When youre out on your own with a million-and-one things to do each week, how in the world can you keep them all straight and not forget things? What Ive figured out in a couple decades of trying to keep track of those million-and-one things is that if I dont have a system for it, it gets forgotten. If you can put systems in place for everything you do, it takes a lot of the stress out of life, saving yourself hassle, embarrassment, and maybe even your job. Let me quickly show you how.

First, get out a batch of index cards and write down all the things you do on a regular basis, one per cardthings like getting ready for work in the morning, taking clothes to the drycleaner, picking up and returning rented movies, grocery shopping, cleaning the kitchen (you do clean the kitchen, dont you?) and the rest of your apartment or house. You may not realize it until you start writing them down, but you have a lot of things you do over and over again, day in and day out, week after week, month after month.

Next, go through your stack of cards one at a time and write down the different parts of that activity. For cleaning the kitchen, for instance, you have a sink and dishes to clean, countertops to wipe down, a floor to mop, and so on. Do this on each cardsome will have a lot more steps than others, but try to think of every part, every step of the activity. If you've just started working after years of being in school, it may sound silly, but creating a card for getting ready for work in the morning could help you avoid embarassment, or worse--do you have parts to a uniform you need to make sure you have on? do you want to wear earrings to complete your outfit, but forget too often? are there items you need to take with you each day? Write all this down on your card and, as long as you refer to it, you'll never forget again.

If you want, you can stop right there and put your cards in a card box. When its time to take care of one of those activities, like clean the bathroom, pull the card out to remind you of the steps you need to take so you dont forget one in your haste to get the nasty chore done.

But if you really want to systematize your life, you can assign a timeframe for each cardonce a week on the clean the bathroom card; twice a month on the drycleaning card. It helps even more if you choose a day of the week to do that activity: every Thursday for the bathroom; every Tuesday for the kitchen; every other Monday for the drycleaning. Then if you put tabbed dividers in your card box labeled with the days of the week, you can just pull out the cards youll need at the beginning of each day, then return them to the box once the activity has been taken care of.

The last thing you can do to maximize the stress-relieving effects of your system is to assign a place for the tools or items you need for each of the activities on your card. For instance, reserve a space under the bathroom sink for a basket or bucket filled with all the cleaning products, rubber gloves, sponges, etc. you need for that chore. For your drycleaning, get a large basket or drawstring bag and keep it in your closet or bedroom and put only clothes needing to be drycleaned in it. Then, on drycleaning day, all you need to do is grab the basket or bag and off you gono searching around for the items you need to take.

Assigning a place for each activity is particularly important if you tend to bring work home with you. Get a desk organizer or at least an in-box type of basket and keep it near the area where you sit to do that work, or have a special spot in that area to put your briefcase. Dont take the work out of your briefcase until youre actually ready to deal with it, and return it to the basket or briefcase immediately after finishing. If you allow yourself to spread work papers around the living room, it may be just a matter of time before you end up standing in front of your boss struggling to find that one page of your report which ended up getting kicked under your sofa.

It takes some work to get your systems thought out and set up, but the time, the hassle, maybe the embarrassment they will save you more than makes up for it. December is a great time for making a resolution to get more organized and reap the benefitsso do it now!