Blog

July 31, 2021

Organizing Is Simple

Organizing retirees is critical to protecting and advancing our rights. Anybody can do it. Just make a list of what needs to be done, put the steps in order, then implement the plan.

Simple flow charts really help.

A really simple one only has information boxes (rectangles) for the steps you made and decision boxes (diamonds) for things you’re not sure of.  The arrows show what comes before what.

I make mine in pencil, but you can make them with post it notes. Post-it notes are good because you may want to change the flow chart as things happen.

If neatness is what you want, you could use the “shapes” in Word:

In this one, I had to get committee approval before going ahead. That’s why I had a diamond-shape “decision” box with “yes” and “no” exits.  Just follow the arrows and you’ll see how it works.

There are much more complicated flow charts with other shapes that you don’t usually need for organizing.

This guy uses round shapes as connectors, or for “start” and “finish.” The ones with the curved bottoms are for documents and the rhombi are for input/output. Input/output usually means a scanner or a printer is involved.

I’ve been flow charting activities for many decades, and I hardly ever use anything except the rectangles and diamonds. I might use the circles as connectors if my flow chart is more than one page, but it almost never is.

Organizers don’t really need a big fancy treatment on flowcharts, but if you want one, there are some on YouTube like this one: https://www.visual-paradigm.com/tutorials/flowchart-tutorial/

–Gene Lantz