How to organise myself?

Staying organized and productive at work helps you stay focused and complete tasks on time.

When you are organized and productive, you can prioritize work and excel, which aids your career progress and success. There are several options for organizing your responsibilities and tasks, depending on your work style.

Consider the following ways to stay organized at work:

Achievable goals can help you stay focused and productive. When you set specific goals with steps and a timeline, you can organize your work into more manageable tasks. Create both long and short-term goals and add milestones to your calendar to make sure you stay on task.

To make sure you achieve your goals in the time you allotted, try to track your progress. Tracking progress can also help you identify when you’re most productive. For example, you might notice you accomplish more at the start of the week or in the morning. With this information, you can decide when to work on your most important tasks.

Some approaches to tracking your progress include logging in time you worked, tallying hours used toward a project, and blocking out periods of your day when you complete tasks.

An agenda is an excellent tool to evaluate your work organization and productivity. When using a planner, write down specific events and their details throughout the days, weeks, and months. This strategy keeps you aware of what meetings and due dates you have coming up in your schedule. As a result, you’re more likely to meet your goals and remember specific events.

There are many types of agendas. Some agendas have a space for every day, while others are weekly or monthly. Think about what kind of planner would best suit you and your work. If you work on your computer often, consider using a digital plan to add events to specific dates.

To-do lists are simple yet highly effective lists to help maintain productivity throughout the day. Use to-do lists to write down important tasks you want to accomplish. Try to organize your work based on urgency. For example, you can add what you need to complete by the end of the day at the top of your list and what can wait until the next day toward the bottom.

Consider writing your to-do lists on a sticky note or in a notebook. When using this approach, think of ways to organize your to-do list. For example, use colored pens to distinguish between items, such as a blue pen to designate a team meeting and a red pen to label urgent responsibilities.

When you hold yourself accountable, you reflect on your to-do list, evaluate your progress toward goals and identify ways to improve your performance. Regularly check in with yourself to determine your progress and find areas where you can approve. You can also develop a system of accountability with your coworkers by holding regular check-ins with each other.

It is much easier to concentrate on work for extended periods in an organized workspace. When you limit distractions, you maintain your focus on your current task. Limit distractions by keeping your space organized and straightforward. Keep common distractions, like your phone, in your desk or a different room.

Keep track of how much time you spend on different tasks to see areas where you can better use your time. When you start and end a task, start and end your timer. Consider using time-keeping applications to see how much time you spend on specific tasks. At the end of the week, reflect on your use of time and be more productive. For example, you could try limiting the amount of time you spend checking your emails if you notice you don’t have much time to complete other priority tasks.

In an organized office, you find supplies and materials efficiently, which makes your workflow more consistent. Keeping a clean environment includes putting items back where they belong, disinfecting your desk with cleaning wipes, and opening your windows for fresh air. A clean environment is a comfortable one, which makes staying productive easier.

Decluttering your workspace is a crucial part of staying clean and organized. Once a week or month, take stock of your workspace and remove any items that you don’t use daily. Throw away any outdated to-do lists, and file away completed work.

Labels are a practical approach to organizing your files. Clearly label each file, and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense to you. For example, you could manage your files in alphabetical order or by year.

Use this approach for digital files, too. Clearly labeled files and folders on your computer are much easier to locate without having to search for them for a long time.

Many professionals use email to communicate with each other, and as a result, you might find your email inbox full of emails. Sorting your emails avoids clutter in your inbox and helps you find essential emails faster.

Create digital folders in your email to sort all your messages. Folders categorize your emails in the appropriate place. Labeling emails remind you to reply to senders and keep essential emails in one place.

Breaks are an important way to keep focus and stay productive. Breaks keep you motivated because you avoid over-working yourself in a short period. As a result, you can often work for longer. During your break, go on a short walk, or get a snack. Make sure you take your break away from your workspace to reset your focus completely.

• Set goals. Achievable goals can help you stay focused and productive.
• Track progress.
• Use an agenda.
• Create to-do lists.
• Practice accountability.
• Limit distractions.
• Incorporate a timer.
• Keep a clean environment.

Instead of throwing life’s tasks in the air in hopes you’ll somehow manage to catch them all, follow a framework to keep every area of your life in order.

This guide will cover 10 rules to truly organize your life – and keep it organized. Then, we’ll jump into how you can apply them across all the areas that are important to you: work, school, business, home, health and fitness, finances, and your relationships.

The result is getting more done while feeling less stressed. Less juggling, more living.

Rules can feel rigid and joyless: do this, not that. But in reality, following a set of guidelines in life can be freeing. When we have a predetermined set of ways we aim to act, we limit the analysis paralysis that comes with choice and the agony that flows from indecision. That’s not to say that life shouldn’t include some serendipity – we include “Experiment” as part of this framework so you can find the happy accidents in life without feeling like everything is spinning out of control.

By following simple rules and applying them consistently, you’ll organize your life in a way that adds calm to your days and order to your weeks.

We all have habits that have solidified in our lives over the years and routines that determine our actions without conscious thought. The question is whether these habits are intentional or simply the result of inertia.

Good habits set us up for long-term success and make us feel good. Bad habits rob us of our time, health, happiness, and money. Take a look at the habits in your life too see what’s working, what needs to go, and what new habits would help you reach your goals.

Building good habits isn’t easy. In James Clear’s Atomic Habits he advises us to have a strong reason behind why we want to develop a certain habit:

Once you have the habits you want in your life, assemble them in a daily routine that keeps you productive. When you have good habits and can string them together into a strong routine, you can rely less on fleeting motivation and leave minimal room for procrastination and distraction.

Life has unpredictable twists and turns. That doesn’t mean a little planning doesn’t go a long way. A task manager, like Todoist, and a calendar are the tools you need to think and plan in advance and organize your life.

Set aside time to map out your days and plan your weeks. When you know which day your work presentation is due, you can work backwards and add to-dos to your task manager to get it done. If you capture when your kid’s parent-teacher conferences are in your calendar, you can rest easier knowing that things aren’t slipping through the cracks.

Here are a few tips for planning:

In Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, she stresses the importance of planning your week:

Of course, the emphasis is on “well-planned”. By scheduling everything on your calendar and adding all your tasks to your to-list, you can work within the confines of your week to give focus to everything that’s important to you.

“The best book is the one you can’t put down. The best exercise is the one you enjoy doing every day. The best health food is the one you find tasty. The best work is the work you’d do for free.” - Naval Ravikant

Organizing your life and thoughtfully crafting your habits and routines can quickly become a self-defeating exercise in aspirational living.

The only problems? You’re a night owl who does your best work at 12AM, you love a good steak, and a good film is how you unwind. To organize your life, opt for habits that fit with your natural inclinations. Be realistic about yourself and embrace what you can conceivably commit to for the long haul.

Here are a few different areas where you can lean into your natural state:

By opting for the path of least resistance you can save yourself the time of trying to embrace what you hate and simply opt for what you enjoy.

For many of us, an “all-or-nothing” attitude can be a source of self-sabotage. When we fail to meet the unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves, we throw in the towel altogether. By understanding the impact of incremental progress and the power of compounding effort, we can be more realistic and get more out of life.

The first step is creating realistic plans that fit into our lives:

Unrealistic plans set us up for a spiral of shame and regret when we ultimately fall short of our goal. Make consistency a part of your life and get used to imperfection. By opting for continuous effort towards a realistic aim we create more room for everything we want to do in life.

In our attempt to do it all and organize our lives perfectly, balance is often a casualty. Instead of getting to bed, you stay up coding deep into the night. Rather than meeting with friends, you study all weekend for an upcoming midterm.

While this strategy can work in the short-term, the long-term impacts eventually rear their ugly heads: stress, burnout, and lethargy. Instead, prioritize long-term sustainability with balance and self-care.

Here are a few strategies to consider:

Besides the day-to-day pauses to breathe, make time for longer breaks too. At minimum, try to take week-long breaks from work at least 1-2 times per year. By constantly recharging your batteries, you’ll be able to show up in work and life for yourself and others who depend on you.

One way to make juggling all of life's demands easier is to intentionally let some balls drop. To make time for what’s important to you, get comfortable with saying, “no”.

Prioritization is a key tool in the arsenal to organize your life. Doing it all is impossible; prioritizing what’s crucial is within reach. By declining what doesn’t serve your highest goals, you can give your laser focus to what matters.

Here’s an idea of what to prioritize and what to deprioritize:

Know your most important task each day and prioritize it accordingly. By having a strong sense of what’s important and what isn’t, you can make more efficient decisions about where to give your time and energy.

It’s hard to feel organized when your mind is in shambles and your office space and house are too. Always be on the lookout for opportunities to make space –physically, digitally, and mentally.

Some of the chaos we feel in our lives is the result of too much stuff, too much to do, too much to think about. Consider this when aiming to organize your life: less is more.

Whether your goals are big or small, it’s important to measure your progress. There’s a lot of power in knowing what’s working and what’s not. You can allocate more time in your life for activities that are helping you reach your goals. You can cut out the things that are failing to make an impact for you.

These practices will help you measure your progress:

Habits automate for your decision-making. Technology can automate your repetitive tasks. Organize your life by setting up automations that remove active effort and free up your time and energy.

Think about the areas in your life where you spend time doing manual work that an app or website could do instead. Alternately, consider where outsourcing to someone else could save you time.

There are likely a few tasks in work and life that could use a hands-off approach:

We’ll discuss in later sections what automation and outsourcing methods you can use in each of these areas.

The last item in the Organize Your Life Framework is one of the most exciting: trying new things and seeking out novel experiences! Just because you’re organized doesn’t mean you can’t make room for messy spontaneity.

Sometimes things aren’t working out. Other times they’ve gone stale. These are the best times to introduce novelty to our lives and shake ourselves from a routine that just isn’t working anymore.

There’s any number of ways to escape ruts and grow in the process:

A constant eye on experimentation will bring excitement to life and break you out of periods of plateau.

Now that you know the ten aspects of the Organize Your Life framework, you can apply it to any number of areas in your life. By having some specific guidelines, you can approach each area with more confidence and less stress.

It’s likely you spend the majority of your waking-hours at work. Work represents what most people are actually organizing their lives around. There’s endless conversations on how to organize the time we’re not working – early mornings, during lunch breaks, and after hours into the evening. Less attention is paid to how people should organize their workdays and make the most out of 8 hours you’re likely spending at a desk.

Staying productive at work follows the same rules whether you work from an office, work from home, or run your own business.

Declutter your desk, inbox, and task manager. It’s challenging to focus or get anything done if you don’t feel like you have everything in order. A desk overflowing with loose sheets of paper and coffee cups is hardly conducive to concentration. An inbox and task manager that isn’t organized leaves us unclear on what we should work on next. Regularly schedule in time to go from clutter to clear.

Prioritize deep work. Most people fall into the urgency trap at work, putting out small fires instead of focusing on the big-picture, high-impact work. But it’s high-impact projects that get you promoted or take your business to the next level. Organize your day by starting with a deep work session that centers the most high leverage thing you should be doing at work to garner more customers, land a big sale, etc. After that, you’re free to do whatever else needs to be done: emails, meetings, etc.

Find opportunities for automation and outsourcing. We do our best work when we’re in what Gay Hendricks’s calls our “zone of genius”, the area of focus that utilizes your best skills and innate abilities. Ideally, everything else should be automated or outsourced.

Balance work goals with life. Burnout is when ambition overtakes balance. While you may love your job and are focused on mastery, ensure you make time for rest and recovery. The best physical competitors regularly sleep more than 9 hours each night. Train like an athlete: go hard, but prioritize off-time.

Home is where it all happens. From doing the dishes to dinner parties, keeping up a clean and tidy household is a never ending unpaid job. However, by being diligent and using some outsourcing hacks, running a household can be a little easier.

Build habits for for running a household effectively. Lamenting about a few chores as a kid seems funny now that all the chores are your responsibility. Building regular habits can help make sure they never get completely out of hand. By doing a little bit on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis you can keep everything running relatively smoothly.

All of this can get overwhelming and difficult to remember. Use a task manager, like Todoist, to set up daily, weekly, and monthly recurring tasks so you can free up your memory.

Declutter your home. It’s not hard for a home to get messy. A few used cups here, some unfolded laundry there, that outfit you haven’t worn in years but you might someday maybe need...all of a sudden, your house is in disarray. Regularly take time to purge items you don’t need and what doesn’t spark joy.

Automate and outsource errands and chores. We’re living in a convenience age and you should take advantage of it. Some help from technology and others can reduce the stress of maintaining a home.

Of course, outsourcing comes with a cost. If these aren’t within your budget, outsource tasks the good ol’ fashion way: delegating to roommates, partners, and kids. Get everyone in your household involved in its upkeep. Clarify responsibilities by formally assigning them.

Making time for a healthy lifestyle is a multiplier for everything else: we become better at our jobs, can be more present for our loved ones, and feel more motivated to tackle life’s other challenges. Unfortunately, it’s also often the first thing to fall to the wayside when the stress of everyday life takes over.

By doing our best each day instead of opting for all-or-nothing we can maintain balance when it comes to health and fitness.

Follow your inclinations with diet and exercise. Instead of forcing yourself to adapt to the latest crazes in diet and exercise, do what feels right for you. There’s probably a handful of vegetables you like and some form of physical activity you find enjoyable. Personalize your meals and workouts so they don’t feel like torture.

Use balance when thinking about healthy food choices. This is an area where “good enough” is almost always more sustainable than “perfect”. For example, follow the 80/20 rule when it comes to eating – eat a healthy diet 80% of the time and indulge in some treats 20% of the time. The same applies for exercise, ensure you’re taking regular rest days so your body can recover.

Prioritize health and fitness. In the vicious cycle of “too much to do”, we often drop time-consuming healthy habits when we’re feeling stressed about work and life. This only leads to more stress when we don’t have an outlet to channel our frustrations and healthy food to support our energy levels. Keep healthy habits like cooking or taking daily walks at the top of your priority list.

Set and measure fitness goals. Fitness is often fun when it can be gamified. To stay motivated, record your workouts and track your fitness over time.

Money can buy financial freedom and peace of mind. It can also buy a whole lot of things we don’t need. By organizing your finances with care, you can set yourself up for the future without depriving yourself in the present.

Plan your money flow. Get closely acquainted with managing your money through budgeting. Understand your net income and create a budget that includes a fixed expenses, variable expenses, debts, and savings. Create a month by month budget that takes these into account.

Be consistent when it comes to savings. Compounding interest will help grow your savings and put you on the right path for funding life’s biggest purchases or saving for retirement. By consistently saving a portion of your salary each month, even if it doesn’t feel significant, you can grow your net worth over time.

Measure your finances. Set financial goals for different time periods: 1 month, 12 months, 5 years, 10 years, etc. Consistently measure your progress towards them and adjust accordingly based on whether you’re meeting your targets.

Automate your finances. Decrease the amount of time you spend on everything from paying bills to budgeting by introducing automation to your life.

Relationships with friends and family are the single most important thing we can cultivate in life. When interviewing 90-somethings, Lydia Soh’s discovered this in her conversations:

“Their joys and regrets have nothing to do with their careers, but with their parents, children, spouses, and friends.”

She found that people wished they had “loved more” not “accomplished more”. By acting on this advice while we have the time, we can live more fulfilling lives and minimize regrets later in life.

Make time for planning social outings. The older and busier we become, the less time there seems to be for spontaneous date nights and random coffee dates with friends. Proactively plan time with all the people in your life you care about, rather than waiting for plans to assemble themselves.

Practice consistency with seeing friends and family. How many times does seeing  a loved one start of with this phrase: “It’s been too long”? Minimize the year-long stretches between seeing friends and family by opting for consistency as much as possible.

Exploring new places can add variety to life and teach you about new cultures. But, between boarding passes and connecting flights, it can also be stressful and expensive. Organizing exploration can add peace of mind whether you’re discovering the canals of Amsterdam or attractions in your own city.

Take the stress out of travel with planning. Heading to an airport with a backpack and buying a ticket for whatever flight is leaving next is perfect for rom-com characters. For the rest of us, careful planning helps us avoid expired passports and forgotten contact solution. It also helps with showing up to a new destination and knowing the right spots instead of being sucked into tourist traps.

Experiment with new travel spots. While repeats can be nice, try choosing travel destinations you’ve never been before. Rather than repeating an annual family trip to the same place, exploring a different corner of the earth can add excitement to your usual routine.

Deciding how to organize your life isn’t about precisely what time you should wake-up in the morning or exactly where you should store your important documents. Rather than getting caught up in these details, pay attention to the bigger principles of leading a good life.