Yesterday I talked about my 2013 Martha System. This change in goal tracking has been so helpful.
Things I’ve Learned About Myself
- I need a gold star. Like an actual gold star sticker. Seeing them all lined up for good work gives me the incentive to go forward. (And no, this doesn’t work with cookies. You can’t see them all lined up in your stomach and in the end your pants don’t fit. Fail.)
- My To-Do List has to be the old fashioned, written in pencil on an actual piece of paper kind. It gives me great satisfaction to cross it off once it’s done. This same feeling can’t be ascertained from checking off a task box in Outlook.
- I can’t count on myself to remember everything. If I don’t write it down, I forget about. Like so many I was using my inbox as my task list. It’s only because an email is an easy reminder – not because it’s the actual thing you need to do!
Even though I only wanted to learn about my working habit, I also learned something valuable about the business. There are three distinct parts to Alesya Bags right now:
- Product Manufacturing & Design
- Marketing & Sales
- E-Commerce & Customer Service
Every day has to include some of each department. But I can’t switch back and forth and forth and back and then forth again. I have to work in chunks of time to make it useful.
With all this being said, I still have a ton left to do on my 2013 list. And I’m feeling stuck in a few areas. How is your list looking?
This immediately made me smile because the first “boss” I ever had gave us gold star stickers when we excelled on a task or took extra initiative. I stuck them to my laptop so I could see them and have a visual reminder I had done something right. My niece (3 at the time) said she was proud I had “been good at work.”
And I’m learning that I do better with a write it down, visual to-do list as well. I try to keep it small and thus manageable, rather than listing out 20 things at a time that need to be done.