I find myself organized in a lot of ways — from my life’s objectives, dreams, career path and progressions, education, etc. But I also find myself de-organized in a lot of things — my desk, my clothing cabinet, my drawer, etc. Come to think of it the things I am not organized are the things just in front of me. These are the day to day things I encounter — the basic things in life.
Do I really need to get these basic things Organized?
Yes. I found out throughout the years when things are organized things are easier to accomplish. Clutter becomes eye sore. This eye sore drain your emotions by making things appear complex, bigger and more difficult to handle. It’s like having a mountain of task right in front of you. This may also cause delay especially when looking for something that is buried right under the pile of things we have. By causing small minor delays everyday it may lead to stress and loss of a large amount of considerable time.
Furthermore, the appearance of unorganized things around us makes the load appear heavier. How about the lost opportunities? I have found discount cards, coupons, and redeemable items having expired a week or two later because they got buried under a pile of paper.
By being organized we free ourselves from chaos, gives us control over situations, gets that extra minute or so everyday from getting the things as soon as we need them, and also showing a good example that everyone may imitate. By getting organized the people around us would usually be compelled by following our leadership since they do not want to be the cause of delay either.
How do I get organized?
I have come up with a three step process on how to go about it. This is simple and easy to follow.
1. Look around you
2. Rank the areas based on the importance on what needs to be organized first
3. Do it one area at a time
What next after getting organized?
After getting organized the next step is staying organized. This is very important because no matter how we organize things we will always go back into a cycle if we do not stay organized. This should be a daily activity for us. Do not wait until there is a pile of things in front of us before we realize we need to get organized. By putting this into our daily activity it becomes part of our system already. The more it gets part of our system the easier we will be able to do it without even noticing the effort we put into getting organized.
Roadblocks to getting organized
On a day to day activity we find ourselves being hampered from our goal of being organized because of a number of reasons:
1. The possibility that it may be forgotten
2. We become mechanical
Often times we do not want to organize ourselves because we might keep the important documents in places that become inaccessible. Worst we may forget them and not be reminded later on the need of these documents. The solution I have for this are:
1. Organize in such as way that the most important documents are the most accessible ones for us.
2. We may keep a calendar to remind us of these document files. I use outlook to oversee these things for me.
3. We may just throw away the least important documents we feel will not be used for the next three years.
4. We may also scan these documents and keep them inside our hard disks.
The next issue is about being mechanical. I have heard a number of times already that the most intelligent people do not have time to organize. Their creativity cannot be hampered by being organized and they need to keep their things just where they are.
Phew, do they realize how much more information they could feed their brains by being organized? Do they realize how much time they could spend from being organized? By saving more time we are able to boost our productivity by using the daily additional time we have in other personal development activities.
Getting organized is something we need to commit ourselves into. It is not easy at start but once we reap the benefits of it we will surely stay organized all the time.
The next time you feel throwing your things around saves you time, think again.
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
