It’s a new year and that means new goals, opportunities, and experiences. There is so much greatness that is to come and you’re absolutely ready for it!
You’re ready for the travel, time with loved ones, work promotions, and reaching those next milestones. Each great thing brings more excitement, but also more things to do!
Rather than getting lost in tasks and losing track of time, take control of by using the 6 strategies below to become more organized this year.
1. Develop and Follow Routines
The holidays, although a beautiful time of year, can also be a disorganized time of year. Not only are you still going to work, bringing your children to sport’s practice, and cooking meals daily, but now you have to consider gift shopping and holiday decorating.
Aunts and uncles come from out of town and parents are asking for your help daily with preparing for the big day. This can certainly disrupt our daily living and throw off our groove.
Combat this disruption by developing and following a daily routine. Yes, things will happen and cause changes throughout the day, however, by developing a consistent routine to follow, you can maintain a sense of order by following a predetermined schedule to guide you through the day.
Start with a morning and evening routine
Start by creating a consistent morning and evening wind down routine.
It’s important that your mornings are set up in a positive manner to prepare you for the day to come. Be sure to include not only personal hygiene and having a meal, but also self care. Give time to showing yourself a little bit of love and gratitude for the day to come.
Evenings should be a time to wind down, especially after a long day. Yes, you may have some dishes to do after dinner or help your children with homework, but be sure to engage in practices that can calm yourself down and bring your mind back home. Use the evenings to connect with your loved ones, rest your body, and calm the mind.
2. Don’t Forget Self Care
Once you’ve developed and followed a consistent routine, creating routines for other tasks during the day will come easier. As Jack from the Shining said “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, hence, scheduling in Daily Enrichment for the Self is just as important.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), self care tasks are important because they improve physical and mental health by managing stress, lowering the risk for disease, and increasing energy (National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 2022). Be sure to include times in your day to not only do non preferred productive tasks, but also hobbies, things in nature, and movement related activities.
Check out the chart below for a sample daily schedule that includes daily routines, work tasks, and daily enrichments.
Check out our free .pdf download to create your daily schedule. Use the brainstorming list of items to create your schedule to include both productive and self care practices each day.
3. Create a “Launchpad”
Do you ever catch yourself rushing out of the home to hit the road before traffic? You’re fully dressed, have just finished breakfast and have your keys ready to run out. But wait, where is my phone, wallet, and work bag?
You then take the next 10 minutes running around your home looking for these items. You finally find them 10 minutes later and hit the road now. Unfortunately, now you’re stuck in traffic. You tell yourself “I can’t keep doing this because I keep running late!”
Rather than running around every morning looking for these important items, create a launchpad in your home.
A launchpad is essentially a designated area in your home with all your essential on the road items.
I recommend having a set corner in your home preferably by your front door where you can place your work bag, keys and wallet every evening when you come home.
Having a large basket to place these items in, a side table to put them on, or even installing hooks on the wall is an effective way to keep all of your essential items in a quick and easy to access area.
Make it easy to access in your home. If you know that you will need your wallet on a daily basis, don’t store it upstairs in your bedroom in your side table drawer.
Create your launchpad in a heavy traffic area of your home or near the entrance. By placing it by the front door, you reduce the amount of time needed to search for the items as well as reduce any potential loss of the items in your home.
4. Break Down Complex Tasks
It’s a Friday evening and you decide to finally do that task you’ve been putting off. You sit down, ready to start and after 2 minutes decide “Ok, this task is just way too much. Yeah, not going to happen.”
It happens to the best of us. We create an intention of completing a task but upon starting, you realize just how involved it is and become overwhelmed and even wonder, where do I start?
If you notice this happens to you often, perform a quick task analysis. Task analysis is the process of breaking down a larger, complex activity into a series of steps or smaller tasks. Task analysis can further be broken down into two categories.
Tasks can be “chained” in which the main activity is broken down into steps that are performed in a sequence. Tasks can also be broken down into small chunks of time For a task that would normally take 15 minutes, it can be broken down into three five minute work sessions (Regis College Online, 2021).
Here’s an example of how you can perform task analysis with paying bills.
Task Analysis for How to Pay Your Bills
- Gather all bills
- Review and organize bills by their due date
- Log into each bills website on the computer
- Pay bills one at a time in accordance to their due date
- Store paid bills in a file organizer
By performing a task analysis and breakdown not only can you see the various steps and materials that you will need you can also determine approximately how long it will take for you to complete the task, and so plan accordingly to complete it within a certain time block.
5. Create To Do Lists
Do you ever come home from a long day of running errands and suddenly realize you forgot to drop that package at the post office? If you notice you tend to forget important tasks sometimes, you’ll benefit from creating daily to do lists.
Start each day by creating a to do list of tasks that day. For help with this, check out our guide “How to Prioritize To-Dos in a Routine”.
However, it’s important that you make a task realistic to complete. Use the previously mentioned strategy of task analysis to break down large tasks into more attainable steps to create an easy to do list.
6. Set Reminders
Once you’ve created your to do list with your top tasks of the day, set reminders. Reminders are effective because they help us with remembering our tasks that we wrote down but also frees up our working memory to recall other things (Dinh, 2022).
Start creating reminders by utilizing the reminders application on your phone. This application is an easy to use list right on your device.
How to Create an iPhone Reminders List
- Select Add List.
- Add a name for your list. I recommend making a list clustering various tasks based on the category. For example, “Home List”, “Bill List”, “Work Tasks List”. Once you name the list, it will save on the home page.
- Select your list and then Select + New Reminder.
- A blank line will pop up and prompt you to type in your reminder. For example, you can write “pay gas bill”.
- Select the i symbol to the right if you would like to be notified of this reminder on a certain date or time.
- Select done and now you have created a reminder under your list.
Final Thoughts
Now is the best time to take charge of your life and become more organized. You have potential and power to take control and become a better version of yourself this year.
Remember to stay organized by:
- Developing and following consistent routines.
- Practicing daily enrichment activities.
- Creating an easy to access launchpad in your home.
- Performing task analysis for daunting tasks.
- Creating daily to do lists.
- Setting reminders for tasks.
By using these 6 strategies, you’ll be ready to handle anything that comes to you this year!
Further Reading
- Discover Magazine – To-Do Lists Free Up Memory For Other Tasks, Study Finds.
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – How to Deal with Changes in Routine
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – How to Prioritize To-Dos in a Routine
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – Daily Living Skills Personal Finance
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) – Caring for Your Mental Health.
- Regis College Online – Task Analysis in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Therapy: Strategies and Examples.