The secret is to look inwards

I have no doubt that the perfect 10/10 tip for organizing your life exists. The problem, however, is that each person is unique so the perfect tips and tricks to help organize your life will be different to that which will suit someone else!

With that in mind, I am sure that my own tips and tricks for organizing one’s life is absolutely the perfect advice! For someone at least . . . though maybe not you. But who knows – read on! Maybe you will find this is the wisdom you need, the words that will resonate with you and the advice will help you excel in life!

Maybe.

The question we all ask ourselves is how can we optimize our time? It is a shame that we are left with such little time to ourselves after work (especially for all the parents out there) to the point where we feel the need to optimize it as much as we can to get the most out of it.

Is your house cluttered? Not a problem!

The most common advice I see is around de-cluttering. That is not really helpful. Clutter is fine! Clutter is an expression of the self! What you need to target instead is chaos. Clutter is manageable and can be fun, but chaos will bring you down before you realize it was too much for you to handle. Your bookshelf doesn’t need to be organized by genre or author – place the books wherever you want, put in the decorative bookends, statues, perfume bottles, and jewellery boxes and don’t let other people lead you to believe this is unorganized clutter. If you know where your things are then there is no problem. Don’t worry about how other people might order their bookshelf – this is about you and you only!

Your house is allowed to have clutter. Your mind is also allowed to have clutter. We are only human, without a little bit of fluff in the headspace we would be a robot or something, right? You are allowed to have a lot of things on your mind; this doesn’t mean you are unorganized at all. You are allowed to have a lot going on or have a busy life, but you need to make sure this busyness isn’t chaos disguised. You know yourself better than anyone else, so don’t let others tell you what you should be cutting out to make your life simpler. Ask yourself: is this too much for me? Is this going to cause me more stress than the reward is worth? Do I have the time to pursue this? Is this going to make me happy? Introspection and self-evaluation is healthy. If you want to tell the difference between clutter, busyness and chaos then you need to press pause and ask yourself these questions.

A to-do list: will it really help you?

Another piece of common advice is to make to-do lists to help record those scattered thoughts of yours. This is decent advice but there still remains a greater underlying problem. How do you know what should go at the top of your to-do list? How are these dot-points, goal tables, or to-do lists supposed to help you if you can’t figure out which task is most important? For sure, write down you goals for this month and see how you go. Are you staring at the page, wondering if point 4 should really be higher on the list? Or wishing that point 3 was lower, because you really don’t want to do it?

A pen and paper alone isn’t going to help you. Unfortunately changing the track your life is on isn’t as easy as making your bed in the morning or writing down notes every day. Organizing your life is not a fast process, you need to be ready to tackle this beast gradually and attack the issue from its source.

How do you know what to prioritize?

To know what you should cut out of your life to avoid your schedule, mind or house becoming chaotic, to know what should go at the top of your to-do list, you need to first decide what you value most. Is your overarching goal making money, supporting your family’s needs, having strong social connections, or finding peace and happiness for yourself? Unfortunately these example categories I have made don’t always align. What is most important to you? You won’t be able to find the answer by reading 100 advice posts. This is something only you can figure out. Taking the time to question yourself, analyze your own thoughts, feelings, internal and external pressures . . . this is how you can figure out what is most valuable to you. Optimizing your time is a very unique and individualistic experience. Figure out what you want to get out of your life and use that as your guideline for your decisions. Don’t let societal pressures or dictations from others on what you should or shouldn’t cut from your life make your decision for you. Others aren’t going to find your path for you, you will need to search for it yourself and take the first step.

Optimizing your time in a way that’s going to suit you isn’t as easy as spring cleaning, organizing your bookshelf in alphabetical order, cutting out the things that keep you busy, writing a to-do list, or making your bed every morning. Optimizing your time in a way that is going to align with what you value most is something only you can push in the right direction. Be patient; re-organizing your life does not happen overnight.

My personal advice is that you should choose to prioritize your own happiness. Life is short. There is a reason we are trying to be more efficient with what we do day-to-day. Our time here is limited, and to make the most of it you need to figure out what matters most to you.

Good luck! <3