Top tips for getting your life in order

How long do you spend each day trying to find lost things, trying to remember important stuff, or trying to plan? It takes up valuable time, but most crucially, it is quite stressful… which obviously has an impact on health and well-being. One of the quickest ways to well-being is to get organised. It sounds so easy, but it is just like all the simplest things – it’s often the last thing that people think to do, often because their logical brain (the left pre-frontal cortex) is not switched on, as is usually the case in stressful or anxious situations.

Getting organised, putting affairs in order, finding a place for everything: all of these measures can really help improve your well-being, as they create healthy patterns for your habit-loving brain. No one ever forgets where their toothbrush is because it’s always in the same place. It can be that easy with other parts of your life too.

How do you become more organised? As with most things, it’s different for each person. Here are some general tips that might help:
1.      Do one small thing each day that will help you become more organised, like putting a container for your keys near the front door or keeping your work kit in one place. You don’t need to fix all problems in one go.
2.      Rank jobs in order of importance and do the most difficult or time-consuming one first. Then all the other, smaller jobs will be done in a flash.
3.      Find a system that helps you, like writing things down on lists, or repeating important information to a song tune so that you remember it more readily.
4.      Keep doing things that work well and eliminate things that don’t work well.
5.      Remind yourself (notes to self, reminders on phones) that you have a system and stick to it.
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