Update on My Ideas Book and How It's Going...

Last week, I wrote a bit about my latest quest to organize myself and my ideas. This has come out of many years of using different systems and finding that I didn't keep going with any of them. I turned to what I do well - planning in my planners - and adapted that idea into a new system. It's been happening for two weeks now, so I'm feeling pretty good about this particular system.

(If you are interested in reading the original post, click here.) 

So, it has been another week of brainstorming and figuring things out on paper in my little book. I keep it in my backpack so I can transport it from work to home and back again due to the fact that ideas come to me at all times. I have found several song post-its that have made their ways into the TME book for storage until I transcribe them into my TME database. My ideas book has several thoughts about upcoming uses for my new technology. My calendar book is the most unused part of the book so far, but I anticipate it will be the most used eventually. It is meant to be the perpetual part of the traveler's notebook, so it will be filled out and added to but will remain a part of this system long after the TME and Ideas books are full and replaced. (That reminds me - I need to print off the inserts for the second calendar booklet.) I like having thematic information as well as ideas and TMEs in the same place - it keeps me from wondering what I decided to do a long time ago and just moving around and around and around to different themes for each month.

As of right now, everything is contained within the blue covers of my traveler's notebook. 

I am the type of person who craves organization and systems to keep various parts of my life moving forward. This is one of the reasons I have used planning systems throughout my life. I like having a calendar of things to do and times to go specific places. It makes me feel like I know what is happening, and I like that. It has taken me years, but I think I now have a way to organize my thoughts into something contained and useful. It is working so far, so I will keep it going.

If you are interested, next month's theme is vocations. I am collecting stories about music careers and songs about other jobs. I will be going to South Carolina and Georgia for a week, so I want to have some digital resources available for my groups while I am gone.

I am starting my digital resource creations off small - one per month. I figure that this way I will have a growing bundle of digital resources available but only have to focus on one thing at a time. One of the ideas in my ideas book that I was able to cross off completely was to make Google Slide templates for a variety of digital resources. I now have the templates set and ready to be fleshed out. I have been learning lots about how to do nifty things in Google Slides, so I am having some fun playing around with files and resources. There is a learning curve, but it is not steep, so I am making forward motions all the time.

I have carved out some time every week for making these things available for my clients. Since they are for my job, the digital files are for use only at my facility. The TMEs that are part of those files are still my intellectual property, so I will be sharing those at some point or another (subscribe to my sing about mini TME release for full TMEs and bonus visual aids!), but the digital parts will be exclusively for use at my facility until I leave that facility. I now need to brainstorm how I will share those files with whoever comes after me...not something I've thought about yet. Jump drive should be sufficient.

Anyway, it is time to arrange for some of my clip art for use with my current digital file creation. I need some music notes and some pictures to use. I will take those files into work to use there in my digital files. I hope to have my September digital file finished by tomorrow, so it is time to finish it up. I need to add the music notation, the links to various YouTube videos, and then it will be finished! I will also be making some non-digital versions of things (that I will be able to share) here at home to act as non-technological TMEs. I am thinking that I need some rhythm cards and some job-related songs. There you go.