Pre-crastination: The Anxious Person’s Guide to Organization

I’m all about pre-crastination… or so I’ve claimed since high school.

The basic concept is that if you do the thing now, then you don’t have to worry about it later.

I suspect this is actually just an anxious person’s excuse for having created neurotic methodologies to navigate everyday life.

All this frontloading is… to encourage starting to think ahead to 2025 if you haven’t done so already.

And, at the moment, I’m talking about organization— 

Sooo… Are you still a paper planner person?

I know the year… but I’ve never transitioned to being completely reliant on Outlook or Teams or Google/Apple Calendar (etc.) for managing my days… This probably has something to do with the fact that I haven’t spent a ton of time in traditional workplaces since 2014… ahem, anyways… it’s not just me who still likes a good ol’ paper planner, right?

I enjoy getting a new calendar in advance and then filling in all the essential annual info. Admittedly… quite a bit of the info I fill in has gotten darker… but getting the calendar organized feels like a small victory. You’ll hear me talk more about small victories in the coming weeks.

Also, I’m a big fan of these desk calendars for keeping track of the household schedule.

They should not cost more than $12 even if Amazon isn’t running a deal.

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A “organization strategy” I’ve been doing for a while is adding books and items I may or may not want to purchase to my Amazon cart and then moving them to “Save for later” … it’s a pretty good reminder system. It’s also more organized than trying to find things in the cluttered “Notes” section on my phone… which gets out of hand in spite of continuous efforts.  

My mess of index cards scattered on nearby surfaces is another indicator that none of these systems are fully functional, in turn, resulting in something of an amalgam of systems.

I created my own “Weekly Tasks” template a number of years ago… It’s semi-based on aspects of Franklin Covey systems combined with my own je ne sais quoi. In all seriousness, a lot of hours have gone into these systems. My Submissions Database Excel spreadsheet, for example, took years to improve though I’ve been using most elements of the original since 2007.

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I can look into making some of these materials available. The reality though is that everyone probably needs to create their own variation to suit themselves. Maybe I’m persnickety; that being said, I’m pretty sure most writer-artist types are picky when it comes to their tools.

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What else do we need to get organized for 2025?