To do or not to do…..

As you all know by now, I am on a mission to get organised.

If like me, you find it hard to say no when someone says “oh could you just…” or “wouldn’t it be great if we had someone who could ……..”, you will have lots of ideas floating around in your head or on scraps of paper.  I have a tendency to write it on whatever is close to hand (envelope, letter, child’s picture) and then hope I remember either the task or where I wrote it.

Also, as mum to three children with SEN, I  have several appointments to prepare for (and paperwork to keep track of).  So I don’t just want to get organised, I need to get organised!

I have tried apps – Remember the Milk – seemed great, Reminders on my iphone but, like my friend Tania, I am good at ignoring them and then forgetting about them.  Tania and I even have a shared Reminders folder and we both ignore that together!

So I turned to my favourite app – Pinterest – for inspiration.  If you want to spend a few hours reading about to do lists, rather than doing to do lists – I can highly recommend the site.  I searched “to do lists” and wow!  I was in absolute awe at how organised some people are – Zoe At Home  is uber-organised and has a plan called GTD (Get Things Done).  However, as much as I love the whole theory, I also know my limitations but, if Zoe wants to pop over and spend a few days here to get me started, she would be very welcome.  My favourite episode of Big Bang Theory is when Sheldon organises Howard’s closet.  I want a Sheldon or a Zoe to call my own.

However, then I came across Andrea Dekker – “Real life…. simplified”.  Her post on Daily and Master “to do” lists helped me to work out where I’m going wrong.

The idea is you write one “Master” list of everything you need to do – house, work, children, blog, etc.  Then each evening you move some over to  your “Today” list and then within the “Today” list, you have a Top 5 list.  These are the things you have to accomplish that day.

So I have written my “Master” list.  I started this on Saturday night but then got depressed remembering what Saturday nights used to be like.  So over the last few days I have been adding to it and then being the procrastinator of all procrastinators, I then looked into different apps for task management.  I am not good with notebook types to do lists – I have children who like to scribble so having something on my phone was essential.  I have tried a few and I loved Planner Plus – calendar, tasks and notes all in one but it isn’t available on the iphone, just the ipad and as my phone goes everywhere with me, that was no use.  That is a real shame as I loved the idea of it all in one app – like a filofax on your ipad.  It looked beautiful.  However, today, I found Astrid and so far, so good.  You can share folders, move tasks around and it works on iphone, ipad and laptop.  We’ll see if I can just ignore the tasks on there too.

So will I be successful in my mission – or will it always be chaos in kent?

How do you organise your “to do” lists?  What works well for you?