The other day someone asked me “How do you stay organized?” It’s a fairly common question for people to ask me because I write for so many different publications - more than a handful of blogs, several websites, a newspaper and periodically, some magazines.

In general, I’m fairy organized by nature (though the messy condition of my house right now is not indicative of that) but not overly so. So to stay on track, I use a spreadsheet.

Every month, I label the columns with the names of my writing clients and then label the rows for each date of the month. In the corresponding boxes, I write what I need to do for each particular client on each day. If it’s something like two blog posts, then I just put two X’s in the box. If I have a hard deadline on certain day, I mark it in red. Throughout the day, I bold the items that I complete. At the end of the day, I move anything that I didn’t finish to the follow day. Archaic? Probably. Works for me? Definitely.

There are many programs available that can help you organize your life but the basic Excel spreadsheet works for me. Oh… and I shouldn’t forget that there are three additional rows after the final date of the month labeled, “Money,” “Invoiced” and “Paid.” The “Money” row indicates how much I’m expecting to be paid. The “Invoiced” line, I mark the date when I invoice the client (if necessary) and in the “Paid” row I indicate the date when I actually get paid.

Also, every night (actually morning) before I go to sleep, I write a to-do list for the following day in two-hour blocks that includes everything from what I should be writing to Spurs games to dinner.

So that’s about it. How do you keep track of what you need to get done?

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