Decluttering and better organizing your life is a powerful tool that will not only make you more productive, but it will also help you de-stress!
These days, with working hours increasing and the work we do each day growing in its complexity, the sad reality is that we’re drowning in stressors. Anything we can do to eliminate, or even reduce stress has got to be counted as a win.
But how? Where do you start, and how much is “too much?”
Those are all fair questions, and to be sure, it’s a bit of a balancing act. If you go too far, you run the risk of spending so much of your time keeping everything decluttered that you almost seem to have OCD.
Each person has a different threshold, but the key is to find your own personal level of organization, and stick close to that band. Remember, too, that being organized doesn’t mean relentlessly chasing down every bit of clutter and having a meltdown when something gets knocked out of place.
The key here is to start small. Organize your work space, make sure everything is within easy reach and make your last task of the day to prep your workspace for the following day. When you don’t have to frantically search for the things you need to get your work done, you’re more efficient and more effective.
Expand your organizational efforts to your email, too. Create a functional, task-oriented set of folders and organize your incoming messages into those functional areas, moving them to a completed folder or deleting them when you’re done.
If you’re one of those people who has a thousand or more messages in your inbox, you know how overwhelming it can be to even look at it. That act alone can lead to paralysis, because there are so many messages it’s hard to even know where to start.
Organization on that front can help you cut through the clutter and get straight to the most important work you need to be doing.
Finally, learn to fall in love with lists! Lists can keep your task load organized, and you can re-order them quickly and easily. By front-loading your task list with your most challenging tasks, you can knock them out in the early part of the day when you’re the most productive, building momentum that will carry you though the rest of the day.
These things taken together will keep you on track and help you be more productive and relatively stress-free. Those are big wins, no matter how you slice it, and you’ll be amazed at how much it improves your overall outlook on life. An organized mind is a calm, productive mind!