End of Year Wrap Up
Sharing a few tips and ideas on how to clean up your personal systems and get ready for 2024.
At the end of this article, I have included a link for free access to my Udemy course, Control Your Day(CYD). If you use Microsoft Outlook, you should definitely check out the course, it offers a unique and different way to manage email and tasks in Outlook. I have had over 4000 students so far on Udemy in the past 2 years.
Personal Productivity Systems
I use a combination of Microsoft Outlook (using my CYD system), Microsoft OneNote and most recently Notion.so. Outlook is my active system for managing all my day to day demands, OneNote is my reference library and most recently I am testing out Notion to replace my paper journal and to build my Second Brain. I could probably do it all in one solution, but i find unique value in each.
Question for each of you: What systems are you using to manage your day? Add a comment to this article and let me know what your favorite tools are. If you don't have a "system" to manage your day, I would challenge you and say you need one to be successful today.
Microsoft Outlook End of Year Cleanup
If you follow my Control Your Day methodology then end of year cleanup is a breeze, if you don't and you are still using dozens, hundreds or thousands of folders to manage your email, I feel your pain and wish you all the best.
Microsoft OneNote Cleanup
I absolutely love OneNote, each year I start with a fresh clean new notebook for the year, inside of that single notebook, I build out top level categories such as Clients, Staff, Projects, Corporate, etc.. I try to leave pages in the prior year's notebook and just go back and reference them. If I have a project or client that is just getting started in 2024, then I will move their pages to the new notebook. I have notebooks by year going back 10 years. It makes it so easy to go back and find things. I mentioned earlier Outlook is where I drive and manage my day to day, anything i need for reference I immediately copy over to OneNote with the Outlook plugin, that way I don't have to use Outlook as a point of long term reference. I have one section called KB (Knowledge Base), within that i will setup sections for major topics. I move this entire section forward each year.
Microsoft Windows Cleanup
Each year I create a new folder for the year in My Documents. Under that folder I will create high level topic folders such as Clients, Projects, etc... Now some of my folders need to carry over year to year for example: Contracts, Staff, etc... For those folders I put a 1. in front of the folder name. 1.Contracts, 1.Staff. At the end of the year I create my new folder for the year and then move all the 1. folders to that new folder, leaving all other folders in the prior year's folder for easy reference.
If you have not heard of our checked out Notion, do a search for it on YouTube and you will find tons of videos out there. Notion is a framework that allows you to create templates for just about anything to help you manage your day. If you search for Notion Templates you will find thousands of templates others have built that you can use. There are templates for personal productivity, project management, buying a house, working out, you name it, there is a template for it. At Century we just built a template to manage our teams when they go to industry conferences. The template manages everything, dinners, hotel schedules, customer visits. I am now using a "second brain" template to help keep all of my projects and initiatives organized and I just created a new template to manage my personal and business network, if you are interested in that template, post a comment and I will share it early in January.
Personal Security
This is a great time to review how you are securing your digital presence. Are you using a password manager? If not you should seriously consider it, there are some great tools out there that make it easy to manage and update passwords across all your apps.
You should have multiple personal email addresses setup. The first one would be your primary email that you use to engage with others. Next you need an email address you use only for high risk sites like banks, insurance, investments. If you are using Gmail for example you can setup multiple accounts and have them all route to the primary. Just one more layer of protection. Also create an email address for junk stuff, tons of sites out there asking for your email address. Give them your junk email address. This way if that address starts getting tons of spam, you can just start a new one. You can do the same with your cell #, seems like every site wants your cell # now. Go to Google Voice and setup a second number there and give that number to sites instead of your primary cell.
Are you using an Authenticator Application for multi-factor authentication? This is a much safer option then just using your phone SMS messages for that. Microsoft and Google both have great authenticator applications. Oh yea, if you are using one of those apps, please make sure you enable the backups. If you lose your phone and have to reinstall the app, you want to make sure you can get all your credentials restored.
Finally if you are visiting with senior relatives over the next week. Take a few minutes to ask them about their digital security. Check in to make sure they know about email and SMS phishing attacks and how attackers might call them telling them someone is in trouble or some other strange story. Ask them if they have experienced anything like that in the recent past. Check to see that they aren't using the same password for many different sites. Also not a bad time to check to see if they have an updated will and living will and where its located, also have they declared beneficiaries on all their investments accounts. Otherwise those funds get tied up in probate.
Oops one more thing. What would happen if you left the planet suddenly? Would your significant other or someone know what to do, how to get into critical accounts, etc..? I wrote a letter to my son explaining all of this and put it with our last will. At least he will have a starting point, most of the letter is about who he should give my bikes to :)
Want to learn more about Control Your Day? Check it out here:
Here is a link for free access to my Udemy Course Control Your Day. It is good for the first 100 people that click it.
Wishing each of you massive amounts of success and happiness in 2024 and please post a comment below and let me know what systems you are using.
Jim
Chief Marketing Officer | Product MVP Expert | Cyber Security Enthusiast | @ GITEX DUBAI in October
4 个月Jim, thanks for sharing!
Procurement Manager and Marketing Specialist | MBA Candidate
7 个月Jim, thanks for sharing!
Saved this last week. I just read through. Insights here are good Jim McCullen, especially security. I recently started using a password manager (early 2023). I have not yet set up multiple emails, which is my call to action here. My biggest takeaway. Google phone for a second number. Brilliant. I receive 4,000,000 spam calls. Had the same number for about 20 years.
Senior Vice President, Strategic Programs, Clients and Pursuits Leader
1 年My life changed after meeting Jim in 2010 sitting next to him on a plane! ?? CYD works (13 years later). With a little discipline and determination, you too, can Control Your Day.
Data Warehouse Developer
1 年Wonderful read, ready to put some of these tips into action and kick butt 2024!