I remember writing at one time that I don’t pay much attention to my blog stats.  I don’t have any of those fancy reader-tracker thingies and I don’t look for people’s IP addresses.  But I will admit that I do look at my page views and I get really sad on the weekends when they go down; of course everyone’s numbers go down on the weekends, because people are out having a life.  (I hope!)

Our weekend featured a lovely dinner out for me and my husband, soccer, fencing, guitar, intestinal distress from dinner out (I must have eaten a bad mussel), a Rockies baseball game (which I missed due to intestinal distress), laundry (BOOOO!), tortilla española for Sunday brunch, and FrogGirl’s birthday party.  Somewhere in there I planned the kids’ summer activities, did some prep for teaching this week and finished re-reading Three Cups of Tea.

My weekends are almost more tiring than my weeks!!

A new organizing scheme has helped me keep everything straight — even those crazy weekends — lately.  To replace the random Post-It notes and paper shopping lists that were always floating around in my purse, I bought one of these Moleskine reporter notebooks:

I had resisted blank books for a long time because I’m left-handed and my hand always hit the bump in the middle of the pages; that problem is solved with this notebook as it lies flat and the bump is at the top where my hand doesn’t hit it.  I divided the notebook into four sections using write-on sticky tabs.  The first section is my “To-Do’s.” On the bottom page, I write my “to-do’s” for the week, such as calls, work tasks, writing tasks, books to read, and errands.  On the top page, I plan my meals for the week and jot down ingredients I need. I cross things off as I complete them, and if they don’t get completed I copy them to the next week’s page. The second section is “Shopping.”  This is where I note what I need from Target, birthday gifts to buy, online shopping stuff to remember, and longer grocery lists.  The third section is “Ideas,” where I quickly make a note of anything that might come to my about my writing projects or school lesson plans.  The final, and least-visited section, is “House.” Here is a lists of all the things that need to be done around the house, like things that need fixing, closets that need to be organized, and possible purchases.  I have been too busy to accomplish much in this area but I hope that by keeping a list, they are more likely to get done when I have more time.

I have another, larger version of the same notebook that I am using for writing projects.  I don’t carry this one around all of the time, but I do use it to make notes for blog ideas, writing exercises and (soon, I hope) novel notes.

So far this system has been working very well for me and I feel like I’m about 1000% more productive than before I started using it.  And I haven’t even read Getting Things Done yet; it’s sitting in my ever-growing stack of “Books to Be Read.”

Where I’m lacking is time management.  I keep a calendar of events and appointments on iCal and sync it with my iPhone so that it’s always handy.  But I really need to figure out a way to schedule chunks of writing time, teaching prep time and yoga time, and stick to it!  It’s always too easy to just research one more Spanish assignment, or check out one more blog, rather than get down to the nitty-gritty writing time.

Speaking of which… better get down to it before the day disappears!