As a Life Coach, hands down one of the most common needs people want help with is being organized. Time management, productivity and efficiency are always connected to one's level of being organized.
As a human, hands down one of the most frustrating feelings I have had and hate is feeling unorganized.
Tasks pile up. The duties are daunting and deadlines are haunting (a little rhyme for you).
We often feel like the 8 year old who is told to clean up their room. They look and stare and feel overwhelmed and never get started because they and do not know where to begin.
As a life coach who loves to help people in their productivity, I know that to get organized we need a plan. We need a system and a strategy.
When we get organized it is a wonderful feeling. There is a sense of excitement and control and we breathe a deep breath of relief and freedom.
When our tasks are our tyrants, we feel defeated and lost. We sink into despair and feel like we do not manage our time or life well.
It all comes down to how we approach and handle our time.
Time is limited. Think about the phrase 'Time management'. We cannot create or control the realty of time. We can simply manage it, and by manage it, I mean we manage ourselves and what we do with ourselves with the time we have.
To manage time well, we need to be organized.
Here are five proven principles to help you get organized and take control of your life and time.
Principle # 1 - Plan ahead
I have a saying that I share with my clients. Unplanned time leads to unproductive time. The fact is, if we are going to get organized, we need to make the time to plan. And planning does not just happen, we have to plan to plan.
The saying is true: if you fail to plan you plan to fail.
How many times have you simply wandered through your week with no sense of direction or control? At the end of the week you are left feeling lost and unsure about what sort of progress or achievements you have had. This is because you did not have a plan to measure it by.
To plan well, we plan ahead so that each day has a set agenda and goal. Good planning takes tasks and then works them into our schedule and calendar. When we do this, instead of asking what we should do next, we can consult our planner and know what is next because it has already been scheduled and assigned that time slot.
I take Sunday nights to look at my week and see what things I need to get done. Then accordingly I make my weekly schedule to accommodate those tasks.
Planning ahead gives me a big picture and sense of control and organization.
#2 Have clear priorities
The second principle is to have clear priorities. Priorities act as guard rails, they help you filter potential activity through the lens of what you should be doing to move your forward.
Certain tasks require that you prioritize them. If you do not prioritize your most important work, you will end of spending time on trivial and less important items. This takes you off course and hinders you from reaching your targets.
If you want to work with more organization, you must determine which tasks are highest priority and be sure to schedule and do those first. You can use an ABCD system, or an urgent important matrix to help you determine what tasks you should prioritize.
#3 Simpler is better
Next, keep it simple. Serisously. Simpler is better. One of the biggest mistakes we make is that we think organization means we add more things to our life and manage them better. This is not so. Good organization will mean that we mindfully begin to remove things from our lives and declutter them.
This means that you will need to be able to decide which things are important and which things are not. This brings us right back to determining priorities.
The point is that as we filter our tasks and set priorities we need to begin to either delegate or eliminate the things that are not our highest priority.
There is a great interest in having a simplified life today, and for good reason. There is simply too much we can do. The most productive people are the ones that simplify their lives and go all in with intense focus on the important things.
#4 make lists
The next principle is to work with lists. These are action items and tasks that need to get done. A good list will be categorized and itemized.
First, categorized lists are groups of items that belong to a certain goal, project or task. This can be as simple as a shopping or packing list. Don't just make a list of items to shop for, and then right after chores to do at home. Keep them separate.
Second, itemized lists are straightforward. Make sure you right down the key items to do. Thinking about what to do will help you remember, and writing it down will leave no task out.
Having a list of items to check off as they are accomplished will help you be more organized and purposeful in your life and work.
#5 Review and reflect
Lastly, to be organized we need to review and reflect. I admit, this is where the real discipline comes in. Planning and list making is fun because it is forward thinking. As people who want to achieve, we like to push forward. But to be organized will require us to go back and visit our goals and tasks and measure our progress.
In reviewing we make ourselves willing to see what worked and what did not. Where we failed and where we succeeded. Momentum needs to be measured, and if we never slow down and analyze how we are doing we will not be organized because we will not make the appropriate adjustments along the way.
Reviewing helps us stay organized because it keeps the big picture in mind, measures success and results and analyzes procedural issues and progress.
This is why successful organizations will constantly revisit their mission and vision statements and measure their activity and results by them.
So use these five proven principles and you will be more organized in life, and therefore more peaceful and successful.
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I write on related motivational topics to productivity like personal vision, goal setting and time management to name a few. If you want to read more posts like this give me a follow… I will give you my best each post!
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