Get It!. Jacqueline Laurita
you’ve already come.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
—Thomas A. Edison
“Organization isn’t about perfection; it’s about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money, and improving your overall quality of life.”
—Christina Scalise
If you are a busy woman who wears many hats throughout the day (the mom hat, the wife hat, the friend hat, the chef hat, the chauffeur hat, the worker hat, the nurse hat—you get the idea!), you know how quickly life can become overwhelming. You’re bombarded with nagging thoughts and constant reminders of things you’ve yet to accomplish, and endless demands waiting impatiently to be addressed.
There are days when there don’t seem to be enough hours to get everything done that you need to get done. And when you feel overburdened, you may shut down. When you shut down, you don’t complete your daily tasks and you can end up feeling even more overwhelmed, inadequate, and discouraged. An unfinished workload can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. And if you’re always playing catch-up, it’s impossible to move ahead.
That’s why it’s so important to get organized—in your thoughts and in your environment. It’s the key to becoming more productive and more effective, in all areas of your life. Getting organized means having the peace of mind that your life is under your control. It means knowing when you can fit in a workout and where you put that bok choy you bought for dinner. It means it will be easier and faster to find that outfit you wanted to wear and the right makeup tools. Organization is essential to really get what you want and need out of life, whatever that might be.
We know it’s not an easy task—but it is well worth the effort!
D.R.O.P. Everything and Refocus!
It’s hard to clearly focus on one task when you are fixated on and stressed about others. Sometimes there are just too many thoughts going on inside your head about what you need to do for you to focus on any one thing, making it impossible to actually get things done.
There’s a tool we like to use when this happens to us to help us think and work more effectively: we D.R.O.P. everything—download, rearrange, organize, and proceed—and refocus!
Download
When you start feeling overwhelmed by your thoughts, stop and physically “download” them, whether on paper (a pocket-size notebook works well for this) or digitally (into a smartphone app or text document). Get them out of your mind, before you lose your mind! Physically being able to see your thoughts lets you process them more effectively.
Rearrange
Once you have your thoughts on paper (or screen), rearrange them into categories: home, work, family, and personal, for example. Then use this to turn those thoughts into specific tasks, projects, and goals.
Let’s say that under the home category, you’ve added—based on your download—things like “clean closet,” “clean out pantry,” and “buy groceries.” Under each of these, write a step-by-step list of how you will accomplish the task. For example, under “clean closet,” your list might look like this: (1) Separate clothes into keep, give away/donate, trash, alter, dry-clean, and wash piles. (2) Put keep pile back in the closet. (3) Wash clothes. And so on.
On Jené and Jacqueline’s Smartphones
We use apps like OmniFocus, a task management platform for Mac, iPad, or iPhone, and Evernote, a digital workspace productivity app where you can write, collect, discuss, and present your ideas, to keep each key area of our lives in order. We also use Fantastical 2, a calendar app for OS X, to manage and organize our calendars, events, and reminders.
“Get Organized and you’ll have Order. Have Order and you’ll maintain Control. Stay in Control and you’ll have unlocked Freedom.”
Organize
After you’ve placed your thoughts in category sections, organize them in order of priority. Then move those items, in priority order, onto a to-do list and add a time frame or deadline for each task or project, where applicable. You want to be able to look at this list throughout the day to remind yourself to stay on task. You can even send reminder alarms to your phone for the most urgent action items, so they stay on your mind until you can cross them off your list.
Proceed
Review your to-do list daily and take action! Here are some tips for knocking out items on your list as efficiently as possible:
Finding the Time
We used to constantly find ourselves saying “I don’t have time to ______,” but when we really thought about it, we realized that we actually did have pockets of time throughout our day we could use to do more things. We just weren’t choosing to use that time wisely.
The issue is almost never that we don’t have the time, but that we don’t choose to make the time. It’s so easy to get distracted! If you block time on your calendar, time becomes available.
Organizing Your Home
No matter how organized your to-do list is, it’s hard to get anything done when the space around you is in chaos.
Here are our tips for creating a beautiful, peaceful, organized living space—quickly and simply!
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
—William Morris
Declutter Your Space
Decluttering your mind starts with decluttering your environment. Clutter makes your home not only harder to organize, but also harder to keep tidy.
To get started decluttering, follow these tips: