22 tips on how to organize your personal and professional life
In this article, I will show you 22 tips on how to organize your life.
Please check out my tips now.
1 – Understand your motivations for organizing your life
To completely reorganize your life is not a simple process but rather a major change that requires first of all an evolution of your mind.
In order to be able to change your organization in order to learn to accomplish what is important to you, you need to believe that you can do it.
This requires building self-esteem, self-efficacy, and awareness of what really motivates you.
It is therefore essential to answer the following question.
Why do I want to learn how to organize my life now?
Answering this question will allow you to understand your true motivations for getting out of your comfort zone and starting a personal development journey.
Your motivations are linked to what is important to you at this moment in your life and therefore to your most important values.
If you don’t know your values, you can be supported by a life coach.
Why is knowing your values so important to organize your life?
Because the ultimate goal of a better organization is to improve the quality of your life in all dimensions.
If you don’t know your values, you won’t be satisfied and happy with your life, no matter what goals you will be able to achieve.
Once you have identified your values, you will need to evaluate the price you have to pay to take control of your time. This is the subject of the next tip.
2 – Evaluate the price to pay
Any change requires an investment in terms of time, energy, money, etc.
This awareness is vital to evaluate if you are ready to become a new person.
Adapting your life to your new ambitions is not as simple as learning a few time management tools such as the famous Eisenhower Matrix or reading books on productivity.
The ultimate goal of time management coaching is to integrate what you need to learn into your lifestyle.
But this transformation requires a conscious effort on your part because if you want to change, you have the responsibility to do your best.
As you can see, organizing your life is an evolution that will take work and patience, but you can do it with the right strategies.
After identifying your first organizing goal, before you act, answer these two questions:
What is the cost?
Am I 100% motivated to pay that price?
If your answer is no, try to understand the reasons for your lack of motivation. If you don’t know how to get there, you can take advantage of the expertise of a life coach to accelerate your personal development journey.
If your answer is yes, you should know that the game is not yet won because you may be influenced by your organization’s number one enemy, which is procrastination.
In the next tip, I offer you a few ways to overcome procrastination.
3 – Overcome procrastination
Now that you know your values and the price you have to pay to start managing your life better, it’s time to take action.
However, even with a clear idea of your priorities, you may find yourself stuck in procrastination.
That’s why procrastination is the number one enemy to deal with long before you think about how to organize your day-to-day life.
But what are the main reasons that cause procrastination?
You can procrastinate for many different reasons.
For example, you may be procrastinating because of the nature of the task. If you perceive a given task as too difficult to perform or not enjoyable or not important, you will be more exposed to procrastination.
In this case, it becomes essential to change your perception of the task in order to take action quickly.
A time management coach can help you accelerate this awareness and your move to action.
But your tendency to procrastinate may also depend on other factors such as your level of efficiency, i.e. your belief in your ability to perform a given task.
Other psychological factors can also explain your procrastination, for example, if your self-esteem is too low, you may procrastinate for fear of failure and criticism from others. If this is your case, I recommend that you read my article on how to free and protect yourself from the gaze of others.
You may decide to procrastinate because of a lack of motivation. If you do have not enough motivation you will tend to prefer less important but more pleasant tasks instead of focusing on tasks that require more effort on your part.
Procrastination can also be related to a difficulty in managing your emotions effectively or to the difficulty in evaluating objectively the time needed to complete a task.
Other reasons can explain procrastination but, if you want to go further in the understanding of procrastination, I suggest you read the article 10 extraordinary tips to stop procrastinating in 2022.
If procrastination is no longer a problem for you but you still have some difficulties taking action, I advise you to read the article on how to overcome the fear of taking action.
Now it’s time to strengthen your physical and mental energy.
4 – Take into account your physical and mental resources
To become more productive you need to manage your physical and mental energies more efficiently.
In order to achieve this, you need to have a good lifestyle in terms of sleep, diet, physical activity, and stress management.
Several studies show, for example, that getting little sleep or having a poor quality of sleep has a negative effect on health and increases the likelihood of procrastination.
Some people also have a tendency to constantly postpone their bedtime without a real reason. In these cases, it is called sleep procrastination.
Your nutritional choices also have an important impact on your vitality and health.
Making time for the physical activity of your choice is essential for your well-being and for better stress management.
Managing stress well also depends on your ability to make time for activities that allow you to fulfill your potential.
In summary, if you don’t manage your energies properly, you won’t be able to accomplish everything that is a priority to you.
Now that you understand the importance of maximizing your physical and mental energy, the next tip is to learn how to use your to-do list effectively.
5 – Use a to-do list
Having a to-do list is important to reduce downtime and accomplish your most important tasks.
Write your to-do list at night before going to bed and organize your tasks according to their order of importance and the time of day you are most productive.
The next day, try to respect this order and do your most important tasks in the morning, afternoon, or evening.
The best time for you will depend on your chronotype but also on your energy level and any constraints you may have.
When you write your to-do list, next to each task write the corresponding goal.
Ideally, try to evaluate to what extent executing a task allows you to get closer to your goal, for example, this task allows me to progress by 5% towards my goal.
Doing this will allow you to :
- reinforce your motivation
- prioritize your tasks efficiently
- accomplish more tasks
If you don’t know how to prepare a to-do list, I advise you to read my article on how to make an effective to-do list for a better quality of life.
Once you have completed your to-do list, you will schedule these tasks in your agenda.
The next tip is to use your agenda efficiently.
6 – Use an agenda
Once your to-do list is ready, you will transfer your priority tasks into your agenda.
The most common mistake at this stage is to plan too many tasks or to plan tasks that are not important.
After you have put your tasks on your agenda, check if they are really important to you.
If they are not, keep them on your to-do list and do them only after your priority tasks are completed.
How can you be sure that the tasks scheduled in your agenda are really important?
They are important if they allow you to:
- move you closer to your goals
- improve the quality of your professional or personal life
- improve your well-being or reduce your stress
- accomplish more activities in less time
- develop new skills
- free up time for yourself
Now that you have defined all the important activities in your day, it is essential to plan breaks between each activity, a break for meals and empty time to be used to deal with unexpected events, to think, or to do other tasks.
The next tip is to plan globally, not just your work activities.
7 – Plan globally in all areas of your life
Some people are able to plan their professional activities but are not very good at planning their personal life.
Learning to plan in a comprehensive way is essential for anyone who wants to learn how to organize their life in a complete and effective way.
Often people fail to plan activities in all areas of their life because of their beliefs.
In these cases, customized coaching with a life coach can help you become aware of your obstacles and eliminate your negative beliefs.
To go further on this subject, I recommend you read my article on how to overcome limiting beliefs.
Other people are unable to think fully because of their fear of judgment from other people.
The next tip is to plan some time to develop your creativity.
8 – Schedule time to think creatively
You can’t be in action all the time because you need to develop a big-picture understanding of the effectiveness of your actions.
To do this, you need time to think outside the box.
Even if you are satisfied with your productivity and your results, you still have the opportunity to progress while taking into account your well-being.
By scheduling time during the day and throughout the week to find alternative ways to better organize your life, you will make faster progress in all areas.
Creative thinking is also effective in solving major problems in your personal or professional life. This is because creativity helps you to get out of your usual way of thinking and acting.
Creativity enables you to get out of your comfort zone and explore new territories in order to understand what is possible for you.
But to get the full benefits of creativity, you must be patient because the results are not immediate.
It is by developing the habit of thinking creatively that you will be able to innovate both at work and in your personal life. Doing so will not only allow you to accomplish more but also live better.
Now I suggest you move on to the next tip which is to get rid of the tasks that are not important.
9 – Eliminate what is not essential in your life
Anyone who wants to organize their life differently needs to eliminate what is not essential to their well-being and productivity.
This advice applies to:
- your habits
- the objects you use
- your thoughts
- the people you interact with
The question you need to answer is this.
What are the reasons that make me continue to repeat these behaviors in my life?
For example, you may find it difficult to change if you have side benefits and therefore may decide to leave the situation as it is.
But, fear can also explain your inaction. You don’t change the situation because you are afraid to get rid of your past or because you are afraid of the unknown.
In order to make this advice work for you, make a list of the unnecessary things in your life right away and start eliminating them.
In the case of relationships, take some time to decide if there is anything you can do to improve the quality of the relationship, and if not, stay away from people who are blocking your progress or reduce the time you spend with them.
The next tip is to start delegating some tasks effectively.
10 – Learn to delegate some of your tasks
Learning how to get organized in life sometimes requires knowing how to delegate some of your tasks.
The main difficulty of delegation is psychological because you may think that you are the only person capable of doing a given activity.
But very often, this is a limiting belief that can prevent you from enjoying your free time and activities that are important and enjoyable to you.
Before delegating a task it is essential to :
- define the expected result precisely
- take the time necessary to properly train the person you have selected
- start by delegating easy and repetitive tasks that cost time
- do not expect perfection from others
- remain supportive
By effectively practicing delegation, you will be able to save time for yourself, and this will :
- greatly improve the quality of your life and therefore your well-being
- allow you to reach your goals more quickly
To learn more about this topic, I recommend that you read my article on how to delegate in order to reduce stress and reach your goals.
The next tip is to lower stress and reduce your expectations.
11 – Reduce stress by limiting your expectations
Managing your time effectively requires controlling your stress because if you are too stressed you will be less productive and this will have negative impact on your health.
One way to achieve this is to limit your expectations in terms of :
- results
- time to achieve them
- the number of improvements you need to make
For the first two weeks, focus on goals that are easy to achieve.
Then, as you progress and are able to meet your commitments, focus on more and more complex goals.
Having low expectations will allow you to:
- increase your motivation
- take action in a more relaxed manner
- achieve and exceed your goals
- build self-confidence
- protect your self-esteem
The next tip is to use a journal.
12 – Use a journal
Using a journal can help you become more organized in your professional and personal life.
But there are other benefits to practicing journaling as well.
Writing is a way to stay focused on your results, your progress, and your learning.
Doing so will help you to stay motivated and keep you in a good mood on a daily basis.
Journaling also allows you to:
- improve your creativity
- test if your intuitions are applicable in reality
- have a written record of your progress in terms of your organization
- know yourself better through increased awareness and more effective management of your emotions
The next tip is to overcome perfectionism.
13 – Overcome perfectionism
Perfectionism is one of the main obstacles to overcome in order to reclaim control of your time, your emotions, and therefore your life.
Several pieces of research show that perfectionists are more likely to procrastinate.
Perfectionism is linked to self-esteem and an effective way to protect self-esteem while reducing the impact of perfectionism is to take regular, easy-to-implement mini-actions.
Another way to be less perfectionist is to accept imperfection in the short term in order to meet higher standards in the medium term.
It is also possible to influence the need for perfection by becoming aware of its existence and its impact on your life.
Finally, you can associate negative emotions with being too much of a perfectionist and positive emotions with the decision to take action.
No matter which of these strategies you choose, your goal is to take action to begin to effectively reorganize your life.
To go further on the subject of perfectionism, I suggest you read my article on how to stop being a perfectionist at work and in your private life.
The next tip is to develop better habits.
14 – Develop better habits
Most of our behaviors are not managed by our conscious mind, but rather by our unconscious which carries out our behaviors automatically after a given habit is established.
This means that in order to organize one’s life better, a person cannot rely on motivation and the conscious mind alone.
Implementing lasting change requires creating new habits and eliminating old ones.
To do this, you must stop repeating behaviors that are not helpful and you must repeat for a sufficiently long time the behaviors that are useful.
To reduce resistance to change, you can use implementation intentions and mental contrast.
Implementation intentions are if-then statements that you will use to facilitate the execution of a given behavior.
For example, if I realize that I am starting to procrastinate, I will still take a small action toward my goal.
These implementation intentions can be combined with the mental contrast which aims to identify in advance :
- anything that might prevent you from taking action to get organized
- possible solutions that will allow you to take action despite the obstacles encountered
By practicing a new behavior enough, it will be automatic and you will be able to organize yourself much better on a daily basis.
The next piece of advice is to act in spite of your lack of motivation or low energy.
15 – Take action even if you are not motivated or tired
Knowing your motivations to better organize your life and reach your goals is very important, especially when you encounter challenges.
But motivation is not everything and some people justify their lack of action by saying they feel unmotivated or tired.
In reality, even if you know what really motivates you, there will be days when you feel like doing nothing and just sitting back and watching your favorite show.
If you find excuses not to take action, your life will not change and you will remain unhappy.
For this reason, the best habit you can develop to get more organized is to take action regardless of :
- your level of motivation
- your energy level
- what is going on in your professional and personal life
By mentally associating pleasure with each time you do something and at the same time associating pain with inaction, you will be able to complete your important tasks in any situation.
The next tip is to become aware of your progress.
16 – Become aware of your progress
Organizing your life effectively takes time, motivation, and the implementation of more effective habits.
But becoming more organized on a daily basis also requires patience and a focus on your progress.
If you set your goals too high from the start, you risk losing motivation.
If you set more realistic goals and focus on what you’ve accomplished and what you can improve, you’ll be able to increase your motivation and become more successful.
During the day, take time to write a list of things you can do better in terms of the organization in your personal and professional life.
Then, plan these improvements in your agenda and take action.
By doing this, you will build confidence, self-esteem, and effectiveness.
The next tip is to use active procrastination.
17 – Use active procrastination
Previously, I talked about the importance of overcoming passive procrastination, which is the tendency to postpone actions while being aware of the negative consequences of not completing them on time.
But there is also a form of active procrastination in which you intentionally and strategically procrastinate certain activities in order to perform them a little later.
People who practice this type of procrastination still manage to complete their tasks on time.
Here’s how to practice active procrastination.
For example, if you are a person who performs better in the afternoon, you may decide to actively procrastinate on important tasks that require more concentration.
In this way, you strategically decide to take care of important but easier tasks in the morning first.
Active procrastination is useful when you collaborate with others to deal effectively with your emotions.
For example, you are expecting someone to complete what you have asked them to do and they don’t get it done in the time specified.
Instead of reminding them, you may decide to actively procrastinate on the task by giving them more time than you originally planned.
This way, you don’t waste your energies focusing on something that is not up to you, and instead, you focus on another activity that is important to you.
The next tip is to be assertive by defining precisely what is acceptable to you.
18 – Be assertive by defining your rules of the game
Organizing your life effectively requires not only being motivated, having a good lifestyle, developing good habits, and managing your emotions successfully but also cooperating effectively with others.
To co-operate effectively with your professional and personal environment, you need to know yourself better to understand what is right, acceptable, and important to you.
It is through this self-knowledge that you will be able to clearly communicate what you are willing to do and what is not acceptable to you.
Learning to be assertive, and therefore to fully express your point of view without being influenced by the opinion of others, requires a good amount of courage and work to strengthen your self-esteem and self-confidence.
If you have a good opinion of yourself and therefore good self-esteem, you will be more willing to express your point of view and therefore you will have more confidence in your abilities.
A simple way to build self-esteem is to:
- stop criticizing yourself all the time
- appreciate your strengths
- focus on your progress
- remember the goals you have achieved in the past
- project yourself positively into the future
The clearer you are about what you expect from others and what others can demand from you, the better your results will be and the more successful your relationships will be with others.
If you have difficulties in dealing with the opinion of others, I recommend that you read my article on how to free yourself and protect yourself from the gaze of others.
The next tip is to understand your strengths and weaknesses.
19 – Become aware of your strengths and weaknesses
Learning to manage your life effectively requires getting to know yourself better in order to identify both your strengths and weaknesses in terms of organization.
You don’t have to be perfect to effectively organize your work, family, and relationship life.
As you read earlier, you can delegate some of your tasks to other people.
Why not delegate the activities that make you feel the most uncomfortable?
Beyond the time you will save through delegation, another important advantage of delegating tasks that are difficult for you is that you avoid having a negative impact on :
- your motivation
- your self-esteem
- self-confidence
On the other hand, you can focus more on activities that allow you to highlight your strengths because by doing so you will feel more motivated and you will develop your self-esteem and self-confidence.
To go further on this subject, I suggest you read my article on how to know your strengths and weaknesses and turn them to your advantage.
The next tip is to accomplish more tasks by focusing on one task at a time.
20 – Focus on one task from start to finish
Nowadays, we are all exposed to different distractions and this can happen to us even when we need to perform an important task.
Generally speaking, I would advise you to avoid switching from one task to another.
Instead, try to focus on one task at a time.
If you are tired or have trouble concentrating, break your task down into smaller parts, finish one part and then take a break and move on to the next until you completely finish your task. Then move on to the next activity.
This way, you will be able to start and finish your most important tasks without being distracted by lower priority activities.
If the task requires several days of work and if it is a priority, perform it in the early morning if you have a morning chronotype, or in the early afternoon if you have an afternoon chronotype, or in the evening if you perform better in the evening.
Each time you complete a task that is important to you, plan a small reward to further strengthen your motivation to better organize your personal and professional life.
The next tip is to consider your primary perceptive modality.
21 – Consider your perceptual preferences: visual, auditory, kinesthetic
According to neurolinguistic programming, each person has a preference for a perceptual modality.
Some people are more visual, others auditory or kinesthetic.
For example, if you are auditory, that is you process your information more from what you hear, instead of writing your to-do list, you can record it and listen to it to motivate yourself even more.
If you are kinesthetic on the other hand, it is a good idea to write your list down and ideally in your notebook.
If you are visual, you can organize your to-do list as a diagram on your computer or smartphone.
By doing this and adapting these tips to your personal situation, you will be more motivated to get organized in your personal life and at work.
The next tip is to stop comparing yourself to others.
22 – Stop comparing yourself to others
The last tip is to stop comparing yourself to others.
Why?
Simply because it makes no sense because each person has different strengths and weaknesses.
But also because comparing yourself to others can have a negative impact on your self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation.
The solution is to compare you to yourself or more precisely to compare how you were a year ago and how you are today.
Doing this will allow you to become aware of all your progress, all your learnings, and more generally of your transformation.
By becoming more organized, you will improve the quality of your life in many areas and ultimately, you will become a new person.
Conclusion on how to organize your life
In this article, I have shared with you 22 tips that will help you organize your professional and personal life more effectively.
You don’t need to apply all of these tips to succeed. All you have to do is pick one tip and start applying it every day.
Doing this will help you become more organized and achieve your professional and personal goals more easily and quickly.
If you don’t know how to set your goals correctly, I recommend that you read my article on how to set goals, achieve them, and be truly happy.
If you are interested in the topic of productivity, I invite you to discover all my articles on productivity.
If you are looking for tools to improve your time management skills, I recommend you read my article on the best time management apps.
If you want to learn how to manage your time, I invite you to find out more about our online time management course.
If you are interested in customized coaching, you can take advantage of the expertise of a time management coach from our coaching firm.
Simply write to us by filling out our contact form, call us at +33 6 69 46 03 79 or contact us on WhatsApp at +33 6 69 46 03 79.
If you are ready to take action, check out our life coaching packages:
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Read this article in other languages
Français : Organiser sa vie : guide complet pour accomplir plus et vivre mieux
Italiano: Come organizzare la vita: la guida completa per vivere meglio