Being organized and maintaining order is, in my opinion, one of the few tools that makes the difference between successful people, and not-so-successful people, and it all comes down to something extremely important: an agenda.

It makes us much more efficient than the average person when it comes to managing our time, our hobbies and our responsibilities.

But what is it and what are the benefits?

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Well, it’s just a list of important things you must do in order to have a productive day/week/month. Usually ordered chronologically, with its deadline, a level or priority (that can range from 1 to 3, or simple words like “very important”, ”normal” and “low priority”) and a small description of the task.

That’s it, very simple. And thanks to this simplicity an agenda is something we can implement in different ways.

The typical is a physical agenda (the one you can buy at the book store) like this:

A more modern way is to use an smartphone or tablet app, like the app Reminders in iOS. See pic:

You can start using an agenda in different ways the important thing is to start using it everyday.

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In my case, the easiest way for me is to have it in digital form on my phone, but I know a lot of people that use just regular agendas like the one in the picture above, one of my college professor used a regular text file on his computer. What I mean is, there is no excuse to not having an agenda.

But, what are the differences between having a proper agenda, and simply “putting” all that information in the memory of our brains?

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Well, to start it off, our memories are unreliable, but most important is that when we see things written we get a complete sight of everything we must get done so we can properly plan our next steps (for example, by finishing off the most important tasks and leaving the less important for later)

Another advantage is to reduce stress. Going to sleep at night thinking about all my pending responsibilities is stressing, especially when you are finishing your college degree and have a lot of things to accomplish in very little time (as is my case in this past few months). I think part of this stress is caused by the fear of forgetting some of the pending tasks and responsibilities. But when you have everything written in your agenda, the stress disappear because you know you have everything there, so forgetting to do something is highly unlikely.

Nevertheless, in order for the agenda to be effective, you must follow this basic rules:

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• Discipline. In the moment you stop updating your agenda, or consulting your agenda every morning, in that same moment your organization and order will start to crumble. An agenda in this case, is like going to the gym and exercising yourself, if you stop doing it for a few days you will eventually stop doing it at all.
• Put priorities and act accordingly. It’s tempting to do easy tasks first, or the ones taking less time, nevertheless, what we must do first is to finish the high priority tasks. This is something that can be hard getting use to, but I can honestly say if you follows this advice you will end up being more productive than before.
• Realistic deadlines. It’s important to put realistic deadlines because this way we can estimate how much time will a task consume me, allowing us to manage our time on a proper way which increase our efficiency.

It’s important to notice, having an agenda isn’t just to people who are students, entrepreneurs or business people, it’s really a tool for everyone since it helps with matters related to planning a family vacation, grocery shopping, paying bills. An agenda is an universal tool for everyone.

Lets hope for a day in which instead of needing external agendas, we could implement them with all of their notifications inside our own brains. Would you like something like this?

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My introduction

Scientists and engineers: heroes in silence

Decorating the Christmas tree with bill

Playing, sharing and cleaning session at the lake with kids!