Here’s Your Sensational Organizing Tip Of The Day
If you want to create an intentional life that serves you, you MUST be organized. You certainly don’t have to have a place for everything and everything in it’s place, as the mantra goes.
But you truly need to have systems that structure each aspect of your life. If you’re not organized you waste precious time that could be serving you instead of spent searching for something.
There are a million ways to organize things, but here is my one organizing tip of the day. See how well it works for you!
Organizing Tip Of The Day
I’m going to introduce my favorite tool to you. It’s called AirTable.
AirTable is this awesome web app that’s integrated on all of your devices. You can stored pretty much any sort of file or information all together in one place. And it’s FREE!
I use AirTable to keep tracking of:
- scheduling tasks
- spreadsheets of information
- images and files
- dates and deadlines
- links and resources
AirTable is fantastic because you can store any sort of information within in it, attach files and documents, then view all that information how you want. Let me show you.
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Bases = Filing Cabinets
An AirTable base is like a huge grouping of whatever you’re organizing. Think of them like a filing cabinet, or a drawer in a filing cabinet that you use to organize tons of stuff.
Mine looks like this. I have two bases, one for Business Editorial scheduling and another for all my References and Spreadsheets that I’ve compiled.
You can have as many bases as you want, you can change the colors, names and symbols of how they look. Definitely personalizable!
Tabs = Folders
So when you open up a base it looks like a spreadsheet with tabs. Think of your tabs like the folders in your filing cabinet. You can name them what you want and then structure everything on those tabs individually.
Here is my Popular Pins tab at first glance. Things originate as a spreadsheet layout, but you can change how everything looks A LOT! I’ll get to that in a minute.
Within each sheet, you can add as many rows and columns as you want. Then you can uniquely personalize those columns.
Spreadsheet View
For the columns, you can make them the type of entry you want. It doesn’t just have to be text like in a typical spreadsheet. All the different field types include:
- url links
- simple text
- attachments
- checkboxes
- dates
- currency
- selection from a drop down list
- formulas
So you can see in my tab view above I have text, links, images, and even drop down selections all on the same spreadsheet. My FAVORITE thing about the attachments field type is that you can just drag and drop files right into those fields!
So you don’t have to store your documents in some other drive. You can have them accessible right next to your links to accounts and notes about whatever the item is. It’s awesome!
I used to spend so much time getting a link from a spreadsheet, then searching for the applicable image in another drive, and going back and forth so much wasting time. Now I don’t. 🙂
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Views = Layouts
Then the cool thing about each tab in your base is that you can view all of your information differently. You can look at your information as:
- spreadsheets
- galleries
- boards
- individual forms
- calendars
Say you have a sheet with a column that is dat specific. You can change the view of that sheet to a calendar with a simple click. Here is one of my sheets viewed as a calendar.
Calendar View
Then within the calendar you can drag and drop the boxes of information around to anywhere you want. If you’re really big into scheduling events this really comes in handy.
Here are more views that you can enjoy. Galleries is based on images across a board. Boards view is like Trello or Kanban boards that you can also drag and drop. Forms are meant for single row items within a tab.
Gallery View
Boards View
Form View
The nice thing about looking at everything as a form, you can see the history on the right side of every change you’ve made to that form. It’s easy to click and download or grab links with any of the information you have available.
So there’s plenty of options to make it unique to you!
Why You Should Try Organizing With AirTable
So I use AirTable for organizing a ton of stuff in my business life. You certainly don’t have to only use it for business stuff. You can apply all of this to anything that you want to keep track of in your life. Here are some examples:
- keeping your tax documents in one place
- links to your favorite events as their scheduled on your calendar
- favorite photos you want to put into digital scrapbooks
- budgeting and accounting systems
- saving treasured emails or notes from loved ones
- compiled to-do lists for your home
- keeping resources in one place that you’ve researched for projects
- save copies of your children’s medical records
And if you’re nervous about trying something new, I get it. Rest assured, AirTable has a bunch of templates you can automatically use that are already set up. They also have tutorials on how to do just about everything.
So if you need a jumpstart on organizing your life, take my tip of trying AirTable. I don’t plan on changing how I organize things for a long time because I really like it!
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Making The Best Of You, Beyond Tips
If using just a tool to organize your life seems a bit too narrow, I totally understand. Sometimes you have to take a big picture approach if you want to make real change happen in your life.
It’s not the hacks or the tools that sustain us. They certainly help. But what really goes a long way is a system for your entire life through goal setting and intentional decision making.
It’s not the hacks or the tools that sustain us.
So if you’re thinking that you’ve missed the boat because New Year’s resolutions aren’t the hot topic right now, that’s completely not true. You can implement goals and strategies ANYTIME in order to progress in your life.
If you’re ready to make over your year from exactly where you are now, I recommend Crystal Paine’s goal setting course. You’re a smart person to make a decision for your destiny.
>> Make Over Your Year And Start Living With Determined Intensity <<
My own goal setting systems have changed completely the past few years and I’m so glad that they have. I’m constantly reviewing things and optimizing how I track everything, whether in my AirTable or not.
Even if this system doesn’t work perfectly for you, no big deal. It’s in the trying and progressing where you’ll find your solid methods for life.