How To Organize Your Life – The Best Guide (Organization Tips)
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
This is the ultimate guide to learning how to organize your life. Determine your priorities and treat them that way to achieve results!
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Determining how to organize your life requires some introspection into what your true priorities are so you can actually prioritize them by assigning them values in order to build and form habits that will help you to work on them consistently to achieve actual results and stay organized long term.
How To Organize Your Life
So you’re here to organize your life …
“Your life isn’t organized, big deal, right?” Very wrong.
Having a disorganized life isn’t good for you.
As with everything, when you don’t do what you need to do or do things that are bad for you — you get sick.
The strain of stress caused by being disorganized can make you sick — mentally, and even physically.
On top of that …
- Maybe you’re sick of not living up to your potential.
- Maybe you’re sick of feeling scatterbrained.
- Maybe you’re sick of never having anything to do.
- Maybe you feel like you constantly have too much to do.
It is truly exhausting to live a disorganized life.
But I have great news for you.
… It’s fairly simple to organize your life. Not easy, but simple.
Step 1: Determine your priorities, and focus ONLY on your priorities.
Your priorities should really govern your life and be the drivers for how you operate.
It’s nice to want to do a million things — especially if you have ADHD or are just really passionate about a lot of things, but the reality is: that you can’t do everything.
… And often, when we try to we end up accomplishing or pursuing less.
- We get overwhelmed
- We jump from thing to thing
- We get bored
- We never fully master what we want to
Or perhaps you have felt decision paralysis.
What Is Decision Paralysis?
Decision Paralysis occurs when you have multiple things going on all at once (either external or self-inflicted) and are so overwhelmed and don’t know where to start that you feel you can’t do anything.
You’ve probably experienced decision paralysis at one time in your life or another:
- Have you ever been so overwhelmed by a mess you had to clean you didn’t know where to start?
- Have you ever had so much schoolwork piled up you didn’t even know what to start with?
- Have you ever had a stack of papers – maybe mail, bills, to-dos, thank you notes, etc. that you could barely stand to even look at it?
To fight it you have to focus on your next move, not the next 12.
This is one of the biggest reasons people procrastinate.
How Do I Overcome Decision Paralysis?
As with everything, you have to accomplish things one small step at a time.
It’s simple — but don’t brush it off as just that. Simple doesn’t mean easy. And simple is often just as hard.
Let’s start in steps.
Break out a notebook, a piece of paper, your phone’s notes app, etc.
You have to write it down.
Start out by listing out your top, most-important, critical thing you have to do or want to do.
- Maybe you finally want to get in-shape.
- Maybe you need to actually start saving your money.
- Maybe you want to finally organize your home.
The reason I recommend focusing on your TOP priority is because:
You won’t feel good if you don’t focus on your priorities.
Perhaps you have felt this before:
You did Y when you should have done X.
- You won’t feel better.
- You won’t be on the path you want to be on.
- You won’t be satisfied come the end of the year, your next big freak-out, or when it really matters.
Worse: If you accomplished something else that was cool, fun, or interesting, you still won’t feel good because you’ll still be regretful that you didn’t accomplish what you should have been.
You ruin things for yourself when you self-sabotage — which essentially is what that is.
I ONLY say this because it has taken me YEARS of writing down the same goals every new year only to never accomplish them.
After years of saying I DEEPLY want the same things every year without actually working towards them.
Now please remember, I ONLY because I want a different outcome for you 🙂
You absolutely can achieve the things you want and organize your life.
Step 2: Determine Your Secondary Goals | How To Organize Your Life
Your secondary goals are the things you still care about but just aren’t the absolute top priority.
They can be anything. You set the rules. The important thing is to determine for yourself what’s actually important to you.
I recommend no more than 5, but honestly the less the better.
You can only focus on a few things at a time. That’s just life. And if you often find yourself piling on a million things to your to-do list or goals list — it’s not going to help you, it will actually HURT.
You will burn out.
Therefore, please focus on the things that are most important to you.
What you can equate your secondary goals to is your bridesmaids or groomsmen.
They may not be your maid of honor or best man, but they are still highly important people in your life who you have a special connection with and maintain those relationships consistently.
The point is, who’s up there with you? Who do you prioritize?
Step 3: Everything Else And What To Do With It.
Now comes the rest of it. The things that are cool, but not at all priorities.
Maybe they are just interesting hobbies you are considering or ideas for adventures you want to take.
Either way, here’s my recommendation:
If they are still important, totally fine, still pursue them but do not allow them to consume your time, and energy, or give you stress.
If they are too overwhelming you have to mentally let them go.
Not to say you can never pursue them again!!!
Maybe learning French was a cool idea, but maybe you just don’t have enough time to pursue it at this stage of life.
Just understand where they stand — as fun hobbies, as cool ideas …
… purely as potential.
… you can still practice your French every now and again but don’t stress yourself out each week if you haven’t done it.
Letting things go, getting over mental blocks, and giving yourself grace and space is FREEING.
Step 4: Prioritizing Your Priorities
To begin organizing yourself to accomplish all your tasks, you need to make them your priority by treating them like priorities.
How do you treat priorities like your priorities?
By assigning them value:
- Time — you are pledging 10 hours a week to work on your side business.
- Money — you are investing in your fitness by purchasing a gym membership.
- Energy — you are dedicating your energy (even if you have very little sometimes) to working on your photography.
- Discipline — you are pledging yourself to get up early every day for the next 6 months to take that pilates class to get into shape.
- Mental Effort — you have decided to allow yourself to focus your mental energy (even if it can be stressful at times) to work harder at your job to finally get that promotion.
What do you get when you assign things to value such as time, money, and discipline?
Habits.
You are essentially building habits.
Do you see why we start top-down and focus on priorities first? We need to be willing to commit to our goals and what we want in order to achieve it.
What Habits Do I Need To Stay Organized?
We must form habits that support our goals.
That doesn’t mean you have to form unnecessary habits.
- If your goals don’t at all require you to do something, then why would you do them?
- If you don’t have goals and purpose, why are you essentially punishing yourself?
Look, I get stoicism, but stoicism for stoicism’s sake I feel is dissatisfying at a certain point.
“What are you working towards?”
Why Must We Form Habits?
If you don’t form habits — you will feel disorganized and lost and scatterbrained.
You have to be CONSISTENT with your priorities or they won’t be accomplished. Consistency is the only way you can get results.
You don’t get results for nearly anything instantaneously.
- You won’t get results from going to the gym 1 time or once a month.
- You won’t get results from randomly writing 1 page of your novel and then 10 and then none for a year.
- You won’t be able to build real wealth from doing the same mediocre job that doesn’t pay well or give any real bonuses or incentives for 30 years.
By doing things consistently you can achieve the things you want.
What If I Lack Motivation?
Fake it till you make it baby. It sounds crass, but it’s genuinely true.
We all have imposter syndrome to a degree.
“Faking it” or simply starting until you get good or actually know what you are doing is the way to begin. You will feel weird and uncomfortable, but it won’t last forever.
Plus here’s the secret: you get motivated by doing the thing.
You get motivated by working towards your goals.
That’s why starting is often the hardest part!
Step 5: Stay Organized | How To Organize Your Life
How To Stay Organized
You won’t write out your goals one time and be set for life.
Being a person who grows and changes means that your priorities will change.
You have very different goals at age 12, 16, 23, 28, 35, 42, 50, 62, 65, 70 … and on and on.
That’s why consistently checking in on yourself and your wants, needs, interests, etc. is critical.
Why Should I Evaluate My Goals Consistently?
Consistently evaluating your goals shouldn’t be an everyday thing, but it can be as frequently as every week, month, quarter, year, etc.
You need enough time to determine what you want and test it to figure out if it truly is what you want, if it’s possible, and if it’s something you can commit to.
Trial and error is key. Trial and error is just learning.
Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t stick the first time. It doesn’t matter who you are, your personality, your age, etc. Those can be contributors, but it truly does take years for you to get to a place where you are confident and thriving.
Life is about the long game. You will feel good and super positive one day and then the next day things could turn sour, only for the next day after to feel exhilarating.
That’s why you have to set yourself up for success by forming habits that you can COMMIT TO.
Make lists, put lists where you will see them, try things and reject things, and learn more and more.
You’ve absolutely got this.
I don’t care if it’s January 1st or July 1st or Dec 31st — You can start at any time.
Helpful Summary
This post was all about how to organize your life. I hope this provided you with some inspiration, some helpful advice, some perspective, and ultimately whatever value you were looking for!
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Cheers!
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