About Organization:
“A dream without a plan is only a wish” - The Little PrinceAntoine de Saint-Exupery
In June we looked atmotivation during Summer 2020 & what it takes to get the ball rolling on your goals/dreams for the year. Hopefully some of our advicehas alreadyhelped! This month we wanted to focus on an important next step once you’re motivated &ready to go: Organization.
Organization is often a tricky subject for people with a variety of different work needs & constraints. From students, to construction workers, baristas & rocket scientists everyone has a different method to their own personal madness. Like with most things; organizational habits tend to land on a spectrum. We'd love to share with you some of our favorite organizational tips.
Naming Conventions:
Depending on what you’re working on, proper naming conventions are crucial for some projects & mildly helpful for others. Regardless of what the project itself is there’s lots of ways your overall productivity is affected by the systems you useon a daily basis so it’s important to spend some time building them correctly. Pro tip: If you’re working with a team, small or large; a good naming convention can bring people together & promote camaraderie. Here’s some good general practices:
1. Keep it simple
The more capitalization, spaces, dashes & special characters you can avoid the simpler it will be looking back through it. If possible, just use lowercase letters & numbers with no spacing.
2. Make a key to follow
A ‘key’ page to your code can be helpful when creating the names & especially when decoding & reading them later.The simpler you're able to make this code the easier it will be to read through your files, if it’s intuitive enough you might be able to memorize it after a couple of goes. It's best practice to keep your key on the first page of your hamelin notebook so you never have to search for it. You can also use the color coded organization stickers that come with every hamelin notebook!
3. Coordinate with color coding
The best way to take advantage of easy to read notes is by using a good naming convention in cooperation with a good color-coding convention. Working together the two conventions can eliminate the need for overlap between categories & unnecessary confusing labeling.
Color Coding:
Synesthesiais a condition where some people have sensory overlap causing them to associate numbers or letters & other senses with colors & various attributes. In nature red often symbolizes danger to animals & humans alike. These are great examples of how color is a natural way of sending signals to our brain. Taking advantage of this natural organization tactic is a great way to supercharge your organizational set up & takeits effectiveness to a new level. Did you knowhamelin products range come in a wide variety ofvibrant colors?
Here’s some best practices for color coding:
- Know what you're going to color code before you startcoding.
- Keep it simple
- Coordinate with your naming conventions