How I Find Order in Everyday Chaos

“For every minute spent in organising, an hour is earned.”

Benjamin Franklin

Organizing, ordering, and prioritization are natural gifts for some and for the rest of us, they come with practice. They come with discipline!

I, for one, cannot function if I have clutter around. Decluttering acts as therapy for me, albeit not at the Marie Kondo level. But, at a level that keeps me sane and allows me to function and focus.

Prioritization is the obvious next step for anyone who yearns for some order in chaos. The chaos we all deal with on an everyday basis. And, don’t even get me started on the countless distractions around. They come in many forms and range from tiny to addiction levels. I’m sure we can all relate in one way or the other.

Just like the countless distractions, there are countless ways to tame the chaos and find the order we need. As for me, I follow a very simple, and perhaps commonly known, model. So common that I don’t even know if it has a name (grin). But, what’s in a name anyway?

Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”

– Stephen R. Covey

As the tasks keep coming to my work desk and home desk (a person has an unending to-do list at home as well, so let’s not forget that), I pass them through these categories:

• Urgent and Important (Do it first thing)
• Urgent and  Not Important (Do it anyway)
• Important but not Urgent (Do it once you are done with the urgent ones)
• Not important not urgent (These are things that can eat dust)

And, then I put them in my diary (you can make a physical or digital diary), which has 4 quadrants that look something like this.

But, what do I do if there are multiple items in a quadrant? Especially that top left one, which actually translates to the ‘fire on the mountain’ quadrant. Well, then you ask yourself: Is anyone dying if I don't do this at this very moment?

And, that’s it. All that is needed after this is to follow the prioritization with all honesty and I can promise you will be much happier. Not just you, but your boss, your stakeholders and everyone else that interacts with you will find it easier to rely on you. Like any art, it just needs practice!

If you worry about the pain of writing in a diary, worry not! Soon you will not even need to write down. It will become your mental model and your brain will automatically process things per the model.

I hope this takes you one step closer to simplifying your daily life.

To happy and chaos-free days, cheers!

Also published here.