StopSpotsUse StopSpots to be on time. Always. As you get closer to the time that you need to be somewhere, you should be closer to your appointment. If you need to be somewhere in three hours and it’s a three hour drive where you are, that’s a problem. Maybe leave an hour earlier and then when you get close to your appointment have lunch. The idea is to have StopStops along the way where you can check your time and make can still make it.
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When I come into my apartment carrying things I often don’t know where to put them. Things that do have a home get put away, but what about things that I don’t where to put them?
My Start place is an empty counter space. Everything get puts there and I take of one thing every time I go by, or one item a day. Whatever it takes. This space gives me room to organize. Try it.
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Take a few things and do something with them. Or take one thing a day, that’s all, and do something with it. If you do that every single day you can take care of 30 things this month!
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What do these have in common, a closet, your bookmarks, your pantry, your files, your computer files?
They all need to be organized. I have been using the StopSpots method to organize everything I can get my hands on and it seems to work.
Start, Tasks, Operations, Projects, Save! Check back daily for updates!
During a recent visit by a friend of mine, I noticed how he put his gear in a big pile, then moved it to the back of the car. Then on top of that pile he put additional gear, picked some other things laying around and tossed it in. What’s wrong with that? How do you readily tell if something is missing if everything is a big pile?
Over the next several days I watched as a piece of gear fell out of the car and was left. I picked it up for him. I got a call from him that he left his shoes by the road and asked if I would grab them for him. And then I got a text from him that he lost his gloves.
This doesn’t need to happen. This is predictable!
Are there principles that can be applied to all organization? Are there rules that need to be followed whenever you organize something, every time? I think that there are. You have to plan, simplify, organize space, containerized and throwaway things to organize a closet. Do these same things apply to organizing a trip? I think they do apply and that’s why I want a single system that works for all organization. That’s what I’m working on.
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One of the first principles that I discovered around organization was the 3-9 principle. That is as you get to about 3 things that need to be organized you need to think about ways to group them. Any more than about 6 items need to be categorized further with about 6 items in any given category being about optimum. You need to have an additional organization method for any more than about 9 items.
There are lots of reasons to have more than 9 items in a category, but keep it simple. This principle applies to items of the same thing.
My computer files were the next thing I organized with StopSpots. And it was really easy to do. The categories at the top level could contain everything on my computer. And it was super quick find my files when I needed them. After seeing that, I started looking at other things and found that almost everything could be organized around it.
From my perspective I could see organizing my life around this and so I did. My apartment has a Start area where drop everything to get worked, it has specific areas for my Projects, it has Ops areas for my ongoing work, say for instance my computer area, and my Tasks are organized into specifics areas. Of course there are Save areas, including closets, where things that are needed for area.
I think that overall the system that I’m using wasn’t put in place my me. It’s just a natural way to organize. Like is a math an invention or a discovery? Is StopSpots a invention or a discovery? I don’t know.
As I looked through my bookmarks, I could readily see that I needed Start and Save containers for my bookmarks. The rest of my bookmarks fitted nicely into three other containers.
The first was Projects. In the Projects folder I gave each a project a name and any bookmarks for the specific project got placed in there. Projects have specific end dates. Compare that with my Ops category. Ongoing operations, like finances or family, do not have specific end dates. Finally, I have a category for Tasks which encompasses everything that doesn’t easily fit into Ops or Projects. Task items are usually one-off items and they normally support other Projects or Ops. For example under the Tasks folder in my bookmarks I have a Fax folder where I can find my fax bookmarks for the occasional fax I need to send.
With these five categories – Start, Tasks, Ops, Projects, Save – I have found that I can organize just about anything. Check back tomorrow and start to see how flexible this system is!
Another thing that I knew right away, some things were going to need to be saved. Things that I started on and were not going to needed until later were cropping again and again as I reviewed my bookmarks. This was something I see a lot in the files I have on my computer. Many files need to be saved but they are only needed if something else happens. Something happens, then I need to be able to find something, an old bill or a doc or go in to old bookmarks and find something. After I finish working on something, I may save it for later, or for whatever reason I’m not going to need it.
My Save category is where I put stuff that is useful, but is not needed until something else happens. Check back tomorrow and see I how manage everything in between Start and Save!