The blog

Per­form a check-up on the sta­tus of your per­son­al struc­ture today and make note of what improve­ments you need to make.

Now is a time as good as any to do so, so by all means, go right ahead, I am pro­vid­ing you with a rea­son to do it with­out fur­ther ado.

Why?

Well, if you improve your per­son­al struc­ture you will quite sim­ply have a bet­ter overview of your life and have more time over for oth­er, more impor­tant things.

Do this

Ask your­self and answer the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Do you have one sin­gle place where you write down and keep all the things you need to do, and there­by avoid hav­ing to remem­ber it all?
   • If not, get your­self a to-do-list.

2. Is it easy for you to get an instan­ta­neous overview of all your on-going projects, such as your areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty or the most impor­tant changes occur­ring in your busi­ness in the com­ing six months?

   • If not, cre­ate a project overview includ­ing your more exten­sive engage­ments and what the next step for each one of these is.

3. Do you find the doc­u­ments you need imme­di­ate­ly, regard­less if they are dig­i­tal or phys­i­cal documents?

   • If not, look into how you store your ref­er­ence-mate­r­i­al (which you know you will need at some point, but not specif­i­cal­ly when).

4. Could you, right at this moment, eas­i­ly update your­self on all the things you are wait­ing for from oth­ers, regard­less if they are clients, cowork­ers, sup­pli­ers or partners?

   • If not, begin to write down all the things you are wait­ing for from oth­ers today and keep this list updated.

5. What is your phys­i­cal work­space like, what is it like at your desk? Do you have an ade­quate but not exces­sive amount of items lying on your desk and hang­ing on the walls, so that you aren’t dis­tract­ed by what you do not need at the moment?

   • If you are sur­round­ed by too many ​“to-do-notes”, clean things up and cre­ate a tick­ler-file so that what you need emerges auto­mat­i­cal­ly when you need it from now on.

6. Do you have a par­tic­u­lar place where you note those bril­liant ideas you aspire to car­ry out at some point, but aren’t cer­tain of when?

   • If you do not have such a place, I sin­cere­ly rec­om­mend you to cre­ate a list (or a sec­tion in your to-do-list) list­ing all the tasks or ideas you per­haps might wish to do at some point. Make a note of them in the list, with­out feel­ing oblig­at­ed to com­plete them – it is a risk-free way to keep them and you will not lose them.

7. What is on your mind right now? Are things and tasks you don’t want to let your­self for­get spin­ning though your mind or do you find it effort­less to con­cen­trate on what­ev­er you wish to focus on at the moment? Per­haps you have a to-do-list, a project-overview and a ​“sometime/​maybe”-list, but be care­ful to keep them updat­ed so that they are com­plete at all times.

   • If you con­tin­ue try­ing to remem­ber and keep a few things in your head in spite of these aids, you will not expe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of rein­forc­ing your per­son­al struc­ture and you will not believe that the above men­tioned struc­tur­al aids are actu­al­ly help­ing you.

Bet­ter and better

Per­form the con­trol described above and you will soon find where you need and can make improve­ments regard­ing your per­son­al struc­ture. You will think of things to amend and improve upon, make the adjust­ments and expe­ri­ence a greater flow in your work­day and that you have more free time when you are off work.

How do you manage?

Do you have a mar­velous struc­tur­al tool which still hasn’t been men­tioned in Done!? Leave a com­ment to tell myself and oth­er readers.