There’s an interview on LifeHacker that details how the excellent Merlin Mann of 43 folders actually gets his work done. Many organizational gurus talk in broad principals of work in an ideal world, but Merlin gets down into the nitty gritty tactical details of getting things done.
I am a formerly disorganized person with a job that did not allow me to be so: as a science teacher, I am foolishly charged with the edification of 300 students in the ways of physics. With all the homeworks to mark, lab equipment to order, classes to teach and syllabus changes to implement, I needed an organization system more formal than just hoping I’d remember what I needed to do when I needed to do it. I experimented with a large number of to-do tracking methods. I tried paper systems, digital systems and hybrids. Great pyramids of binders rose and fell on my desk. Many systems tried to sort my life and most failed. Some quietly, some spectacularly.
But with each oscillation in organization a dampening effect occurred and, finally, the system settled down.
The heart of my system comes from Getting Things Done by David Allen. I recommend going to Merlin Mann’s excellent site, 43 folders, for an introduction to the method. Merlin is an organization guru and plays T. H. Huxley to David Allan’s Darwin. The best place to start is his post `getting started with getting things done.’
As someone who spends most of his time on the computer, I failed to recognize for a long time the one obvious thing that really makes my current system flow: to-do lists work better on paper. Tasks are more real when written down or crossed out. But, I revolted against paper because of its inability to deal with recurring events. Writing down the fifty identical to-do’s at the start of each week on paper is impractical.
The solution is a computer file to print daily recurring to-do’s. My template has five pages, one for each day of the week. Each day lists the things that must get done by the next day. So Monday’s list includes all the lesson planning and marking to do for Tuesday. Requisition sheets are due in on a Wednesday, so Tuesday’s sheet includes ‘make requisition sheet’. Before I leave school all the to-do’s on the daily sheets must be crossed off.
This provides the outline for the week, but things always come up that cannot be planned for, such as wayward children and the detentions they must serve. There are several ways to handle unplanable events.
The first page of my organizer is called ‘inbox.’ This is a scratch pad to jot down any thoughts or items that come to my attention but don’t need immediate action. It serves as a holding pen for issues that need to be done until I can organize them into the rest of the system. It is not a to-do list — just a temporary place for thoughts.
If, however, something comes up that needs to be handled that day, I add it to the daily sheet. If it’s a job that does not need to be done by a certain time, I have one last sheet for tosdo’s when I have spare time called ‘next actions.’
All of these papers are kept in a clipboard which never leaves my side. I take it to every meeting and have it on my desk during every class so that anything that needs my attention latter can go straight into ‘inbox.’ I cannot emphasize enough how much of a difference a quality clipboard makes. I recommend a strong aluminum one.
At the end of the week I review my documents and lists to ensure that everything is up to date. It’s here that I empty my inbox and sort its contents into the rest of the system.
To keep track of what I’ve taught in each of my classes, I switch to digital. On a spreadsheet I set up one sheet per class. On each sheet are four columns: one for the date, one for what I need to finish from last lesson, one for the main subject in this lesson, and one for assigned homework. While I could have done this on paper, this is a case where loss of the data would be catastrophic, so digital’s easily backupable nature wins out.
But the biggest trouble for teachers is always keeping track of all the paper: the work sheets, the homeworks, the quizzes and tests.
In my current system, each class gets one big folder and the papers related to the class go in that folder. While this would normally turn into one enormous mess, paper protectors keep it neat. Each set of worksheets, collected homework or whatever, goes in a paper protector then, bundled together, they go into the folder. This way when I need to mark any work or teach the lesson I can just grab the folder for that class and be sure that I have everything I need.
In summary, the system looks like this:
Getting things done for teachers originally appeared on Wellington Grey’s Articles.
Header photograph by DcJohn