Life Lessons: How to Organize Your Life

Life is full of ups and downs and sometimes the instability may leave you feeling like you’ve lost direction. While there are many reasons why your life may feel unsteady and purposeless, disorganization could be the main culprit. So, the first step you need to take is to learn how to organize your life. This article offers you genuine life lessons to help you organize your life.

How to Organize Your Life: 33 Tips

Organizing your life can at times feel like you’re a deft juggler, trying to strike a balance between competing priorities and catching moving targets. As you move to catch one target – say a healthy relationship with your fiancé, finances, or business – the next one is racing toward you. Sadly, some targets end up hitting the ground.

For instance, you might end up failing to prioritize sleep, eating fast foods, or end up overlooking important occasions in your life like your wedding anniversary, your fiancé’s birthday, etc. due to tight deadlines. Unfortunately, life isn’t a juggling act, where you simply throw important tasks and commitments up in the air hoping that you’ll somewhat succeed to catch all of them.

You have to organize your life by creating a well-structured framework that will keep your whole life orderly. Here are tips on how to organize different areas of your life.

How to Organize Your Mind

You need to realize that your mind is a powerful tool that determines the direction that your life takes. Your current mindset could be the main reason why you’re not achieving your goals. So, before you start organizing any other area of your life, organize your mind. Here are simple ways to organize your mind.

1. Journaling

Journaling helps you to organize your thoughts as well as your overall state of mind. It’ll improve your memory, make you more creative, accelerate healing, improve your mood, and help you to overcome trauma. By journaling consistently, you’ll find it easy to figure out what you need to do professionally, what you need more in your life, and where most of your energy is getting wasted.

Journaling will open your eyes and help you to see where your life ought to go. With a simple journal, you can organize your thoughts, figure out your priorities, discover what’s holding you back, eliminate bad habits, recognize mental obstacles that prevent you from realizing your dreams, and turn your internal detractor into your lead cheerleader.

2. Create a Realistic Plan for Personal Development

Everybody needs a well-thought-out personal development plan. This plan will serve as your roadmap to achieving the life you desire. So, before you start organizing your house and business, you need to design your personal development plan.

This plan will open your eyes, remind you of your priorities and objectives, and motivate you to continue pursuing your dreams. Once you have the plan in place, make you follow it religiously and review it periodically to reflect on your achievements and failures. It’s important to review your goals regularly to know if you’re making progress and to see where you need to improve.

How to Organize Your Time

Time is the most important resource that we all have. No matter how huge or small your bank balance is, you have time. So, once you’ve organized your mind, the next course of action should be to organize your time. Here are some useful tips to help you organize this vital resource.

3. Creating a Routine

Instead of performing your daily chores haphazardly, you should create a routine that will help you to organize the tasks in a more orderly manner. This will help you to learn how much time each task takes so that you can find a way to complete more tasks within a short time. That way, you’ll have more time left for you to do other things like going back to school or socializing.

4. Schedule Your Workout

Regular exercise offers numerous physical, mental, and health benefits. Working out consistently will improve your physical appearance, clear your mind, boost your self-confidence, and improve your self-discipline. When your mental health improves, you’ll be able to make more rational decisions that will turn your life around.

By scheduling your workouts, you’re able to follow the routine religiously, which translates to impressive results. Whether you do weight lifting, jogging, walking, dancing, aerobics, or yoga, create a schedule that you can follow without fail.

5. Create Lists

With everything that’s going on in your life, it’s easy to forget some important things like shopping, special occasions, and daily chores. That’s why you need to create lists for everything you have to do, including to-do lists, shopping lists, birthday gift idea lists, things you’re grateful for lists, etc.

That way, you’ll give your brain enough space to focus on other important things instead of remembering mundane things like shopping and birthday gifts. This trick may seem simple but it’ll help you to organize your life.

6. Develop Time Blocks

Aside from creating a list of everything you need to do every day, you need to create time blocks before you go to bed. You can use Google Calendar for this. It may not be the most interesting thing you do before bed but it’ll help you organize the next day.

It also creates a sense of order in your life, especially when life happens and things don’t go according to plan. You just need to appreciate the amount of time it takes to complete various tasks so that you can create a time block for each.

7. Track Your Time

You need to know how you’re spending every second and every minute of your time so that you don’t waste too much time on mundane things. Fortunately, there are many free apps that can help you track your time and daily activities. By tracking your time, you’ll easily identify areas of your life that you can improve on.

8. Organize Your Projects

You can simplify your life by organizing your projects. With free project management tools like Trello and Asana, you can manage all your tasks, ensuring that nothing important falls through the cracks. You’ll always finish your work on time and even become more productive.

9. Pay Close Attention to Processes

Once in a while, take a minute to analyze important procedures and processes in your life. For instance, try to understand the steps you take to accomplish certain tasks. That way, you’ll know what works for you and identify areas of your life that you can improve on. As you analyze each process, think about ways to optimize it so you can complete it in less time.

10. Create Your Own Systems

Instead of following other people’s organizational systems, you should create your own. This helps you to recognize what works for you, what you like, and what doesn’t work. Fortunately, there are many free tools that you can use to create your systems. You should experiment with different organizational systems until you discover the one that’s right for you.

11. Set Alarms

Modern life has become so hectic that people no longer have enough sleep. For instance, if you work two or three jobs, you have to plan your time properly to avoid getting late. In that case, you need to set an alarm before you sleep to avoid oversleeping.

Alarms also help you to wake up early so that you have enough time to plan your day. However, make sure you get enough sleep every night to avoid the serious physical and psychological problems caused by lack of sleep. You can do this by setting a realistic sleeping schedule and following it dutifully.

12. Set Deadlines

If you don’t set deadlines for yourself, you’ll end up spending too much time on one task. It’s easier to set deadlines for your daily tasks so that you can complete as many tasks as possible. However, the deadlines you set should be realistic to avoid disappointment and shoddy work.

How to Organize Your Workspace

13. Keep Your Documents and Projects Organized

If your work involves handling many documents, you should keep them organized by putting them in marked folders. Then create one large folder for each project that will carry the smaller folders with the respective documents. It makes it easier for you to access important documents quickly to save time.

14. Have a Pen Holder

Instead of leaving your pens scattered all over your desk, you should get a simple pen holder to help you keep them in one place. Since you don’t need dozens of pens, a small pen holder with a capacity of three or four pens is enough. You can even turn your old coffee mug into a pen holder.

15. Design a Weekly Planner

Your weeks become easier when you plan them in advance. With a simple weekly planner, you’ll have all your weekly tasks clearly indicated in the order of their urgency. This planner could be a journal or a calendar to remind you of upcoming tasks and occasions.

How to Organize Your Digital Life

16. Unsubscribing from Inactive Email Lists

Many people have formed a habit of deleting emails they’re not interested in even before they read them. Others leave them unread in their inboxes. Instead of doing this, you should unsubscribe from the email lists you’re no longer interested in. It’ll save you a lot of time because you don’t have to sort through too many unnecessary emails.

17. Unfollow or Unfriend Those Aren’t Useful to You

In this digital era, you can follow and be followed by all manner of people, some of whom add little or no value to your life. While everybody wants to have as many followers as possible, sometimes it’s good to keep your circles well-organized. This means unfollowing people who don’t bring value or meaning to your life.

18. Empty Your Folders Regularly

You need to tidy up your devices once in a while by emptying the folders. This prevents your devices from becoming slow due to too many redundant files.

19. Store Your Documents Online

Instead of having heaps of paper documents on your desk, you should convert them into digital files and store them on the cloud. Fortunately, there are many online platforms where you can store your documents for free, including Google Drive and Dropbox.

20. Reorganize Your Device

If you use certain websites, applications, or folders regularly, you should make them easily accessible on your device.

How to Organize Your Home

A messy surrounding will mess up your mind. Therefore, keep your home organized using these tips.

21. Put Everything in Its Rightful Place

Before you purchase any home appliance or fixture, identify the perfect place for it in your house. This might require you to seek advice from an interior designer.

22. Don’t Leave Your Bed Unkempt

Many people have a habit of leaving their beds messy when they wake up. At first, this behavior may seem insignificant but it’ll eventually catch up with you. Leaving your bed unkempt shows how disorganized you’re. So, always make your bed the moment you wake up.

23. Store Your Food Items in Transparent Containers

When everything in your kitchen is clearly visible, your culinary routines become easier and faster. It also helps you to know when certain food items are about to run out so that nothing catches you unaware.

24. Label Your Containers

This keeps all your containers and boxes organized to avoid using the wrong food items. Everyone in your house will know where to find what they need without opening every box and container.

25. Do the Dishes the Moment You Use Them

Stop leaving your dirty dishes in the sink for hours. You should wash them immediately after you use them so that they don’t pile up in your kitchen sink.

How to Organize Your Meals

26. Always Have an Updated Grocery Shopping List

This list will remind you what you need to buy before it runs out. It also makes your shopping errands easy and accurate because it contains everything you need to buy.

27. Track Your Consumption

It’s important to have a record of the amount of food you consume every day so that you only buy what you can use within a specific period to avoid wastage.

28. Plan Every Meal

Planning your meals in advance helps you to gather all the necessary items before you start cooking. It also allows you to broaden the variety of your meals.

29. Do Weekly Shopping

Grocery shopping every other day can be time-consuming and expensive. The best thing is to designate one day of the week to get what you need for the whole week.

How to Organize Your Finances

30. Track Your Income and Expenditure

Every finance expert will tell you that you should never spend more than you earn. The only way to know if you’re spending your money wisely is to track all your incomes and expenditures. Luckily, there are many free apps that you can use to organize your finances.

31. Start Saving

No matter how much money you earn, always save a portion of it. If you don’t know how to save, talk to a finance expert for guidance. They’ll help you come up with a sustainable savings plan.

How to Organize Your Free Time

32. Create a List of Things to Do in Your Free Time

If you love watching movies, create a list of movies you would like to watch in your free time. And if you love to travel, have a list of places you want to visit. You should also have a list of restaurants you want to try and books you want to read.

33. List Your Hobbies

You’ll be surprised to learn that some people don’t know their hobbies. Don’t be like them. Having a list of hobbies will save you the hassle of wondering what you want to learn or discover next.

Ground Rules for Organizing Your Life

Organizing your life isn’t a walk in the park. It requires consistency and discipline. Here are some important ground rules to guide you.

• Start Small

Doing little is better than doing nothing at all. So, start small and build on the little achievements you make every day. For instance, you should start by doing some organizational work for 10 to 20 minutes a day. Eventually, this practice will become a habit.

• Don’t Complicate Things

Don’t make the process of organizing your life more difficult than it has to be. For instance, you don’t need to start by undertaking a huge organizational task. Just analyze your life and identify the easiest tasks you can accomplish before you move to the harder part.

• Evaluate Your Feelings

Constantly evaluate your feelings to know if the changes you’re making are having a positive impact on your life. This will also motivate you to continue organizing your life.