Will you look at life admin every day or maybe only once or twice a week? Doing things every day might set you up for failure. Most households will run well if you do admin tasks once or twice a week. Ideally, you want to pick the day, time, and place to make it a habit. If life throws a spanner in the works you can simply move it a day later or you catch up soon.

Whilst you get notes, appointments, have ideas scribbled on a post-it you need to place them somewhere. An in-tray / small box is ideal for this. However, note that an “In Tray” only works if it gets emptied (otherwise it becomes a “file tray” or a place where clutter ends up living).

When you sit down to organise your life admin. Find out what the item is and what you need to do with it.

Here are a few examples:

• Doctors appointment – in the calendar and toss

• Script – file it with your health paperwork and put a reminder in your calendar when your next script needs to be obtained.

• School note – sign, pay and make it return to school ASAP.

• Homework – decide when you will do this homework (hopefully you have a daily habit in which you do homework) and file the stuff in their “home” for the specific subject it relates to

• Work project – if it is an active project keep it in a specific folder on your desk or in your bag. Use it several times a week until the project is finished then declutter, file and start a new project.

Lots of paper actually has a very short life span. It could be a few hours or days.

For example a:

• Note about upcoming appointment, when this appointment is in the calendar the note has completed its life purpose.

• Post-it note for a task, as soon as you have scheduled when and where you will complete this action the post it note can go.

• Calendar if the year, month or week that has passed this information is not really relevant. If there is still relevant information on this calendar place it on a digital note taking system which makes it easy to retrieve e.g. Evernote as discussed on this page. Or place it as an action in your calendar system as discussed here.

If you have information that will be important for you in the future. For example a specific document, email, or meeting outline. Make this information easily available. I often have an “appointment” next to my actual meeting in my calendar that contains the links to all my documents and emails which are relevant in that time block.

Paperwork is a fine balance between, action, location, and retrieval. Make it as easy as possible for future yourself. Take small actions before you move onto doing something else this is what I call a “closing the loop sequence”.