Organization


Blog / Tuesday, December 13th, 2016

I consider myself to be a pretty organized person. I have a great mind for what needs to be done and when, and I also am pretty good at remembering where I put things (glasses are the exception). Much of this organization, mostly on the deadline side, I can attribute to my time as a project manager for a translation company. At any given moment, I had 15 projects I needed to keep track of. Each project had a different set of deadlines and a different client to answer to. As a result, I really honed my skills in keeping track of my to do list. I do so through calendar notification, written notes, mental capacity, and automatic reminders. I cover all my bases.

So, please do not question my organization or ability to remember what I need to be doing.

Looking at you, boss.

Seriously, I have a great track record at getting my things in on time, or earlier. This is in spite of the fact that my deadlines change, the scope of the project changes, and other things get added into the mix on a whim. All that considered, when was the last time I didn’t get something done? So please, do not reprimand me in front of my co-workers for “not” doing something I was never asked nor told to do in the first place. Also, please try to remember I keep a spreadsheet of my to dos and that I’ve shown you this spreadsheet on many occasions. Have you considered you may have forgotten to put it on my list of things to do?

We can look at your track record, if you like. You often forget meetings. You often do not know what people are doing based on what they always have done. You forget you told someone to make a change to a document only to turn around an hour later and ask why that change was implemented. Despite repeated attempts to teach you how to do things more efficiently and in a way that jives with the rest of the company, you prove to be incapable of remembering how to do things I consider to be very, very simple and straight forward.

While we are at it, let me get something off my chest. You need to start putting requests in writing. Absolutely need to do so. I think this would really help with the aforementioned problems, but more importantly, I’d think it would keep you from doing some shady business deals. I can easily think of one occasion where you deliberately told someone not to agree to terms of a contract in writing. Terms that would have been good for them to have in writing, had we not been able to pay our bills. Fortunately for them, we did what we said. But it shouldn’t work that way. You shouldn’t be allowing yourself or the company to conveniently forget something.

So, please stop this notion that I am not organized. Stop this forgetfulness of what you have said. I stay on top of my shit and am rather proud of it. I can show you how I do it, if you care to learn.

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