I went to bed in 2009 with my head spinning with too many little details to carry over to the new year. I resolved to find a way to better organize myself. My friend Woody swears by MS OneNote. I looked at it, the learning curve seemed less intuitive than I wanted. Continuing my quest for order, I came across and downloaded, Personal Brain 5.5. I am a few hours into setting it up and I like the way it all comes together. What I don't like is how much detail I have to remember so I can eventually forget it all once it is in the software.
I feel like when I go to the grocery store and fill a large basket and the store clerk offers to help me to my car. Honestly putting it all in my car is no big deal. Getting it all put away in the right place in my kitchen is the hard part.
Similarly, I have just gone shopping through my brain and picked up everything I am going to need for the next year and put it in a big basket. But now I have the daunting task of putting it all in the right drawer, cabinet, container, etc. I decided to start with the staples and place those first since I have to access them the most. My focus is now on the perishables; everything I have to get done in the next 30 days. When all the perishables are stored properly I will be ready to put away the luxury items like the special gourmet mustard I got from my neighbor for Christmas.
I am anxious to see if I can really keep track of all of my brain food in one program or will some of it get lost in the back of the refrigerator and go bad before I find it again. Will I find a moldy "to do" item in six months from now? Will the crackers go stale in the pantry because I forgot to seal up the container? Will I come across 20 cans of tuna because I am always buying more tuna than we need. My husband has gotten around to giving me a grocery list of items I SHOULD NOT BUY rather than those I should. It turns out I am one of those people that has way too many copies of the same document stored in the pantry.
As a result I am not just reorganizing my brain, I am in full on spring cleaning mode. It may take me until summer, but I am optimistic that I will be able to purge some tuna and stock my shelves appropriately. Today, however, my head is spinning worse than on New Year's Eve and I haven't even had any champagne. Perhaps I should!