Am I organized? Are you organized?

Do you feel cluttered; shall we first analyze the reasons behind the same.


No time..?

Poor memory..?

Fear of Failure..?


To start organizing our life, we need to acknowledge the cause and make a decision to overcome it. Organization takes time, but when we get into the habit of it, life becomes so much easier!

Configuration Management is not a mere CMMI PA or an ISO requirement. Don’t assume it to be limited to an organization, seeking for appraisal. Configuration management is an inevitable part of one’s daily life.

Let me connect it to an organized lifestyle. Organization starts from the moment we wake up. Even before that, it should start as planning for a day begins much before that.

1. Making lists

There are many things which we often forget in our day to day life. Say like list of grocery items, names of people who we met recently, birthdays, anniversaries etc. Why do we need to stress our brain by handling all these stuffs while the brain has got many other important jobs? And that too in a world with many technical advancements to keep reminders. More over once we start writing, it becomes a habit. And writing a thing or a name makes us to remember the same even without looking at it at a later point. I always prefer to have a pen and paper, which is a permanent reminder. You can have your laptop or smart phones or even a pen-paper to write down the reminders or your appointments or anything else. I have a small whiteboard on my bedroom wall (which is not easily noticeable by outsiders). Upon which I made two columns, one for ‘to do’ list and another for ‘today’ list. “Todo” is a list of general things I have to do. Then “today” is what I need to do, obviously, today! I also keep two things unchanged on the “today” part, which are surya namaskar and exercise. This seems to help. I do wish to include one more item permanently, i.e meditation. But somehow it’s getting skipped. I need to be more cautious. Make a To do list for your day, week month and the year..

2. Making planner

Observe your day. How long you are taking for each activity. Are you wasting your time? Make schedules for your day or week or month. Plan your activities accordingly. Make deadlines and set goals. And do ensure to check your bucket list on a periodic basis. Review your milestones. Write down the thigs you want to achieve this year in your life and break down the yearly goals to monthly goal and write down what you need to achieve them. Get a calendar and place it so that you can see it every morning. Your calendar can remind you to do things on time. Touch today’s date on the calendar and see what’s marked for today and for the upcoming week.

3. Don’t set aside small things for tomorrow

As far as possible just ensure to complete the things by today itself. Don’t leave it to tomorrow as it may make it further delayed or even make it incomplete. Today you will be much clearer on what to be done. You may not have that much clarity tomorrow. Ignoring stuffs, thinking to be a silly thing, often we set it aside and ultimately it gets never completed. Don’t think or ask yourself repeatedly “Should I do it now “. Even that question itself is sufficient enough to get it postponed. Don’t think more, just do it. Also try to remove your distractions when focused on work which have a deadline, whatever they are. Often it is the internet, your phone, sleep, or even a good book.

4. Have a fresh start.

When we wake up on a holiday, just try to forget it to be a holiday. Do our regular works as if we have to go to office. Get refreshed as early as possible. This will change our mental perspective. Now, we have more confidence as we are presentable to the world.

5. Dependency Planning

Don’t make yourself in a que. A que is the place which steals a lot of our time. I’m not mentioning about a physical que, which may or may not be avoidable depending upon your timings. Let me take the extracts from one of my posts, I’m more productive when I’m Busy Suppose there are two urgent mails to be replied. Our normal tendency is to just start writing the letter taking one by one. And in the middle way only, it will be realized that there is missing information and the person who knows about it, is out of reachable now. So either we fail in the task or happens a lot of que time. So think parallel. Will there be a que time..? How can I avoid the que time..? First of all just analyze both cases and ensure whether you have all the information to be drafted in the mails. If not, find and clear out the dependency factors immediately. Then go ahead… no que time.. 🙂

6. Have a room for all of your items

It is equally important to keep things in their proper physical places. Don’t get things around here and there. Keep documents filed. Have separate files for different kind of documents. Store things in their storage area under proper label. Never have a miscellaneous storage place as items may get dumped over there. It must be ensured that you are keeping things that you want only. The more the things, the more the clutter. Go and check your cabinets, boxes, drawers etc. Whatever you find as ‘dust’, keep it aside. Then find way to kick them out of your sweet home. Organized doesn’t just mean tidy and beautiful in appearance. The purpose of organization is to be able to find, exchange, and evaluate items quickly. You can arrange your books in the shelf in the increasing height of your books. But it will confuse you to pick a specific book as it is not an arrangement based on category. So make it categorized and thus organized.

7. Put it back

Putting things back into their cases is equally important. As soon as you are finished using it, don’t leave it here and there. Ensure to keep in their allocated room.

  • Always put your phone in the same place. Have a cell phone charging place set up.
  • Always keep your keys together in the same place.
  • Put your pens in the pen stand after use.
  • Keep your bills in the file after payments.

8. Delegate your tasks and work hard

As far as possible, delegate your tasks. No wonder, you can delegate small tasks even to your kids. In fact delegating is not only beneficial for the giver but also for the receiver. Once you have delegated your responsibilities and made a schedule, you can organize yourself in the best possible way. Don’t give up when you feel exhausted. There is no limit to human skills. It gets molded in the way you tune it. If you make it to work hard, it will adopt to the situation.

9. Set a Vision

Have you thought about your vision and found the same? Many of you might have. I also thought a lot about the purpose of my life, but reached nowhere. I think something is there in my mind, but it’s not coming out. I can’t express it in words. And working behind many other goals, but I know it’s not my life vision. So I’m still trying.. Anyway I’m quite sure that we need to find our vision and work for it.

10. Reorganize

Finally, but the most importantly we need to ensure the practice of reorganization. Things are not alive people. They need to be manually reorganized. Do it on a weekly basis.