Since the age of about 10, some 34 years ago, I have been an entrepreneur. Over the years I have organized and ran numerous successful businesses ranging from the small sole proprietorship to corporations with millions of dollars per year in revenue. Today I work a full time job in a position I absolutely love, and I also run several growing, successful enterprises. In addition, I am gradually creating many products, including three more books, to help others learn from my experience. I am constantly asked how I manage to keep as many irons in the fire as I do and yet still have time for my family, exercise, and meditation. The secret is that I am highly organized and align my activities around my life mission, each and every day.
If you want to achieve your dreams in life, or just enjoy more satisfaction and peace in your life, you need to get organized. If you have tons of clutter in your life, and everything is in disarray, it distracts you tremendously even if you don’t realize it. This drain on your mental and physical energies directly takes away from your ability to maximize your most precious resource – time.
Not only do you need to keep your daily, weekly, monthly, and long term tasks in order and make conscious decisions about what you will and won’t do with your time, but you also need to learn how to say “no” to less meaningful activities, and you need to clean up the miscellaneous clutter that may fill your world.
My organizational activities circle around a life mission I have formed, one which gives me a great feeling inside when I think deeply about it. From my life mission I have developed a life vision, a vision of where I want to be. Also, I have written and review daily a list of my values, those things which are most important to me. Each day I review and update my daily task list, moving some items forward, crossing off some items, delegating what I can to others when appropriate, and deleting some items when I decide they no longer warrant my attention, or if they don’t contribute to my life mission in some tangible way. By prioritizing my activities and being realistic about what I can accomplish in a given amount of time, and reviewing my prioritized daily task list frequently during the day, I ensure I’m not distracted by others or by non-important tasks that may try to fill my time.
By learning to say “no” to those things and demands of my time which do not truly warrant my attention, I am able to increase the likelihood that I’ll accomplish those high priority tasks I need to accomplish in order to move myself forward toward my future goals. Saying “no” with sincereness, and when appropriate with an explanation to others, actually increases the respect of others who realize that I am control of my time and that I will do those things that are most appropriate therewith. Not only do I say “no”, but when appropriate I also try to help the asking party to find the appropriate resource to complete the request which they originally shared with me.
Another activity I engage in from time to time, which I find to be very helpful, is to spend some effort de-cluttering my world. I purge unneeded things which tend to distract from my ability to engage in forward moving activities and which otherwise clutter my mind or space. Included in this are not only physical things such as files, old clothes, etc. but also loose ends with other people that need to be purged. For example, if I have pending phone calls I need to make to long lost friends, which bugs me incessantly, or if I have other things I need to get rid of, I either cross the items off my list through accomplishment or I decide once and for all to not complete the uncompleted item and move on. Cleaning up the clutter in your life can result in a burst of new energy, which should be quickly funneled toward accomplishment of the higher priority activities in your life.
If you truly want to success, it is vital that you make a conscious effort to control your use of time, get control of the activities in your life, and that you get highly organized so that you utilize the resources at your disposal, including especially your time, with the maximum possible efficiency and effectiveness.