This article is a chapter from my book The Life Actionbook: Tools and Actions for Personal Development. The entire book will eventually be available on this website for free in web format, but if you prefer to read it in ebook or physical formats, you can find The Life Actionbook on Amazon.com (affiliate link).
Your organizational skills are reflected in your reliability and neatness. Well-organized people are more reliable than those of us who leave clutter in our wake. You can count on them to remember appointments and arrive on time. They stay on top of things. They finish what they start before moving their focus to other things. Can people rely on you? How organized are you?
Question 1: How often do you arrive late to appointments? Do you ever miss appointments? Do you arrive unprepared?
Your Answer:
- I have trouble being on time and frequently don’t have time to prepare adequately: 0 points.
- I am late or unprepared occasionally: 1 point.
- I am always on-time and prepared: 2 points.
Question 2: How does your work area look?
Your Answer:
- It’s a war zone. I can never find anything in the mess: 0 points.
- It’s cluttered, but functional: 1 point.
- It’s neat and clean: 2 points.
Question 3: How do your work and personal projects usually go?
Your Answer:
- I rarely finish a project: 0 points.
- Projects occasionally go past deadline or over budget: 1 point.
- Every project I work on is on-time and within budget constraints: 2 points.
Add up all your points and see how you fared:
- 0-2 points: read this article now.
- 3-4 points: come back to this article later.
- 5-6 points: skip this article, you’re good.
The Importance of Organization
People want to understand things. They want to have control. Organizing your possessions is one way to have more understanding and control over your life.
Organization is a form of abstraction. Abstraction is taking a complicated concept and simplifying it. For example, a car has hundreds of parts. Most of the time, you don’t need to think of the individual components of the vehicle. You just refer to the product as a whole. It’s a car.
Organization works the same way. You take a big pile of stuff, separate it all out, and put each item away. Pens go into a pen holder. Office supplies you don’t use every day go into the drawer. Books go onto the bookshelf. You don’t need to worry about each item. You can take solace in the fact that if you need any book, you can find it on the bookshelf. Being organized saves you time because you know where each item should be.
A good organization habit makes it easier to do tasks. Meetings get scheduled with reminders. You know where to find your tools when you need them. You can easily locate any file that a client requests. You know what task you need to do next to complete your project.
It’s all about the systems you put in place to ensure that everything that needs to get done gets done.
Organization Action #1: Do an organization audit. What parts of your workspace, home, and life are the most cluttered? Write down the five areas that you need to organize the most.
Your Time
What do you do now? If you’re organized, you know exactly what you need to do at any given time. Most people are not so organized. Most people spend a lot of time deciding what to do next.
The time you spend between tasks is called overhead. If you want to do more each day, you need to reduce the overhead as much as possible. It might seem like a productivity problem, but it is an organization problem. If you spend a lot of time between tasks, you need to organize your day better.
There are a few ways to make your day more efficient to reduce overhead. One way is batching. Take a task that you do several times a day or several times a week, and consolidate it to fewer times. If you do laundry three times a week, can you do larger loads once or twice a week instead? If you check email throughout the day, can you check it once in the morning and once in the afternoon instead?
Organization Action #2: Make a list of things you do more than once a day. Can you do each of those things only one time a day? Make another list of things you do more than once a week. Can you find a way to do each of those things just once a week?
Another tactic for keeping your schedule manageable is saying no. If you say yes to every request and invitation, your schedule will quickly fill up with other people’s agendas. It will become an unmanageable mess of unproductive meetings, events you don’t want to attend, and tasks assigned to you by others. You will lose focus and miss meetings. Despite considerable efforts, you will become unorganized and unreliable.
There is a place for taking every opportunity that you come across. But once your career is underway and you have clear goals to focus on, you need to say no to anything that will take you off track. As entrepreneur Derek Sivers said, “No more yes. It’s either HELL YEAH! or no.” Fill your schedule with things you’re excited about. Say no to everything else.
Organization Action #3: For every opportunity you come across, ask yourself if you’re excited to do it. If you’re not thinking, “Hell yeah!”, then you should decline the opportunity.
Your Work Area
When you were little, your parents probably nagged you to clean up your toys after you were done playing. They were teaching you a valuable life lesson. You could be as messy as you wanted while you were playing, but once you were done, you had to clean up your mess.
Business researchers have proven it time and again. People working in neat work areas get more work done. The work they do is better. The truth is, your workspace is a reflection of your work.
Creativity is a chaotic process. When you’re in “the zone,” things can get out of hand. Creativity is disorganized, and the act of being creative will lead to a cluttered workspace. That’s okay. But it’s also important to clean up after the creative work is done. If you don’t, the dust will never settle, and the disorganization will continue into your essential non-creative work. It is why many creative people have trouble finishing projects. They let the chaos of initial creation spill into the later phases of their project like design, production, and marketing. When the entire project is a work of chaos, it never gets completed.
Cleaning up your workspace serves as a reset for the project. You can sit back, look at your bare desktop, and start your next work with a clean slate. Literally. It will get messy again, especially when you get inspired. Do your work, clean up the mess, and repeat. Just like when you were little.
Organization Action #4: Clean up your work area after finishing each task. Don’t start the next task until the mess from the previous task is cleaned up.
Your Digital Life
If you are under 25 years old, you’ve probably spent your entire life with the internet. The internet has created an alternate reality that runs parallel with the real world. Chances are, if your real-world life is cluttered and disorganized, your digital life is as well.
How many media files do you have stored on your computer and phone right now? That’s pictures, videos, documents, and audio files. At one point, I had over 20,000 photographs, hundreds of video clips, hundreds of documents, and 2,000 MP3 music files sitting on my computer. I also had over 3,000 bookmarked articles that I was planning on reading eventually. You might have a similar problem with digital clutter. Let’s be honest. I was never going to sort through the almost 30,000 media files sitting on my computer. The solution to the digital clutter problem is not more storage. The answer is better curation.
Fortunately, we have two tools that will tame your digital mess: the 80/20 rule and the cloud.
The 80/20 rule was developed by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto after he observed that about 20% of the peapods in his garden contained about 80% of the peas. Since then, people have found the phenomenon almost everywhere. For our purposes, we can assume that 20% of your media collection will receive 80% of your attention. You will probably not miss the other 80% of your media collection if you simply deleted it.
Organization Action #5: Use the 80/20 rule on your digital files. Go through your files and pick out the 20% that are most important. Archive or delete the rest.
“The cloud” is a fancy term for “internet storage.” You don’t have to store anything on your computer or phone anymore. You can save it to Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, YouTube, Flickr, or any of the other myriad of cloud storage platforms out there. That means I could store my 30,000 media files on the cloud and delete them from my hard drives.
The magic happens when we use the 80/20 rule together with the cloud. I can think of two approaches:
Organization Action #6: Back up all of your files to the cloud. Then go through and delete 80% of them from your hard drive. That way you never really delete anything, but you have your most important files physically stored on your device (and also backed up).
Organization Action #7: Go through your media files and choose the best 20% to back up to the cloud. This way you also don’t delete any files, but the most important ones are backed up in cloud storage.
Your Projects
If you want your projects to succeed, you need to organize them well from the beginning. Planning is crucial. A project with no clear starting point, path, or goal cannot succeed.
When planning a new project, start with the end in mind. What product do you want to have after all the work is done? Once you know that, you can start working backward to define the project’s path and the starting point.
Define the goal of your project. What are your expectations? When is the deadline? What is your budget? Who are the stakeholders, what resources do you need, and who do you need to hire? Come up with a name for your project.
After your goals and expectations are worked out, you need to come up with an execution plan. What needs to get done before you can reach your goal? For this portion of the planning, you may want to brainstorm with other people involved in your project.
Break down the goal into several small tasks. Assign due dates for each job to be completed. What are the milestones and when should you reach each of them? Can you break each task into todo lists of even smaller tasks? If you’re working with other people, make sure each person knows their role and associated deadlines.
Once you know your goals and how to get there, the final planning step involves getting started and receiving feedback. How will your team communicate with one another? How often will meetings occur? How will team members be held accountable? What happens if there are problems or delays?
Organization Action #8: Get a pencil and paper. Brainstorm your next project. Answer all the questions above. Write down whatever comes to your head. The act of getting your ideas down on paper will help define your project and provide a clear path for moving forward.
Organization Action #9: Plan for disaster. Have a separate brainstorming session to plan for obstacles. Every project will hit some snag along the way. List everything that could go wrong, then write down some solutions for each problem.
Hacks
Organization Action #10: Use the 43 Folders System. It is a tickler file system that consists of using a filing cabinet with 43 folders to get through your work. You can learn more about it from the YouTube video, How to Create and Use the 43 Folders System (www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG0FU_M_YB8).
Organization Action #11: Use mind mapping to organize your thoughts into a cohesive document. A mind map a picture you draw on paper with each of your ideas from brainstorming. Start by drawing the main topic in the center of your paper and circling it. Write down every thought you have and draw a line coming out of the part of the map that inspired that thought. For more details on drawing mind maps, watch How to Mind Map with Tony Buzan (www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Y4pIsXTV0)
Organization Action #12: Use the 1-3-5 Rule. Each morning when you wake or on the night before, write down your one biggest task for the day. Then write down three small tasks that you would like to complete. Then write down five other tasks that are not as important, but would be nice to complete if you have time. Start your day by doing the biggest task. Don’t move to the other tasks until your biggest task is complete. Then work on your three smaller tasks and don’t move on to the other five until those three are complete.
Organization Action #13: If you’re working with a team, make sure everyone uses the same software. It’s a pain in any organization if people are using different software apps. Get everyone on the same page with the same software: word processors, messaging apps, and project apps. Not only should the software be the same, but everyone should also run the same versions.
Organization Action #14: Use desktop organizers. The saying, “a place for everything, and everything in its place” applies here. Make sure everything in your work area has a place, whether it be a box, a drawer, or a designated spot on the desktop. When you work, always put things back where they belong after you’re done with them.
Organization Action #15: Use group file storage. Have storage space in the cloud where the entire team can access the work files. Doing that will remove the need for having a mess of different versions of the same files scattered all over the network.
Supplements
As you might have guessed, there are no supplements you can take to improve your organization skills or to tidy up your office for you. However, organization extends to all areas of life. A disorganized person can become disorganized with the supplements they take. You can quickly go crazy with supplements. Some supplements are best taken on an empty stomach, while others on a full stomach. Others require timing intervals between doses throughout the day.
One way to keep your supplements in order is to simplify. Instead of keeping track of ten different pills, see if you can take combination supplements.
Organization Action #16: Take multivitamins. For those who don’t have the time or desire to research supplements, multivitamins are an excellent choice. According to Labdoor (www.labdoor.com), the best multivitamins are:
- Garden of Life Vitamin Code for Men
- Garden of Life Vitamin Code Perfect Weight
- Nature’s Way Alive Max Potency Multivitamin
- Rainbow Light Men’s One
- Garden of Life Vitamin Code for Women
Organization Action #17: Eat nutrition bars. Replace your pantry full of sweet and salty snacks with boxes of protein bars. They are much healthier snacks than a bag of potato chips or cookies. Labdoor recommends these five protein bars
- Quest Bar
- Premier Protein
- RXBAR
- thinkThin High Protein Bars
- MET-Rx Protein Plus Bar
Organization Action #18: Take meal replacements. Rather than throwing together a rushed meal at home or having junk food on the go, try a meal replacement. Labdoor recommends these:
- Vi-Shape
- Herbalife Formula 1
- Vega One All-in-One Shake
- Labrada Lean Body
- Soylent
Tools
Organization Action #19: Manage your projects with software. The internet has changed the way we organize our work. Sure, we can manage projects the old-fashioned way with paper and secretaries. But that’s time-consuming, tedious, and results in stacks of paperwork that nobody wants to look through. In this regard, technology has made life easier. These days, we have project management software. Here are some of the more popular choices:
- Asana (www.asana.com) is a web and mobile application that helps teams track projects from start to finish.
- Trello (www.trello.com) is a web-based project management application that uses boards, lists, and cards to help teams collaborate, organize, and prioritize projects.
- Basecamp (www.basecamp.com) a web-based project management tool that features to-do lists, milestone management, forum-like messaging, file sharing, and time tracking to organize projects all in one place.
- Zoho (www.zoho.com) is an online office suite featuring more than 35 separate applications for running your projects.
- Google Workspace (workspace.google.com) is a set of cloud computing apps developed by Google. It includes Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Google+, file storage, document editing, spreadsheets, slides, forms, websites, and interactive whiteboard.
- Microsoft Office (www.office.com) is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft for creating, communicating, and collaborating on projects.
- Slack (www.slack.com) is a powerful collaboration tool that allows people to share messages, conversations, and files.
Organization Action #20: Use digitization tools. The paperless office used to be a dream. Today, the dream has come true. It is finally possible to have a truly paperless office. You need a computing device connected to office software like Microsoft Office or Google G Suite. You also need either a scanner or smartphone to digitize documents. On smartphones, Evernote (www.evernote.com) is a popular app that helps you digitize your documents.
Organization Action #21: Use a file cabinet and folders. If you work better on paper, go with the time-tested organization approach. Get a file cabinet with hanging folders. Label your folders and keep all your documents organized. You can even use the 43 Folders System (described in Organization Action #10) to keep your work files in order.
Organization Action #22: Use a desktop organizer. If your desktop is often cluttered, you need a desktop organizer. A desktop organizer creates a place for each item on your desk so you can quickly find things while you work and clean up after you work. Search “desktop organizer” on your favorite online retailer’s website to see the possibilities. Or if you have some money to spend, check out the modular system developed by Ugmonk (www.ugmonk.com/gather).
Organization Action #23: Use a calendar. Get a physical or virtual calendar. The benefit of a physical desk calendar is that it is always in sight so you can see your day’s tasks at a glance. Virtual calendars are useful for editing your schedule from anywhere and setting up reminders to alert you of appointments.
Organization Action #24: Use cloud apps. Cloud storage apps keep your files on the internet so you can access them from anywhere and from any device. Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) and Google Drive (drive.google.com) are two popular choices.
Resources
Organization Action #25: Listen to organization podcasts:
- Organize 365, with Lisa Woodruff, supplies home organization tips, strategies, and motivation.
- Organize Your Life, with Clutter Coach Claire, provides ideas so you can get organized and stay that way.
- Project Management for the Masses Podcast, with Cesar Abeid, helps project managers take their lives and careers to new levels.
- The Minimalists Podcast, with Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, discusses living a meaningful life with less.
- Optimal Living Daily, with Justin Malik, features audio articles on personal development, minimalism, productivity, and more.
Organization Action #26: Read books on organization:
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo.
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown.
- Real Life Organizing: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day, by Cassandra Aarssen.
- Sink Reflections: Overwhelmed? Disorganized? Living in Chaos? Discover the Secrets That Have Changed the Lives of More Than Half a Million Families, by Marla Cilley
- Simplify, by Joshua Becker
Organization Action #27: Read blogs on organization:
- No Sidebar (www.nosidebar.com) is a blog about getting rid of the excess and focusing on the essentials.
- Be More With Less (www.bemorewithless.com) is about simplifying your life and really living through decluttering and focusing on the best things.
- IHeart Organizing (www.iheartorganizing.com) is run by a mother of three, who shares tips on maintaining an orderly home despite a busy family life.
- Unclutterer (www.unclutterer.com) is a website for home and office organization featuring tips, organization strategies, product reviews, reader questions, and more.
- Creating Mary’s Home (www.creatingmaryshome.com) offers advice for creating happier, more peaceful, more functional homes.
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