How to Get Your Life in Order Quickly: A Three Step Guide (Plus Infographic)

Getting your life in order doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out process—it’s very quick once you get going.

Why get organized? Because an organized life leads to more confidence, more efficiency and less stress.

Get Your Life in Order Fast with the Following Three Steps:

1. De-clutter Your Space in Two Days
2. Develop a Habit-Building Routine
3. Capture Your Tasks

For a handy overview of the three steps, see our infographic at the end of this article (it’s also free to download).

Let’s get organized.

Step 1: De-Clutter Your Space in Two Days

To begin getting your life in order you’ve got to take care of your physical space. Studies show clean and tidy spaces can make you feel happier and help us to be more focused and efficient in our work.

Physical clutter on the other hand can cause mental clutter that makes it much harder to get things done.

Our physical surroundings have a big effect on our productivity levels, mood, and happiness levels. 

So, start by de-cluttering your space to create a clean and clear foundation from which you can build your life.

Which Areas Should You De-clutter First?

Start with the areas that are most critical to the smooth functioning of your daily life. Desks, kitchen countertops, bathrooms, and wardrobes are good places to start.

These areas play a huge role in most people’s lives. If they’re cluttered and messy, they will create a feeling of chaos.

Cleaning up and keeping these spaces organized can improve your mental state and overall productivity levels.

How to De-clutter Quickly

Work with speed, taking out-of-place items back to their rightful homes. Put items you no longer need into ‘dump’, ‘donate’ or ‘sell’ piles.

Place items for donation in bags or boxes and take them with you to donate when you next leave the house. Put items to sell in containers and store them neatly aside to sell later.

Spend at least two days sweeping through the critical areas in priority order.

Priority areas are those that cause the most distress and time wasting due to the clutter. To make the most of these two days be efficient and ruthless when clearing and tidying!

Next Steps

By the end of two days of clearing clutter you will already be feeling like your life is more orderly.

Congratulations!

Keeping things orderly is key now, and this becomes easy once you build good habits such as putting things away instead of just putting things down.

Building good habits into your daily life begins with having a good routine, which brings us to step two.

Step 2: Develop a Habit-Building Routine

Step two is about creating a routine that works to develop habits that will support you every day.

Habits are the things you do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis without even thinking about them. They’re the things that make up your daily routine.

There are lots of excellent productivity books that talk about the ‘power of habit’. That’s because having positive daily habits can make a huge difference in your life!

You can use the power of habit to your advantage by building a routine that helps you achieve your goals.

The goal of keeping your life in order is just like any other, it requires adding daily habits into your routine that support the achievement of that goal.

Today you will develop and commit to two key habits: (1) early to bed early to rise and (2) preparing nightly for tomorrow.

1. Rising Early Every Day

Early to bed early to rise, is a powerful way to bring order to your life.

By simply rising early you can stop being rushed and instead feel calm and have command over the day ahead.

Now, think about all the things you need to do at the start of each day, such as preparing breakfasts, school lunches, packing bags, showering, dressing and so on.

Calculate the amount of time you need each morning to achieve all those things without having to rush. Also, add some time for things that will help keep life orderly, such as putting things away, tidying up breakfast dishes and making beds.

Now you understand how much time you need each morning, write down what time that means you need to rise each day. Ensure you give yourself more than enough time to manage your morning calmly.

Knowing what time you need to rise means you also now know what time you need to go to sleep.

Write these times down and commit to adhering to them.

If the times have changed a lot from what you are used to, then at first it will be challenging. However, every day you follow through on your commitment is another day of building the habits and daily routine that support your goals.

2. Preparing Nightly for Tomorrow

Rising early and keeping your mornings calm and orderly is made even easier when you prepare the night before for the following day’s events.

For each day of the week write down events that occur on specific days, such as, ‘tennis training Tuesday nights’, ‘family get together Thursday nights’, ‘kids’ sports Saturday morning’.

Once you have an overview of what each day of a typical week entails, create a template of it and leave room to add ad hoc events such as concerts, medical appointments, and special events.

Keep the template in a place you can easily ad events to and can refer to each evening, then commit to building this key habit of preparing nightly for the next day.

For example, if tennis practice is the next day, gather up the gear and put it near the front door the night before.

Or for a birthday event you’re attending the following evening, wrap the gift and write on the card the evening before.

At times, you need to prepare things further ahead than just the night before, such as buying a birthday gift and card. To-do lists are an excellent way of keeping sight of tasks such as this, and that brings us to the focus of step three.

Step 3: Capture Your Tasks

A to-do list is one of the simplest and most effective ways to get your life in order and stay on top of your responsibilities. A to-do list is simply a list of all the tasks that need to be done.

Writing tasks down allows you to get them out of your head and captured.

It is the ‘capturing in writing’ of tasks that is so important, as it reduces overwhelm, and will give you confidence knowing you won’t forget important things.

Tools of Choice

Think about the type of to-do list you would prefer to work with. Digital and paper options abound! The key is to choose something that works for you and your lifestyle.

If you prefer to work with a digital option then choosing a basic tool is best rather than getting bogged down in fancy color coding, and complex tracking tools.

You need to be able to add tasks to the list quickly and easily as they come up.

If you prefer paper to-do list options then a plain note pad can do the trick. Alternatively, a pad designed specifically for list writing and checking off tasks can be bought from stationary stores.

A combination of digital and paper can work too.

The key to any organizational tool is to use it consistently until it becomes a habit.

So, start building that habit today by writing a list of all the things you can think of that are either outstanding, coming up in the future or that you just want to get done.

Your task lists will be constantly changing as you add new things and cross off completed items.

From right now, commit to using your to-do list every day, adding tasks as they arrive and crossing off completed items.

Then, at the end of each day, review and refresh your list by carrying over the outstanding items and adding new tasks that come up.

Reviewing your list this way has the added benefit of giving you an oversight of what the following day’s tasks entail.

The Power of Three

If you’ve worked through the three steps so far then your life will be transforming into a much more orderly one.

Congratulations!

Let’s recap what you’ve achieved with each step:

• You brought more order to your life by de-cluttering your space in step one.
• In step two, you took command over each day by analyzing your morning tasks and determining the time you need to rise to calmly achieve all you need to. You also committed to your new wake up and bedtimes.
• And finally in step three, you took control of all your tasks by determining your preferred method of keeping track of everything you need to do. You committed to capturing, completing, and reviewing your tasks and list every day.

The tasks of keeping your space uncluttered, rising early, and tracking and completing your to-do list, will take conscious effort over the short term.

As you repeat these actions every day, they will soon become automatic.

They will be so habitual you won’t have to think about them anymore, you will just do them.

It’s the power of combining these three new habits that is key to achieving your goal of an orderly life now, and in the future. And that’s what makes them habits that are worth repeating.

So stay committed and you will continue to reap the rewards!

Infographic

For a handy overview of the three steps, see our infographic below. You can also download it for free here.