Activity Director Tips: How To Stay Organized

Organization is important to being successful at almost any job but it's especially important for activity directors. Proper planning ensures that you have enough supplies for residents to participate in activities and that the locations for your activities are available on the days and times you need them to be.  Small oversights can lead to major disasters, unhappy residents and displeased administration.  Use these three simple tools to keep yourself organized and avoid chaos:

1. Daily Planner or Electronic Calendar
   In order to plan effectively beyond the current month, you need a daily planner that you can use to book your upcoming entertainers and events.  If you don't like the idea of carrying around an actual daily planner then you can use an electronic calendar like the one in Outlook (or any other email client) or you can even use an online solution like Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar) which is a free service.  Put everything from meeting times to scheduled activities and contact info in your planner or electronic calendar.  By using this resource religiously you'll never double-book yourself or forget about important events.
2. Copy of Your Current Monthly Activity CalendarMake sure to keep a copy of your current activity calendar with you so when someone needs to schedule to use your Activity Room at the last minute, you can easily refer to your current calendar and make changes. Make sure that you are consistent with updating all versions of the calendar; if you display the calendar in 2 or 3 places and you make a change then it needs to be changed everywhere to avoid confusion.
3. Activity NotebookThrow away your Post-It notes. They get lost, you'll overlook them and you don't need them anymore if you use a notebook to write everything down: notes, ideas, things your administrator wants to see in your activity calendars, etc. Utilizing just one place where you keep all of your notes reduces the risk of losing important information. It also keeps your desk neater because you don't need as many little pieces of paper with information on them floating all over your office.

(Source: http://www.notjustbingo.com)

Are you still creating activity calendars by hand?  Or do you use a service that requires you to manually recreate your calendar each month?  There is a better way!  MyCorwinCalendar saves you time and money by allowing you to create your calendar online and then edit it and reorder it each month.  We deliver high-quality professionally designed calendars to your facility's doorstep on-time each month.  Call us at 1-877-267-9462 or visit our website for more information about what we can do for you.