Laura Waller - Get Organized: How to Overcome Information Overload, Get Organized and Make Better Use of Your Time

Perhaps this sounds familiar:

You wake up first thing in the morning with a jolt because your alarm has gone off. In a rush, you clean your teeth and get ready for work while watching the news on whichever device you prefer.

You pack your family off for school and work respectively and then you set off yourself. Youre late, because it took you 20 minutes to choose what you were going to wear and to find your keys. And because you lay there on the couch for 5 minutes doing nothing.

What follows is a tedious and frustrating 10-90 minutes of commuting complete with angry fellow commuters, stuffy carriages and probably a fair amount of time spent playing Candy Crush. By the time you get into work, youre already stressed, late and feeling a headache come on from peering at a small screen under artificial lighting.

You then have a strong coffee, leaving you feeling wired, and you open your inbox to 10,000 emails (okay, maybe thats an exaggeration but you get the point!). You set yourself some things to achieve for the day just so you can get back to feeling on top of work, but then you spend the next 20 minutes on Facebook and YouTube watching cat videos.

And staring at photos of your friends on sunny holidays wondering what went so wrong with your life

Lunch comes and you feel like youve barely done anything. You head out for lunch and grab the cheapest thing you can find thats sugary and have another strong coffee.

This doesnt exactly fuel you with energy for the second half of the day, which is spent largely putting out fires. How can you be expected to progress in your career and to get the kind of lifestyle you want, when youre spending the whole time treading water?

By the end of the day, youve spent most of your time responding to emails and trying not to get distracted. You end up leaving an hour late, which is followed by another hour of commuting.

Youre now home at 7pm. You should make a healthy meal for your family, maybe suggest a fun activity that you can all get up to?

But youre completely stuck for inspiration, so instead you put on a pizza and a film and crash on the couch for the next hour.

The house is untidy and messy though, so you feel generally anxious and stressed instead of getting any relaxation.

There were things you were meant to do this evening too: calling your friend who you havent spoken to in ages for example was high on the list. So was paying that bill. Only you cant face the idea of paying that bill because you dont want to rummage through the piles of documents on your desk. Youre not even sure you can find the bill anymore. Which would mean calling them on your lunch break to get them to send out another one.

You havent even looked at your bank account because you dont want to know how bad it is. Youre supposed to be saving for a mortgage/your kids college fund, but you have that stag/hen party coming up that you cant really afford but cant really get out of either

And you dont want to call your friend because youve now only got an hour left before you start getting ready for bed. And how can you justify calling that friend when you havent paid the bill? So you avoid looking at the WhatsApp message because you dont want them to see that youve seen it.

Let alone spending any time with your wife/husband?

Then you get an email from work reminding you how much you have to do tomorrow, which only stressed you out further. You browse Facebook a bit more and respond to some notifications from Candy Crush.

Then you hit the sack later than planned and having done barely any of the things you wanted to do. You still havent read that new book you bought and were excited about.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day?

Except you cant get any sleep because youre stressed and you just spent the last hours before bed looking at screens. And the coffee is still in your system

And at the weekend you have about 20 things to do and that dinner party youre supposed to be going to.