I don鈥檛 know you or anything about you. It makes suggestions a little hard, so all I have to go on is my own experience here. I鈥檒l tell you what I use it for.
I write fiction (so far, just for fun), knit, crochet, work in stained glass, have two grown kids and a husband, cook a lot, play pub trivia, rent out a home I own, helped my husband run a consulting business for a while, like to see as many live music acts as possible, pay bills, and on and on and on.
I find the filing system to be really helpful once you spend a little time getting the folders and setting them up. I use the inbox the way he suggests and the daily filing instead of a calender for my to-dos.
I have folders for each kid, my husband, things I want to read and why, projects for the future (some of them in particular other places and some in what he calls the ';someday maybe'; folder), a ';cooking'; folder, and a lot of writing folders for characters, plot ideas, and other things that could be developed into a story, folder for my house, a whole range of things.
I keep blank notecards in my purse or courier bag and I write down one thing per card. This comes in handy when I hear a band I want to know more about, I鈥檓 talking to someone who mentions a book I鈥檇 like, I see something that makes me think of a story idea or design I don鈥檛 want to lose, I get a call and realize I have to do thing X before Monday, I hear something I want to check out for a friend or my husband or my kids. When I get home I sort my cards into appropriate folders.
The next time I鈥檓 going shopping I get out my cooking folder --that鈥檚 what I was going to try this week. When my son鈥檚 birthday was coming up I pulled a folder that I have on him with all sorts of random stuff I鈥檇 been collecting all year that he鈥檇 like. When I sit down to write a story I have some outlines and character sketches in various degrees of readiness and a lot of little random thoughts written down. I put tickets to future shows in my ';live music'; folder. When I want to do a new stained glass project I look over designs. Sometimes have calculations for material amounts ready and sometimes I know that鈥檚 my next step in a design I want to do. (See the ';next step'; idea. That鈥檚 helpful, too.) I鈥檓 not repeating work because I don鈥檛 know where I put it.
I like doing this for a few reasons. If I write something down I鈥檓 not spending all my time trying to remember random things and my head is freed up for thinking about all the things I want to think about. I鈥檓 not having this slight panic that I鈥檝e forgotten to do something, pay something, or go somewhere. I don鈥檛 feel like I鈥檓 losing great ideas all the time anymore. (I certainly used to.) And I feel like I can get thinking done anywhere. If I am waiting for my trivia group to show at the pub I can be drawing my garden idea for next spring and not loose the idea or the time.
The daily folders for to-dos works better than to-do lists --once you take a few days to get used to it. If something comes up that changes your plans you can rearrange what鈥檚 in the folder instead of rewritting lists all the time. I find myself grabbing things out of tomorrow鈥檚 folder to do ahead of time when I can.
It separates out the have-to stuff from the creative stuff and lets you focus more on the creative stuff. The have-to stuff just becomes habit. So, shopping for ingredients in a timely fashion is a have-to. Buying yarn or working out how much glass I need is a have-to. Paying bills on time and checking on the status of something for the home or kids can be a have-to. The designing and doing are the creative fun bits.
I know this all sounds really overly organized before you start doing it, but it鈥檚 really great how much you鈥檙e freed up once your system is in place. Since I started doing this, I鈥檝e written more, gone on more trips, cooked more new dishes, completed more glass and needlework projects, seen more live shows, etc. than before. I鈥檓 fully doing whatever it is I鈥檓 doing at the given moment instead of doing one thing and trying to remember something else I need to do tomorrow.
I hope this helps.
Take care,
Cyndy
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