Everyone has the same 24 hours in each and every day. Yet, it is amazing the differences in what people achieve with that time. Some of those differences depend on energy levels, capacity to focus and how hard you work, but I have found that one of the main things that sets apart high achievers from the pack is learning how to be organized.

How To Be Organized

There are many personal organization systems available. What works for you will depend on your personality, the nature of your business, whether you like to work with paper or technology, whether you are individualistic or more communal, whether you are visual or verbal, whether you are visionary or more functional and a whole range of other factors.

The person who develops an integrated system to organise their life towards clear goals will always outperform the other 95% of people on the planet.

This is huge! It is the difference between dreams becoming reality or just fading away. It is the difference between wealth and poverty. It is the difference between fulfilment and frustration. It is one of the primary keys to making life work.

4 Guiding Principles That Govern How To Be Organized.

1. Know what you want. You need to kno where you are headed; what you want to achieve.  This will guide your thinking and planning. The problem is many people do not know what they want. So there is little passion or heart to set priorities, make decisions and plan ahead. They are easily distracted. Passionate people will always rule the room, the marketplace, even the world. Passion is the fuel that drives you to make things happen.
2. Your organizational system needs to actually work! This may seem obvious but I have discovered that many people don’t actually measure or test the ways they do things. They just keep doing what they have always done and if it doesn’t work theyeither put in more effort or give up. We humans are such creatures of habit that it is actually quite difficult for us to change especially on our own. We need help to break habits and retrain ourselves in new more productive ways. The new will feel uncomfortable for a few weeks but it really is possible to make major changes in our daily habits over about 6 weeks.
3. Make sure your organizational system covers your whole life. There is nothing more fragmenting and self-sabotaging than being organized at work but not at home. Or having one diary for home and another for other parts of your life. Schedule everything in one organizational system (e.g. paper diary, outlook calendar, iPhone, wall calendar, etc). And now with cloud technology you can link all your computer diaries effortlessly into one place and share it with whomever you want as well.
4. Make yourself accountable to someone you respect. This is the crunch point that is usually avoided. You will become so much more focued, disciplined and productive if you know you have to give an account to someone at least once a month. This is where a mentor, coach or trusted colleague can be a great asset in our lives.

So, which organizational system is best? Simple…the one that works for you across your whole life to help you achieve what you really want.

If you are currently disorganized and always behind the game, then I strongly suggest you invest some time and money into finding and learning a system based on these 4 principles.

You could always pay someone to organize you … but that is a whole other story as it requires tremendous discipline and significant humility and trust to work effectively with a Personal Assistant (PA, EA, VA).

This is a start of a very releasing journey. Can I encourage you to be patient, be willing to take small steps and before you know it you will learn how to be organized.

Feel free to leave me a comment on what has helped you to get organized and become productive. I’d love to know.