If you’re one of those people who has scraps of paper around the place on which notes, phone numbers, things to do and ideas are scattered, you are not alone. Have you noticed that these scraps of paper can be difficult to locate occasionally? There must be a better way , you wonder… The simplest solution is to create five to ten files or boxes in which all these scraps of paper go, depending on their category.
For example, say your focus in your life is family, friends, work, finances, art class, exercise, self-development and gardening, all you do is create a file for each of these seven areas. Whenever you write a note to yourself, or receive some information about one of these areas, slot it immediately into the relevant file. That way when you need it it’s exactly where it is supposed to be.
It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It means you are organised, and has the added bonus of making possible for you to get away from the “busy-ness” of the tasks you need to do. What so I mean by this? Have you ever noticed that a proportion of your time is spent running around doing errands that perhaps aren’t that important to you? If you answered yes. you’re in the majority. Now imagine taking each of these files and instead of just making your way through the to-do--lists they represent, you ask yourself a better question… what is it I ultimately want to achieve in this area> What will achieving this ultimately give me?
Let’s look at the example of exercise. The person above wants to achieve greater fitness, but always run out of time. They also notice they want to spend more time with their family and on personal development. Why are these areas important? Because what they ultimately want is to feel great about themselves.
Can they achieve this without having to do everything that’s on each of the to-do lists? Absolutely. Perhaps they could go for walks their family, or jog as they listen to a personal development tape. Notice that these options combine activities to get even more juice into what they want. Now they are propelling themselves closer to what they ultimately want.
What this means is you are creating for yourself a smarter system for achieving your ultimate life. Instead of spending each day simply getting through the lists of what needs to be done, you combine tasks.
This system also allows you to eliminate tasks also. Say you want to spend more time on your gardening and new business idea, and find yourself spending too much time on errands. Instead of chaining yourself to the mundane tasks of dry cleaning runs and ironing, you hire a cleaner runs and ironing, you hire a cleaner, and with the extra time you’ve created you develop your business faster and more efficiently.
What if you can’t afford a cleaner? How about delegating more of these tasks to family members who wouldn’t traditionally do these things? Or how about doing them all in one hit once a week in “down-time” when you would normally watch TV?
If you eliminated TV three days a week from your schedule how much more would you get done? How much closer would you be able to be towards building your ideal life?
