Get Your Life Together: Principles for Becoming Organized
As a college student, I learned very quickly that your room is a visual reflection of your current state of mind. Just imagine what a college dorm room looks like during finals week: random things all over the place with dust and crumbs for decor. Organization (or lack of) has a direct impact on your ability to perform, your mood, and your stress level. If your physical environment is disorganized, it will be difficult for you to feel motivated and find what you need to accomplish tasks. If you do not manage your time effectively, you’ll miss deadlines and the few tasks you complete will be subpar. You need organization to make the most efficient use of your time and space.
Becoming organized can be challenging at first but the overall clarity and ease it adds to your lifestyle is worth the effort. Here are four principles I follow to stay organized:
- Prioritize: Whether it’s physical objects, or habits, the first step towards becoming organized is to eliminate anything that isn’t useful or essential. Ask yourself if that thing, activity, or behavior adds value to your life; if it doesn’t, then it is keeping you from focusing on what really matters. Thoroughly and continuously analyze your environment, activities, and goals and establish priorities. Without prioritization, there can be no organization.
- Make room for priorities: Designate a specific area or time for all of your priorities. Space and time are fixed; how you structure things will determine whether or not these two things work in your favor. You don’t find a place for your desk, you make room for it by re-arranging all of your belongings. You don’t find time to exercise, you make time for exercise by re-arranging your schedule. Always make your priorities your center of focus.
- Don’t let things “sit” for more than 5 minutes: It is very easy to say “I’ll get that done later” when you are swamped with major projects and responsibilities, but without you realizing it, that procrastination becomes a habit. Procrastination means accumulation; the longer you put it off, the more challenging and time-consuming the task will become. If you have a major deadline coming up, start working on it immediately; if you are finished having dinner, wash the dishes in a timely manner. Develop a habit of starting things promptly.
- Be flexible: it is very important to remember that one should be organized but not obsess about organization. Keeping your schedule, house, or office organized does not mean that you cannot show any signs of having a social life. Structure is needed to be more efficient with our time and space but rigid structure can squelch creativity, block opportunities, and cause anxiety. Things come up that make our plans and priorities change; adjusting to your changing needs, wants, environment, and responsibilities will allow you to stay organized and achieve your goals while new things come flying at you.
It takes creativity to design the structure and develop the plans that will move you from your current standpoint to where you want to be. My form of organization may, and probably will, look very different from yours. We all have different priorities, goals, and styles of living; create the environment and structure that work best for you.
