Get Organized: Benefits Of Using Spreadsheets – Part 2

This is Part 2 of our article on using spreadsheets as a tool to get organized and improve your life and processes. You can read Part 1 of this article here. So far, we’ve discussed using spreadsheets to save time and to help with individual or business growth.

Use data to improve your decisions

This database of information about your professional or personal agendas helps you grow, realize waste, get organized, and allocate your efforts to what matters most to you. The same way your primary care physician keeps a file on you with your health history and updates it regularly when you go for a check-up, you should keep data with your habits, whether they are personal or business related. The list of vendors you use and the history of their pricing helps you adjust for inflation. The time you spent on creating posts for your social media channels is correlated to the traffic on your blog. Regular entries over extended periods of time will give you statistical data that you can use to improve your decision-making process.

Turn your aspirations into a roadmap

Having a spreadsheet that serves as a dashboard of sorts for yearly goals and aspirations helps you build the detailed steps to achieve them. Several linked sheets within a document can be dedicated to yearly, monthly, weekly and even daily tasks that bring you nearer to your goal. For example, imagine your goal is to be 20% percent more health-conscious and productive by the end of the year. Your daily list could include good sleep, 10min of meditation, and a cup of green tea. Your weekly list may include jogging three times, doing creative work in the morning, and answering email in the afternoon. Your monthly list may include riding your bike once per weekend, two nature outing and ten days of eating vegan. I hope this has given you an idea of how you can use spreadsheets to get organized and improve your efficiency.