Organising yourself

By Sally Evans

If you’re too busy to organise your life: your life may be more off-course than you think!

Despite turbulence and other conditions keeping airplanes off-course 90 percent of flight time, most flights arrive in the correct destination at the intended time.

The reason for this phenomenon is simple - through air traffic control and the guidance system, pilots are constantly course correcting. When immediately addressed, these course corrections are not hard to manage. When these course corrections don’t regularly happen, disaster can result.

Small things - if not corrected - become big things, always.

So, I wondered if flying could be an analogy for our lives. Sometimes, even inconsequential aspects of our lives can create ripples and waves of consequence, for better or worse.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

How are you piloting your life?

What ‘feedback’ (verbal or otherwise) are you receiving to correct your course?

How often do you check your route? Do you even have a route or system to guide you?

What is your destination?

When are you going to get there?

Are you currently off-course? How long have you been off-course?

How can you minimise the turbulence and other conditions distracting your path?

Well here are some ideas to help you course correct:

Organise your Life!

I don’t think I’m alone in being slightly scattered and sloppy about certain areas of my life.

Life is busy.

It’s hard to keep everything organised and tidy. And maybe you don’t want to have an organised life. But moving forward will require far less energy if you remove the excessive baggage and tension. Everything in your life is energy. If you’re carrying too much, either physical or emotional, your progress will be hampered.

In his book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Stephen Covey explains that some things are important, and some things are urgent. Most people spend their life prioritising urgent and ‘shallow’ activity (like answering emails, putting out proverbial fires, and just day-to-day stuff).

Very few people have organised their lives to prioritise important and ‘deep’ activity (like learning, health improvement, relationship quality, travel, and goals). So how do you organise your life? Use these questions to help set you in the right direction.

Does your environmental energy drain you?

Is your living space cluttered and messy or simple and neat?

Do you keep stuff (like clothes) you no longer use?

Does your environment facilitate the emotions you consistently want to experience?

Does your environment drain or improve your energy?

Does your Financial Energy drain you?

Do you have unnecessary debt?

Do you know how much you spend each month?

Do you know how much you make each month?

Most people don’t track their expenses. But if they did, they’d be shocked how much money they waste on stuff like eating out.

Until we can hone in on our finances, we probably won’t have a healthier financial life, regardless of our income.

Does your Relationship energy enhance your life?

Are your relationships the most meaningful and enjoyable part of your life?

Do you spend enough time nurturing the relationships that really matter?

Do you maintain toxic relationships that no longer serve you?

Are you authentic and honest in your relationships?

Like money, most people’s relationships are not organised in a conscious manner. But with something so critical, we should take better stock of our relationships.

And what about our Health Energy?

Are you conscious of and in control of the foods you put in your body?

Does the food you eat improve or worsen the other areas of your life?

Does your body reflect your highest ideals?

Is your body as strong and fit as you want it to be?

Are you healthier now than you were three months ago?

Health is wealth. It’s so easy to put our health on the side, such as foregoing sleep, over consuming stimulants, and making poor eating habits. Little things become big things. And eventually everything catches up.

And what about your Spiritual Energy?

Do you have a sense of purpose in life? Have you come to terms with life and death in a way you resonate with? How much power do you have in designing your future? Death, it turns out, is not our greatest fear. Our greatest fear is reaching death and having never truly lived.

And what about Time?

How much of your time do you feel in complete control of?

Is your time being wasted on things you don’t intrinsically enjoy?

Are the activities you spend your time doing moving you toward your ideal future?

What activities should you remove from your life?

How much time do you waste each day?

What would your ideal day look like?

What activities could you outsource or automate that take up your time?

Until you organise your time, it will disappear and move quickly. Before you know it, you’ll wonder where all the time went.

Once you organise your time, it will slow down. You’ll be able to live more presently. You’ll be able to experience time as you want to. You’ll control your time rather than the other way around.

Getting organised and being conscious of your present circumstances (e.g., your environment, finances, relationships, purpose, and time) puts you in a position to build toward the future you want.

The fastest way to move forward in life is not doing more. It starts with stopping the behaviours holding you back.

If you want to get in shape, you’ll make more progress by stopping your negative behaviours than starting good ones. So, before you start exercising, purge the junk food from your diet. Until you stop the damage, you’ll always be taking one step forward and one step backward.

Before you focus on making more money, reduce your spending. Detach yourself from needing more and become content with what you have. Until you do this, it doesn’t matter how much money you make. You’ll always spend what you have (or more).

Why do most people stay stuck? They never organise. They try adding more, or being more productive, or taking a different approach.

So go on! Start today: Organise yourself.

Sally is the Founder of LifeBuddy. She is an Organisational Development consultant and is a Practitioner with the Association for Business Psychology.