7 Organizational Tips and Ideas for Coaches

3 min readAug 18, 2022

There is a lot of information floating around in the coaching world:

As a coach, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

That’s why you need some type of organizational system or philosophy to guide you.

Here are a few organizational ideas that might help:

1 — Get a note-taking app

There are plenty to choose from with a simple Google search, but here are 3 good ones:

Notion — this is what I use. Caution — you can get caught up in making it look pretty.
Evernote
Google Tasks — I use this for all my to do list items (and you can download it as an app). Any time I remember something that needs to get taken care, I have a random idea, or I want to record a thought…I stick it in here and get back to it later.

2 — Create a Coaching Portfolio

Having an established document that details what you believe as a coach is one of the mostbeneficial tools you can have in your arsenal.

You can organize it how you want, but here are some important items to include:

your basic philosophy
offensive and defensive scheme
situational items
skill development philosophy
core/base drills
culture items
program running items (fundraising, program promotion, feeder program)
and whatever else goes into running your particular team/program
I created a self-paced course that walks you through the process. You can check that out here

3 — SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY

Getting to simple or “lean” in your coaching takes a lot of front loaded work.
To know what you believe and how you want to use it, you must first educate yourself on your options. To choose the best option, you must have a decent understanding of your options in the first place!
A big key here is that, at some point, you have to actually DECIDE.
Do NOT waste all your time researching, trying to figure out exactly what works, etc.
Pick something, roll with it, get great at it, and then…next season maybe…reevaluate your path.

4 — Schedule your days and week

Every Sunday evening, plan out your week hour-by-hour.

First, fill in your big items (practice times, work hours, family obligations, date nights, etc.).
Then, fill in the rest of your schedule for the week in the remaining time slots.
I’d recommend filling out a daily plan for the next day every evening (I use a simple notecard) with your hour-by-hour plan, goals for tomorrow, and your 2–3 main things you want to get done

5 — Use FastDraw to organize your playbook/drill book

Some of you may not have FastDraw (worth every penny)…but it’s a great tool to organize your plays and drills into a single location.
It also lets you create different PDFs that you can print out or access whenever you want.
Even if you don’t USE everything in your playbank, having it all in one place for reference is a valuable tool.

6 — Keep an “Idea Notebook”

I’ve been carrying a simple $1 spiral notebook from WalMart around with me for years now (not the same one, but you get what I mean).
Jot down any ideas you have, any diagrams you see from games, etc.
My system? I’ll jot everything down, come back to it later, decide what makes the cut and can be used with my team, and apply.

7 — Simplify or organize your social media, newsletter subscriptions, and the like

You could go through your multiple social media accounts and other subscriptions right now and cut out a lot of them.

Decide which of your subscriptions/follows that you just aren’t getting that much from. Then, ruthlessly eliminate what doesn’t serve you.

Get rid of anything that:

There you have it, folks — 7 simple ideas that you can use to organize your life as a coach.

Written by Brandon Shields