A Simple And Practical Guide To Getting Things Done
By: Jack Heimbigner
Tags: Life Lessons, Productivity, Self Improvement, Advice, Life

How do you keep track of all the bits of information in your life? When I say bits of information, I am talking about ideas, things to remember, and information you may need to reference at another time. We need to keep track of things, but how do we do it? Especially if we want to reference them later.

This has been a constant struggle for me.

When life was less complicated, when I was single, I didn’t have any issues keeping track of things. Yet, when I got married and added three kids to the mix plus assets it got much more complicated. Each time we have added something new to keep track of I have had to change up my system a little bit.

However, lately, I have gone back to a much more simple system with a very simple application.

While I have been thinking a lot about systems for managing my ideas, files, documents, and anything else that comes to me, I realized this is a struggle for other people. As I talk with friends, family, and coworkers, I realized that many people don’t have a good set up for keeping track of everything in their lives.

Everything Needs To Be Digital

While I understand that people are uncomfortable with the idea that things can get “hacked,” I have come to the conclusion that everything we keep needs to be digital now. There is no reason to have boxes and boxes of paper sitting around your house.

I do have one caveat to this, financial paperwork that you should keep for tax reasons should probably stick around. This amount of paperwork will likely only require one box however and you can shove it in the back of a closet.

All that to say, everything in our lives should be digital now. Paper is nice to hold, but it takes up space, kills trees, and is really easy to lose. When we are looking to keep track of everything in our lives, we have tools that are completely digital which we can use.

Creating Your Digital Filing System

When I first started keeping track of everything going on I used a series of notepads and an alphabet filing system. The notepads were for different projects I had going on at any time and the filing system was where I would deposit anything based on the first letter of the title I put at the top of the page.

This system worked great for a few years right after college. However, as I moved into a digital, remote work role, I had to change things up quite a bit.

With the changes to my work environment, I had to learn to go digital and make it work for me. I couldn’t carry around the notepads and filing folders everywhere I went. So, I started using Evernote. Evernote is like a giant filing cabinet/notepad rolled into one space. This would be the space I would keep everything for years.

Over the last couple of years, I have migrated everything from Evernote to several other applications, however, the principle has been the same no matter the application I have used. The key was keeping information for reference and having a place to store my work-in-progress projects.

I also use a very simple filing system for word processing documents, spreadsheets, and other files on my computer. Focusing on the year and the project. It is simple so I can move ongoing projects to the following year if I need to and if not, they can stay in place to reference later.

In this post, I will share with you how to create your system for reference and project management.