You Can Be As Organized As A CEO
6 organizational habits that will make you on top of things even without a personal secretary.
A friend of ours, a college friend back from the Philippines, visited us in Florida. I haven’t seen this friend for more than 2 decades. We started catching up with life.
Gani, my friend (short for Isagani), did his Ph.D. at Texas and decided to go back to the Philippines. He is now heading the research and development section of a local pharmaceutical company back in our country.
While we were talking, one thing struck me most is that, most people he encounters in the laboratory is that they lack the critical thinking and organizational skills to be effective in a chemistry laboratory.
He then added, “if you go back to work there, companies will pay you more because of your higher academic training, but also for you organizational skills.”
“Organizational skills?”, I thought.
After lunch, we parted ways and said goodbye to his family. In less than a week, they will be headed back to the Philippines.
But the organizational skills thing was stuck in my mind, so I started reading about this kind of skills and looking to the readings if I do have those skills. It turns our I do, and I summarized it below.
Everyone has experienced that overwhelming feeling that your life is one giant chaos. As a student, parent, or average person, you’ve got a lot going on and it can be a real challenge to get in control in staying organized.
So what’s the best way to get your life more organized?
It turns out there are six habits highly organized people have in common. What’s really interesting about these top tips is you can apply them to organizing anything, not just a physical space.
Now you might be wondering why you should even care about being open and honest to be organized. So let’s see if any of these reasons can blow your hair back.
- You’ll be more focused on what you want to achieve, the able to prioritize your tasks and set and achieve your goals more efficiently.
- You’ll manage your time more effectively, work more economically and be more productive.
- You’ll be less stressed, achieve more balance in your life and be more flexible and you might even have more energy and enthusiasm once you’ve achieved freedom from chaos.
Sound good Okay. Here’s how to do it:
Habit number one, keep it simple.
Elaborate organizational systems that are hard to maintain and most of the time they’re not worth the effort. Whether you’re organizing your sock drawer or your class notes, have as few steps as possible. Otherwise it’ll be too frustrating to maintain over time.
Take for example my email. I really don’t have an elaborate folders to organize my emails, not just work related but business related emails.
It turns out, people who just use the search button in their email (especially gmail users) is more efficient than creating complicated folders.
Going crazy with a fancy color coding system might look pretty cool, but the effort can outweigh the benefits. Choose a system that’s easy to use and you’ll become more productive, not less.
Habit number 2. Develop morning and evening routines for your regular tasks, whether it’s study or putting out the recycling.
I never knew that I was doing this. Or let me put it this way, I was just aware now that I use this strategy.
Every morning, I prepare my coffee, reach out for my gratitude journal (yap, I have a gratitude journal), and starts writing what I am thankful for.
Then I meditate for 5 minutes. I just use the app in my phone to do this but I sometimes hate opening my phone in the early hours because I am sucked to Facebook. But I always tell my self, use only the meditation app.
After this, I jumped rope for 5 minutes and I’m ready to conquer the day.
So develop routines if there are things you have to do every day or week. Create set routines about when and how you do them. This is about managing your time more effectively an saving yourself the mental effort of continual planning and rescheduling important tasks into routines and fit the rest of your life around them, not the other way round.
When is your best time to study, exercise, socialize, clean your home or relax?
Anybody’s routine can get broken, but always try to get your groove back as soon as possible.
Habit number 3. Have a place for everything and put everything in its place.
This might be common sense, but it’s not always common practice. If you don’t know where things belong, you can’t put them away.
You might have a shelf for all your textbooks and class notes, a special section of your closet for your winter clothes or folders on your computer for all your assignments. So this works for physical things or digital things or even your knowledge.
Try not to put something temporarily, but take a few extra seconds to put it where it belongs.
Habit number 4. Keep a current and detail to do list.
Don’t be mistaken, It takes planning to be organized. Work backwards by starting with your end goal and then decide what smaller steps you’ll follow to get there. Try to keep lists for daily tasks as well as longer term projects and use a central list for everything, whether it’s in a physical notebook or a digital list on your computer or phone. If you write random or a mind is on loose pieces of paper, make sure you transfer them to your main list and keep it current and giving yourself deadlines can help you to get things done and crossed off your list.
Habit number 5. Don’t get bogged down by perfectionism.
You don’t have to be perfect to be organized, so don’t think you need to get everything done and done and exactly right. Prioritize tasks and try to learn where and how you can take shortcuts and how to get things done quickly. Be honest and think about what’s really important. The end goal is progress, so it’s less about perfection and more about action.
Habit number 6. Toss things daily and purge routinely.
Organize people. Don’t wait for a free weekend or an open block of time to get themselves in their lives in order. They constantly cross things off their list and throw things away. Reevaluate what they own and tidy their house in the way they operate. They may take a few minutes each night to clean off their desks, delete old files from their computer or emails from their inbox. Oh, throw out the expired food from their refrigerator.
Organizing is not a separate event. It’s part of their day.
And there you have it. Whether you are organizing your room or home, your computer, the way you study, the way you think, your social life, or the goals you want to achieve, these six habits will get you streamlined and heading in the right direction.
Keep it simple.
Develop routines.
Have a place for everything and put everything in its place.
Keep current and detailed to do list.
Don’t get bogged down by perfectionism and toss things daily and purge routinely.
