Organizing Work

I like to think of my organizational process in 3 steps; Task Generation, Prioritization and Scheduling.

Task Generation

During meetings and everyday conversations, you can find me furiously writing down keywords and tasks in my notebook. I have several, one for my purse, one for my schooling and one for work. You could say I have a strategically placed collection. Inside, I love to highlight repetitive ideas that are intended to be conveyed to our consumers and create strategic campaigns around these key concepts.

In my last role working at a contact lens manufacturer, our target market was 3rd-4th-year optometrists to practicing optometrists with 1-2 years’ experience. In every conversation I had learning about the business, 3 key concepts were repeated by my superiors; Educate, Relate, Sell. I then sought to create year-long campaigns around these concepts.

Prioritization

If you are a superhuman you can prioritize in your head but when mass amounts of information are passing us by, we are bound to have human error come into play. That’s why I love to use project management tools with my favorite being Wunderlist. Post-meetings and key conversations I love to put these key concepts and ideas straight into my Wunderlist.

Monday mornings are my time to plan out my week and prioritize all these ideas. Within each task, I compile relevant attachments and invite anyone else who may have some input on the concept to comment. I used to use this often for editing our email marketing campaigns and my superiors could easily comment on any edits that needed to be made.

Another way I use Wunderlist to prioritize and organize my tasks is by separating them within each list when they were pending review or completed. I liked to use a task bullet in all caps to separate each task and better understand where each of my projects stands in their respective process.

Scheduling

Lastly, I also use Wunderlist to schedule out my week with my top priority tasks on top and setting due dates inside the app. For quick reference, I usually write down my top tasks for the week on a weekly planner on my desk. At the end of the week, if I have any leftover tasks that are pending review, I will place them into another category so that I know I’ve completed my workflow and am just waiting on proofing or feedback.

I must note, this isn’t an ad for Wunderlist, I am just an avid supporter!