Each day, without even realizing it, you make choices. Hundreds of little decisions.
Some of those choices can affect your organizing. What you choose to buy and when, where you choose to put things and when you choose to manage tasks can all affect your overall level of organization and productivity. By making smart choices (at least sometimes), you can reduce the amount of clutter in your life and schedule.
You Make Smart Choices in your home or office when you stick to your set boundaries and meaningful habits. These limits and routines include how much stuff to buy or keep. So if you’ve designated one desk drawer to hold supplies such as writing utensils, paper clips, stapler, notepads, etc. then don’t buy any more until your stock is low. So you can’t take advantage of the buy one pack of pens, get one free deal unless you have space!
In your schedule, you Make Smart Choiceswhen you allot adequate time for each task or activity while leaving some “white space” in your calendar for when circumstances change (and they will). Constructive choices are also made when you can shift your calendar or timing as priorities change. You’ve scheduled lunch with a friend at noon, one-and-a-half hours for picking up groceries, toiletries and other necessities (this includes driving time) and you have an important meeting at 2:30 p.m. Your friend is going through a crisis and asks if you can spend some extra time helping her brainstorm about the situation. You can:
Photo by Baskykes.
- Say that you can’t do it today but you’d be glad to get together with her later in the week.
- Stay with your friend and decide about the shopping depending on when lunch is done.
- Continue lunch with your friend, complete the shopping as planned and skip the meeting.
None of the choices is inherently right or wrong, although missing meeting (finalizing a client contract) or not doing the shopping (ingredients for dinner) might have some consequences. You might feel pulled toward one option more than another. In the end, only you can decide which is the best decision for you that day.
Two other aspects are important so you can Make Smart Choices:
- They should only be made on known factors.
- Most can be modified as your situation or needs change.
We’ve got some more ideas on how you can make smart choices in this article, or watch Janice below as she talks about some other smart choices.