Peace of Mind Organizing

Bingo update

5 June 2012

Last year, I created a bingo board that turned out to be a powerful motivator for me to accomplish tasks that are important to do regularly, but aren’t urgent (so weren’t getting done regularly). For me, that’s stuff like social media posts, blogging, following up with clients, past and present, tending to my website, stuff like that. You might have an entirely different set of tasks you want to accomplish regularly.

The reason that my bingo board works for well for me is that if I get close to getting a bingo, I’m completely motivated to do the extra task or two to get me there. So I tend to mark my bingo board as the day’s end nears and usually spend a few minutes doing that extra thing or two. It works great for me!

In fact, I was so enamored of the notion that I created an Organizing Guide, called Making tasks fun with to-do list Bingo on how to create your own. I’ve also blogged the heck out of the topic..

Since it’s been about ten months since I first created it, and four months since I last wrote about it, I just wanted to report back about how it’s still working for me and tell you about a little improvement that I made the other day.

I’ve found that my bingo board is most effective when I have full days at my desk. When I’m sandwiching desk time between client appointments, I find that only urgent stuff gets my done. But when I have lots of time, I tend to flounder a bit and even though I have plenty of time to work on stuff, not so much gets done. The bingo board reminds me of these important tasks and gives me a little bit of structure. And it’s fun!

This week, I’ve set a goal of getting a bingo every day (Monday through Friday). I started off by getting a triple bingo yesterday! And after I finish this blog post, I’ll have today’s bingo!

I love the way I set my bingo board up, with pretty squares attached by magnets on a square magnetic board. But there was little irritation: I was using small Post-It® notes to cover the tasks I’d finished and they kept falling off. And littering the area when I tried to reuse them. Plus, I ran out of the pretty pale pink ones I started with and kept forgetting to buy more. So I was using the standard yellow ones and, to my eye, they clashed.

I improved that situation last week when I was participating in a Secret Play Date from Kindergarten Mind. During a Play Date, you’re encouraged to do something creative while simultaneously working (internally) on something else.

I got out my 2011 Wall Art Calendar from Paper Source. This beautiful calendar is meant to be cut up (there are even templates on the back of each calendar page for that purpose). I found a page with a sewing theme and cut out the drawings of buttons on the page. I used glue dots to adhere the buttons to magnets. And now I have lovely magnets to cover the tasks I’ve accomplished!

Here’s a photo I took to share with my fellow play daters:

My button magnets make me happy.

Tagged with: bingo, motivation, productivity

Comments