I use some colors in the Microsoft Outlook Calendar. Red for an appointment with someone else. Orange for recurring meetings. And yellow for travel time before or after. The rest remains in the default color. So I'm not going to go deep into color theory. Organize tasks How to deal with a new task? What you need to know first is that you need to reformulate a task for yourself. In a way that you immediately know what to do later. An example: 'Create table of contents message Organize communication'. You also have to make sure that you don't forget the task, because you see it somewhere again.
Organizing tasks can be done in 5 ways: Ask someone else to do the task if it makes more sense (forward). Flag the task in your mail, so that the mail gets a red flag. Put the task on the hotlist (your red A4 paper) for if you are going to do it today. Schedule it in the Calendar if it won't work today. Name them in the Excel job function email list as a task, under Column Comments. Add something like: see mail folder X. Organize Notes You can store individual notes in the tabs of your Excel workbook. There is also Microsoft OneNote. The Google extension Notepad is also useful. You can also WhatsApp yourself things that you might forget. Or write it down in Google Keep (Iphone). You can organize yourself and remember less via the processes in Microsoft Outlook (and your Excel, see tip 2).
Organize meetings Organize your meetings by planning them one year in advance in all Agendas. Share agendas with (new) employees, so that they can be informed of planned meetings. Planning different forms of consultation Before we go further about tools. By meeting every week, but not in the same way. One week is for regular consultation in an (online) meeting room. In it you discuss substantive topics. The other week there is a stand-up. Your suggestion of 'becoming more creative' can provoke resistance, which is why I immediately add the methodology.