Uncluttered Oath Take Control Of Your Life By Organizing A Master Plan
If your life is hectic and full of confusion, resolve to get organized in 1996. Organizing techniques eliminate clutter from your life and use time effectively so you accomplish your routine tasks quickly and have more time for leisure activities.
How do you get the control that being organized give you? By learning a few basic simplifying strategies. It doesn’t matter how much money, how much intelligence or how much energy you have. All it takes is knowing and putting into action some simple practical steps.
1. Know what your goals are and where you want to go. In your life and in each day, know what you want to accomplish by the end of it. With that target in mind, you’ll have the basic overall direction in which your activities must be aimed.
2. Clear the clutter that’s in your targeted path. It can be overwhelming just to walk into a home or office that is cluttered, much less try to accomplish anything there. If clutter is a big problems, declutter one space each day. Today your desktop, tomorrow a shelf, the next day a drawer, etc. De-cluttering means getting rid of what is not essential to the activity that is performed in that particular place and controlling the items that are. Control comes by grouping items that belong together.
3. De-clutter mentally, too. Use the same guideline for the clutter you can’t see. If your mind is filled with worries of what to pick up at the grocery store, whose birthday is around the corner, project deadlines and which bills need to be paid, do some mental decluttering. Get rid of what is not concerning the activity at hand. Use a calendar and master list to get bothersome thoughts out of your mind so you can quit worrying about them.
4. Start a master list. Use a bound book (a simple spiral bound notepad will do) to record every item that looms for you to do. Don’t worry about when it has to be done or how large it is initially. List every thought that pops into your head of phone calls to make, projects to complete, tasks to be done. Items on this list will be used to make daily plans.
Prioritize entries to your master plan using a simple 1-2-3 system with most important tasks being #1. Review this list daily to remove completed items and add new tasks that occur.
5. Maintain a calender for future activities. Whenever a date or deadline is mentioned that concerns you, note it in your calendar. If you spend your days at a desk, a desktop style will do, but a thin month-at-a-time style will be more portable and can be carried in a briefcase or tote bag. There are many choices; choose your favorite and put it to work.
6. Plan each day. Thanks to telephones, co-workers, children, etc., it’s often impossible to have complete control of the time and activities of a day.
But, when you plan your days in advance you will lose less time to interruptions and non-important activities and the things that are accomplished will be those that are most important. To plan a day, fill in time commitments from your calendar, then select the most important tasks to be accomplished from your master list. Only include three or four tasks that are very important. It’s difficult to accomplish more than that. If you include more, you’re likely to feel frustrated and burn out on your attempts to get organized. Include some easier tasks like filing and phone calls, as time fillers and for periods when you’re not at your peak.
Each day’s schedule should also include some entries that may not appear to be vitally important at this time, but are important to helping you toward your personal goals (see Step 1).These are the activities that will aid your sense of satisfaction with your day’s progress.
7. Have a daily routine. Don’t try to regiment each and every minute of your day, but do allow a certain block of time for recurring activities. At the office, schedule a time period for working alone to accomplish important projects. Designate a particular time when you meet with your boss or secretary to share information. By having a pattern to your activities, you’re more likely to get to each activity each day and perform it most efficiently.
8. Develop routines for daily activities like paper handling. Each of us has activities that must be done - ranging from personal hygiene to opening mail to returning calls. By streamlining these activities you will be able to zip through them, leaving more time for special projects and working towards your personal goals.
Follow these simple strategies to simplify your life in 1996 and beyond.