Life can get pretty busy, rushed, and messy. Sometimes it might feel like our daily lives are a never-ending stream of responsibilities, commitments, tasks, duties, obligations, events, etc., etc. Even things you genuinely enjoy can seem like another thing to add to your already long to-do list. When all these things pile up, it can be hard to feel organized about it all.
When life is disorganized, it can feel extra overwhelming and hard to keep track of. The different aspects and areas of your life might conflict, blur together, and feel like a jumbled mess. Bringing organization into your life can help ease your feelings of stress and overwhelm. Organizing your life won’t necessarily decrease the amount of things vying for your attention, but it will help you approach them with a more calm sense of intention.
Ready to organize all the aspects of your life? Then read on for 7 ways to get your life organized!
1. Split your life into categories.
When all of the aspects of your life are lumped together, it can feel like a disorganized mess. Categorizing your life is a helpful organization tool. I like to look at my own life as having three main categories: my personal life, my professional life, and my social life.
Those categories then have their own subcategories. For example, my personal life includes my hobbies, self-care practices, and my physical, mental, and emotional health. My professional life includes my job, creative pursuits, and blog work. And my social life includes my family, relationship, and friends. Splitting your life into categories helps you approach everything in a more organized and intentional way.
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2. Use planners, journals, and lists.
You can use one or all three of these tools. The key is to use whatever is the most helpful for you to record and plan ahead in your life. I find that having things written down is a helpful alternative to letting it all get jumbled up in your mind.
It’s really helpful to have a general plan for your days. It’s not possible to plan out every minute of every day, or to know exactly how a certain day a few weeks from now will play out. But using tools like planners, journals, and lists will help you stay on top of it all and organize all your tasks, events, and commitments.
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3. Reflect on your priority levels.
There are many, many things trying to grab your attention in life, so in order to feel more organized about it all, it’s helpful to reflect on what is the most important to you. What aspects of your life do you value the most? Which ones have lasting positive impacts? And which ones do you focus on simply because you need to or think you should?
Knowing what your top priorities and values are will allow you to put more of your attention on the most important ones and stop putting so much pressure on the less important ones. That doesn’t mean you should start neglecting the things you don’t necessarily want to do but need to in order to have a good quality life (like paying bills and tending to your health). It just means that you are allowed to put more of your energy, focus, and time into the aspects of your life that really matter to you. This will help you organize your daily life in fulfilling and meaningful ways.
4. Utilize colour-coding.
My planner is FULL of colour. Every aspect of my life gets its own colour. This organization method is especially helpful if you’re a visual person. If you’ve tried out tip #1 from this list and split your life into categories, use a specific colour for each category and subcategory of your life when writing out your plans.
Doing this will not only train your brain to associate a certain colour to each category, it will also allow you to see just how much time you’re dedicating to each part of your life. If you see a certain area lacking or falling short, you can then reorganize everything so that the areas of your life are getting the attention they need based on their priority level.
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5. Try the productivity method called “batching”.
I learned about batching recently, and it has greatly improved my own approach to organization and productivity. Batching means working on similar tasks together and designating specific times for specific types of tasks. So maybe you decide to do all of your house cleaning on Mondays, your workouts on Tuesday and Thursday morning, your creative work on weekday evenings, your grocery shopping on Saturday mornings, etc., instead of spreading these tasks out over multiple days and times.
Batching is basically doing all parts of a task all at once instead of spread out over a long amount of time. I do this with my blog and creative work and it’s been so helpful for my productivity levels. Batching will help you organize your time and get more done faster. And it can be applied to any and every aspect of your life!
6. Set goals and make plans of action.
Having goals and plans of action are great ways to keep your life organized. I find that if I’m kind of gliding aimlessly through my days, with not even the smallest goal in mind, I’m more likely to lose my sense of intention and feel all over the place instead of organized. Having a sense of direction and overall idea of what you want your days to look like can be a big help in feeling organized.
Your goals don’t have to be huge and long-term. It’s great to have those kinds of goals in mind, but your small goals can also help you feel more organized. Your goal could be to tidy your room by the end of the week or spend time with your family on the weekend. You might want to get to bed earlier, spend time meal planning, or dedicate an hour every day to self-care. Whatever your goals are, big or small, setting them and making plans of action will help you organize your days and give you more direction in life.
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7. Consistently take time to tidy up your physical, mental, and emotional spaces.
Decluttering and tidying up your spaces is a really helpful way to feel more organized. Just as you’d spend time cleaning your home (your physical space), it’s important to spend time tidying your mind and soul (your mental and emotional spaces). This might sound pretty abstract, but decluttering your mental and emotional space can actually be pretty fun and easy.
Our minds and souls can get easily cluttered with stress, anxiety, sadness, fear, anger, and a million thoughts. You can tidy your mental and emotional spaces by practicing mindfulness, meditating, journaling, feeling your emotions, processing your thoughts, and reflecting on how you feel in this moment of your life. Doing these things can help you feel organized just as much as decluttering and tidying up your physical space would.
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Life can get messy, and that’s okay. There will be times when nothing feels like it’s in its right place and everything is disorganized. But when you learn how to take a step back, re-evaluate, and take the steps to put everything in some kind of order, you’ll be able to organize your life in ways that work best for you.
What practices help you feel most organized in your life? I’d love to know!
what do you think?