Ditching Digital for Print

I’ve been pretty darn busy these first few weeks of the semester. There’s a slew of things related to a new school year going on at work (at the university), and then a bunch of beginning of the school year activities with the kids, plus a writing deadline approaching, a work construction project about to begin, and general daily life activities all going on at once. It’s felt like I’ve been going from one task to another, with little in the way of pauses or breaks.

My typical approach to staying organized is to use a Google Task List to keep track of everything. That’s mirrored on my iPhone and iPad, and I can always know what things still need to be done. Once I complete something, I delete it from the list. Ideally, the list gets shorter, and life is good.

The problem the last week or two has been that the list hasn’t been getting any shorter. I’ve been adding new things to it faster than I’ve been subtracting old things. And nothing quite replicates the feeling of working your tail off each day, only to find out that it looks like you have more to do, not less.

With digital, it’s even worse, because there’s no real record of all the things I actually accomplished.

That’s why, for the past few days, I’ve ditched the Google Task List and gone with the good old fashioned pen and paper, instead. At the end of the day, I might still have a ton of work to do, but at the very least I can look at all the scribbled out things on the list and know that I worked hard. That I did get some things accomplished. I thrive on getting things done. It’s what motivates me to keep going. When that feeling is lost, I can start to flounder and feel adrift.

So pen and paper it is. And I’m going to bring this blog post to a close, because that’s one more thing on my list that I can scribble off for the day. Huzzah!

What do you do to keep track of your crazy?