Today, I noticed my colleague Ruben brought a journal along to work. It was a cute little black book, so I decided to ask him what it was for. He explained to me that he uses it to make plans, jot down goals and make a to-do list. I was very impressed and made me want to grab one for myself, and it made me think of how important it is to stay organized – especially in the PR industry. With all of the follow-up calls you have to make, media appearances with your client and important emails it’s a really good idea to stay organized. Whether you write it down in a journal or a plain old post-it, it helps to see it in front of you. You can be the most organized person in the world, but when you have a job that requires you to do 10 things at once eight hours a day, you sometimes tend to forget. Here are a couple of tips on how to stay on top of things and the tools you can use to do so:
- Classic notepad. I didn’t start using this until my first internship. I’ve been using the classic, yellow notepads ever since. The best thing about it is that you can easily rip off the pages when you’re done with them!
- Post-its. These are good for temporary reminders, notes, etc. After all, no one wants a desk full of post-its. That’s just the complete opposite of being organized.
- Sticky Notes. This is the digital form of post-its. I work on a PC at the office, and the Sticky Notes function allows me to write reminders that will stay on my desktop until I delete them. What better reminder than one that you’re constantly looking at?
- iPhone reminders. This always comes in handy when I need to do something at a certain time. I just set a reminder on my iPhone, and it goes off when I schedule it to.
- Create folders for each client. When there’s a million press releases to get to, it always helps to store them in different folders to help differentiate which client they are for. Trust me, this always comes in handy when a reporter calls about your press release!
Is there such thing as being too organized? -xxJ
The PR Girl 
