How to Organize Your Life

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

• 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

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