Getting organized is one thing, staying organized is another challenge altogether. If you want to stay in control of your life, you need to form a few simple habits to change the way you think about your ‘stuff.’ These strategies will keep you ahead in both your personal and professional life.
Here are 7 easy ways to stay organized and empower your brain for more success.
Make the bed
Making your bed every day is a small but easily overlooked task that will make you feel instantly more organized and your bedroom look neat. Whatever else happens in your day, at least you’ve made your bed. This simple task will be powerful in what successes you have for the rest of the day and week.
Clean up the kitchen, clean up your office, create a task list
Do the dishes, clean up the kitchen, and keep a well-run goal list. This will help you finish each day with the right mindset and empowerment for keeping the rest of your life organized. This translates into creating better habits that make you feel like you are in control, a success, rather than beating yourself up. It always starts with the simple easier habits to take you far. Wikihow has a wonderful tutorial on making effective task lists.
Stay on task
Finish one task before you start the next one. Multitasking is overrated and wastes your energy. By trying to do too much at once, you risk getting exhausted and never actually finishing anything. Focusing on one thing at a time will keep you calm, and soon you’ll have a bunch of checks on your to-do list. Just marking off that check list will empower you beyond your wildest imagination. Try it and see!
Use your downtime
Add up all those minutes that you wait throughout your day. Other then realizing how much time you have wasted; you will find there are lots of minutes to have a standby list for those occasions. Whether it’s waiting for the coffee maker to brew or waiting for an appointment, you can use this time to do some critical tasks for your business; such as, updating your database, establishing your goals for the week, or making a few contact calls to your database.
Keep synched
Make sure your smartphones and devices talk to one another and that calendars are kept synced. You will not miss appointments, you will save time, and you will feel empowered by the organization this will create.
Stay on top of emails
Schedule part of your day to deal with emails so your inbox doesn’t get out of control. Aim for zero email by the end of the day by using filters and tagging, and don’t procrastinate. Getting it done will keep you on top of your game.
Stay on top of paperwork
Work out a system to deal with the tide of papers that come into life and stick to it. Action, scan and file important papers, and throw away or recycle hard copies. Make dealing with paperwork part of your evening tidy up for the next day, and you will never have piles of unsorted papers again.
Remember, staying on top is better than getting buried. Develop a reward system to help you feel positive about organizational habit development.
There are many things you can do to empower your life. Start with these 7 to see where that takes you. Just remember that consistency is everything and will lead you to greatness.
Cindy Bishop is the Managing Director for Cindy Bishop Worldwide, A Real Estate Education company offering Virginia Continuing Education and Business Development Training. She is also a 30-year veteran of Real Estate Sales. Visit www.cindybishopworldwide.com or www.cindybishoptraining.com to find out more. You may also want to check out Cindy’s fabulous book section.