No matter how hard you work, if you do not have your life organized, your success will always be hampered by disorganization. No one can be fully productive, efficient, and happy in a disorganized environment where all that surrounds one is chaos.
If you are looking to stay organized at work, you are probably looking for a way to be on top without sacrificing your work-life balance. More importantly, during these not-so-normal times when many of us are in a state of mental exhaustion. The good news is that better organization is a skill that can be learned!
Use a Daily Planner
There are many ways to go about doing this. One tried and tested approach that works for many people is a daily planner. This will help you organize your life in a way that will maximize your productivity. In addition, getting our lives organized is a way of minimizing stress and mitigating any unpleasant surprises that might arise. Hence utilizing a daily planner contributes to our overall well-being.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the selection of daily planners to chose from. With a wide variety of options, it is important that the planner you choose must fulfill all your needs and criteria. The Thrive Framework Planner will be the ideal planner for those looking for a holistic solution. It will not only help manage your tasks but also manage your mental and emotional well–being. The Thrive Framework planner will help you stay organized and motivated. In addition to that, it will also help you grow and reach for the success you want to achieve. If implemented the right way, the Thrive Framework Planner will be guaranteed to help you get your life together!
Organize Your Life Work-Life: Your 3 Step Plan
Step 1: Take the time to schedule out your day
Having a disorganized mind will undoubtedly result in having a disorganized day. Having a rough idea of all the tasks you want to complete tomorrow isn’t enough to optimize your productivity. To declutter your mind start every day with a fresh new outlook, it's important to take some time to schedule your tasks and appointments. Whether it is the night before, or early in the morning, writing down all the things you have to accomplish throughout the day will help you be more organized. This gives you the time you need to prioritize your tasks. Take time to reflect on your goals and shake off any thoughts of uncertainty you might have on your mind.
Prioritizing Your Tasks
When you schedule out your day, you may find yourself overwhelmed or confused about how to prioritize your tasks. In the Thrive Framework Planner, these hurdles are tackled by incorporating a simple tool called the Eisenhower Matrix. By dividing your task into four categories, the Eisenhower Matrix makes it easier for you to stay organized and get your work done. These four categories are divided according to its level of urgency and importance. They consist of the task you Do First (urgent and important), the ones you Schedule for later (less urgent but important), the task you will Delegate to someone else (urgent but less important), and the ones you Shelve away for later (neither urgent nor important).
With this new strategy in place, you begin to eliminate the tasks that are not worth your time and energy. You will have more time and energy to focus on the ones that do. Although categorizing your task may come as a challenge, it's an important step to take to increase your productivity. At the end of each day, your time is efficiently spent on the tasks that will get you closer to your goal.
Step 2: Avoid Multi-tasking
When the tasks on your to-do list start to pile up and you are eager to get them done as fast as possible, it is easy to fall under the practice of multi-tasking. We might conclude that working on two tasks simultaneously maximizes our productivity, but studies show that the opposite takes into effect. While you might feel as though you are getting more work done, multitasking decreases your productivity by 40%.
According to psychologists, there is an added switch cost that we burden when we multi-task. We take time to readjust. When we try to perform two different tasks simultaneously, our brain puts in the extra effort to readjust between them. This cost may seem minuscule, but when added together, it leads to a significant amount of time wasted and an increase in error.
For most of us, multi-tasking has turned into a bad habit we just can’t shake. However, there are many steps that we can implement into our daily routine that will help it break. The Thrive Framework Planner emphasizes the importance of focusing on a task and tackling them one at a time. It is important to keep track of all the assignments you have to do during the day. Once you are done with them, cross them out. Having this central to-do list and allocating a specific time during the day to perform your task will give you greater results and increase your efficiency.
Step 3: Take care of your mental and emotional well-being
To thrive in your workplace and lead a life of productivity and efficiency, one must do more than just ensure their work affairs are in order. A jam-packed schedule may make you feel as though you’ve got your life together, but it is important to always take into account your mental and emotional well–being. Being organized doesn't mean we ignore our mental health. In a time where hustle culture proves to be dominant, it is easy to place your well-being on the back burner. However, without proper care and prioritization, our well-being will start to decline and affect the way we work.
Procrastination
When we are given a task to complete, we want it done to the best of our abilities and as fast as possible. But often enough, we put off our work until the last possible moment and fall as victims to procrastination. Mental health impacts our productivity in more ways than one, but it especially plays a role in procrastination. We may assume that procrastination is a result of laziness, but recent research shows that it has more to do with our mental health than we think.
According to a study by psychologist Dr. Tim Pychyl, a member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa, “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem”. When a challenging task is placed upon us and we are consumed by our insecurities and anxieties, our first instinct is to find ways to avoid the task. Although we are unaware of why we do it, we still feel the guilt looming over us. When we are inevitably faced to complete our work, our anxieties still remain and we are left to acknowledge that we just wasted three hours deep cleaning our medicine cabinet.
Anxiety and Self-Doubt
Oftentimes, anxiety and self-doubt feel like endless spirals. However, there are activities that you can incorporate into your daily routine that will help to reduce them. Within the Thrive Framework Planner, activities such as Anchoring, Visualization, and The Happiness Habit, have all been added as daily routines to take care of your mental and emotional well–being. By taking the time out of your day to wind down, reflect on your thoughts, and record your lessons, you start to build a more positive mindset, which will help you in conquering the obstacles that stand between you and your goals and stay organized.
By incorporating this 3 Step Plan into your daily life, you will start to notice an increase in your productivity and overall well-being. You begin to prioritize tasks that are important to you and effectively use the time you have. You will start to feel as though you are getting closer and closer to your goal. Instead of scrambling between different objectives, you have chosen to organize your day in a way that makes you feel fulfilled. Most importantly, the steps you take have actively created a routine that not only maintains productivity but also looks after your mental health.