and toddlers - not so much). but children older than 7 should be able to entertain themselves for periods of time. And what you can say to them is that you will be available to them at 3PM (or whatever) but until then, unless someone is bleeding or the house is on fire, you are unavailable. Teaching children how to set boundaries (as well as how to tell time!) is a key success skill for them. And the best way to teach is to model.

For adults who are interruptious (like it?), ask for their help/support. "I'm working on this project and I could really use your help. You're willing? Oh, great - I need to be uninterrupted for the next 3 hours. Can you help me with this?"

Hope that helps!
Debra

[wen]

LOL! I love that. "Help me by going away," lol.

One other thing I'm going to do. Get Open Office so I can have an Outlook-style email client (and better Excel).

I just can't get the knack of Gmail's filters, labels, etc. and my Gmail is out of control.... I like the folders I can make in Outlook and quickly drag things to them...

cheers all

[Len911]

So your solution has been to buy more software?? Oh, now you're really going to be overwhelmed,lol, like I should speak, I spend more time reading manuals and deciding which software is better for what, because many are redundant, and the whole point was to be more efficient!

[wen]

oh yeh, I get that! LOL

But its free software and mimics MS Office, which I know really well, but I only have the MS Office Starter at home so it would be a nice complement. What is the issue, is making the time to do it and get organized in the midst of competing priorities...

If anyone else hates Gmail like I do, you might try Mozilla's Thunderbird, by the way.

[wen]

If anyone is interested, I just made big headway by installing Thunderbird.

I even accidentally cleaned everything up real fast by deleting my entire inbox since 2005. On the plus side, there was a lot more to throw away, than save, and by sorting on the "From" field I quickly retrieved what I wanted to keep and put it in folders.

A few examples:

Collaborations
Equipment and Instruments
Friends
Family
General Biz
Logins and passwords
Listings
Marketing and CD Baby
Mixing
Publishers and BMI
Receipts
Recording
Songwriting and Composition
Submissions To Do
Submissions Done and Critiques
Taxi Stuff
Upcoming Events
Vocals
Website

Then I can set up filters so stuff automatically goes into those folders.

I feel Mucccchhhhhh better now just getting this stuff organized.

If you have any categories of folders you use that you find helpful I'd love to hear.

[Len911]

[quote="wen"I even accidentally cleaned everything up real fast by deleting my entire inbox since 2005.[/quote]


OMG! 2005? inbox? I wonder how many people are still living and businesses that are still in business today?
I think I would have replied to them all with an email asking, "How many of you are still alive and in business? Please respond, I'll get back to you in the next decade!"

[rdance]

hey wen, long time. (we met in the registration line at the last rally). there's always plenty to do, but i will go zen and just say, just choose a couple of things you will get done today...as suggested in my signature line.

richard dance

[wen]

[quote="wen"I even accidentally cleaned everything up real fast by deleting my entire inbox since 2005.

OMG! 2005? inbox? I wonder how many people are still living and businesses that are still in business today?
I think I would have replied to them all with an email asking, "How many of you are still alive and in business? Please respond, I'll get back to you in the next decade!" [/quote]

INDEED!

Like I said, I threw away huge chunks. I still need to do that with many papers but at least I've gotten 30 boxes of papers down to around 8 after moving.

Believe it or not, my house is not total chaos either. It's just the damb articles and research for screenplays and other writings.

[wen]

hey wen, long time. (we met in the registration line at the last rally). there's always plenty to do, but i will go zen and just say, just choose a couple of things you will get done today...as suggested in my signature line.

richard dance

Richard, of course I remember you We were in that line an awfully long time!!! I even fed you, as I recall, LOL.

Yes In fact every day I chip away at something. Today it was my email. tomorrow.. well we'll see.

Appreciate the encouragement. I just went looking for a composition and realized some of my boxes of papers are .... ..... disorganized as heck. See? something to do tomarrrooowwwwww