7 Ways to Keep You Organized Specially In A Work From Home Scenario

At a time when the pandemic isn’t just easing down and we all are in a rock and roll ride of juggling work-from-home and life-at-home together, it’s becoming even harder to organize our homes and ourselves. Attending an office meeting over a video call while the noise of your mom calling you for the lunch strikes right trough has become a common thing and we all are becoming adaptable to it. There comes the time when we forget to email an important file because we are unable to manage home affairs and work affairs simultaneously at the same place. We are all in this together and hence I have found ways to take up a notch in organizing our lives by organizing ourselves.

We all loved how Monica Geller in FRIENDS organized her home, work and herself. But is there any secret to be effectively organized and not having any stress related to lost keys, forgotten files, unsent emails, skipped meals and rotten sleep schedule? Well, the secret is disclosed and it includes so many little things that we need to focus on to get bigger results. These results may surprise you and can elevate the quality of your life. These little things, once adapted to, become the habits that can transform your life from ordinary to an excellent one.

To improve your productivity while not missing out the fun of working from home at the same time, you can embrace the following scientifically proven ways for making yourself more organized.

1. Get Up Early:

   So, this secret doesn’t seem new and it indeed is an ancient and foremost way related to organizing life in a better way. Robin Sharma before launching his revolutionary book “The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life” has many times mentioned the perks of getting up early in his other books. But he had to write a separate book to specifically prioritize the necessity of early morning routine to achieve success because people love to procrastinate. Setting at least 6 alarms in a gap of 5-5 minutes is also an example of procrastination. The solution to avoid procrastination is also dealt with in Robin Sharma’s book. But there are other books as well like “My Morning Routine” by Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander, “Thrive” by Arianna Huffington, “Unplug” by Suze Yalof Schwartz etc. can also help you make your getting-up-early dream a getting-up-early habit.

Just because you are working from home and you don’t need to travel to your workplace shouldn’t be an excuse of getting up late because that will only yield the unnecessary impact on your overall routine and health.

You will have a lot of time saved for other works if you wake up early and the time is the key that we all need for the sake of unlocking the medicine of stress. Getting up early also has health benefits that can keep our mind and body fit and fine.

2. Weekly Planner:

Creating a weekly planner can save a lot of time that you often tend to waste in deciding what to wear the next morning, what to eat in the dinner and what to do next. There are online apps available to help you in performing this task and if you are not comfortable in using them, you can simply switch to the conventional way of making a planner of a paper. Keeping a journal and making planner on it would also serve the purpose. You can think ahead of time and decide all things that you will need in the upcoming weeks and then properly list them. Make this planner handy by sticking it on a wall or keeping it on the table in case of a journal and the online planner comes with notification facility which we all should be thankful for.

3. Decluttering your life:

Decluttering is removing the unimportant and unnecessary things and tasks that disturb your routine and also your mental health. Decluttering is a kind of therapy since it involves removing the intoxicants from your life. These intoxicants can be in any form and be slipped away from your attention easily. Your habit of procrastination becomes the might of these intoxicants and it’s the root cause which halts your success. What are these intoxicants and how can you declutter them?

• Declutter your home:

  While working from home or otherwise, if there are unnecessary objects in your home, they’ll always create disturbance in your life. If your kitchen platform is piled up with unclean utensils or if your closet is filled with old jeans and t-shirts that always come in the way while you’re rummaging through it to get a perfect outfit or if your bathroom has that empty bottle of shampoo that hasn’t found its place in the trash yet then you seriously need to declutter your house. You can take the time of 1 to 2 hours and the help of your family members to remove these unwanted things from your home to bring its charm back. Trust me, you’ll feel organized and relaxed.

• Decluttering your table:

  I am mentioning your table specifically here because it is very important to declutter your table whether you declutter your home or not. The magazines you’ve read already and won’t be of any use further, the files that are craving to get a place in the drawer, the pens and markers that are just lying unabashedly on the table surface, the sticky notes or other papers regardless of their importance need to be set in a perfect place.

• Declutter your habits:

  the real intoxicants feed your thoughts negatively and live within your soul. These are the bad habits that you need to throw out of your life. Be it procrastination, smoking, excessive drinking or sleeping late, you must fix them to achieve the greater objectives of your life.

• Declutter your phone and social media:

  some long-gone memories still breathing into those pictures and videos that you haven’t deleted from your phone will hinder your path. Similarly, the inboxes of your messenger app like WhatsApp etc. need to get decluttered. Find a few minutes to identify the items in these areas which are still important to you and the rest should be deleted immediately. If you are a bird who has nests in various social media accounts then try checking those accounts that you follow but when you see or read them, it just invokes the rage in you because they are toxic, fake or unwanted in any way, then go to their profiles and unfollow them. You don’t need to carry the baggage of guilt for unfollowing them even when they were your closed ones. You have to identify who brings positivity in your life and who just weigh you down by instigating skepticism and self-loathing in your mind.

• Declutter your e-commerce website’s cart:

  E-commerce website will follow you everywhere and keep poking you until you buy the product you have saved in your cart. So, you better remove the product from the cart without being confused about it. If there will be a right time to buy, you’ll buy this, but do not let these habits of yours and sales mechanisms of e-commerce websites haunt and lure you at the same time.

4. Clean your surroundings:

A clean environment has positive energy around it and this can help in cultivating the best vibes to facilitate the smooth functioning of your regular works. Cleaning is a form of meditation. There have been instances when people accepted that when they get angry, they start cleaning the house to channelize the negative energy of rage into a positive outcome. But you don’t always need to get angry to clean your house, rather you need to make cleaning a habit by considering it a form of workout or meditation whatsoever you may like.

It is important to note here that cleaning of the house only will not suffice. The often-forgotten areas such as your handbag, shoe rack, and that one important drawer which contains everything important also need to be cleaned regularly.

5. Set goals:

Setting a goal is all about having a clear vision of how your life should look like within or after a particular time. The goal of life can be bigger and far-reaching yet it can only be achieved by setting smaller goals or daily targets. The bigger mountains are climbed by climbing smaller flights of stairs. Hence, you need to set a target for yourself for a day or a week. The goals for that particular chunk of time should be small, smart and feasible. You can make a to-do list and consider the short-term targets. These to-do lists can be made on google keep or other digital notes. There are various apps available in the google play store that work as free and easy list-making tools.

6. Set reminder:

Setting a reminder goes a long way in keeping your life on track. You can use various tools to set reminders. An important thing to note here is you must not set numerous vague reminders that may end up distracting you. Prioritize your tasks. And then find out the area where reminders would be necessary for you and then use them accordingly. Setting a reminder to call a colleague or emailing your boss or submitting the project before the deadline or paying the bills before the end time or drinking 8 glass of water daily can help you more than you have ever thought.

7. Putting labels: 

The human brain is subject to forgetting things easily and we all struggle a lot because of it. But isn’t it obvious that you cannot remember everything yet you can label things to help you in keeping track of where the things are put? Just like you put a sticky table on a book so that you don’t forget to revise that particular page, you can put labels on drawers of closets highlighting what things they contain. This small habit will certainly help you in remaining organized and disciplined.