Mastering Organization and Time Management EASILY

How often do you find yourself spending way too much time watching pointless videos on YouTube or browsing your Instagram explore feed? It’s easy to get sucked into the massive collection of memes and celebrity gossip. While it’s entertaining to watch a twenty-minute Tik Tok compilation or vlog, we end up prioritizing these tasks over necessary ones.

As we get older, there are a lot more things to manage in our lives between school, work, relationships, and responsibilities at home. These can easily overwhelm us and stir up feelings of anxiety and stress which is why we turn to social media, to distract ourselves.

I’m guilty of this too. I’ve spent countless hours scrolling through Instagram and watching cringe compilations on YouTube, when I could be getting ahead in my work or actually doing a hobby I enjoy.

This hybrid summer/ quarantine, I decided I wanted to change this behavior and increase my time management and organizational skills, and I want to share the main strategy I’ve been using to help me overcome the stress and anxiety of all the responsibilities.

It was actually my girlfriend who suggested this tactic to me. Every day she writes out a list of all the tasks she needs to complete, and she encouraged me to mimic this. Now, when I originally heard her say make a list, I imagined a complex series of bulleted tasks done in order of priority with designated time frames.

The actual list I still use is far simpler. It is just bulleted tasks. There are no time frames and no order, they are just things I need and want to get done. I find that by not being specific with time frames and orders, my day is much more fluid and it’s easier to accomplish everything. Knowing myself, if I had failed to complete a task within its designated time frame, I would probably just abandon the list for the rest of the day and try again tomorrow. The method I use now is far less pressure-some and demanding, but it still proves an effective reminder of the things I want to get done in a day.

There are a couple things worth noting about the construction of your list. I like to start off the day by writing a simple task (for me that’s brushing my teeth), it takes a very short amount of time to do, and I already do it on a daily basis. But being able to start the day off by crossing something off the list of tasks feels very rewarding and motivating. Also, write down the fun things you want to do in a day. Hobbies and fun need allotment in the schedule so that your lifestyle is sustainable and healthy.

If you want to improve your time management and organizational skills, try this strategy of just making a bulleted list of tasks you need and want to do. Let me know in the comments below how it works out for you!

--Jonathan Holden