by Lisa Morgan

Created on: May 18, 2009

There is really no secret to organizing your life, it doesn't take years of practice, classes or how-to books, by using the following simple guidelines you can regain your sense of order in a world that often seems like it's careening out of control.

#1 Reduce the unnecessary clutter that surrounds your life.

Take a look at your life and see what you have that clutters up your space and your mind and distracts you from the things that are important to you. This includes everything from junk mail to dirty cloths in the bathroom. Don't let clutter pile up around you, by taking care of small things before they become big things you will feel more in control of your life and your surrounding.

#2 Use one central location to keep all your incoming bills, correspondence, to-do lists, and your calendar of appointments and activities.

This is a simple but effect tool to help organize your life. By using a central location for all these activities, you no longer have to waste time or energy looking for all those miscellaneous papers, you know exactly where everything is and can easily find what you are looking for thereby eliminating a great deal of your frustration in looking for lost or misplaced things.

#3 Learn the art of saying No.

Everyone wants our time; every activity we do to relax, for charity, for fun, for higher goals, and for work take our time and our effort. By learning to say no judiciously, you will gain more time to truly do well in those areas and activities that can benefit everyone, instead of spreading yourself so thin you only have time to do perfunctory job. By carefully choosing your activities and learning to say no, without feeling guilty, you will have more control over your life and how you spend your time.

#4 Learn to use a rating system for your life to organize everything you do from most important to the least important.

Rushing from one thing to the next without a sense of proportion can waste your time and your efforts on things that can wait until later, while letting those things that need your attention right now go to the wayside, simply because you ran out of time. As each new task, assignment or activity comes your way, learn how to rate it in level of importance. Ask yourself, must this be done now? Are there any other steps that must be taken before this one to insure that it is done properly? Is there something else that needs my attention more urgently before I start this task? By rating each task by its level of important or urgency, you can more effectively manage your time and your efforts.

The preceding four guidelines are simple and easy to implement into your life, and if you fall off the organizational bandwagon, there is always tomorrow to start over again. A simple life is a rich life in many ways, it allows you to truly enjoy the moments in your life that are worth savoring and leave behind all the drama that brings stress and discontent. By organizing, prioritizing, and eliminating all the unnecessary clutter in life it's possible to bring about a feeling of control and contentment that is not possible in the cluttered life.

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