Keeping life organized often feels like a juggling act. 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. The result is getting more done while feeling less stressed.
Automate or outsource
Set up automations that remove active effort and free up time and energy
- Consider where outsourcing to someone else could save you time
- Experiencing new things and seeking out novel experiences will bring excitement to life and break you out of periods of plateau
Declutter and Simplify
Always be on the lookout for opportunities to make space
- Less is more: organize your to-do list
- Marie Kondo’s To-Do List Tip
- Organize by task and keep only the tasks that spark Joy
Measure your progress
Have a regular weekly review
- Try out the quantified self method and measure your goals
- Implement an Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) format for your goals – at work or in life
- Track your time being productive or distracted online with RescueTime Productivity
Organize Your Finances
Plan your money flow
- Understand your net income and create a budget that includes a fixed expenses, variable expenses, debts, and savings
- Add to your savings every single month
- Set financial goals for different time periods
- Automate your finances
- Decrease the amount of time you spend on all aspects of your finances
Organize Your Health and Fitness
Follow your inclinations with diet and exercise
- Use balance when thinking about healthy food choices
- Prioritize health and fitness
- Set and measure fitness goals
- Wear a fitness tracker to count your steps
- Record your lifts and keep track of our PRs
Develop habits and build a routine
Have a strong reason why you 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
- A little planning goes a long way
- Plan and schedule in the small things
- Dedicate an hour a week to planning your week
- Overestimate how long a task will take you
Embrace your natural inclinations
Organizing your life and thoughtfully crafting your habits and routines can quickly become a self-defeating exercise in aspirational living.
- Be realistic about yourself and embrace what you can conceivably commit to for the long haul
- A few different areas where you can lean into your natural state are: If you dislike ironing, buy only clothing in wrinkle resistant materials
- If you hate going to the gym, join a recreational sports team
Find balance
Prioritize long-term sustainability with balance and self-care: avoid overextending yourself and spending too much time on work, prioritize physical activity, try meditation, journalling, or cultivating a gratitude practice, spend time with friends and family, unwind alone with a good movie or book, and avoid all-nighters.
The Organize Your Life Framework
Rules can feel rigid and joyless: do this, not that
- 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
Relationships
Cultivate close relationships with family and friends
Organize Your Travel
Take the stress out of travel with planning
- Create a travel checklist with everything you need to pack
- Experiment with new travel spots
- Ask friends, family, and colleagues for their favorite vacation destinations
- Make “travel” a weekly or monthly habit by being a Tourist in your own city
Work
Represent what most people are actually organizing their lives around
Organize Your Life at Work
Declutter your desk, inbox, and task manager
- Prioritize deep work
- Find opportunities for automation and outsourcing
- Balance work goals with life
- Avoid after-hours emails and team chat messages
- Book regular time off each year for vacations to recharge
Prioritize appropriately
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”.
- Do not confuse importance for urgency
- Know your most important task and prioritize it accordingly
Consistency over perfection
Create realistic plans that fit into your life
- An “all-or-nothing” attitude can cause self-sabotage
- Make consistency a part of your life and get used to imperfection
- By opting for continuous effort towards a realistic aim create more room for everything you want to do in life
Organize Your Life at Home
Build habits for for running a household effectively
- Use a task manager to set up daily, weekly, and monthly recurring tasks
- Declutter your home
- Regularly check your pantry and fridge for old and expired items
- Donate clothing, toys, and books you no longer use
- Automate and outsource errands and chores
Health and Fitness
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.
Organize Your Social Life
Make time for planning social outings
- Redefine what socializing looks like
- Practice consistency with seeing friends and family
- For long-distance relationships, make use of phone calls and video chat to decrease the time between seeing one another
