How to feel more organised and get things done
Feeling lost and disorganised most of the time? Not sure what you’re meant to do next but know that your to-do list is a mile long? In this Basics guide I share things that have helped me feel more organised and on top of things, whether it’s work or areas in my life that I simply want to improve on.
Don’t let the social media posts and my constant chatter about a new organisation tip I’m trying fool you – I am a chronic procrastinator and terrible at time management. I also have anxiety, so that’s why I need *gestures to piles of planners, digital calendars, to-do list apps and productivity videos * all of this. When I tell people this about me, they’re often surprised. But the reality is that I struggled through university and with deadlines at various jobs, not because I didn’t enjoy them or didn’t want to do the work (although obviously that wasn’t always the case), but because I didn’t have a good system of how to organise my work so that I could complete it by the time it was due. I recognise now that my anxiety had a lot to do with me putting things off until the last minute, but I also didn’t have a system, a process, a recipe for starting and finishing pieces of work. This made every task seem as hard as the first time, and I wouldn’t always remember everything I had to do, let alone the date I had to do them by.
In the end, how to be organised is something I learnt later in life. Over the last few years, I’ve realised that my lack of organisation was really holding me back, especially since there were so many things that I wanted to try my hand at. So, I trained myself up, put some things into practice, tweaked my processes, and now am, if not 100% organised and calm, at least more organised and calm than I have been in the past. Most importantly, when I do procrastinate and get a bit lost, I have some tools to help me find my way back. In this Basics Guide, I’ll share how you can feel more organised and productive in your own life and work too.
Firstly, I want to start off by saying that being organised is something that you learn. It’s not something you’re innately born with necessarily or something you can’t develop later in your life. Personally, I wish study vlogs, study inspiration and organisation tips that you can find readily now on the internet had existed when I was at school, but I’m glad that I can still make use of them now. Although the tasks might have changed from exams to side hustles, the method largely stays the same.
Secondly, it’s important to know that what works for some people when it comes to organisation, planners or calendars won’t work for everyone. I came across an idea recently, which was ‘Know your own psychology.’ Basically, understand yourself, or as Aristotle said, ‘ Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.’ As I’ve gone on my own organisation journey, I’ve found this to be true. The more I test out different planners, organisation systems, or tips and tricks, the more I learn what works best for me and my brain, what is helpful and should be kept and what should be discarded. This might sound like organisation is this hard, long-winded journey, but hopefully it’s more of an encouragement – it’ll probably take time and trial and error to discover what suits you and your life, so don’t be discouraged if you’re not vibing with that planner you bought at New Years. You can’t force a system to work for your life, but you can adapt it or try something else.
This list is fairly long – some are ideas of things to try or important points to remember – so my suggestion is to pick a few things to introduce into your life and see how you go. This post is always here for you to come back to.
1. Write it down
Writing things down on paper or on your computer gets the task out of your brain and on to something that you can look at later. Some people like to create what is called a ‘second brain’ or a system that houses various pieces of information and details such as tasks and deadlines. I use Notion for this, but the idea is that it frees up your primary brain (the one in your skull) to focus on more complicated tasks and processing. If you think of your brain as a computer hard drive, it pays to not crowd it with things that could exist somewhere else, like a piece of paper or a notebook. That way you can still run, like Photoshop, without crashing. For this, I highly recommend buying a notebook to house your thoughts and tasks, or, even better, a planner or diary. The latter will allow you to not only write it down, but to schedule it in somewhere, making it more likely that it’ll get done.
2. Brainstorm and plan
Actually take some time out for yourself to brainstorm and plan things that you need to do. Ideally, it helps to do this weekly or even daily. I’m a big fan of booking time into my calendar to specifically think about a gift I need to buy or the first steps to start a new project. Even taking the time to just dream about the things you’d like to do one day can be really helpful. If you’ve always wanted to try dancing, how can you make that happen? After you’ve written down some goals and steps for how to get there, you can book in future time with yourself to buy the thing or do some research. What matters is that having these things top of mind and written down will help you utilise your time more efficiently.
3. Break it down
Sometimes tasks or goals can seem so huge that we struggle to start or know where to go next. I suggest breaking the task down into smaller chunks and, if there’s a deadline, estimate how long you think each step is going to take you. Smaller tasks make things much more manageable and this is how I tackle any new hobby, project, or area in my life that I want to improve. It usually goes research, decide on steps, trial, tweak, try again. You can then schedule these smaller tasks into your week or month, allowing you to slowly make a start.
4. Prioritise
There are an infinite number of things you could do, but what would have the most impact this week? This could be anything from an upcoming work deadline or a movie you’ve been meaning to see – get it into your diary.
5. Theme your time
This is pretty similar to prioritising, but it focuses on giving your weeks or months a theme that allows you to focus on tasks that steer you towards a specific goal. For example, this month’s theme might be ‘House,’ so I would write down and start ticking off tasks that have to do with things around the home, like tidying, sorting, or buying picture frames. Theming is something that I’ve recently started doing because sometimes some goals aren’t more important than another or they don’t have a deadline, so it can be hard to prioritise them. This allows me to focus on something specific and to maybe have a bit of fun in the process, like dreaming of how we can reorganise areas of our home to be more functional/comfortable. I might have noted it but never acted on it if it wasn’t part of my theme for that month.
6. Use a calendar
I’ve only been using a calendar seriously in the last year or so. I had this passive relationship towards annual events, like birthdays and anniversaries, usually letting something like Facebook remind me. I’ve always been so impressed by my mother’s diligence towards remembering every extended family member’s birthday and ensuring a gift was on it’s way on time. It always makes you feel so special and thought of. Eventually I got pretty tired of forgetting a close friend’s birthday and not having enough time to buy a gift, send a message, or organise an event, so I started using a calendar. Whether it’s Google Calendar or the paper one from the local real estate agent, start adding in people’s birthdays and other key events where you can check it regularly and plan in advance.
7. Be realistic and “track” your time
It’s really easy to be optimistic about how quickly you’ll be able to clear tasks, especially when you first start out. Either track how long tasks take or make a mental note so that you can plan more realistically the following week or month.
8.Time batching
Time batching is about doing similar tasks at the same time. For example, if you have a bunch of errands to run, you plan an errand day, or you do all of your essay outlines for university during a one hour window. This prevents you from having to switch your focus between different types of tasks and experiencing the drag that happens as your brain adjusts to the new thing. I like to do this for life admin tasks, so if there’s a phone call I need to make, an email to reply to, and a form to fill out, I’ll batch them together to complete at 9am the next morning as an example.
9. Schedule it in
Sometimes I just don’t feel like doing something like checking my email, but it has to be done. For tasks like this, I specifically schedule it in to my calendar or planner with a time and a set duration. Most recently, I’ve done this with weekly chores – I now have a list of things that I need to clean and a timeframe to do it in, so I’m not just procrastinating the whole weekend because it needs to be done ‘at some point.’ Again, this is about making things, especially tasks you don’t enjoy but have to do, more likely to happen.
10. Plan the next day
If you can, plan the next day before you go to sleep or at the end of your school or work day. Note down what you need to remember to do, questions you need to follow up on, or tasks you want to complete first thing in the morning. Having a list or plan for the next day means you can start it on the front foot, ready to go.
11. Organise your station
Visualise a professional kitchen or a woodworkers shed – there’s a place for everything and everything is in it’s place, so when the chef or craftsperson needs a tool, they know exactly where to find it. I think of our workspaces and homes like this as well. I’ve found that having a tidy workspace makes my brain feel clearer, but it’s also more efficient when I have everything I regularly use close to hand and/or where I expect it to be, like paper, pens, my phone or my keys.
12. Have a place to brain dump things
This could be a whiteboard, a notepad or a digital notes app, but when an idea strikes or you remember a task that you need to do, quickly jot it down to come back to later so that you don’t break your flow if you’re working on something else.
13. When all else fails, reset
I have tried many a planner and organisation tip. Not all of them work for me or they need to be tweaked before they’re useful. If things aren’t working with what you’re doing so far and you’re struggling to manage your tasks, try something else or start over. I regularly shift notebooks I’m using because the tasks or ideas I’ve put in it become emotionally or mentally burdensome and not productive. I also use clearing my space as a reset. Friend, we can build a house and find that it’s not working for us and tear it back down to its foundation to start again. Resetting in this way can feel really freeing because you’re not trying to make an old way of thinking or doing work for you. Instead, you can reflect on what’s working, note down things that feel immediate and front of mind and start from there.
14. Know that procrastination is a thing
Procrastination is fine and having downtime or being bored can actually be really helpful to give your brain time to wander. However if you’re struggling with maintaining your focus or slipping into procrastination town a little too often, you can try some of the techniques I’ve mentioned or give the pomodoro technique a go. This is where you set a timer for 25mins, followed by a 5min break, and so on.
15. Not every day is going to be a productive day
I recently listened to this episode of Ctrl Alt Delete with Oliver Burkeman and he talked about how you can’t manage time, you can only manage your energy. Every day is not going to go to plan, and that’s ok. Figuring out what to let go of or accept is part of the process, and so is understanding your own energy levels and what habits, routines or tools work best for you.
16. You’re not going to get this right the first time
As I mentioned at the beginning, what works for you will take time to discover. Maybe you’re a tech whiz and you love utilising apps to keep you on track and on task, or perhaps you’re perfectly content with a paper notebook and a pen. Articles, videos and books about productivity and organisation have boomed over the last decade. In many ways, instead of technology making our lives easier and giving us back more time for leisure, it’s instead made it easier for us to work even more. If you continue down the planning route, there’s a myriad of ways that you can mix and match tools to help you work at your best (I’m purposely not saying ‘how to optimise your productivity’). Keep tweaking, adjusting and learning to incrementally improve things. Finding your organisation ‘style’ will take time.
Thanks for reading this pretty long list and I hope that some of these tips and practices help you to feel more organised as we head into 2022! I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still learning – 2021 has been a total testament to how much I’ve tweaked, dumped, built up, pivoted and redrafted as I’ve worked towards a planning and organisation system that works for me. And I’m sure it’ll change again next year, and that’s ok. If you’re interested in seeing what I do to keep track of everything, drop a comment or send me a message on Instagram.
