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As Publius Romus, the only famous Roman slave aside from Russell Crowe, once said, “Disorder will ruin the greatest empire.” I would like to reverse that and say, “Order will create it.” At least, it will be a great helper.

When I was working at an education company, the CEO and I were waiting outside a conference hall as we were shortly due to speak. Suddenly, he turned to me and said, “Janet, if I was going to describe you in two words, I would say you are ‘smart’ and ‘organized.’”

“Where is this coming from?” I asked. “Have you been reading a book about how to describe people in two words?”

“No, I just think that’s how I would describe you.”

“Well, how would you describe yourself in two words?” I asked.

“Smart and charismatic!” he replied. 

A year after I joined that company, the head of HR said to me, “Nothing was happening in your department except talking until you came along, and you have really got things done.” Maybe that was because I had already got 18 service-level agreements completed, as well as sourcing and leading several potential acquisitions.

To achieve this, I created a deal log: After every conversation with a current or potential vendor, I added a sentence on the status and next steps (with the date) to the log and thus could quickly reference how much things had progressed and where I needed to push forward further. I didn’t have to waste time looking for notes from old phone calls or asking others for meeting summaries. 

If you have a system, it makes life so much easier. This goes from simple things like having a place to put your keys and wallet/purse when you return home so you can always find them, to complex activities such as implementing a joint venture or launching a new business.

“A place for everything and everything in its place,” goes the popular idiom, first said by Benjamin Franklin in the 17th century. 

There is so much power to being organized. When I was running one company, the CFO said to me, “You run the whole company on index cards!”

This was true. I always have an index card for each of my direct reports plus one for me and one for the board. I use them to manage all the varied and complex needs of the business. (The same thing can be done by any department or unit head, or business leader.) On them, I write things I want to check up on, and actions the person needs to take that are not daily. For example, for the head of marketing, I would not write, “Send out monthly marketing reports.” That is a standard repeated activity as part of her job. I would write, “Look into how AI can help us in marketing,” or maybe I’d note she should research something interesting from an article I read, or “Add a chart on ABC to the monthly report” if I had thought of something that would help us analyze our performance better.

I read somewhere that creative people are terrified of forgetting an idea. I carried the index cards with me at all times, so if an idea for business improvement came to me, I could just put it on the relevant person’s card right away. 

Why didn’t I put all this in my phone instead of cards? Because there is something much more real and visceral about the act of writing it down by hand. It goes into your mind better, and it provides a visual of where you are at. If I was on my second or third index card for an individual, I knew it was really time I met with them ASAP. 

As we would go through the index card in a meeting, I would cross out each discussed item. If the item was completed or no longer relevant, it was gone forever. I moved other items still in progress to a new card for the next meeting. If I was writing the same item on a new card again and again in many meetings as it still was not complete, then I knew it was time to discuss with the exec whether this item was really important and we must focus on it, or whether actually it was not getting done because it was not truly a priority and we could take it off the list.

I kept a “six-months’ time list” for items that were deemed not a priority, but I wanted to check back to see if they might be worth doing at a later date. 

Once in a meeting with my executives, I had to step out to take a phone call. I hesitated and then left my stack of index cards on the table.

“Oh good, you are leaving behind your cards,” one of them said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied, “There is nothing secret on them.”

“We don’t want to read them!” another exec exclaimed. “We can’t even read your handwriting. We want to burn them so that you can’t hold us accountable!”

Clearly, the index card system was working well.

The only negative is that you, as CEO/manager, can end up being the organizing system for your direct reports if, when you have your meetings with them, you are the one going through all the items on the cards first. 

“Why didn’t you come in with a list?” I asked one colleague.

“Because I know you will do it for me and have a list of what I am meant to be doing,” came the reply. That was definitely not the goal of my index card system!

There will always be a comment like, “Oops, I forgot about that one, I will do it now.” Better if you can patiently wait for your colleague to give you their update and then use the index card to check for what is missing to be sure it is something new you added since the last meeting rather than something they simply forgot to do.

By adding your needs to the index cards, you also avoid overwhelming your direct reports with emails every time you have a thought or new idea or need that is not urgent. Otherwise, each email distracts your colleague from the task at hand and diverts their attention in an unhelpful and inefficient manner. They may also feel they have to stop what they are doing to research and reply to your idea when, in fact, there was no urgency.

When I join a new company, the first thing I do is meet with the team to have an “issues-surfacing meeting” where they tell me everything that is a problem or bottleneck, and we discuss an action item needed to resolve it. The action item list is made up only of short phrases and a responsible party’s name attached plus a date by which to ensure completion, and it goes out to all attendees at the end of the meeting. Then, at the next meeting, each person knows they must update on their tasks from that list.

Of course, you can now keep lists and reports in a pre-formatted database, which countless software companies provide in various forms. Here’s the problem: No one is going to look randomly or at the end of the month. If something comes directly in an email or is attached to a meeting invite, folks have it at the right time when you want them to be aware of it. As the CEO of a financial services company where I worked used to say as a mantra, “The right product to the right customer at the right time.” This is true for employees as well as customers.

For personal action items, I am a huge fan of to-do lists. I have this on my phone under the “reminders list” function which I titled “To-Do List” so every time I add something, my kids get a kick out of Siri saying, “I have added that to your ‘To-Do List’ list.” I also write these by hand in the morning, based on what I intend to do that day, not just so that I have focus and prioritization but also, as with work items, so that I can feel what I intend to do through the motion of writing it down. (How to prioritize which tasks to do is a subject for another column.)

“Tidy house, tidy mind” is a good rule. However, as I always say, the right answer is that there are no right answers and some creative people simply work well by having stacks of paper around their desk, objects in disarray and nothing ever tidied. Yet they are super productive. Being creative is less about being efficient and more about being in flow and having the time and space to open your mind, so you will have to decide for yourself what works best for you.

If you start by being organized, that will save you more time later. A sink with a few dishes to clean is manageable. Once the buildup is sizeable, it can feel too overwhelming to even start. The same is true of your work tasks, personal activity needs, and brain.

Having said all this, I have to admit that I am constantly searching for my glasses and phone. I have tried in vain to teach myself to be more aware when I put them down. Thank goodness for the “find my iPhone” ringer function. It has saved me countless times (except when I absent-mindedly put my phone face-down in which case it does not work). For my glasses, that’s another matter. I have even toyed with adding an Apple air tag to the frame but my children say, “No, sorry, that would just look too stupid, even for you, Mum.”

So, if you want more efficiency, which leaves more time for yourself, put in place systems that allow you to avoid cluttering your mind with remembering everything that needs doing because you have put that information neatly and easily accessible somewhere else.

Janet Lewis Matricciani is a two-time CEO who has worked all over the world and is multilingual, now sharing her business lessons publicly. She can be reached at [email protected].