How being more organised helped me
Have you been thinking about being a little more productive? Wanting to get more time back? Or worse — do you feel inundated, overwhelmed and maybe lost? I had all these thoughts and feelings at some point and can empathise. If you would like to see how someone got a little more organised or want to compare notes — this is my experience and hopefully it is of some use to you.
Why I decided to do this
Organisation was never my strong point; for quite a lot of my life being disorganised was a badge of honour. Supposedly being disorganised is a sign of intelligence; this potential kudos led to a self-affirming loop, probably with a bit of ego involved in all honesty, to maintain my disorganisation. However, I was struggling to keep pace with the demands on me which created tension and stress. Eventually, with this stress some self-reflection and self-awareness began to creep in, forcing me to ask some uncomfortable questions.
Tension and reflection began to change my awareness; my focus changed and it was clear I had a problem. After reading the ideas of Peter Drucker in the Effective Executive, a new perception began to dawn. This is an insightful book, worth reading and regularly referring to. His pithy ideas were simple; the importance of knowing where my time goes, which can only be understood by measuring it, and where I spent my time was not what I had thought. This was profound and a major insight. Where does my time go? Now my awareness and focussed moved to figuring this out and stop the time haemorrhage.
Initially it was a gradual shift, I began to see a little more, and then with some immediacy, insight hit me like an anvil. I saw a whole new perspective — I was completely wrong and my disorganisation was not a badge of honour, it was milestone around my neck dragging me down. Something needed to be done and my perspective and behaviours needed to change. I needed to change.
My time was wasting away on trying to find things; remember things — many ideas irretrievably forgotten; I was struggling to articulate and form an argument or have a logic, my ability to structure was gone. This was because I was not writing a basic plan for what I was doing. I was losing important dates and failed to meet deadlines. I lack a consistency and coherency in my actions and work. Things were shoddy simply because I was trying to catch up. Eventually things were tangential and the most important things were not focussed on, written down or reviewed. It was like I was always starting again, because I could not follow on from where I left off, and relied to much on my failing memory.
Before continuing, to be very clear I have not converted to a hyper-organised individual. I do not manage my time to 5-minute intervals or undertake any of the extreme productivity rituals or practices. I am a human being and not that organised — I still have many challenges in this regard. However, I have improved, and these improvements were not particularly difficult or complicated.
This is the important point of this article; some small changes had a major effect. The point is that now my organisation is not a major concern that will hold my progress back; it is not a form of self-sabotage. Another major message is about getting the self-awareness to see where things have gone wrong and being willing to appreciation the costs and consequences of certain behaviours. Much of the improvement was in the mindset change; it came from an open acceptance of the costs I am paying and the consequential benefits of change. This is all related to forming and developing habits — developing a set of new habits.
The costs and benefit
When measuring time it became clear that, as expected, there was a massive difference between how I spent my time and how I thought I spent my time. It was amazing to note how much time can be lost to just trying to look for keys, glasses and papers that you know you have and cannot remember where. Chopping and changing between things brought about a significant amount of lost time trying to pick up from where I had previously stopped. I did not realise the amount of time that was lost doing such things. The measurement of my time, by simply using a pen and paper became important. I could roughly say what I did and at what time. It was not hard — but it did involve discipline and the willing to see and accept an answer that I was not going to like.
I was becoming clear; there was the dawning realisation was how much time my disorganisation cost me. Also, how much time was lost in how I approach things. I realised that multitasking is toxic, it looks smart on paper, but the time losses doing the multitasking — having to pick-up, re-read and re-assess work, where my focus kept changing caused an overall quality decline and time wasted trying to address these. It was also stressful because the constant change was a cognitive burden.
The realisation was not that I needed hyper-organised and hyper-time management approaches. I just needed to understand the major flaws that I was accepting for the first time, and put simple systems in place to overcome them. It was important to be simple so that I can commit to them easily and follow them and that they did not consume too much time.
The insight was that in addition to the original badge of honour, I assumed that the time to get organised would take away from the time to do things. More importantly, organisation for its own ends is just another was of time. If it takes up too much time to be organised, then the time lost because of a lack of organisation, is now replaced with the time lost being organised. This I feel may be what hyper-organised people who fail to see the bigger picture miss — their organisation may be holding them back because the effort to organise outweighs the waste in time.
This was the balance that I needed to get right.
Some insights
What I was starting to see was that there was a psychological aspect going on here. Namely, I did not appreciate organisation. It was less about being lazy, it was about not seeing it as a time saving. Having to organise at the start takes time, and what I was missing was seeing the benefit and time saving. All I was seeing was the time I was losing. It was important to start to see the time I could reclaim.
For instance, when I started having meaningful folder names and saving things on computers and memory sticks, I could see some saved time. I could remember how long it took to look through all the doc1, doc2…. trying to find the document that I needed. I started to see progress from the time lost looking for things.
Although this seems repetitive, it was in the measurement of my time I began to see the trade-off. Small things like the above were making a difference. More importantly hyper organisation did not matter. If all my pencils and pens were somewhere I could see and easily find, that was enough. If I had labels on books and maybe an index, I could find things. If I kept files with meaningful names in folders and folder structures with meaningful names and sensible paths, this was enough. The perfect name was not important; agonising over organisation and pedantry was a waste of time. What mattered was simply that I could find things and pick them up easily.
Just doing these small things gave back measurable time. I could see the time saving by how long it took to do something. The fact that I could see a tangible improvement also gave a sense of encouragement and engagement.
The less used and less important things could be labelled and stuck somewhere. If I had a few boxes, some of the less read papers and books could be put there. If it was labelled and the box labelled it would save some time if I needed to look for them. The level of organisation was less important as these were used less. If it did not take too long to find putting something in cupboard with a label on it, that was enough. I did not need to sort things alphabetically or anything else more complicated — I would not use it enough to warrant this. This was the trade-off, just making it easy for myself.
It was the realisation of this level of pragmatism that helped, and this was key in forming the habit. It was uncovering the cost and seeing the benefit that I could find a pragmatic solution that took a minimal amount of time and removed most of the pain. Not all the disorganisation needed to be removed — just the major pains that held me back; anything too complex or time consuming for things used or done less often that caused little pain could be ignored. My personal view is that pragmatism is crucial for habits and being able to understand and make appropriate trade-offs and see consequences clearly — ideally through uncomfortable personal experience.
Next, I realised that part of organisation is planning. A key point was that technology is not a panacea, it is a tool. If I cannot plan my time then the best planning tools will still give a garbage plan. I needed to make a good estimate of what is important and how much time it should take or have good goals. These are crucial in making a good plan.
Moreover, planning involves having priorities. Having a really long list in which more is added at the end is not having priorities. It just leads to a mess. Having a long to do list is unhelpful. It just leads to increased stuff being programmed in the plan and falling increasingly behind, and eventually burn out. It helps to have a clear small set of goals and priorities and having the focus on these. Just including these in the plan and being realistic about the time these will actually take, is the crucial point. Being realistic on how long things take is a hard skill and habit, and crucial to get anything done. Cutting things off the plan that are not a priority is also a hard skill that in necessary to get stuff done.
Before I changed, I found having a long list daunting and did not know how I would get through them, and things fell of the list which in many cases were the most important things to do. Seeing things fall of the list was hard, and it does take an emotional toll leading to a feeling of discouragement. However, when I changed to having only a small list to focus on, things became far more manageable, and list fatigue that I had previously started to disappear.
Now with a small prioritised list this can be put on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. It can be put in front of me to make it easy to refer to. Being smaller, it was less psychologically scary and it became easier to see what to tick-off. I would not say it was easy, but it made me engage with things more and become more energised with it. Having a list that I knew why I need to do them and just focussing on these each day really helped. I was now much more committed to what I was trying to do, and felt my plan was achievable.
Now with a realistic and a manageable plan technology can also help. What I found was that Windows has a free calendar app, a free Google account has a calendar app and these can be linked together so that they communicate. Also, an .ics file is the universal calendar file format that most calendar and email software can read. You can also create and send .ics files to others for meeting and events. How to do this depends on your calendar app, but you can look up how to do it on Google. Just send it to people in an email and they can use it with whatever software they have. Also, if someone is sending you an invite, ask them to create one for you. This just makes it easier to share meetings.
One of the advantages of an electronic calendar was in shaping my day. It is not about just writing things down on a calendar; like alerts, but also it is broken down in time. I can look at my day with the different pieces needing to do and plan the day. I now have a realistic idea of the amount of time I have and what I need so I can just fit things in. With meetings and events, I could just plan around them. It was amazing looking at it where I could place my time on the calendar and just see the day unfold. I could organise and arrange things in time blocks to make things much easier.
This also made it easier to plan things out when a new invite comes. I can see what I must do for the say and see if I could shuffle things around. I can see quickly what I can take on and what I cannot. I can also see a conference and book the time out. I can use this to shuffle all the other things around. I plan events and meetings far in advance, but not necessarily the work that I want to do, because I cannot see that far into the future.
So, every week it helped to do a little planning for that week. It takes me about 15–20 minutes on a Sunday evening. This quick bit of planning brings a lot of benefits, as during the week I know exactly what I should be doing and when I should be doing it. It saved a lot of time as I did not have to try and figure out what I should be doing, and chopping and changing throughout the day.
I also realised that blocking time off was important. Replying to email or messages immediately is not helpful, it can swallow up the day. Blocking some time off every day for emails and just answering them during this period can really save time. It stops having a constant barrage dominating my time and focus. Many people have issues with social media, and this approach works equally as well.
Messages and comments do not need to be replied to immediately. Just having some time put aside and focussing on it during that period frees up a lot of time. It stops it encroaching on the time dedicated for other things. Same for a smartphone. They can be put aside and only looked at during specified time periods. Things do not need to be given up; it just takes discipline to only look at them at fixed periods during the day.
My memory is fallible, and a lot of good ideas were falling through the cracks because I did not write them down. Insight, discussions etc., phone numbers. Having lots of things on scraps of paper can easily get lost. Now I try and carry and use a notebook where possible to write everything down. It makes it a lot easier and over time carrying one becomes a habit. But scraps of paper sometimes must be done and I have an index card holder box to put them in there for safe keeping. I can go over it every so often and pull out the important bits and get rid of the unimportant stuff. Having the box ensures that things will not get lost.
This was a major insight — I was retaining information better. But I needed to put sometime aside to review it, otherwise why keep it? I had to only record the most important things so that I could come back to them. This minimises the time spent. But also setting some time aside, I try a few times a year to go over the note books and scraps, puts the information back in my mind. Also, I can get rid of what I do not need.
I would like to be able to say I had all the answers, and everything came to me in an instant. But the real process did not happen that way. It started with the insight that something was wrong. Then the time I was wasting became apparent which engaged my thinking and it was clear I had to change. But how?
This is where things get a little cloudy. Really, it was about trial and error; what could I do to improve my time loss? I tried many different methods, and then realised from the outcomes that what seemed to work and what did not. Ultimately, it just took discipline specifically to experiment and when a good approach was identified to stick with it. In the end I realised that the point is to do things that make sense to me. It is my time and it must be something that helps save time. It is about doing the easiest and obvious thing to make my life simpler and not waste time.
Wrapping-up
Finally, this may all sound very easy and like common sense. In some ways it is, but it requires discipline. I will admit, I do not always follow through on every one of these items, but I try. I also keep with it after I fall. Being human involves frailties and failures. Nonetheless, I kept with it and it is becoming increasingly a habit.
I found significant time benefits in doing these things, and I feel in control; there is no longer feeling of being overwhelmed. There is a lot less stress when focussing on one thing and not having the added complication of desperately trying to find the needed information. Giving myself enough time to do things by planning better really makes things less stressful and I can concentrate much better.
Yes, it takes discipline, but the amount of time returned, if pragmatic, is more than you would imagine. Just having a time block for emails, smartphones and social media during the day gives so much time back. You do not have to give them up which for many people is unrealistic, it is just about limiting the time spent to specific periods during the day and focussing on other things undisturbed for the rest of the time. It will be surprising how this small change gives back so much time.
Many of these items have paid real benefit, but each one will give some benefits if just stuck with. I found being pragmatic and just taking small steps have made a massive impact on my time and productivity. Even when I am not as disciplined as I should be there are still benefits, and I can get back into the groove; it is not all or nothing. Also, it does not take a lot of time and effort to do; these are just some small things that are easy to do and pay benefit.
Finally, this is not about being hyper-productive or living in a masqueraded vision of perfection. This is not about feeling bad about not meeting aspirational lifestyles. This is about small actionable steps that give clear benefits that can be seen quickly. What works for me may not work for you and vice versa. That is not important, what is important is finding what works for you and it will take some trial and error. But if you just try, find the right trade-offs for you, you are likely to find some major benefits. Then it is about the discipline to stick with them. Good luck to you.
I hope this has been of some benefit to you. If it has, please feel free to leave a comment below.
