If you’re living out on your own for the first time, you may have already discovered how many things can get in the way of your life, making it stressful and chaotic. You probably never realized all the ’stuff’ going on behind the scenes when you lived at home with Mom and Dad…the bill paying, the home maintenance, the car maintenance, the food shopping, the clothes shopping, the ‘other stuff’ shopping, the trips to the drycleaner, the checkbook balancing, the cooking, the cleaning, the mending, the yard work, the run to the post office, the hour spent on hold trying to straighten out a problem with a credit card, the researching to find the best deal…the list goes on and on. How’s a person supposed to keep up with all that and stay sane these days?
A great place to start is with a planning book. You see businesspeople carrying them everywherethey’re guarded like treasure. “My whole life is in that book!” they’ll say. They’re right…and they’re smart. There is way too much going on in most people’s lives to be able to keep everything in their head. Finding a planning book that works for you and your style can make a huge improvement to your confidence in dealing with all those things that ‘get in the way of life’ and even free up more time to do the things you want.
Even if your business life isn’t full enough to require a planning book, guaranteed that your personal life is. There’s the information you need to have readily available, like contact information for your landlord, your bank, the lender on your car loan, your doctors and dentist, emergency road service…plus sensitive information like your credit card numbers, even numbers for grocery stores, libraries, organizations you’re a member of, and clubs…you’ll want to keep the phone and cell numbers of your friends and business associates handy…a place for keeping the business cards you collect as you meet people through work will come in real handy, too.
Each planning book is a little different in the types of pages available for recording this kind of information, and they usually have several different scheduling pages to choose fromwhether you need to see only one day at a time and have lots of room for notes, or want to see a week or even a full month on a two-page spread. Think carefully about what you do at work, the kinds of activities you’re involved in outside of work, how many appointments or events you usually have to keep track of, and how much room you want for adding notes as you go along.
Once you’ve found a book you think will fit your lifestyle, start using it! Collect all the contact information you’d like to have at your fingertips and get it recorded in there. Do you already have meetings, appointments, events, or special dates that you know of? Get those written down on the proper dates along with any notes to help jog your memory about what the appointment is for, directions on how to get there, or maybe what you need to take to the meeting.
The more you write down, the less you need to remember. Doctors say that the best way to improve your memory is to memorize things, but in this hectic world, I’ve found that the less I need to ‘think’ about things, the better. I write it down and purge it from the gray matter. When the time comes, all the information I need is right there in the book. As your life gets crowded, too, you’ll realize what a lifesaver a book like this can be.
Remember those goals you took the time to think about and write down last month? (You did do it, didn’t you? If not, take a look at the Career article in our Dose of Reality e-newsletter, or search ezinearticles.com for Expert Author, Kathryn Marion, for some major motivation.) Make a photocopy of your goals lists (shrink them down on a copy machine, if you have to) and keep them in your planning book. That way you have them right there to help you figure out what to do with some unexpected spare time (hint: make some progress toward one of your goals; don’t waste it reading a comic book!) or to remind you that you’re saving money for something special so this ‘great deal’ that just plopped in your lap will only derail that goal.
Do you see why so many people say “my whole life is in that book”? Don’t wait until you miss an important meeting for work, or get charged for missing a doctor’s appointmenttake charge of your time and your life with a planning book now…and guard it with your life!
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Kathryn Marion is President of Education for Reality. in Erie, Colorado. Her book Success in the ‘Real World:’ The Graduate’s Complete Guide to Making the Most of Your Career (and Your Life!) was released in April ‘05 in e-book format for its tenth anniversary–it was distributed through schools, colleges, and universities to nearly two million new graduates. Jam-packed with savvy insights and helpful advicem it covers everything from careers to money management to handling personal and even legal matters. Visit http://www.EducationForReality.com and sign up for the free monthly newsletter, Dose of RealityTM–it will give you a ‘dose’ of advice on your career, your money, and your life each month as well as point you to additional online resources which will help you in these areas–so you don’t have to surf the Net (we do it for you!).
