Organizing Thoughts~Part 1

Image courtesy of karenswhimsy.com



Where do you keep your thoughts?

Odd question?

Ok, I admit it, I'm odd.

But I'm also curious.

Were you born organized?

Does your brain have drawers with neat rows of filing cabinets

filled with perfectly labeled, color coded & alphabetized files

and an smooth, efficient information retrieval system

so's you can locate important thoughts in just a split second?

I was NOT born organized.

Nor was I trained to it.

My thoughts are more like grass clippings coming out of a lawn mower deck--

scattered at great speed to the four winds

to be further dispersed at random.

Before I realized that there might be a better way,

my usual habit was to write my thoughts & notes to myself

on whatever scrap of paper might be lying closest.

Then, once the thought was out of my brain

and not clogging the system  any more,

I could and would churn out more.

All those thoughts and  that multitude of scraps

turned into a mountain of moving paper,

sort of like a pile of leaves blowing in the wind...

Yeah, I wasn't born organized.
Nor was I trained to it.

From past experience,

I've learned that before I worry about ordering my thoughts--

first I need a place to keep them!

I think the professionals call that containerizing?

Somewhere a few years back,

I read yet another "Get Organized Quick" book
(hoping, of course, to find the "magic pill" or at least a quick cure)

and came across the concept of using a simple spiral bound notebook

as a log to keep all telephone messages in.

I tried it and liked it!

All those phone notes and information were in one place.

Amazing!



A 15 cent solution  at the August
back-to-school sale at my local W--mart.



As I've experimented over the years with different day-planning

and organizing systems,

I keep coming back to that simple idea--it works for me.
I've had to learn to discipline myself to the habit
of writing my thoughts--notes, lists, information from the day,
addresses, phone numbers, etc, ad nauseum--
into this notebook so I now know where to find my thoughts!

So far, I've used about three different kinds of these notebooks,
including the type above.
A couple of years ago I created my own spiral-bound day-planner.

The pages were drafted on my home computer

and I then went to a copy shop and had the pages

reproduced and spiral bound.

Now, I'm using a day-planner that I bought off the shelf

which looks like this:

Month at a glance dividers

 

One page per day for each day of the month.

 I'm finding that it suits my needs pretty well at present.

I have a place to keep track of appointments as they arise

and plenty of room to scratch my random thoughts and lists down.

And, spiral bound to keep those thoughts all together in one place,

which is important because I carry this black book with me everywhere I go:

from room to room in the house as I move through my tasks for the day,

to town and appointments (my lists are in there!) and when I travel.

It helps so much to have all those jottings are in one place.

This book is the tool I use to contain my thoughts.

(Next I'll think about organizing those thoughts.)

How and where do you keep your thoughts?

What works for you?