Chapter 1: Intro To Organization

Knowing yourself if knowing how to be organized - there is no “perfect solution”

Coming up with a way to organize yourself is a really vulnerable, honest process. This is something really hard to do - recognize that the hard work you're putting in up-front will dramatically improve your experience in all areas of your professional life, both inside and outside of Shift.
Throughout this course of work, think critically about the effectiveness of tools and strategies. This process is not "one-size-fits-all," nor is there any kind of "perfect tool" in this line of work.
Thousands of people before you have tried to make "the perfect tool;" nearly all have been unsuccessful in their pursuits.

"I just feel so unorganized"

Does this statement resonate with you? If it does, I want you to grapple with what this statement implies on your success.

1. First off, this statement is self deprecating. When we put ourselves down before we even set off to start, we close ourselves off to the serendipty of adventure.
2. On a secondary level, there is a lot of anxiety that comes with this statement. Since the dawn of knowledge work, first mentioned in 1959 by & Peter Drucker in his landmark book, { The Effective Executive - The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, there have been myriad of tools to support the accumulation and organization of knowledge.
   In modern day, we call this process Knowledge Management.
   Feeling unorganized is only a feeling - this feeling by no means requires us to act upon our fears. Instead, I advise to act in our best interests and to think critically.

Chapter 2: Why do I need to be organized?

The statistics

You WILL waste time looking for things

You WILL NOT have enough time to repeat yourself

You need more time for yourself and for your dealers

Starting with Why

Formally defining Critical thinking does not do the process any justice. Pulling the thread on critical thinking sets your sites on one common theme: "Starting with Why."

Why do you need to be organized?

Real question to the audience Let's flip the original statement on its head - turn "I just feel so unorganized" now becomes a question centered on what we can do, not what others can do for us.
Shift was founded as a product that could provide for others; ELMS was created as a way for dealerships to focus on the things they're specialized in: selling cars.
In the same way, creating an organizational system that works for you will help you focus on the thing that you were hired to do: provide exceptional customer service and peace of mind to the dealership.
Taking 202108012057 - Extreme Ownership to manage the knowledge you intercept takes excuses out of the equation. Knowledge management is not only the right thing to do, but also is an opportunity for us to excel in our roles and be leaders in this industry.

Chapter 3: How can you get organized?

The philosophy of modern knowledge management

Structure : the scaffolding of information infrastructure

Before modern knowledge management, there were 2 ways to get organized:
#question: What does "go with the flow" look like to you?

1. you can "go with the flow" and use a system that works for you, is extremely simple, and gets your job done no matter what.
   #question: what does an overly rigid system sound like to you?
2. You can use an extremely rigid system characterized by

• folders and bins
• standardized file names
• formal processing and procedures

What if there was a way to tie what you do day-to-day with why you do it week in and week out?

1. Projects: Short term efforts in you work or life that you're working on now

• 202206222239 - Hollywood model
• 202207162056 - How Do I select Projects?
• Projects are most actionable because you're working on them right now and with a concrete deadline in mind 202108012140 - Parkinson's Law

2. Areas: Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time

Mission driven - standard measured

• Areas have a longer time horizon and are less immediately actionable

Personal

• Activities or places you are responsible for: Home/apartment; cooking; travel; car
• People you are responsible for or account to: Friends; Kids; Spouses; Pets
• Standards of performance you are responsible for: Health; Personal Growth; Friendships; finances
  Job or business
  • Departments or functions you are responsible for
  • People or teams you are responsible for
  • Professional development

3. Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future

Resources may become actionable depending on the situation

• What topics are you interested in
• What subjects are you researching?
• What useful information do you want to be able to reference?
• Which hobbies or passions do you have?

4. Archives: Inactive items from the other three categories

Archives remain inactive unless they are needed

• Projects that are completed or canceled.
• Areas of responsibility that you are no longer committed to maintaining
• Resources that are no longer relevant.

Where Do I put this?

1. In which project will this be most useful?
2. If none: in which area will this be most useful
3. if none: which resource does this belong to?
4. If none: Place in archives

• you are always trying to place a note or file not only where it will be useful, but where it will be useful the soonest.
• Organizing by actionability counteracts our tendency to constantly procrastinate and postpone our aspiration to some far-off future.
• The goal of organizing our knowledge is to move our goals forward, not get a PDH in Note taking
  • knowledge is best applied in execution.

The same concepts apply to tasks

Show case study working with PDA and organizing information

This method is effective - it is by no means a "perfect solution." However, i find it to be the "imperfect solution" that utilized two human qualities:

1. Context
   • Everything we know is source from context. Any deeply rooted memory you store goes from a place of short-term access to long-term storage. This system emulates this process.
2. Action
   • I don't know about you, but the one thing that I actually want to be doing at work is doing something, or making things.
   • When I have to spend all my time doing things I already know or have to repeat tasks I've completed in the past, i don't want to have to go through and re-do the work again.
   • This system helps you store everything you've done in the past so you can focus on doing your best centered and present.

Chapter 4: Tools of the trade

"I need X tool and then I'll be organized..."

There is no magic pill in knowledge management - just consistency and hard work. If you're seeking answers outside of yourself, you are seeking to fail.

Tools of the trade

1. Shift uses the Salesforce ecosystem to manage accounts and enrollments. If there are any doubts, where would you go for answers?

Two places are readily available to help improve your capabilities:

1. Saleforce trailhead
2. Your peers

• In order to be effective in your role, it is incumbent of you to learn how this system works

2. You will need to learn how to manage your tasks

• if you have used a task manager in the past, and it works for you, check that it is a secure platform, create a work account, and you can be on your merry way.
• if there are any doubts about that tools effectiveness in this specific role, keep listening and you will find that there are modern tools that can more appropriately keep you on track and getting things done.

Notion

If "a project is “a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline,” then we should use a tool that helps put your tasks in context
Notion is a relational database program build as a sandbox to build modern tools. It also happens to be an exceptional place to build task managers that help knowledge workers see what they're doing in the present day, what they've done in the past, and what they plan to do in the future.
Todoist is the closest shot at a tool built to take on modern workloads. It works great for personal endeavors, I use it to organize my life at home...I highly recommend it. But the free plan limits you on the amount of projects you can use.
Notion is free for personal use and blends well with the P.A.R.A organization system.

insert free notion template

Obsidian

This tool is new - and I love everything about it. I singlehandedly attribute my success here at Shift to this one tool. Notion is awesome and gets me through my day-to-day. However, if there is one program that keeps my meetings straight and my objectives clear to my superiors, it is Obsidian.

Obsidian over OneNote

To keep things short, OneNote has one significant advantage to Obsidian at the free price point: cloud access. Obsidian is build on the local hard drive of your machine. They have encrypted cloud capability, but I've had less than a handful of times where I have not had my work computer on me and needed information from my vault.

Why obsidian

Context

Context is everything. As stated above, context helps use remember things. Obsidian is not like Notion because Notion is built to store data and relate that data in unique, visualized ways. Its priority is tables and displaying information visually. Obsidian information is stored and used in the form of tags.
By tagging a note in another note, you've created a relationship. These relationships help you create insights. These insights create opportunity, and those opportunities call you to build, create, develop and/or innovate.

Markdown

Markdown is the language of information in Obsidian.
Markdown language is easy to learn compared to most. In fact, you will come to find that markdown comes in handy in workplaces and on the backend of the internet a lot more than you think.
Just like any tool, you're going to need to learn how the program and the language work together in order to make use of it.
Markdown is not only simple and effective in storing information, it is also "lean," meaning it takes up little and runs on very basic file formats.

• the entire database of information is stored as .txt files. These files can be read by any word processor.

How it works

–> Obsidian sandbox

insert demo

Chapter 4: Fellowship - productivity is a team effort

Inevitably, people have and will do things at Shift that you haven't. Learn from you peers and share information in the spirit of growing the team's collective understanding of the position.

Chapter 5: “making fun” of our work - how projects can turn isolated activities into fulfilling campaigns

Shift the video game
Do you play the campaign or the multiplayer?

Campaigns

• good to learn what the game was made for
• great place to learn the backstory
• a practice range to master the skills needed to play the game

Multiplayer (social co-working)

• a place to show skills and finess

• a place to learn things the game could never teach you

• a place to find achievements not found in the campaign

• Shift is a fantastic place to find and grow your true skill.

  • Find projects that fit the theme of your position
  • let those projects direct tasks that you complete day-to-day.

• You will soon find that the levels you build from playing this game each day will begin to write chapters of success. These chapters are part of a much larger campaigns

Chapter 6: Testimonials