Have you ever wondered how to effectively manage your assignments? Do you use any methods or tools to do it efficiently? As we get busier and busier and we live our lives in a constant rush it's essential to gather all the input properly and store it in a place that releases our internal resources. It allows us to handle another task without worrying about something that's not that important right now. Every one of us uses some kind of storage for information, data, assignments, or any other stuff that needs to be kept secure for later use. It might a paper notebook, sticky notes, a computer or a mobile device, or all of these combined. No matter what is your preferred storage I'm pretty sure you don't use it in a proper way. We all tend to just write down information as we want to postpone making a decision about it. In other words, we simply jot things down to get rid of them. We only put the data in but almost never review the content and take action about it. This way our personal storage is constantly growing and suddenly we realize that it's already too much to handle. We find ourselves in over our heads and the only possible solution we might think of is to erase all the data and start from scratch. Maybe it's just too much data at once? Maybe next time it will work out? It won't. Taking the same steps time and again will never lead to a different outcome, so we'd better figure out the problem and make the process efficient rather than sweep it under the rug.

Let's think about what causes us to fail. It might be that we use too many different storages and never synchronize the data between them. Remember that you should use as many of them as you wish, but only as few as you really need to. If you use too much you'll end up having all the necessary data scattered all around and therefore you won't be able to piece things together so they make any sense. It indicates a problem with data collecting, so I suggest starting with just one bucket where you put everything together. This way you'll have all the data in one place and you don't have to bother synchronizing them.

Another problem with gathering data that might cause problems with its utilization is that we tend not to review and organize it. We simply add another piece of information and never go back to see if we can do anything about it. Some data might become outdated, some could be potentially replaced with more accurate ones and most importantly it might be the right time to take action and eventually remove it from the storage. But how do you know about it if you don't check it on a regular basis? It's important to gather input effectively but it's critical to have some process of organizing and removing it from the storage.

The last potential problem I wanted to point out is that we might not fully trust our storage and therefore we don't place all the stuff there. This way we subconsciously keep the data in our internal psyche and make the physical storage less important. It becomes a secondary source of information and therefore it's not that vital to use it on a regular basis. As a result, the data in the bucket seldom gets reviewed and utilized and we end up with a cluttered center of useless information.

Does any of these ring true to you? It definitely does to me and that's why I got so much interested in the topic. I'll definitely share if I have some proven tips to be more organized and effective at handling multiple assignments and a big amount of data. I'm curious what are the tools and storages you use for data collecting, so feel free to share them in the comments.