A Dude's Guide. . . to everything

Knowing What To Do

by Richard

The older I get, the more I find that I couldn’t get through my days without doing some serious organizing. Well, I could get through my days, but I’d get through them with nothing accomplished and that’s a very bad idea.

I’m not the only one, either. Nor do you have to get old to need that organizing boost I’m talking about.

One of the best ways to help young dudes and dudettes with ADD or a learning disability to take responsibility for their own lives is to help them understand and then use a to-do list.

My mantra these days is if it’s not on the list, it doesn’t exist.

To-do lists can be as easy to create as a sheet of paper with a list of stuff you’ve got to do written on it. When you finish one task, you scratch it off. That’s easy. I mean, really easy to do. The problem is that it’s also just as easy to lose the list as it is to use it.

Thankfully, in these days of advanced technology infiltrating every aspect of our lives, we’ve got some other, more high-tech, slightly harder to set up, but possibly more efficient ways to organize our lives.

In addition to the to-do list on paper I’ve got, I also am a serial abuser a big-time user of my phone’s calendar and alert function. I’ve got my calendar on my phone linked to the Google calendar online, which is synched with the iCal program on my computer. With all these things working together, when I put in an event on one calendar, it shows up on every other calendar.

In addition to marking them down on the calendars, I also assign most tasks an alert or two. Usually, if I’ve got a task or something that is a ways off, I’ll set a reminder for a week before and then a day before. These remind me that something’s coming up so I don’t forget it. I also use a couple of different programs, including the Reminder program on iOS5 from Apple, to help with to-do lists that have deadlines attached.

This program does a great job of keeping me on track. It can work for anyone.

The hardest part about making sure these things work for you is getting yourself set up and started. All the lists, calendars and alerts in the world won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t actually start using them. That’s what you need to work with your young dudes about, getting them used to entering their information in a timely fashion. To get something done, you’ve got to know it needs to be done.

And knowing is half the battle.

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