Organisation - Simply Put!

In the Marstan Guide Introduction to Personal Development, we said that organisation was one of the four core skills that can be applied to all aspects of your life.

If you can’t organise your time and your actions, you will not achieve your goals.

There are two principal skills required to organise your life or career:

• Organising your home and work space
• Time management

Organising your home and work space

There are 3 benefits of organising your home and work space:

1. Too many people waste time trying to find things in their cluttered environment.
2. The inability to find things creates frustration and stress, whereas a neat environment looks good and is very calming.
3. A tidy workspace makes you look more professional and is good for your career.

The concept of a tidy home and workspace is very simple and there are four tips to good organisation:

1. Keep as few things as possible “when in doubt, throw it out”. The more things you have, the more time and effort you have to spend organising or finding it.
2. Store things effectively. Follow the old adage, “a place for everything in its place”. Make sure you have cupboards, shelves, boxes, files – whatever is needed to store everything neatly and effectively. Buy the best that you can so that everything looks good and you are encouraged to use your storage media.
3. Put everything away as soon as you have finished with it. If you set something aside to “deal with it later”, you will find yourself becoming disorganised. The beauty of creating a place for everything at the beginning is that all you have to do is walk up to the right box or file to put something away – instant results and peace of mind.
4. Make a note of where you put things. If you find yourself struggling to lay your hands on things you may need a list of items and their locations. The format doesn’t matter; whether you create a simple computer database or have a little black book, the important thing is to have something to help you so that you don’t waste time.

Time management

Time has many similarities with money:

1. You can spend both time and money
2. If you spend them wisely, it brings a lot of benefits.
3. If you waste them, it is very demoralising.

Unlike money, however, on any given day, you have exactly the same amount of time as everybody in the world. How you choose to spend it is what makes the difference to your life and career.

There are 6 steps to managing your time effectively:

1. Find out what you are doing with it now

Take a time log for 5 (preferably consecutive) days, including a weekend.

Download a blank time log form. Make sure that you cover a 24 hour period, including sleeping time. Download a sample time log form. Most people are surprised to see how much time they waste.

2. Always plan the most important parts of your day before it starts

You can plan it in the morning, but your resolve (and ambition) may be higher the night before.

3. From your Action List, identify the most important activities of the day

If there are a lot of items on your list, identify the Top 6.

4. Plan the order of your day

Make sure you have planned your most difficult tasks to coincide with the time you feel you are at your best.

5. During the day, make sure you start your work in the order that you have planned

If you are interrupted, make a decision – do I have to deal with this unexpected item now? If not, carry out what you were doing and add the new item to your Action List. If you have to stop to deal with the interruption, set aside your current task and come back to it. (DO NOT pick up another task).

6. Motivate yourself

Give yourself the fun and motivation of ticking things off your list.

Downloads

• Daily Time Log.xls (29.5 KB)
• Sample Daily Time Log.xls (31.5 KB)