Paul Morrisey - How to Organize Your Life, Mind and Home: 9 Organizing Principles to Help You Simplify Your Life, Increase Efficiency and Maximize Productivity

Which means thatthe first step towards establishing a positive organizational mindset issimple. As Stephen Covey writes in The7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you must always start with the end inmind. That means that you must have goals.

Begin with the very end of yourlifewhere are you? Whos surrounding you? What have you accomplished? Focus onthe big three: health, money (or work), and friends/family. Visualize thesituation, using your full imaginative faculties. When you dieand sadly, thisis inevitablethe legacy you leave will be dictated by your goals. This maymake you feel uncomfortable, but the culprit is unlikely to be the morbidity ofthe thought. Any discomfort probably stems from the fact that what youre doingright now isnt going to lead to a great end.

Dont just establish daily orweekly goals. Life goals.

So what do you want your life tolook like? While a simple question, many of us dont stop to ponder it for evena momentwe just allow the tides to toss us off course unwittingly. If werenot careful, well end up halfway around the world from where we actuallywanted to go.

It would seem ridiculous to try toreach a faraway land without at least a plane ticket and a destination. Yetthis is what many of us do when charting the course of our own lives. It isimpossible to expect great things if you do not plan out how to get them. Fewsuccessful people were successful by accident or just got lucky.

They had goals, and then theyplanned out how to achieve them. This is the true essence of organization, andit requires that you define what success means to you. It might not meanchanging the world, having millions of friends or making billions of dollars. Thats okayjust define the end game, so you can steer yourboat in the correct direction.

You should have goals in allimportant areas of your life: health, work and in your social endeavors. Theseare all dependent on your desires, so its difficult to get too specific here.For example, a single man might have a social goal of increasing his ability topick-up women. A married man, on the other hand, might want to better be ableto speak and connect with his wife. Its important to mention that neither goalis inherently right or wrong. It is important,however, to have the goalas this will dictate how each man organizes hisrespective life.

Its best not to be morally blackand white with such mattersthe word pick-up might raise the hackles of some.But one can work towards such a goal with integrity and honestyjust as ahusband can, on the surface, better the relationship with his wife whilesecretly manipulating her with his newfound silver-tongue. One powerful idea tokeep in mind is to ensure that your actions do not bring injury to humanity;leave the world a better place for you having been in it.

Right and wrong, much of the time,are related to how you accomplishyour goal, rather than what your goalhappens to be. The thing to remember is that you should allow yourself tochoose whats right for younever allow the moralizing whispers of society toget in your ear and distract you from your path. One common fallacy is thatmoney is evil; another myth often repeated is that you must have a real jobworking for a real employer. Fact of the matter is, however, America rose toprominence on the backs of those who spurred this trendentrepreneurs andartists who set off alone, with different goals. Not everyone wants to be anentrepreneur, nor should everyone (or even most) strive to be. But had Edison,Steve Jobs and Jimi Hendrix become bankers or retail clerks, I suspect theworld would have been far, far worse off for it.

Each man had a clear goalEdisonto invent, Steve Jobs to revolutionize computing, Jimi Hendrix to change theguitar. And while there is little doubt that their level of organizationdiffered from there on out, youll see time and again that, if you desire agood life, you must plan to some degree. This varies from person to person;often those who are more spontaneous or like to go with the flow areresistant to any and all planning. They feel it will shackle their creativespirit and be a fruitless endeavor.

This misconception stems fromoverzealous organizational texts that suggest you implement wildly detailed andobsessive principles. The truth is , point-by-pointplanning and organization is right for only a select few individuals. There aresome who thrive in hyper-organized environments; others thrive on the vergechaos.