Getting Organized: My Evening To-Do List

As I mentioned on Sunday, I’ve come up with a three part plan to get myself more organized and be more productive.  The first part was my Sunday plan which has helped a little bit already, but will probably take a while to really be a habit.  The second part of the plan is my evening to-do list.  This is sort of linked to the third part of the plan, my morning schedule, but I’ll post about that tomorrow.

It probably comes as no surprise, especially to those who are naturally organized and productive, but I have found that if I get a few small things done in the evening before going to bed, my mornings are way easier, which of course leads to being more productive in the morning and getting to work at a better time, and generally leads to a better day.

I’m pretty sure that there are many home/life organizing blogs, websites, and even courses that cover the topic, so rather than go over all again, here is my “must do” list before bed.  No exceptions.

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Getting Organized: My New Sunday Plan

I’ve decided that I need to work on getting a bit more organized in my life in general.  Every once in a while I’ve posted a to-do list (like here or here) on my blog when I’ve felt like my schedule or to-do list is out of control and I need some external support and accountability.  Those weeks mostly work out to be much more productive… I don’t know if I need to write a list on my blog each week, but I’ve come up with a three part plan to get myself organized:

1. My Sunday Plan
2. My Evening To-Do List
3. My Morning Schedule

Today I’ll talk about #1, and hopefully I’ll be able to post about #2 and #3 later this week.  I’m sure some of you will wonder that I need to actually think about these things, not everyone needs to… but I love lists, and schedules, and my brain seems to require them in order to be the most productive, so bear with me as I go through this process.

So, I have created a Sunday evening plan for myself.  Somewhere in my organizing internet adventures, I stumbled across this post on the Sunday Basket.  I have not purchased the ebook, but I’ve read some of the posts and I’ve adapted the idea for me.

Tuesday To Do List

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m back from my work road trip.  The work stuff went well, but the attempt to catch up on blog reading and writing didn’t really happen… but I did make it to the community club gym to do a quick work out once while I was away (my arms were sore for two days, so I must have worked harder than I thought)… which is great, but it still means that for the first time this year I was unable to meet my fitness goal of doing some form of exercise three times a week.  I also went over my drink limit by 1… but that week is over now, and I need to just work on getting back on track.

To Do List Photo Credit

So, what’s the best way to do that?  Make a to do list!

Follow-Up Mid-February Procrastination

On Tuesday I posted about my procrastination, and how I was needing more structure in my evenings.  I made a list of goals for the evenings for the rest of the week.  Let’s go over the results:

Mid-February Procrastination

I’m not sure if I really need to do a formal review of my goals again… I just published one a few weeks ago, but I want to use this blog for accountability, and for working out what is or isn’t working, and things definitely weren’t working last week…

I could make excuses that being sick and the holiday Monday totally messed with my schedule, but I also wasted time and basically wasn’t productive when I should have been… nearing the end of last week, I told myself I would get on track on the weekend… and that didn’t happen… so of course, I told myself that this week would be better, and so far it hasn’t started out so well.