The 4th Habit to Becoming Highly Organized: In Order

A series exploring 5 habits to help you learn H.O.W. to Make it Happen

H.O.W. Habits will find more time in your day so you have more time for you. They are secret weapons of organization to fight against whatever makes you feel stressed. Adopt one or adopt them all — whatever works for you to show busy who’s boss.

I’ve always been a creature of habit. I packed the same thing for lunch every day from grade school through high school (juice box, Tastycake chocolate cupcakes, Utz potato chips, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). I find comfort in routine and having a structure to my life.

A routine, however, is not the same as a schedule — at least not in the way that I have adopted it. A schedule necessitates that you do certain activities at specific times: a meeting from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., for example. A routine is a set pattern of tasks that advance in an orderly fashion from one to the next, without being wedded to each minute on the clock. It doesn’t always matter when you do the steps, just that you do them. Think of it like yoga, flowing from one position to the next. When you practice yoga isn’t critical, but moving through the various poses, matching breath to movement, is what’s important.

Why bother with this habit? I’ll answer this question with another question: what is most important to you that you struggle to fit into your life? A structured approach can help you proactively identify and protect time to do things you love. A commitment to work out for 30 minutes a day at 6:00 a.m. every single day may be unreasonable. Schedules fluctuate, people and problems interfere, and sometimes you just don’t feel like it. Instead, commit to working out once a day. It doesn’t matter for how long or what type of workout it is; only that you are carving out time for this activity that you have deemed important to occur at some point during the day. When you protect time this way, you have told yourself, and the people in your life, that this time is sacrosanct. It is a priority. You are a priority. Make it so.

How can you develop this habit? Start by experimenting. It may take you several tries to figure out what a particular structure should look like to create and maintain that protected time. Is it a particular time of day? Day of the week? Can you couple it with something else that you’re doing to make it even more likely that it will happen?

Personal: I finally began working out every day because I set a recurring reminder. For me, it doesn’t matter what I do or when I do it, as long as I get it done. Since I love checking off items on my to do list as complete, it also soothes that itch.

Professional: Blocking off time on your calendar is an excellent way to create space to strategize, brainstorm, catch up, or prepare for what’s ahead (see 3rd Habit to Becoming Highly Organized). But there are often tasks you need to accomplish that don’t have to be completed within a certain timeframe. If you include those tasks on a particular day of your calendar, and that day passes without you having been able to address them, then they’re out of sight, out of mind. But if you establish these tasks as a routine, then you are more likely to accomplish them.

For example, if business development is a part of your role, set a recurring reminder for a particular day of the week when you will focus on that activity. It doesn’t matter what time of the day you review your leads and make phone calls; just that it happens every Tuesday, for example. Further, if you just can’t get to those tasks, the reminder will stay on your list and show up on Wednesday as overdue.

The routine that you establish will likely take less time than the time you spend worrying that you don’t have enough time.

Simply stated: establish a routine to keep your life in order.

Next week — the 5th Habit to Becoming Highly Organized: Situational Awareness