How to Organize Your Life: A Step-by-Step Guide

i would imagine considering you clicked on this video that you're looking for a way to organize your life

maybe get a clear idea of the way forward i'm going to share with you how i do it

it's easy to get lost in the weeds but fortunately i found that with a few simple practices

i can see my life and what i need to do a lot more clearly i'm gonna split this up into three parts

step one fireworks to organize my life i have found that i must see what i'm organizing

it is amazing to me how few people actually do this there's truly nothing like creating the

space between yourself and what is going on in your head by writing or drawing it out

i am asking you in a sense to channel your inner da vinci i love using notepads to organize my

ideas you can use a journal or software if you prefer that the important thing is to keep all these

ideas in one place as being disorganized in where you offload these ideas can

potentially lead you to losing them if you're familiar with my videos the next thing i'm going to say is not going to

surprise you at all i'm a strong believer in analog which means

a pen and paper and not anything digital not at this stage at least there isn't a productivity app or piece

of software in existence that comes anywhere close to the power of the pen and paper in my opinion

i just love how it feels i love offloading and organizing my ideas in a tactile

way i know i'm such a weirdo about this but it's the sounds it's the feeling

something about physically doing this is really really important to me i'll leave a link in the description to what i use

but these are basic notepads and any notepad or notebook will do there is another thing

to think about which is that whenever you're on your phone or your computer you're always two clicks away from a

distraction it's not your fault if you had a brilliant idea and go to your phone to

write it down and end up distracted by a notification that leads you to watching a video

of a dog petting a cat that actually exists anyway that is done by design do

yourself a favor and put it all away and try going old school for once

i think it's worth it i really do so why am i calling this first stage fireworks you know that scene in

ratatouille where remy sees fireworks when he tastes the flavors of different foods

this is kind of how i feel when there's a flow of ideas out of my head and through my hand

i've always found that feeling very exciting and i would just say to drop the expectations

it's normal not to feel clear about what your future holds there's a lot going on in all of our lives and in the world

today in my experience this first stage is really quite chaotic and that's totally fine

i think it's better to embrace that than to fight against it order will come later

and if ever i'm unhappy with how i'm laying out my thoughts and ideas i can always

redraw and rewrite them out i think refinements are totally fine and i will often do that and each time

brings greater clarity the point here is that there is great power in seeing what is going on in your

head and not just thinking those thoughts so oftentimes it's to do's it's doubts

it's questions that i have i'm often wrestling with ideas or themes or

concepts and i regularly give myself the challenge of visualizing

these things as in coming up with a visual that i can draw out that pairs up with that thought or idea

or concept so for example failure this is something i did recently on

no backup plan i found myself thinking about failure quite a bit and so i took the time to draw out

my thoughts on this i had something of a visual along a timeline that i thought would be

nice to see and i went through this process i think i drew it out maybe four times

and each time i iteratively brought more clarity to what i had in my head but of course at

first it just had to come out because i wasn't sure where it was going to take me there's a skill that i see people

seriously lack it is the ability the capacity to externalize their ideas and this is the place to start step two

prioritization i talk a lot about two resources that we all have a limited amount of and that

we all must confront and deal with in our own ways and those two resources are time and attention and having limits on

these two resources requires us to prioritize you can't do it all i wish i had a thousand lives

that i would have the time to do all the things that i want to do to create all the things that i want to

create but i don't i have this life and so the next best thing

is to make the most of it there are a whole variety of different ways that you can go about prioritizing

and for example an idea that i recently came across is what is known as the eisenhower

matrix popularized by the ex-president eisenhower who would lay out the things he

had to do in his life in terms of important and not important and urgent and not

urgent this is great what matters more than the system itself whether you use

a matrix like this or not is this kind of thinking this sort of distinguishing between what

needs to get done and what doesn't necessarily need to get done my favorite way of doing this

believe it or not is actually through conversation i think conversation is underrated

in many ways and i find that i walk away with a tremendous amount of value when i

bounce off ideas of course ultimately i'm the one that makes the decisions on

what is important to me and where i place my time and energy but it doesn't hurt to have

certain outside perspectives i have found for example that i have a tendency to be

pretty unrealistic about what i can accomplish in a certain span of time so it's helpful to have people that

bring you back to earth there's a lot that i could say on this topic but what i found is the most valuable

people to bounce your ideas off of are people that you respect people that believe in you but that are

also willing to tell you the truth and not be yes yes men step three the timeline

what i have found throughout my own experimentation in organizing myself and my life and my thoughts is

that i cannot see clearly beyond three months from now actually i think the magic number is more like

two two and a half months but three months remains a very round number that i like to work with it's a

manageable chunk of time to work with it's a quarter of a year 90 days a lot

can happen in 90 days but at the same time it's not too much to handle i feel like in the span of 90 days you

can see measurable progress even if it's just a tiny amount

i've done videos on how i organize myself both on a shorter and longer time frame and i'll link to

both of those down below but for now we're going to focus on three months what i do is i transcribe

a lot of my notes and crazy scribbling and chaotic messiness from step one with a deeper understanding of what i

need to prioritize from step two on a hand-drawn timeline that i create for myself and it's helpful for

me to see when certain projects are happening and what comes first and what comes

after and seeing it all laid out often i'll separate different kinds of projects

that i'm working on with the vertical access which helps me see them more clearly you know you can

color code this you can do whatever you want now again there's a lot of ways that you can

actually go about doing this it doesn't have to be a literal timeline years ago i would

create mood boards for myself based on a similar concept of what i wanted to

focus on in the coming three months things absolutely never pan out a hundred percent as we planned them to

but i have found that on a three-month time frame you can consciously work towards specific goals

that you create for yourself and that's basically how i do it so to recap it's extremely important to

get your ideas out of your head first to write them down to scribble them out to list them

to draw them doesn't matter get them out of your head and make that a skill of yours where you're not editing

you're not preventing this from happening you're just going for it it's hard to have a clarity

on what you need to prioritize when you don't even know what you're prioritizing for example

and that's the second step prioritizing and finally i lay out these to-do's these projects these ideas

across a timeline what are the things that i want to be focusing on over the next three months and if a

timeline doesn't work for you a mood board or something along those lines is an alternative it's another way

to approach this that's how i do it i hope this helps this video is sponsored by skillshare i

have a new class on there by the way that i just released it's my second one after seeing the

incredibly positive reaction to the first class i decided to make another one and i made this class on what i call

intentional documentation how to capture your life in a way that brings meaning to the

things that you do it's about intentionally channeling your attention and creating things that have great

personal meaning to you i break down four methods to go about doing this that are accessible to anybody even if

you are just starting out the other class the skillshare original is on creativity

and how to develop your voice online so they kind of complement each other and that isn't an accident the first 1

000 people to use the link in my description will get a free trial of skillshare premium membership a

year-long membership comes out to less than 10 a month so check it out and i'd love to

know by the way if you do if you find it helpful and interesting i feel like i've built

my entire career on the intentional capture of my experiences so it only made sense to make a class on it

plus there are a ton of really interesting classes on there as well so it might be interesting to explore

what they have to offer thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video and thank you for watching i'll see you

soon