And with that, you should now have all the tools and knowledge necessary to start organizing your brain, organizing your life and finally feeling on top of things.
It’s a lot to take on board and of course it’s not going to change overnight. Try to avoid the temptation to force yourself to adopt all these changes right away – instead, take some time out to fix as much as you can and then try to slowly introduce as many positive new habits as you can. After all, you don’t want this to add to your overwhelm!
If you’re looking for an action plan you can follow, then try the following…
A Day to Rearrange
First, take one day off in order to deal with as much as you can and to thereby give yourself a good fighting chance. On this day, you’re now going to do the following:
- Clean and tidy everything up
- Invest in things that can help you stay on top of chores – like a handheld vacuum cleaner
- Implement systems – such as washing up immediately after you’ve eaten, or keeping clothes to be ironed somewhere useful and out of the way
- Complete your ‘open loops’ – the small niggling tasks that are causing you stress
- Throw out lots of items to create less clutter
- Define your goals
- Prioritize social time with the people who are most important to you in life
Moving Forward
From there on, try your best to follow these principles to help keep everything in order:
- Ask for help when you need it
- Learn to say “no” when people invite you out and you just don’t have time
- Complete big tasks first at work
- Make plans for the week to reduce decision fatigue
- Add things you need to do to your diary and treat them just like your social plans – as non-negotiable
- Look after your health and eat for energy
- Schedule time off
- Turn off screens an hour before bed
And at work…
- Negotiate flexi-time with work
- Or working from home…
- Work on large projects first
- Reduce communication overhead
- Avoid distractions
- VALUE your time and make sure others do too
- Ask for help if you need it
- When you get home from work – switch off!
Start putting this into practice, give it time and look for more ways that you can organize all the information coming in and give yourself more time.
Just remember that your happiness is the number one priority. If all the information and stress is doing anything to harm that… then something has to change!
Organize your mind, organize your life and take back control of your time!
Follow the tag THE STREAMLINED MIND to read the complete series.
