I love my new freedom filing system and just had to share it with you! As leaders of our lives and organizations, we often times feel overwhelmed and trapped. I experienced this when I worked for someone else and with my own company. As I listed in a previous blog, I recognize the “symptoms” of overwhelm and do not like the way it makes me feel!
My freedom filing system takes care of overwhelm and gives me back my freedom to think, focus, concentrate, and plan with clarity. I call it my “freedom filing system” because it provides me the right amount of structure to be free to create.
As CEO of my own company, I wear many hats. When I am creating new products or writing my books, I have a dark cloud of business correspondence or updating the books hanging over me, which impedes my ability to focus. Recognizing this, I took the following steps and you can too:
- List every category of activities I do throughout the week (product development, writing, education, marketing, meeting with clients, administrative, etc.)
- Group together activities, identifying a theme that makes sense (updating the website and following up with media contacts)
- Determine five categories and which day of the week it makes sense to complete those tasks. This activity creates theme days. For example, Monday is Product Development Day, and Tuesday is my writing day. If I am on a roll with writing product, I can easily carry over into Tuesday.
- Create files for each day of the week, with the theme for the day. Inside each folder, list the typical activities for that day (Marketing day: lead follow-up, web updates, media follow-up, etc.)
- Put all those loose papers into the appropriate folder. If there is an email that has an action item, I print the email and put it into the folder. This simple activity completely cleared my desk and mind. I no longer have to think about the to-do items as I know it is in my folder for that day to complete.
- At the end of each day, I pull my folder for the next day, review the activities associated with that theme and create my action list for the next day.
- Begin and end each day with 30 minutes to answer immediate correspondence.
I now have the freedom I craved because of this structure. How do you get out of overwhelm and what system are you using? I love to hear from you.
With love,
Maria
