Posted on: April 30th, 2022

Imagine you could get all of your to-dos out of your head and onto paper. Once you did that, you’d still need to organize all those items. So what’s the best way to do that? According to Richard Saul Wurman, the author of Information Anxiety, there are essentially five ways to organize everything in your life. You’re likely using all of them, but the final two, in particular, will play important roles in becoming more productive and organizing your newly assembled pile of tasks.

1.) Alphabetically – perfect for contacts, files, etc.

2.) Size – useful for physical spaces from bookshelves to warehouses

3.) Location – whether it’s everything you need when you leave the house (keys, wallet) or all the information relating to a particular client

4.) Time – essentially, calendaring things

5.) Category – this is the secret to organizing any brain dump list, no matter how large

Action Item: Sit down and do a brain dump of everything (yes, everything) that you need to do. Once it’s out of your head, you’ll feel much better. Then take the time to organize all those tasks by category. Your brain loves categories! Organizing your tasks this way will allow you to be more productive and efficient.