The phone reminder you need to set

If I didn’t have a system of reminders, calendar events, and to-do lists running on my phone at all times, I would get nothing done. 

So it’s really clear which things I don’t have in that system … because they’re hopelessly falling by the wayside (the dust bunnies in my house say hi).

In nonprofits and organizations who are busy meeting the complex needs of families, the same thing can happen. 

Often, tracking important, but not urgent data points can be what falls by the wayside. 

Then, you’re stuck playing catch up, which is endlessly annoying, and then you put off tracking again in the future. 

No judgment – I do this too.

Every year, I set up a spreadsheet for tracking household expenses for our taxes. 

And to write off my home office, I have to track mortgage payments, utility bills, and internet fees that we paid each month (in addition to medical expenses, business expenses, and donations).

It’s the worst. I hate it. So I never do it. (Whoops!)

Every year, in January, I get mad at myself for not having tracked these expenses as we paid them, spend forever going through our bank account to find the charges, and then get so disgusted with the process that I don’t touch it again until the following January.

It’s really a terrible cycle. 

I bet I’m not the only one who does this though.

However, in organizations, we’re not so lucky to be able to just put off all of our data-related tasks until the following year.

If we did, we’d miss the fun part – discovering what the data is waiting to show us! 

Plus, avoiding our data keeps us from being able to use it to improve the work we’re doing in real time.

So as the new school year kicks off, think about what routines you can build into your work week around data. 

Is it a reminder on your phone every Friday afternoon to log what referrals you made? 

Maybe it’s a sticky note on your monitor that reminds you to log the outreach you did every day.

Whatever your personal routine is, don’t forget the part where you (and your team) USE this data you’ve been reminding yourself to track. 

Maybe it’s scheduling a monthly meeting where your team checks in on your tracker and examines the patterns you see in your school’s attendance.

Or, if you have the capacity, maybe it’s setting up a simple dashboard (many platforms will help you do this with a few clicks!) that gets reviewed regularly to make sure you’re reaching your whole catchment area in recruitment or enrollment. 

Whatever works best for you and your team … SCHEDULE IT! 

If it’s constantly popping up in your reminders, it gets harder to ignore and put off. 

And what we do regularly becomes more ingrained (and hopefully less annoying). 

So what data reminder are you scheduling today?