Organize? Is That Something With Anatomy?

Up until my first job out of college I would not call myself “organized” by any stretch of the imagination.

A story to exemplify my profound lack of organization would be when I showed up for class one day, called Western Civilization I which I did not enjoy nor did I particularly fancy the professor (but there are some great stories I could tell about that class), and the professor handed out a piece of paper saying, “When you finish your midterm you can turn it in up front and then you are dismissed.”

I had zero clue there was a midterm that day, and I hadn’t studied or anything.

It was at that moment that I realized I needed to learn how to get organized for daily life. I was barely able to function in college. And life before college was basically just going with the flow until something else happened, changing the direction of the flow.

If someone asked me to go somewhere or do something in high school, then I pretty much did it or went with not many questions asked. Aside from “bad things” that I already knew to turn down, I was up for pretty much whatever.

The only plan I had for going to college was to study Youth Ministry and to go to Olivet Nazarene University. Then, I went to Mount Vernon Nazarene University for a visit and decided to go there instead.

I only applied for MVNU after that.

When I got to MVNU I had no connections and started fresh, so I went with the flow.

I went to class, made friends, did dorm stuff that people do in their freshman dorms, etc. I made no plans for the future or prepared or organized for anything other than the day-to-day.

Until that midterm, which I was the first to turn in by the way, where I only answered 4 out of 10 essay questions and only got 3 of them partially correct, resulting in a score of 27/100.

It was time for me to learn how to get organized for daily life.

Try and Try Again

From there, I tried daily planners, the school agenda book doo-dad, using my calendar app to organize everything, keeping a daily to-do list, the list could go on and on.

I tried just about everything and only had partial success. 

What I did learn in college about how to get organized in daily life, though, was to find something that fits your personality.

In college, I began to realize I am not a vision-caster, if you will. I don’t have a lot of long-term foresight.

It just isn’t my gifting.

Now, I can try and do some of these things, and I do try to think and plan for the future, but I am more focused on the daily grind of life.

Getting a J-O-B

After college I got married and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where I got my first big-boy job working at a chicken product warehouse as a warehouse clerk.

It was exciting stuff, truly.

Each day I dealt with angry truck drivers, piles of paperwork and emails, and untold amounts of chicken products (fresh, prepared, and recently butchered).

(Let me tell you one thing, I have a new appreciation for the chicken you buy at stores and at restaurants and can sincerely tell you that anything coming from Koch Foods is quality-made stuff!)

But

I learned a whole lot about how to stay organized as a warehouse clerk.

If so much as one number was off it could end up costing the customer or my employer thousands of dollars. 

In fact, one time, a clerk sent the wrong product on the wrong truck to the wrong facility and it ended up costing my employer half a million dollars to pay for the truck to come back, unload, and get reloaded with the right stuff to the right place.

I learned that mistakes can be incredibly costly, and staying organized was a great way to limit the mistakes I was making.

While I didn’t learn any great methods of organization during this time, I learned the importance of learning how to get organized for daily life and to make whatever you have work for you.

How to Get Organized For Ministry

My next job was in Columbus, Ohio as a Student Ministries Pastor where I developed my skill for working with what I had and making long-term plans.

The most important thing I learned from this phase of life, though, was what works for me and what doesn’t.

I tried Trello for a long time and I really wanted to make it work for me. I spent hours getting everything set up, organizing all my boards exactly the way I wanted them, and even included some of the other staff on my Trello board in hopes that having them using it would help me stay committed to the cause, too.

That isn’t exactly what happened, though.

One of the other staff ended up using it quite a bit and I almost never looked at it after the first couple of weeks.

Eventually, I resorted to what I knew was working for me, and I made a list each morning of what needed to get done that day.

This left little room for future planning and I ended up playing catch up more than I’d like to admit.

However, I learned that a list or a board were not the things that were going to do it for me in the long run.

Life After Ministry

In an event I have already shared in other places on this blog, I ended up leaving ministry and needing to start a new career. 

I became a writer and Story Forger!

It was here that I finally nailed down my method of learning how to get organized for daily life.

So, what follows is a condensed form of everything I have learned in short paragraphs followed by my best recommendation for getting started with learning how to get organized for daily life.

How to Get Organized For Daily Life

1. Find What Works

This is my first piece of advice because I think it is my best piece of advice: you need to make sure you find something that can work for you, and maybe only you. Organized Chaos works perfectly fine if it actually works for you!

2. Play With Software & Methods

If you search around online there are about a bazillion different options for organization strategies or software to keep you organized. Don’t start with one and feel like you have to stick with just that one forever. Go and explore and cherry pick what you like and don’t like.

3. Make Sure it Actually Works

I thought for the longest time that my list-in-the-morning method was working out great. It was only when I started to get swamped with all the stuff that I should have done 3 weeks ago to prepare for the thing today that I realized my method was broken. So make sure whatever style you choose actually works and helps you get organized and stay organized.

4. Discover Your “View”

Most organizational methods and software and apps are centered around this idea of “views,” or how you take in all the information. Maybe a running list of things categorized by type or project works for you, or maybe you need to see everything like sticky notes on a wall to maintain focus. Either way, you need to find something that helps you take in all of the information as efficiently as possible for you.

5. Create Your Space

You are going to want to customize whatever method you run with. There is something about taking a software or pen-and-paper method of organization and making it yours that just adds that psychological level of commitment. So, when you find something, make it personal in some way.

6. Enable Automations & Workflows

I cannot stress this one enough. If you cannot find a way to automate parts of your organization, then it will not be sustainable. You need to be able to be given a reminder to do daily, mindless tasks that are easy to put off or ignore entirely. These are called workflows and they are essential to helping you figure out how to get organized for daily life.

7. Copy, Paste, Sync

Last one. Whichever software you use (have you gathered yet that I think the best practice is to use some kind of software?) should let you copy and paste the entire method. This will come in handy when you have finally figured out how to get organized for daily life and want to replicate it for another task. Also, this should go without saying, but you should be able to sync up your method with your other daily-use programs and methodology. No sense in creating the perfect way to stay organized without being able to line it up with your Family Calendar.

One Recommendation

If I had to make one recommendation to you, then it would be to consider using ClickUp (affiliate link, if you sign up with this link then I may benefit in some way). I wrote an entire blog post about ClickUp if you want to reference it. 

However, in short, it checks off all the boxes for me, and I think it could check off most or all of the boxes for you, too. I would encourage you to give it a try, play around with it, and, if it isn’t your cup of tea, steal the best ideas from it.

No one can tell you how to get organized for daily life. Only you have the power to get yourself organized in a way that sticks. I hope this guide gives you some inspiration and some ideas to encourage you to find something that works for you!