Making Lists

By: Claire Keeling
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:52
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Don’t you just love crossing things off of your list? I do. Lori is more of a list maker than I am, I keep more in my head. There is definitely something freeing about getting the information out of your head and on to the paper. It’s hard to carry all the information around with you all of the time.

Do you know if you’re a list maker or if you are creative and need to use more creative methods? Both of us are big fans of mind-mapping. It is really freeing and can bring an enormous amount of clarity in just a few minutes. I went to a flower nursery with a couple of friends a few weeks ago and even had the urge to map while I was there. My friend, Elizabeth, had recently moved into a new home and was doing some band-aid landscaping. By band-aid, I mean that she’s going to do some serious work in the yard next year, and is just doing enough to look presentable. She was thinking about various things she could plant and I was having a hard time visualizing. I got out a piece of paper and started having her help me map out the area so that we could better understand what was going to go where. I can’t help it. I’m a compulsive mapper!

We are both trained in the clear & SIMPLE way of See It, Map It, Do It and believe in it for any project. Once you’ve seen what your task is and gotten the visual, the next step is always mapping it out. Making lists are fine, but mind mapping takes things to the next level. Your mind just somehow unloads all at once when you mind map. There’s no way to do it wrong and you can always add or remove ideas easily.

Some great websites to help in this process are:
www.tadalist.com
www.mindtools.com/prtodo.html
www.davidco.com/tips_tools/tip2.html

Go check them out when you have time.

If you are a list maker, where are your lists? Are they on a bunch of different post-it notes all around? Do you keep your lists all in one place? It’s a funny question that we ask our clients, but the answers really reveal a lot. If your lists of “to do” or action items are spread out all over the place, it might be visually confusing to try and keep up with them all. We recommend some type of system that is easy to take with you everywhere you go, and extremely simple to use, like FiloFax at www.filofax.com. Lori has even customized her pages to include:

Notes
To Do
Top 3 Things Today
Call
Email
Errand
Projects

People use mind mapping in all sorts of ways. You can map out your day, your week and your month. We enjoy mapping out projects that come up and always do a mind-map for any type of proposal, or new business opportunity.

Aren’t you ready to let your mind unload? 2006 All Rights Reserved.

Claire Keeling and her partner Lori Bickel are the co-owners of Sort It Out, Inc. Sort It Out helps companies become more productive, one employee at a time. For more information contact them at http://www.sortitoutduo.com

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