How to Become More Organized in Your Twenties

There’s just so much stuff going on in our lives right now, let alone the whole world! It's overwhelming, if not impossible to try to make sense of it all. There is hope for us yet though. Our one weapon to combat that crushing pressure is to get in the habit of being organized. Starting habits like this right now is a great thing, because it will allow us to iterate on it as we get older. I want to share a little bit from my experience in hopes of helping you get back on track.

 

Let me know if this sounds familiar: you’re a student with a part time job or someone in the workforce, defending themselves against the dreaded 9-5. Another week has seemingly fallen through your fingertips. Sure, you were physically present for it, but the days kept changing and the amount of things you needed to get done or fun stuff you wanted to be a part of kept growing. You’re drowning in the mess that’s become your life. To stay afloat, all-nighters are pulled, dates with your partner and/or friends are rainchecked, assignments/work projects are submitted late, burnout is endured, and several conversations with yourself contemplating quitting it all and running away to a remote island are had. How did it get like this?

 

If you resonate with the above, chances are you’re at a stage in your life where you’re outgrowing the past methods used to manage yourself. Those techniques weren’t necessarily bad or wrong, it’s more so that the current you has different needs. We’re only human after all! We are creatures that constantly grow and evolve, so it only makes sense that the way to organize our time, priorities, and responsibilities are going to change too. That part is key. Organization will allow us to give our lives some structure, which will create the time necessary to address all the stuff we’ve got going on.

 

In my own personal journey, I’ve found a few ways to kickstart becoming more organized. Below I’ve listed three steps to get you on your way.  

 

1. Listing Out Your Needs/Wants For Your Week

 

It’s impossible for us to foresee everything a week has in store for us. But we can definitely do our best to get ahead of it. One way to do that is to take some time and list out everything we have to expect. This list should include our priorities (non-negotiable things that need to be completed), but also our activities (we deserve fun too!). It’s important to also take note of the definites as well. The definites are those predictable, recurring moments in our week that we know we’ll be present for. These can be: 

• Classes
• Your shift at work
• Weekly hangout with your friends
• The practice session for the sport you play

and so on!

Listing out what makes up your week is a great starting point to visualizing it. It also puts less strain on your brain to retain all that information. 

 

2. Scheduling

 

Now that we have all of the content that makes up our week, we can start to make a tangible representation of it. The best way to do this is through scheduling. Using the list we created, we will assign our priorities, our definites, and our activities to certain times throughout each day. This will help us not only block out our time, but also show where we have extra time to dedicate to the other things we want to enjoy in our week. How you want to set it up is totally personal preference. Some examples of some good starting points can be the calendar app on your phone, using a planner, or writing on a calendar. If you go with the planner route, clock planner stickers are great for time management, or AM/PM labels to track the routine in your day!

 

2a. Alarms/Alerts

 

This is mostly just supplemental to the schedule you’ve just set up, but alarms are a great tool to make sure you’re hitting all the goals in your week. Ideally these would be set up on your phone. That way, there is a constant force in your immediate vicinity keeping you on track throughout the day. I’m definitely the type that needs to be reminded constantly of something even if I already wrote it down, so this step is really important to me. Alarms or alerts go the extra mile since they can reinforce that sense of discipline.

 

3. Have a “Reset” Day

 

Now, all of these different ways we can organize our lives are good in their own right. But where is the time to set that stuff up? This is where your “reset” day comes in. A reset day is a day where you have the most time to yourself, where you can dedicate at least an hour or two to prep for the start of your week. For me, my reset day is on Sunday. My work week starts on Monday. and generally I tend to have the least going on Sundays, so this makes a perfect fit. Towards the end of that day I spend an hour listing out my priorities, definites, and activities for the week to convert them into a schedule. Then, I assign an alarm to each of those events on my phone to make sure I’m properly notified. 

 

Going through your day to day is never an easy task. Each week is not made in the same way as the last, so it can get fairly difficult to keep up with it all. But if we try our best to stay organized, we can better prepare ourselves for it. Better yet, keeping organized is one of the greatest acts of self-love we can give to ourselves. 

 

Thank you for reading! Hoping this was helpful to you! :-)

 

Take care,

Knee 💫