This month has been insane. Between changing my business structure, moving my office/studio to a new location, seeing a full load of student, starting new sessions of two different early childhood classes, and creating an online CMTE course, I’m lucky I’m still sane enough to type this blog post.

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to organize all the chaos, I entered everything into iCal. Then I used the Reminders app to make lists for each different area of my work and life that needed attention. I could access both my calendar and lists from my iPhone, iPad, and laptop, so I thought everything would be under control.

But I was wrong. Things were still slipping through the cracks, and whenever I found a free block of time to get something done, I would be overwhelmed and have no idea where to start. So one night I went old school and wrote out a list of things I had to do the next day.

Thanks to the list sitting on my desk the next morning, I knew exactly where to start and how to budget my time. I didn’t waste precious minutes with things that didn’t need to be done right away; instead, I went right down the list, crossing things off as I finished them.

You really don’t get the same satisfaction from check-marking an item on your iPhone as you do drawing a line through something with a sharpie, do you? It’s amazing how focused and motivated I am when I sit down to work each day, because I know that my goal is to have crossed off every single item before I go to bed that night.

I use these small notepads (of which I have several, thanks to giveaways at AMTA conferences!) so that I can’t fill it up with too many to-dos; keeping the list relatively short allows me to concentrate on the MOST important items. And if for some reason something doesn’t get done that day, I write it down on the next day’s list. This doesn’t happen often, though, because nothing irks me more than throwing away a list with items left uncrossed!

Thanks to these daily lists, I’m just about finished with content creation for that online CMTE course I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Early Childhood Programs: Create, Market, Make Music! is just a couple weeks away (or less, if I really get things in gear) from launching — I can’t wait to share it with you :)