Find your style. The biggest hurdle you’ll ever have if you’re trying to find a way to get organised is yourself. Mostly, you’ll have problems because you’ve taken somebody elses way of working and trying to force it to work for you.
Some things to consider are:
- Do you like lists, appointments and having everything set out. Or are you more of an “as the inspiration strikes” worker.
- Do you work best in silence, or do you need background noise to be comfortable.
- What excuses do you make? Planning? Comfort? Any other distractions…
- Do you work best under pressure or when you’ve got a lot of time.
- What motivates you? What makes you procrastinate?
Once you understand how you get your best performance, it’s easy to organize to suit your style.
Keep it real. If you have a big problem with time management you don’t need to start out by organizing your entire life. Instead, plan out your morning or your afternoon instead. If you hate being overly regimented but can motivate yourself, plan out your week instead. Just break whatever time period you’re planning for into bite size pieces.
Start with a plan. Even if to-do lists stress you out or a scheduled life drives you crazy: You still need to decide what needs doing. You still need some sort of prioritizing. You still need to have everything you need to get the job done.
If you have a plan for the day you’ll be able to make sure that you have everything you need to complete each task and you’ll be less likely to miss doing something important.
You can write a list, schedule things in your calendar, you can keep a mental note, you can make a voice recording, use crayons to draw on a piece of paper and pin it on your notice board. It really doesn’t matter how you record it, just decide what you need to do for the day.
Minimise distractions. Once you know what needs to be done, you need to be able to focus on the task at hand. If you can, turn off the email and turn off the phone. Turn off Twitter, Linked in or Facebook. Make sure you’ve got all the coffee, water, chocolate (or whatever you’ve identified as a distraction) that you’ll need to get through the next task.
Be realistic. Don’t overextend yourself. The more you plan, the more you’ll get done, but you can’t expect to do a weeks work in a day. Plan for the important things that need to get done, throw in a couple of things that should get done and any extra time you have can be spent on the things you’d like to do. Or you could just give yourself an early mark and go play with the kids or read a book.
Learn to love lists. It may take time, and I’d definitely recommend introducing them slowly if you currently hate them, but lists are the best way to get organised and to stay organised. You can make lists of what needs to get done. You can make lists for the specific steps in tasks you don’t do regularly. You can prioritize, categorize, alphabetize and individualize them to suit your style. Best of all, ticking things off feels good.
Don’t forget the fun. Don’t forget to include things you like to do. It’s all too easy to schedule the things you put off and forget about the enjoyable things. You also need to leave some time to do the things you enjoy doing outside of work. So if you plan on scheduling every minute of your day, make sure you schedule some play time. Better yet, schedule enough time to do the things that need to be done and leave the rest of the day for you to do whatever you want.
Most importantly. Unless you’re the type who doesn’t feel like you’ve accomplished something unless it hurts… don’t try to force yourself into a time management strategy that doesn’t suit your style. If you try a little and find it relatively painless you’re far more likely to keep going. And after a week, or a month, or if you were particularly disorganized to start with, a year – you’ll be amazed at how much more smoothly things are working and how much extra time you have.
