My whole life, I’ve been a procrastinator. I’ve been a down-to-the-wire, “I-swear-I-work-best-under-pressure,” wait-til-the-last-minute person. I studied journalism and work in a world full of short deadlines.

I’m starting to realize though, that I don’t have to be a procrastinator all the time. I always thought that procrastination was one of those things that you either do or you don’t. There are people who do everything ahead of time and leave buffers, and there are people that wait until the last possible hour to even start that paper.

I spent the weekend getting ahead in two important areas of my life: this blog, and the Web class I’m taking for work. These are two things that I don’t generally have time for on the Monday-Friday, but I need them in my life, and they’re not things I can put off.

So, while I may work well under pressure and on a deadline [hey, I still need to for my job], I can also be someone who plans ahead, does next week’s homework this week and writes/schedules future blog posts.

i could never use a planner

This week, I also learned about prioritization. Remember in school, how they always supplied you with those daily planners that had your school’s mascot on the cover, and the first five minutes of every class period was spent writing down that day’s homework? I was terrible at those. I always wrote it down, because I had to. But I never looked at it again until I had to write in it at the beginning of the class. I always just kept things in my head. And when I couldn’t? My hand was a better place for assignments than a planner [oh shuttup, I know you did it too].

But since school, that doesn’t work for me anymore. Maybe it’s my memory failing me in my old age [hah]. But really, there are just too many things to do. Sometimes, far more I can even think about doing in one day. Last week, I came to a point where a to-do list wasn’t enough. Because I could look at this list [which spanned more than one page], and feel my heart start to beat out of my chest with nerves.

so, i prioritized

I organized my list by client or project and then color-coded them by priority. Red has to get done today, yellow needs to be done this week and green is for next week. Call it OCD, but it helps me on those days where I have so much to do and ZERO ability to determine what should get done first.

Different things work for different people, and I’ve had to adapt my own personal habits to fit my workload. It’s definitely been an adjustment, but my sanity is appreciating the change.

what works for you?

Do you keep it all in your head? Do you write everything down? Does list-making and using a calendar help you?

photo credit: weheartit