09. The 3 Most Important Areas to Organize
Episode 09
Organization is one of those things that is the foundation for so many OTHER things. When we’re disorganized, it can feel like everything around us falls apart and is so much harder than it needs to be.
If your digital space is disorganized, you can’t find what you need when you need it.
If your tasks are disorganized, you don’t know what you’re supposed to be working on, or even IF there’s something to be working on.
If your time is disorganized, you miss deadlines and due dates, and you feel stressed out and overwhelmed
In this week’s episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I talk about the 3 most important areas to organize. If you can get a grasp on these 3, then everything else around you will run smoother.
FREE RESOURCE
→ Free Daily Time Block Planner Template (pdf download): Download Here
OTHER EPISODES MENTIONED
→ Episode 05: Secrets of a Good Task Management System
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
The 3 Most Important Areas to Organize
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How many times have you said to yourself? “Oh, I just need to get organized.” How many times have you looked at your space, your calendar, and just in exasperation said, “ugh, I just need to get organized.”
Getting better organized is a thing that I'd say most of us strive for. But it is a very vague goal. In fact, it's too vague.
What does getting organized even mean? Right. And we know that vague goals are nearly unachievable.
So in this episode, we're going to talk about getting organized in what I argue are the three most critical areas. Time, task and space.
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So I'm choosing to talk about getting organized with your time, your task and your space, because those three areas, when you have those on-point and buttoned up and clear, okay- that's absolutely a focus of these three areas, getting those things clear- then everything else seems to run smoother.
So much in our work lives, our school lives in our personal lives could just feel better, could operate better, if we just looked at our organization systems and tightened them up just a little bit.
So let's start with time.
Now, getting started with organizing your time begins with knowing where you are spending your time. How are you currently spending your days? Let's think about this in terms of Monday through Friday. So school or work. Okay.
We are notoriously terrible at estimating where we're spending our time, [00:02:00] um, on thinking about how long we're spending our time on certain tasks.
So I like to suggest beginning with what I call an activity inventory. This is a strategy that I teach in my online course, SchoolHabits University. And it's an activity where you honestly and authentically assess what activities you are doing during your day and how much time they are taking you.
And this includes activities- if you were a student- it could be like how many hours a day you're in school, how many hours a day you're actually doing your homework, at your practices, spending on your phone, spending watching TV.
Okay. If you're at work, how much time are you actually spending at work, including in the car commuting to work, including times you stay after work over time. Including things that you're doing after work and driving places and driving your kid somewhere and preparing meals and doing your errands.
We need to know where we're spending our time and how much [00:03:00] time we're spending doing those activities before we can ever attempt to organize our time.
We have to know what we're dealing with before we organize it.
I like to suggest that we organize our time on three different scales: a daily scale, a weekly scale, and then a monthly scale.
So in general, organizing your time looks like knowing what you're doing in a day. You can set that up the night before. Knowing what you're generally doing in a week.
Yes. Things change, but generally on a Sunday, maybe sitting down and mapping out the week, what's coming up. What deadlines are there? What assignments are due? What projects are due? Um, who has activities? Do you have activities? Where do you need to be? You know, those types of things. So on a weekly scale, you can do that on a Sunday night for Sunday planning, and then in general, what's happening this month.
Now, or if you're a student, you could, you know, add another level and you can start looking at organizing by semester.
If you're a working professional, you can think about organizing by quarter.
And that's, that's up to you. You can experiment with doing that, but in most cases, getting a [00:04:00] grasp on your days, your weeks and your months- so just on those three scales, and organizing your time in terms of those three- you can feel so much better and the overwhelm just.. I'm not going to say it it clears up all your overwhelm, but knowing what you're doing each day, week and month can set your other systems up for success.
How do we begin organizing our time? And here I am saying, organize your day, organize your week. Organize your month. You're going to need a calendar.
If you're not using a calendar at this point, I don't care if it's digital or analog or a hybrid system. I personally use both. I use Google Calendar and then I use a paper calendar as well.
You have to experiment to see what works for you, but the point is these things, your time needs to become visible somewhere. Because time needs to be visible in order for us to manage it.
That's why I started with saying, let's do an activity inventory. Where is your time actually going? How much time do you actually have in the day to do these things that you that you're claiming you don't [00:05:00] have time for, or that maybe you really don't have time for. But you need to see that because time is not a feeling you have to make it visible.
Right? So calendars. Time-blocking. Time-blocking is an excellent, excellent strategy for managing and organizing your time on a daily level.
In the description box of this video, if you were watching it on YouTube or in the show notes of this podcast, if you're listening on Apple or Spotify or something, I have a link to a free daily time block planner, template. It's a simple PDF. It's free.
It's downloadable. And that's what I personally use to time block my days. I don't time block every single day. Okay. Because it's, uh, I don't need to, but on really busy days, when you have a lot going on, then try to time block plan.
If your days are chaotic and you don't feel like you have a good grasp on where your time is going Monday through Friday, then you got to do something different. You know, start by making time visible and you can do that by using calendars and time-blocking.
The next area, we [00:06:00] need to organize are tasks.
I talked to all about task management in episode five. So if you're still struggling to figure out what a task management system is and how to create one for yourself, then when you're done here, go listen to episode five.
But a task management system has to live outside of your head. Okay.
We are not designed to remember and store daily monthly, weekly tasks.
Our brains were designed to think and to create. Okay. Not to store this ridiculous amount of information that our world throws at us.
So start by creating a task management system that keeps track of all the tasks that you need to do in the amount of time that you have, which if you know you organized your time, then you'll know how much time that is.
So organizing your tasks and organizing your time, each as its own system, creates an amazing system together for just being [00:07:00] organized in general.
Now in episode five, I talked about some key components of a good task management system and real quickly right here, one of the most critical ones is that you want to keep it simple. It doesn't matter if it's digital. It doesn't matter if it's paper-based, it can again be a hybrid.
I personally use a hybrid system. I use digital and I use paper. But it has to be nearly frictionless. Easy to access, easy to add information to, easy to edit and change events.
And it has to be something that you use consistently. A strategy that I shared in episode five, to help establish the habit of using a task management system that might be new to you. Right? New habits are hard to, um, get to stick.
So a way that you can try to encourage a task management habit to stick is to use your task management system even on the days when you don't need to.
And I explained that a little bit further in the episode.
Okay. So, so far I've covered two of the three areas that I suggest are the most critical areas to organize.
What are the [00:08:00] things that you need to do? So that's tasks. And when are you going to do them? And do you even have the time to do them? And that is organizing your time.
The third one is space.
Now, because we live in a digital world, when I say organize your space, it means digital and physical.
So by digital, I'm talking about, let's say you're using Google Drive or maybe one drive or something like that. Your files and assets and photos and homework assignments and projects and everything that we keep stored digitally needs to have a place to live that makes sense to us and is intuitive for when we want to go find that again.
So if you think about the things that we store, why would we ever store something that we don't intend to find again? Right?
If you're like, “oh, it doesn't matter. Like I'm never going to need it,” then why are you keeping it in the first place? I know there's a lot of like, just-in-case scenarios, right? “I keep this just in case.” [00:09:00] I challenge you to challenge the just-in-case scenario.
So oftentimes we don't need to keep these things just in case, but if that sort of the natural tendency that you have when you are trying to organize things, you have a strong sense of, I just want to keep this just in case, well, then make a system where you can keep your just in Case items, but you don't want your Google drive just to be a wild, wild west.
You don't want your one drive to have no folder system.
Now, on the other side of the token, we also don't want to have, you know, 15 levels of folders.
So I suggest that our organization systems have two- this works for most people, you'll have to, you know, see what works for you, but for most students and working professionals organizing your digital space- two levels deep.
So you have folders and then sub-folders within that folder.
Not a fan of having folders, then subfolders, then sub folders within that, because that creates too much friction. So if you are new to creating a digital management system or you're listening to this podcast and you're like, you [00:10:00] know what. My digital space is a disaster, and you're going to take an hour to, you know, dive into it and see if you can make some sense of it.
Then I want you to think of that framework: having two folders deep. And that's it. I don't care how many folders you have. Okay. That's something that you're going to have to experiment with yourself.
And then what about papers? Right? We live in a hybrid world. So, you have to think, are you going to be the type of person who scans papers and makes them digital?
Or are you going to be the type of person to keep the papers?
Maybe you don't have a choice. Maybe your work makes you keep the papers. Alright, then what does your physical storage system look like?
Is it too complex? Is there too much friction there? Do you have folders within folders within folders?
Can you use a simple A to Z system, like literally get the file folders that are A through Z right? If you're dealing with clients or something and that's their last name?
Do you need a system that's more chronological?
Do you need a system where you're creating your own folders and tabs based on the key categories in I don't know your work, your life, or your school. Right.
What we don't want to do is not have a system.
Now when you're [00:11:00] creating or maybe reorganizing your digital system, there are two primary questions that I want you to think about as a way to assess if what you're doing is currently working.
Number one: do you know where your things are when you need them?
And number two: do you know where to put something when it comes in?
So if you get a piece of paper, if you get an email, if you get, um, an attachment, right, or a PDF or something sent to you, do you know where to store that?
Okay. Going back to question number one, do you know where your things are when you need them? So let's say someone's like, oh, do you have that file? Do you have that form or whatever?
Sometimes we have to be like, “oh shoot. Where is that?” And it's normal to take a second to think, where did I put that?
But if you genuinely have no idea where you're storing things, man, that form could be here. That could be here. That could be here.
And you don't know, you don't remember if it's a paper copy. You don't remember if it's a digital copy, then that's a sign that your digital system needs some organization.
And then the second question, do you know where to put things when they come [00:12:00] in? Sometimes, you know, you get a piece of paper, right? If something comes in the mail, a kid brings something home...
Or if you don't have kids and if you're the kid, right, and you get something and it doesn't just go on the counter. It doesn't just go on the table. It doesn't just go with the bottom of your bag. Right? Do you have a place that's intuitive and sensible for you to store that? And if not, then you have to reevaluate your system.
And another tip when I'm talking about spaces and your physical space, I'm not just talking about, you know, files and papers and things like that.
Yes. That's part of it, but also we need to be working in a space that supports the work that we're doing in that space. Okay, I need you to understand that we need to create a space that supports the work we're doing in that space.
If you sit down at your desk to work or to study, and you're not feeling it and you feel stressed and you're overwhelmed by the clutter and there's too much stimulation around you and reminders of things that you haven't done yet, [00:13:00] then you need to tackle that space.
Is that hard? It may maybe, but you know what, let's change the narrative around that. It can also be fun. Put on some music and get at it, right?
Clear off the desk. Start with ground zero and just slowly, gradually hold each item in your hand and say, do I need this on my desk? Do I need this within reach?
Do I already have this? Do I have multiple versions of this? Do I need 59 pens? Half of which are dried up?
Okay, these are the questions that we have to ask yourself. And I understand that sometimes it can be tough letting things go, but what's more valuable, right? The figurine that you've had collecting on your desk for four years, because you never questioned its existence or its right to be there, or your mental peace and your productivity. Right.
Which one's more valuable? I think, you know, the answer to that.
Okay. Let's open our drawers. Take the things out. How many [00:14:00] packs of sticky notes do you need? I may or may not be talking to myself. When I'm giving this advice because I do have an unreasonable amount of sticky notes in my drawer.
Do I need them all? No, but they also bring me joy. So that's another question. I don't want us to be entirely utilitarian in our approach to organizing our spaces, we need to have some things that provide us joy and motivation, and we don't want to overlook that. But there's a happy medium, a perfect intersection between having the things near us in our workspace that are functional and that enable us to do our job and also provide us joy.
And only you can be the judge of that.
Now all three of these areas, time, task, and space work together in a perfect little ecosystem when they're running tightly.
They work in harmony.
If just one of these areas is off- so maybe your time management is great, maybe your task management is great- but it's the [00:15:00] digital organization that's just really for some reason fallen apart. Okay. We don't always have to investigate why isn't this working sometimes that's helpful, but sometimes it's just not. And we just never gave ourselves the time of day to sit and evaluate.
Here's my permission to take an hour and evaluate. If we don't evaluate ourselves and we just continue doing what we're doing and oftentimes that's not, what's not working.
And then we wonder why isn't this working well, have you given yourself the time of day to sit and identify what's not working? How do we ever fix something if we don't know what's broken?
Okay. When your time and your tasks and your space are organized, everything else around us runs smoother. We operate with less anxiety. We operate from a place of clarity and efficiency.
That little voice in the back of our mind, that's like, oh, did you forget this? You might be forgetting this right when you lay in bed at night. And you're like, “ah!”
Okay, that becomes quieter when your time, space and tasks are organized.
You know what you [00:16:00] need to do. You know, when you're going to do it, or if you even have the time to do it, and you know where your materials are that are required to complete the task.
Now in episode four, I share a lot of practical strategies for managing overwhelm for those days and those weeks and those months and seasons, that we're just like, “oh my gosh, there's so much to do.”
Now, I know my podcast is really, really new, but so far that has been my most popular episode.
I can see the statistics on the backend. So there's something that's triggering people with the word overwhelm. And I get it. I'm like I'm right there with you. My friends.
In that episode, I do talk about strategies for managing time and tasks and the importance of doing so because those two are directly connected to our sense of feeling in control.
And that's why, again, in this episode, when I'm like, it's the three most important areas you need to organize.
Yes. Not just for productivity and efficiency and getting the things done, but for our mental health too.
Okay. So now I want to give some [00:17:00] examples of how this framework can apply to school, work and to personal life. So the framework of organizing time tasks and space.
All right, so let's start with school. Organizing tasks in school, it looks like having a homework agenda.
It's not using your learning management system, like Canvas or Google Classroom. And the whole reason why using your learning management system doesn't work is because it doesn't allow you to put your own things in there. Okay, which are assignments that teachers don't necessarily assign, like studying or the micro-steps of long-term projects, right?
So your teacher might just be like “essay due.” But what about the steps that lead up to you completing that essay? That's on you to add to your task management system, your homework management system. And Canvas and Google Classroom and those types of things, don't allow you to add in your own events and add in your own tasks.
That's why you need your own.
I don't care if it's digital or analog, but you do need your own.
So that's getting clarity and [00:18:00] organized around your tasks. And then students need a calendar.
I have a tutorial for how to use Google Calendar for students. I will leave that in the show notes. That is my second, most popular, second or third, most popular blog posts on schoolhabits.com.
And I think that's because students are becoming overwhelmed. And hopefully are starting to realize that a source of that overwhelm is time and not feeling like you're in control of it.
Okay. So, so far managing your tasks with a homework planner, managing your time with calendars. And then managing your space and organizing your space.
So your digital files. Google Drive, One Drive, your folders, your backpack, okay. Your things.
Do you know where to put things when they come in and do you know where to find things when you need them? Those are the two fundamental questions.
So let's move on to work. Let's say that it's your turn to run a monthly status meeting that you and your colleagues have for your team.
Having a good organization system for your tasks means [00:19:00] knowing what it is that you will be covering in that meeting, knowing what the key points are, knowing what the agenda items are.
Maybe you kept track of the things that were covered in the last meeting so you know what to follow up on.
Okay. That's all good symptoms of having a good task management system.
If you're good at organizing your time, that meeting will be on the calendar as well as all the things that need to happen leading up to that meeting. Those are on your calendar as well.
Sending the agenda out, you know, two days in advance, things like that.
And then having a good sense of spatial organization means that you know where the meeting notes were stored from the last meeting, maybe they were paper and you scan them in. Maybe you took the notes digitally. Maybe someone else took the digital notes and shared them in an email with the group.
But you know where to find those.
You know where your agenda template is. You know where these resources are going into the meeting and then any materials or resources that are generated at the meeting you have a place [00:20:00] to store those as well.
And then beyond just work in school, there's our personal lives.
We're not just employees and students.
We are first and foremost, humans.
And managing our time tasks and space just in our own personal life also can make everything else around us operates smoothly and with less stress.
So let's say for example, that you need to get an oil change every four months. You know what? I'm not the one who does my car stuff. So it was every three months, every four months, every six.
I don't even know- my husband's gonna be like, what the heck? Okay. Every four months, we're just going to say that. So knowing that you need that oil change every four months, that's a task that would go on some sort of task management system.
If you're good at organizing your tasks, you will know what the things are that need to happen regularly on a, you know, daily. Weekly and monthly scale.
Organizing your time well means that that is on the calendar. Either the appointment itself or a reminder to yourself to make the appointment as the [00:21:00] time approaches.
And then keeping your materials organized. Maybe you're the type of person who likes to bring their own oil to get their oil change. That's actually something that my husband did for years.
Cause. his oil was special. I don't like, literally don't even know. Okay. But he would have to get that oil ahead of time and it was hard to find and he would put it in the trunk the day of his appointment and then drop his car off.
That involved spatial organization. Okay. It's not a digital thing, but it's like, what are the things that you need to get the job done? Okay. And then when are you going to get the job done?
That's an example of those three sort of spaces working in harmony.
Now all three of these skills, how to manage your time, how to manage your tasks and how to manage your space, I teach in my online course SchoolHabits University, which opens again for the second enrollment in March. So stay tuned. There'll be more announcements about that coming up and everything.
If you are watching this on YouTube and you have a question about any of these systems, then you can always leave it in the[00:22:00] comments and I will attempt to answer in the comments.
Or you're also welcome if you're listening to this on Apple or Spotify, or even if you're watching on YouTube, at the homepage of Learnandworksmarter.com there’s a form and you can submit your questions that I will answer on upcoming future q and a episodes.
So far, my plan is to do once a month, but I've gotten a lot of questions so far and I'm already like, oh shoot. How do I cover all of these questions in just one monthly episode? But I'll figure this out as I go.
But before we wrap up, I want to recap the most important key points from today.
And I think this will help you be more likely to take action on some of the things that we talked about and not just feel momentarily inspired as you're listening to this. That's a goal of mine. I want to inspire you, but at the end of the day, the magic is in the action.
So anything that I can do to encourage you to take action on these things on there for it.
All right. Here's the recap. Number one. When things are disorganized, everything feels harder than it [00:23:00] really needs to be.
Number two, the three most critical areas to organize I argue are your time tasks and space.
Number three, organizing your tasks means knowing what needs to get done and storing these things in an external system that is not your brain.
Number four. Organizing your time means first and foremost, being aware of how you are currently spending your time. And then also knowing generally what each day, week, and month is going to look like. Of course, this involves calendars. And you can start with the free time block planner template that I have linked in the show notes.
And number five, organizing your space means having a simple system for organizing digital and physical things. And this includes supplies and files. You also know where to go when you're looking for certain things and you know where to put things as they come in.
Now my challenge to you is over the next 24 hours. I want you to look at one of these areas, your time, your task, or your space. I [00:24:00] choose the one that you feel could benefit from the most attention. What can you do, even if it's a small, minor tweak, what can you do to increase the organization in that space? Okay. Think about it and then do it.
I want you to find a way to make things work better for you because you deserve that.
Okay, thank you, my friends. And, the most important thing of all, remember, is to never stop learning.
