These are strange times, and I am sure I am not the only one that has let some of my normal organization fall by the wayside. I for one am losing track of time constantly, I still can’t believe it is May. But now it is time to start thinking about returning to normal, at least a little bit. It is also a great time to reevaluate your system and see if it is working for you. Here are some tips fo reevaluating your organization system. Side Note: The focus of this blog is books, so that is what I will be discussing, but some of these will translate into just other areas of life too.
Are you using the right Medium?
Electronic or paper, the great debate. I tend to switch between electronic and paper organization and that works for me. For example, my photo challenges are in a spreadsheet on google docs, for my blog calendar I use google calendar and a physical calendar. I have an ARC list electronically, my books read list is in my book Bujo, as well as on Goodreads. I am also an avid list maker and I have to have a handwritten list. I usually capture my daily to-dos for both my blog and bookstagram in my planner.
When deciding what medium to use I think about why that makes the most sense. Aside from ease of use, electronic tends to be much quicker for me. But why else would it make sense to make my blog calendar or ARC list electronic? Because I change things a lot. I move my blog posts around constantly, and I’m sure you noticed the rash of recent publication date changes. My dive, if it is something that is going to be changing either invest in a lot of white-out or think about using an electronic organization system.
Now, I am not telling you to make a switch. If you love paper, stick with paper, but it you are like me and use both you might want to think about what’s better suited for what medium.
What to Include
Some of this is very self-explanatory. I am sure I don’t need to tell you what tin include on your posting calendar. But what about book lists? If you store your reviews, TBRs, etc. on Goodreads then you don’t have the think about this. Goodreads does it for you. But if you are like me and like to have it on paper what do you out on the list. This is going to change based on the type of list and personal preference, but here are some ideas :
- The usual – title, author
- publication date
- publisher
- genre
- book type – audio, ebook, etc.
- rating
- number of pages
- start and finish date
- Author info – male/female, POC, own voices
These are obviously all personal preference. Think about what information you want to have and what you might use it for.
Try Something New
One thing I am always doing is adjusting my system. Sometimes it is little things like adding genre to my ARC tracker, and sometimes it makes a whole spread of the readathon I am doing for the month. I get a lot of inspiration from others. Pinterest and Instagram are great places to see what other people are doing. At the end of the day, this is your system though. So remember that not everything is going to work for you, but it is all about trial and error.