“A place for everything, everything in its place.”
– Benjamin Franklin
If you have a big pile of paper and stuff that you’ve been calling “I’ll get to that one day,” try dividing it into smaller piles then attacking them one at a time.
An important element to organizing your home / office / life is categorization. Whether you’re organizing items or tasks, dividing them into separate categories is quite helpful. Then you can efficiently focus on the action items for one category at a time. The cool thing is that you get to name the categories!
My former roommate used to tease me about “making piles” whenever I was getting my home office desk in order. She said she couldn’t tell the difference between each of my piles of papers / books / whatever. But I knew that each pile had it’s own category name that made sense only to me.
Some examples of pile names:
- “to-do before next Thursday”
- “life maintenance” (doc appointments, insurance calls)
- “money matters”
- “cool stuff to read”
- “errands”
- “get it over with”
- “family/friend tasks” (making a dinner plan, buying gifts, holiday planning)
We all have different ways of categorizing items and information. It’s important to know what works best for you and to proceed accordingly. Onward!
