Post-Its, To-Do Pads and Planners...Oh My!

During college, I realized something about my parents and myself. My mother is a neat-freak and germ-a-phobe, while my father is perpetually organizing his life. Thus, this combination has come together to create me: an obsessive compulsive neat-freak, germ-a-phobe, organized perfectionist. It would've been nice to get one or the other, but no, I had to get all of these traits and then some. This is why most of my arguments with my parents end in "...and this is why I need medication, thanks to your combination!" Kidding, kidding.

But, seriously, I have a thing about organization. In college, I had a steady system of using my:

• Planner - for school, sorority, and work related dates. More of a scheduling tool.
• Hour-by-hour notepad - for my daily hour-by-hour break down of things that need to happen.
• Post-it Notes - for those little things that pop up and need to happen in the next 24 hours.

Pretty solid system I had back in the day. Then I graduated, got a job, and my organization took a new level of crazy. I had, all of those items, plus:

• Dashboard Stickies - on the dashboard of my MacBook Pro...it's a Mac thing.
• Gmail To-Do - a little to-do list icon on Gmail
• Zeta Notebook - my ZTA notebook To-Dos

While that seems obscene (and it is, I agree), all of those items at least had a purpose; none of the lists overlapped or had the same tasks. But, to be honest, that's just too much.

Since I've been home, I've realized that this move has created even more to-do's in my life. So, I've been playing with different forms of organization (since I really don't need my planner or my hour-by-hour at this time of unemployment). I whipped out my day-to-day organizer I got for Christmas a few years back. Too small. Notepad notes. Too disorganized. It got to the point where today I said ENOUGH!

I got out a notebook and wrote down everything I had on every to-do list. I then separated the tasks by "To-Do NOW" and "Tampa To-Do". And this my friends, is what I got:

Ahhh, sigh of relief. I can be done with all the madness, and just get down to business. The big move is in: