Organized: how to become organized

Even the most recent slob has heard about the principles of organization - a clean, properly designed workplace, where everything is at hand, a system for storing information, records, schedules, etc. Moreover, he probably saw examples proving their performance. But he doesn’t have enough discipline to follow them himself. This is how a popular excuse is born: organization is boring; an organized person becomes a slave to his habits and time.

Is it so? Not at all. Organization means certain habits. And we all have habits. Only some people have a habit of scattering everything, while others have a habit of keeping everything in order. The first is not necessarily bad, but only as long as it does not harm life, killing productivity and taking up time.

Habits of Organized People

Develop the following habits to become an organized person.

Write everything down

Often, when a person has not forgotten something, it is not due to a good memory, but because he wrote down the most important things. Trying to remember everything will not help you become organized; it is rather a sign of laziness.

Write down everything: a list of products you need to buy, movies you want to watch, books you need to read. You can use a paper diary, phone or computer.

Create schedules and set deadlines

Create schedules, tables and graphs. Set deadlines and goals. Without these simple techniques, it is very difficult to control what happens in your life.

Remember that if there is even the slightest reason not to do anything, you will immediately seize it. Therefore, a well-drafted plan is a unique way to prevent yourself from evading work, because here it is, defined and understandable.

Get rid of procrastination

Procrastination is one of the main problems of modern man. Even without particularly straining, you can provide yourself with food and have a roof over your head. This means you can put aside important things and do something pleasant, right? No, because in this way you choose in favor of immediate pleasure, missing out on the opportunity to do something meaningful.

The longer you put off work, the harder it will be to get started. Therefore, you need to introduce the habit of doing important things immediately after waking up.

Clean your house regularly

Cleaning is not only a useful act, but also a symbolic one. In this way you show yourself that you are putting order in your life and do not accept chaos.

Clean your apartment at least once a week. This will allow you to find the tools you need in a matter of seconds and not put off important things.

Buy everything you need for work and school

As we have already said, a person likes to come up with excuses for himself not to work. Organization is out of the question. If you don't have a notepad, pen, paper clips and other office supplies, you risk missing out on that moment of inspiration when you feel like working. And when you don’t feel like it, but you need it, it’s much easier to start when everything you need is at hand.

Eliminate distractions

If something can distract you, it will definitely distract you. Don't test your willpower. It’s difficult to do anything else in the library reading room, since no one is bothering you, there’s no TV or radio blaring behind the wall, and the upstairs neighbors aren’t singing “Macarena” in the shower. The fewer irritants, the easier it is to focus on what’s important.

Work hard

To become organized, you first need to work hard. This is necessary to understand where you need to put more and where less effort.

You can read David Allen's book Getting Things Done, but you won't get much out of it. After all, he is talking about people who work hard and need to be productive. And if you like to put in a minimum of effort, his advice is unlikely to help you.

Assume that you need to work more than eight hours a day. Only when you start to notice that you can do it smarter, start using productivity tips.

How to become collected and organized

Use the 3D method

This technique stands for Delete, Delegate, Do (delete, delegate, act). As you can see, “act” is in last place. If you want to learn how to work smarter and stay organized, start by removing everything you don't need or assigning some tasks to other people (we'll talk about this separately below).

Delete all cases:

which are urgent but not very important;
that give a fake sense of progress;
cause a lot of stress and do not make any sense.

This is especially important when working with email, since at its core it is a list of other people's to-dos. These are the requests they send you. They take energy and time.

Of course, in some cases, both you and the person who wrote the letter benefit from the response. But only if your goals are in harmony. In all other cases it is a distraction.

Delegate your tasks

If you have an assistant or team of employees, assign them things they can do. The difficulty is that you may consider yourself a great expert, and everyone else - amateurs. And even so, there are often cases when it is better to let others do the job normally than to spend a disproportionate amount of time yourself to do it perfectly.

If there are no such people, find them. Let's say you are a freelancer who works hard and gets enough money. I want to not only relax, but also engage in self-development, for example, learn English. What to do? Find another freelancer who can do some of your work.

If you can free up 50% of your time, reducing your income by 10-15%, great! This means you are already starting to follow Kiyosaki’s precepts.

Once you start thinking like this, you might want to take it a step further and start working 4 hours a week, as Tim Ferriss wrote. Why not? Even if you cannot achieve such an ideal result, you still need to strive for it.

Make a list of the three most important things to do

Make a list of the three most important things you need to do in a day. This will help you maintain utmost clarity and focus. A long list is tiring and makes you feel depressed and lost. It’s not clear where to start, especially if there’s a big project coming up. And this leads to procrastination.

Just three tasks, no more. Each of them should take from 1 to 2 hours. Commit to doing them the next day, no matter what happens. No excuses. In addition, you can plan three tasks a week, especially if they are quite large.

Still, it's worth mentioning that some time management gurus don't agree with this method. They believe that such lists lead to even more disorganization, because in addition to three things to do, there are still many small tasks that need to be completed. In any case, we advise you to try this technique and identify its pros and cons.

Other experts advise having two lists. The first will have the three most important tasks that need to be completed first. The second is what you should do next. Consider this option too.

Find out about all your shortcomings and weaknesses

Each of us has flaws and limitations. Anyone who ignores this obvious fact will face the same problems every day. Therefore, do not overestimate your capabilities.

Do you want to learn English and go to the gym three times a week? No problem, just get started with a piece of paper and do some simple calculations. Let's say you work 8 hours a day in the office, 2 hours are spent on the road. You still need to get ready in the morning and have dinner in the evening, that’s another 1 hour. You need to sleep, that's another 7 hours. How much did you get per day? Don't be fooled, the numbers don't lie. Find another way to develop your skills. Something will have to be sacrificed.

No matter how organized you are, parts of your day will most likely be useless: meetings, traffic jams, pointless conversations. You also need to rest and get yourself in order. Accept the limitation: you can’t find it all the time. But you can find it for the most important things . This is why the list of three tasks we wrote about above is so important.

Create a "Maybe Someday" List

Throughout the day, a person can keep ideas and things in his head that he definitely wouldn’t get around to today. They may or may not be valuable, but right now it’s not worth torturing yourself with identifying this. And in order not to forget about them, just write them down in a separate list. This way they will stop bothering and distracting you.

Use time boxing techniques

Time boxing is one of the best ways to organize yourself. The idea behind it is that you reserve certain hours of the day for your valuable activities and goals.

Let's give an example. You devote the first hour after waking up to reading. This is not discussed because self-development is incredibly important to you. Then you work for 5-6 hours. Go to the gym or go for a run.

The point is to set aside a few hours for specific tasks, but not to set an exact time, but rather to book it.

Time boxing has been used by some writers. They set aside, say, 4 hours for their work and sat down at the table. They had a choice - sit idle or start writing. Few people feel comfortable when bored, so the person immediately took on the task.

For example, you need to write an article. You have booked 2 hours for this. Just sit down at your desk and open a document in Word. Don't know where to start? Then write what exactly will be in the article. Come up with a title or create a paragraph that definitely needs to be there. Ideas will appear immediately, you just need to overcome inertia.

Sharpen your saw

The advice may seem unnecessary specifically for organization, but this is only at first glance. Sharpening the saw is one of the principles of the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. The point is to regularly update your knowledge and learn new skills. That is, invest in yourself at the level of:

Physical: exercise, eat right, avoid stress and get enough sleep;
emotional: communicate with positive people, love, be grateful, believe in yourself;
mental: read books, try new things, play brain games, go to museums, get creative, meditate, brainstorm sessions;
spiritual: keep looking for the purpose of life, be a good and worthy person, help others, donate money.

Stick to minimalism

After all, the less stuff there is around you, the easier it is to be productive. Previously, there were no smartphones with a bunch of applications, the TV showed a couple of channels, and no one had heard of the Internet at all.

Minimalism, however, should be not only in relation to things: it is also thoughts, people around (although someone will argue with this), food. However, you need to know moderation in everything. Everything that surrounds you affects your energy level in one way or another. So figure out what's taking her away and get rid of it.

Use apps for productivity and organization

There are now a huge number of them, some are completely free, while others are not too expensive. Here's what we can recommend to you:

Evernote.
OneNote.
RescueTime.
Pocket.
Trello.
Any.do.

Good luck!

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We also recommend reading:

Storytelling
3 steps to overcome procrastination
10 Zen Habits from Leo Babauta
The two-minute rule to combat laziness
Personal Development Plan
Seven principles for improving the quality of work
Ways to train and develop willpower
Habits to develop over the next year
How to turn a deadline into a friend?
How to organize your life in ten steps
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Keywords:_C1038, _D1047, _D1057, _D1058, 1Time Control, 3Time

Why developers

Besides the fact that we are on a geek portal, according to personal observations, it is programmers who have the most problems with organizing their time. The entire development cycle is strictly regulated in terms of timing, purpose and tools, so there is a false sense of control over the process. Online courses also take place on schedule in a short time frame.

The truth is that all control is external. It’s like treating a monthly salary or loan payment as a monthly plan. These deadlines weigh on you and limit you even more. Anyone who strives for freedom must build his own line of organization.

Planning

What kind of person is called organized? Of course, someone who knows how to plan their daily routine. This is a very important aspect that helps in solving many problems. Planning allows you to structure all important matters, highlight the more significant and secondary ones, and, in addition, determine which task will require how much time and financial costs. Each of us faces planning every day: a list of products that need to be purchased, drawing up a family budget, etc.

We are pumping up development

Organization in programming affects several aspects:

Tools. Maximum efficiency in modern development is achieved not only with the help of knowledge, but also with the use of advanced and user-friendly software. Frameworks, code editors, testing programs, templates - all this will save time and make the code better.
Schedule. Deadlines and milestones should come not only from the manager, but also from you. Leave time for creativity, but clearly control the execution of subtasks on time. The code will contain fewer errors if you do not write it in the last hours before the deadline.
Communication. Sometimes it’s easier to go ask a colleague or manager about something than to spend hours figuring it out on your own. Accustom yourself to business communication that does not degenerate into chatter, and you will be surprised at the effect it will have.

Advantages

The benefits of being organized are obvious. A person who has this quality can make a good career, because he knows how to solve assigned tasks on time, does not delay deadlines, and creates a favorable image of the company. He commands respect from others because he is never late, never lets anyone down, and is responsible. But the most important thing is that organization allows you to achieve any goals that a person sets for himself.

For example, an organized school graduate wants to become a student at a certain university. He methodically prepares for admission, working through all the necessary material and successfully achieves his goal. Further, already as a student, he prepares for seminars, tests and exams on time. He has no time pressure because he does everything on time. The chances of him expelling from the university are zero. On the contrary, the record book works for the student, the teachers love him, he has a chance to find a job while still at the university without compromising his studies. After graduating from university, the graduate gets a job and - again - thanks to the timely completion of management assignments - has every chance of promotion.

Another example can be given, from a different area. For example, a person wants to go to Thailand next year. He has no money for these needs. The cost of a trip with a departure from Moscow is 1.5 thousand dollars. An organized person makes a deposit and puts aside $170 a month for a trip plus something to take with him. Again, thanks to his discipline, after a year he accumulates the specified amount and goes on a vacation that his friends continue to only dream about.

The benefits of organization are obvious in other areas of life. There are no boundaries for a person. I wanted to lose weight - I started doing fitness and gained weight. All you need to do is not miss training at the fitness club. Do you want to accomplish more? I planned my day in a new way - now you save time and have reserves.

Calm

Another quite important sign of organization is calm. The crazy pace of life unsettles you, it makes a person much weaker. Organized person – what is it? In fact, he is always calm and balanced.

It is not typical for him to get nervous over trifles, be late, freak out and worry. A quiet, measured life allows an organized person to do all the necessary work very efficiently and quickly.

This is explained by the fact that a person spends a lot of vital energy on stress and emotional upheaval. In addition, the absence of strong emotional outbursts guarantees good health and well-being.

Ways of self-development

In addition to many classic ways of learning, such as reading books, watching webinars and practicing, there are two sure-fire methods to develop yourself by filling 5-10 minute pauses throughout the day.

Help others. If you have very little experience behind you (but you have it, and it’s real), help the same newcomers. A few years, and you can already move on to mentoring or teaching. The main thing is to remember the responsibility entrusted to you.
Blog. This is a very good way to keep yourself updated, and a few minutes is just enough time to browse a forum or read a post on another blog. As a result, you accumulate information within 2-3 days, systematize it, convey it to readers and receive feedback. In this case there is less responsibility, but more negativity. Be prepared for this.

For greater effect from the methods described above, work within the same topic, for example, “C language” or “Artificial intelligence in mobile applications.” The narrower the list of issues considered, the deeper your knowledge will be. Blog visitors and those you help will certainly appreciate it.

Order

As you know, disorder breeds chaos, so it is very important that both around a person and inside, it is “cleaned”. Order allows you to save a huge amount of time spent on cleaning. The question of what kind of person is called organized is very simple to answer. Such people try to keep everything in order.

In an organized person’s workplace, as a rule, everything is laid out in its place. This allows him to significantly save time and not search for the things he needs for several hours. The same applies to “internal order”. Confusion in the head cannot give effective results when performing a particular job. Extraneous thoughts cause a person to be distracted by trifles and waste a huge amount of time on it. Organized people are used to thinking only about work while working. This allows them to quickly and efficiently cope with any activity.