Order as key to the success of Entrepreneurs

Those of us who have been on the entrepreneur road usually have many tasks and compromises. At any given point of our professional life, we are likely to be working with several tasks simultaneously. For these reasons and to maintain the focus of our goals it is quite important to have order on our lives.

Some people are more organized than others, which is why I recommend entrepreneurs to adopt good practices for organizations. For instance, there are some people who are apparently disorganized, but the truth is that they have their own organization methods. If this is your case this is perfectly valid, as long as you don’t have to share your information with someone who doesn’t understand your methods.

There are many tools at our disposal to maintain order and focused towards our goals. One of the easiest and most used tools is the use of agendas. You’ll find the physical ones, made out of paper. However in the last decades, electronic agendas have taken over and they’re included with software packages such as Outlook, and cloud solutions offered by Google, Microsoft and others. This will be a great tool, as long as we learn to use it for all your appointments.

In my case, my agenda rules my life and if the appointment isn’t in there, for me it doesn’t exist. My agenda is in the cloud and I synchronize it with all my computers, cell phones and tablets. Plus, I’m able to share my calendar (without all the details) with other people who need to know my availability for other meetings.

As an entrepreneur, another basic but key element, is long term goals. For instance, you might be thinking in formalizing your company, which you thing will take 6 months. To accomplish this you have to perform many activities, including finding a name for the company, opening an office, obtaining permits and more. When we start we might be able to visualize all this smaller tasks and so you don’t forget them, you can create a chart where you keep track of the tasks and their advancement. Software packages such as Microsoft Project or OpenProj will aid you in this task.

Another element to maintain order is keeping control of the daily shores and activities. This is a good practice to keep track of what we have done and those important activities that we can’t forget. An easy way to accomplish this is by using post-it notes. I’ve used the notes as well as the software version with success. A couple years ago I start using Evernote with a note I update constantly and that synchronizes with all my devices.

There are many more tools to keep order and track advancements in our lives. My recommendation is that you should use those tools that value to you life and make your work easier. As entrepreneurs we usually follow several goals at the same time and this is why it is so important these controls.

Image taken from Flickr.com