Tackle Complex Projects and Connections with This Simple System

Today we’re going to tackle how to juggle multiple people and projects while keeping everything well under control.

Europa was verklemmt! Her day job is as an office manager at Green Growing Things, the carnivorous plant store that specializes in Audrey IIs. By night, she’s the secret ruler of the Eastern Bloc. She’s got a lot on her plate.

She’s trying to juggle relationships with dozens of world leaders, clandestine negotiations with governments, and appearances at the local plant appreciation lunch club. And on top of everything else, her angst-ridden teenage cyborg son, Thomas, has been dating the toaster. Sometimes she doesn’t know how a single parent is supposed to cope.

With so much going on, important issues seem to come up every few minutes. Dealing with any one of those issues might involve delicate negotiations with several people. Having all of them hitting at once leaves Europa’s head spinning. She just can’t keep track of who needs to know what, and when.

“The President of Nowhereistan has just placed an order for the world’s largest supply of squirt guns, paid for in untraceable cryptocurrency.”

She’s sure that Vlad, Angela, and Boris have an opinion on this. But the next time she calls Boris to demand her tribute, she gets so caught up asking him to place an order for a dozen Audrey IIs that she completely forgets to mention Nowhereistan. Then she asks Angela to have the intelligence agencies do a background check on the toaster, before realizing how absurd the whole notion is.

When there’s way too much going on, you need a system for quickly organizing all that stuff so you can put your fingers (or toes, or noodly appendages) on it the moment you need it.

Create a note for every person

This is one area where the electronic solution really shines. Open your notepad program and create a separate note for each person you are communicating with. Create the notes in a folder called AGENDA in your notes app. You can also title each one so you can clearly identify it as an agenda.

Europa quickly creates AGENDA VLAD, AGENDA ANGELA, AGENDA BORIS, and AGENDA THOMAS.

Since I’m often invited to participate in online summits, or do public speaking engagements, I often have introductory conversations with people scheduled weeks in advance. If PAT KITTY emails asking to schedule an introductory conversation, I even create AGENDA PAT KITTY. Being electronic, there’s no cost to creating notes for people you’ll only talk to once.

Stay tuned. You’ll use these shortly.

Set aside a time to organize

When you’re going about your day, you’ll get incoming messages and have stray thoughts about your various projects and...

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