30 Organization Habits of Highly Organized People

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An organized life helps you simplify life and do routine tasks around life effectively. If you wonder how to live an organized life. Here are 30 organization habits that you can follow to build a discipline and system for an organized lifestyle. These habits are followed by highly organized people to get life organized and be highly organized at work too.

30 Simple Organizational Skills

Here are 30 simple organization habits that you can follow to build an organized lifestyle

1: Plan for the month

Organized people break down the bigger gold into smaller tasks that they can achieve every month. They plan the month keeping in mind the tasks at work they are accountable for and their personal commitments. This gives them clarity on the expectations from the month and also be productive at work. To get more productive, start monthly planning read Monthly Goal Planning for Balanced Life under 30 min to get started.

2: Have a To-Do List

Organized people know that the hustle of busy life will make it difficult for them to remember all the things that they are supposed to do, so rather than rely on memory they make sure to put down all the things to be done on To-Do list to get it done and keep things organized.

P.S. You may find this post on 10 ways to make an effective To-Do list helpful.

3: Use weekends to organize

Busy weekdays may hamper your plans and life may not go the way you expect it. At times you may even not find it possible to plan your days. Organized people know this well and use weekends to set things in the right order and prepare for the coming week.

You should read 10 productive things to do on weekend to manage a busy week.

4: Have a daily routine.

Routines have a big influence on the quality of your life. It impacts your day and your well-being. Organized people are very mindful of their routines they build a productive routine for the morning, evening, and other parts of life that suit their needs.

I believe routines are a great way of transitioning from one phase of the day to another without spending a lot of effort thinking about what you do next.

If you are looking for some inspiration to build a routine you should read

5 steps to build a morning routine before work

Simple After work evening routine to keep you sane

5: Have a place for everything

Making things organized is not a one-time activity and you have to make sure to maintain things organized. People who are highly organized are well aware of this.

They have houses for everything and build systems to make sure the organization’s plan is sustained.

6: Declutter frequently

Organized people declutter frequently, in fact as and anytime they find something that will not be of importance to them later they instantly discard it.

This helps to keep things organized and spend less time decluttering later.  The fact is clutter itself is one of the biggest inconveniences in continuing with organized systems.

7: Organize digital files too

With life getting more digital each day you must have systems in place to keep their digital files organized too. This includes having a consistent way of storing data files into folders and subfolders and at the same time deleting unwanted and temporary files.

They ensure that the digital files are stored in a manner that they are instantly retrievable and they do not spend a lot of time searching it.

8: Have files and folders to keep papers organized

Organized people maintain files and folders to keep their papers organized. They maintain good segregation of various documents and have a habit of instantly sorting papers. They have systems of sorting, labeling, and filing paper. You can read my post Complete guide to Document Organization

9: Put appointments on the scheduler

Organized people don’t miss appointments and meetings. They use a physical or digital scheduler to keep a tab on all important appointments and major events.

To get my life organized in 1 place I use a spreadsheet life planner. It has everything to be organized and planned in 1 place.

10: Follow Minimalism

Organized people are well aware of the fact that the less they have, the less they will have to deal with, and it is easier it is to be organized. Being minimalist not only helps in living a simple life but also makes it easier for you to organize things.

11: Don’t Procrastinate

One of the biggest reasons for being unorganized is procrastinating. It can be procrastinating to keep the papers in the right file or decluttering and keeping things in the right place.

Even the best systems of organization fail if they are not followed and maintained. Hence organized people do not procrastinate to keep things the right way.

P.S. Need help to stop procrastination- Understanding Procrastination And Effective Solution To Stop Procrastinating

12: Learn to reset after a mess

Unforeseen conditions in life put even the best organization system out of order and make things miss even for a very organized person. But organized people have ways to reset and get things back in order. They are aware that sometimes things go out of hand and know how to restore it back to order.

To reset things in order at work and house checkout

5 Steps to reset your work-life after busy times

How to get household back on track after busy times

13: Organize Emails 

Organized people know a fact that email takes a lot of time during work hours and searching for emails during the need may get difficult and waste a lot of time hence they keep the emails organized in a way that suits their needs.

To organize your emails and manage them productively read How to declutter email quickly and Best tips to improve email productivity.

14: Prioritize tasks

Organized people have habits to prioritize tasks to be more efficient and spend their time on things that really matter to them. They often spend some time going through all the tasks they need to get done and prioritizing them. For more details on How to prioritize work tasks.

15: Plan for the next day

It’s a very good habit to plan for your next day the previous night this helps to reduce the anxiety one may feel for the unfinished work and gives you the clarity to start with the right work the next day. It lets you work on tasks that are more meaningful and have a high value. You should read How to have a productive day.

16: Plan meals

One of the questions that we all face every day is wondering about the meal.  Organized people have their meals planned for an entire week, in fact, they even spend some time pre-prepping the meal to make cooking easier for the other days.

Planning meals makes it easier for you to make sure required groceries are available and make healthy food an available option rather than takeout.

17: Use a planner

Organized people always have a paper or a digital planner that they swear by. They use it to take note of all the things that they need to do, keep their study and meeting notes organized, and plan different tasks. They also use it for brain dump and keep all the thoughts and references in one place. You can turn a simple notebook into an effective planner using my post 10 ways to organize a notebook for work

18: Keep backup

Organized people always keep a backup of important information and documents. They routinely plan for backup sessions to update with new records.

Wherever possible they keep their important data on the cloud or shared drive to reduce the additional work of taking backups.

19: Make a master list

Being organized is a lot of work and organized people are well aware of this, so to reduce their effort on making a list all the time they make a master list.

This is a list of various activities that they do daily or periodically so that they need not spend time making them over and over again. Some of the common master lists that can be prepared are grocery lists, monthly task lists, and weekly task lists. For details of master lists to organize your life read 20 Lists to make to organize your life and 12 Master Lists you must make to be organized at work

20: Keep passwords organized

In today’s day and age where every login requires a strong password, it gets very difficult to remember all the passwords, organized people understand this situation and they have ways of managing passwords.

They either maintain all in one secured document or they use specific password managing tools such as Google Password Manager or Zoho Vault, there are many options to manage passwords.

21: Declutter the phone

Organized people do not restrict the activity of organizing things only at work and home but also apply it to their personal lives and spend time decluttering their phones as it is one of the most used devices and accumulate a lot of photos, messages, and forwards that are not essential.

22: Have checklists

Organized people make a specific checklist for various common activities and try to make it uniform and comprehensive to accommodate all the requisites in a checklist format. 

This ensures that all the things required to be completed for an activity are covered and nothing is forgotten. It reduces the time and effort required to repeatedly make a task list and spend effort to remember, as through a checklist it will be consolidated and consistently available for the references. Some common checklists that can be made are the cleaning, meal prep, and travel checklists.

My husband travels frequently for work and every time I pack his travel bag I need to think of things to pack and would recheck to ensure nothing is missed. But once I made a checklist it was so easy as I just mark a check what is packed and don’t need to spend time thinking.

23: Use trackers

With many things to take care of in life, we often lose track of things and find ourselves in an overwhelming situation. Organized people keep track of different activities to help them trace their progress and reflect. Some of the trackers that may be helpful are task trackers project trackers expense trackers.

24: Clean the workspace daily

Having a clean workspace offers many benefits, it increases your productivity reduces overwhelm, and helps you focus on your work better. Highly organized people have a habit of daily cleaning their work desks at the end of the day, this includes keeping all the papers in the respective folder, and they put stationeries, devices, and books in the designated place.

 This lets to start fresh the next day and you will not need to spend a long time over organization later. To organize your work desk today and boost your efficiency read 14 Tips to organize your work desk

25: Follow Time Blocking

Time blocking is a great way to manage time better and increase your productivity organized people plan their work based on priority and block a specific amount of time for each activity to ensure your things are done.

Want to try time blocking read: Manage Your Time Like a Pro with Time Blocking

26: Set reminders

Organized people have a habit of setting up reminders for various important things, it is very obvious for us to forget appointments and important events and things to do with our routine life work.

Having the habit of sitting in alarm for appointments and meetings and even important tasks that are time-bound allows you to be on the right track. You can even set an advance reminder for the preparation required to be done for the event.

27: Do a brain dump

Quite often we get befuddled, there are many things to take care of so much so that we are even unable to identify the things that we need to do, get things right, and the emotions that we feel. In such a situation organized people do a brain dump to clear the head and plan the next steps.

28: Maintain meeting and project notes

One of the habits of organized people that make them very successful at work is the habit of taking notes at meetings and making project notes. It keeps you on top of information, be prepared, and, helps you track the progress.

29: Keep a bucket list

Has it ever happened to you, that you want to do certain things but when the time comes you are lost? It used to happen frequently with me that I would think of eating at a particular restaurant or watching a particular movie or wanting to go out someplace. But when I have the opportunity to do it I will be wondering about it.

After several such incidents, I have started to make a bucket list for all such things, this can be a bucket list for movies, books to read, places to visit, and restaurants to explore.

Keeping a bucket list makes it so easier to plan my leisure and personal time. 

30: Have a cleaning schedule

One cannot be organized if your surroundings are not clean. To maintain the organization system keeping things clean is very essential. Hence organized people always have a cleaning schedule to maintain a clean environment and to ensure everything is covered.

They do daily cleaning for frequent use and occasional deep cleaning. Build a cleaning schedule that suits your needs and is easy to follow. I find cleaning checklists very effective in keeping the house clean and missing some cleaning tasks. You can grab my free cleaning checklist which is room by room and can be used to make your cleaning schedule.

P.S. If you like to be an organized person you would like my post How to organize your life and make it better.

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Conclusion

So, these are different habits that distinguish organized people from the unorganized. This might sound simple but is very effective and eventually gives the compound effect of making you a very organized person.

Hope you find this helpful, now that you are aware of this pick one at a time and start your journey from overwhelmed and unorganized to a very organized person who is able to manage things very effectively.

Struggling to develop habits and stick to them? Look no further! Use my Habit Tracker Google Sheets Template to revolutionize your habit tracking and help you achieve your goals.

Related posts you will like:

How to be organised at work

How to organize your life

How to organize life with spreadsheets

How to organize notebook for work

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