Stevea Robbins here. Welcome to the Get It Done Guy podcast. Listener Maheen writes in. I'm a self-employed owner of a belly dance company. I always have multiple projects, some are time sensitive like event hosting, while others are maintenance like administrative and marketing. I keep them in a multi-pocket notebook so everything's sorted,

but how do I track each project's progress?

Melvin was in my office when this letter came in from Maheen,

taking one look at Maheen's project file.

You can see the picture in this episode's transcript.

He jumped up and down in excitement.

You can imagine what that did to the open fountain pen

he had absent-mindedly clipped

to his shirt. Ah, Bernice is out buying him a new shirt while he tries to convince the office

staff that an Argentina-shaped birthmark can appear on his chin overnight with no warning.

I told Bernice, no more chocolate-covered espresso beans for Melvin before lunch.

Maheen has taken an important step.

As I discuss in step five stay organized in my book,

the key to organizing is having a place for everything and everything in its place.

Mahin has done that.

She has a folder with transparent sleeves, one for each project.

When she has a piece of paper or an idea related to a project, say, the construction of a 30-foot-tall belly-button to advertise her business, she knows just where it goes, into the big belly-button project sleeve.

Then, when she needs to know the tensile strength of paper mache, when used used as a belly button sculpture foundation, she goes

right to that project file. That's great for reference information, but it doesn't tell her

anything about the state of the project at any given moment. Along with collecting all the reference

material needed for each project, Maheen needs a place to know the status of the project. If she were a robot with cybernetic eyes

in every nook and cranny of the business, and I'm not saying she's not, she could just scan her

...