Keeping life organized often feels like a juggling act. Instead of throwing life’s tasks in the air in hopes you’ll somehow manage to catch them all, follow a framework to keep every area of your life in order. The result is getting more done while feeling less stressed.
The Organize Your Life Framework
- Rules can feel rigid and joyless: do this, not that
- In reality, following a set of guidelines in life can be freeing
- When we have a predetermined set of ways we aim to act, we limit the analysis paralysis that comes with choice and the agony that flows from indecision
Develop habits and build a routine
- Have a strong reason why you want to develop a certain habit
- Once you have the habits you want in your life, assemble them in a daily routine that keeps you productive
- A little planning goes a long way
- Plan and schedule in the small things
- Dedicate an hour a week to planning your week
- Overestimate how long a task will take you
Embrace your natural inclinations
- Organizing your life and thoughtfully crafting your habits and routines can quickly become a self-defeating exercise in aspirational living.
- Be realistic about yourself and embrace what you can conceivably commit to for the long haul
- A few different areas where you can lean into your natural state are: If you dislike ironing, buy only clothing in wrinkle resistant materials
- If you hate going to the gym, join a recreational sports team
Consistency over perfection
- Create realistic plans that fit into your life
- An “all-or-nothing” attitude can cause self-sabotage
- Make consistency a part of your life and get used to imperfection
- By opting for continuous effort towards a realistic aim create more room for everything you want to do in life
Find balance
- Prioritize long-term sustainability with balance and self-care: avoid overextending yourself and spending too much time on work, prioritize physical activity, try meditation, journalling, or cultivating a gratitude practice, spend time with friends and family, unwind alone with a good movie or book, and avoid all-nighters.
Prioritize appropriately
- One way to make juggling all of life’s demands easier is to intentionally let some balls drop
- To make time for what’s important to you, get comfortable with saying, “no”.
- Do not confuse importance for urgency
- Know your most important task and prioritize it accordingly
Declutter and Simplify
- Always be on the lookout for opportunities to make space
- Less is more: organize your to-do list
- Marie Kondo’s To-Do List Tip
- Organize by task and keep only the tasks that spark Joy
Measure your progress
- Have a regular weekly review
- Try out the quantified self method and measure your goals
- Implement an Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) format for your goals – at work or in life
- Track your time being productive or distracted online with RescueTime Productivity
Automate or outsource
- Set up automations that remove active effort and free up time and energy
- Consider where outsourcing to someone else could save you time
- Experiencing new things and seeking out novel experiences will bring excitement to life and break you out of periods of plateau
Work
- Represent what most people are actually organizing their lives around
Organize Your Life at Work
- Declutter your desk, inbox, and task manager
- Prioritize deep work
- Find opportunities for automation and outsourcing
- Balance work goals with life
- Avoid after-hours emails and team chat messages
- Book regular time off each year for vacations to recharge
Organize Your Life at Home
- Build habits for for running a household effectively
- Use a task manager to set up daily, weekly, and monthly recurring tasks
- Declutter your home
- Regularly check your pantry and fridge for old and expired items
- Donate clothing, toys, and books you no longer use
- Automate and outsource errands and chores
Health and Fitness
- Making time for a healthy lifestyle is a multiplier for everything else: we become better at our jobs, can be more present for our loved ones, and feel more motivated to tackle life’s other challenges.
Organize Your Health and Fitness
- Follow your inclinations with diet and exercise
- Use balance when thinking about healthy food choices
- Prioritize health and fitness
- Set and measure fitness goals
- Wear a fitness tracker to count your steps
- Record your lifts and keep track of our PRs
Organize Your Finances
- Plan your money flow
- Understand your net income and create a budget that includes a fixed expenses, variable expenses, debts, and savings
- Add to your savings every single month
- Set financial goals for different time periods
- Automate your finances
- Decrease the amount of time you spend on all aspects of your finances
Relationships
- Cultivate close relationships with family and friends
Organize Your Social Life
- Make time for planning social outings
- Redefine what socializing looks like
- Practice consistency with seeing friends and family
- For long-distance relationships, make use of phone calls and video chat to decrease the time between seeing one another
Organize Your Travel
- Take the stress out of travel with planning
- Create a travel checklist with everything you need to pack
- Experiment with new travel spots
- Ask friends, family, and colleagues for their favorite vacation destinations
- Make “travel” a weekly or monthly habit by being a Tourist in your own city
