The Foundation Of Organization

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

- James Clear, in “Atomic Habits”

Themes tend to emerge among my coaching clients, a sort of interesting synchronicity. Lately it’s been all about organization!

What I mean by organization are all the tools, structures and systems that we create and use to manage our resources (time, energy, money, possessions, etc), and to stay on track with our tasks and commitments. It involves scheduling, budgeting, organizing our digital documents and physical possessions, etc.

It’s not about having instagrammable pantries and laundry rooms, with expensive fancy containers and cute labels; it’s about having a way to manage our time and energy, having what we need on hand, knowing what we don’t have, and finding the stuff that we know we have around the house. Our systems can also certainly look good, but it’s not necessary. It just has to work!

Simple and easy to maintain are all we need. We should only make our systems more elaborate if doing so brings joy.

In the Integral Coaching methodology, creating, using, and maintaining systems are considered an essential category of human development, just like our self-awareness, our self-care, our relationships, etc, and it makes so much sense. If we do not have effective systems to organize ourselves and our life, it’s going to be difficult to function well. Any new intention such as starting or stopping a new habit will be difficult if we don’t have a good time management and scheduling system. And a lot of time and energy will be wasted without a system to manage our finances and our various other resources.

Personally, I have systems to manage four main areas in my life. You might have more than that, depending on the complexity of your life. Here are a few ideas and questions for each of these areas, in case you would benefit from some fresh perspective.

Fair warning: I use Google Drive tools a lot A lot!

1. Time Management - Scheduling

Time is a limited resource, and commitments and tasks have a knack for filling up our schedule until there is no time left for important personal self-care activities. It’s essential to create and maintain a system to schedule all our activities - not just our commitments to other people but also to our self.

I use two systems to organize my tasks and commitments: 1. A Google calendar (technically I use multiple Google calendars) for scheduled commitments such as specific meetings and appointments, as well as recurring monthly or yearly tasks such as paying bills, planning birthday cards/gifts, keeping track of my other systems, etc. 2. A Google Drive Doc with my daily tasks listed by day for the upcoming week. This document lists the daily appointments and tasks that the Google calendar has reminded me of, in addition to all the to-do items to complete that day. At the end of each week, I update this document with the tasks for each day of the following week.

The digital format works well for me because I can access this document from any device, even on the go. When I plan the next week, I can simply copy-paste for each day what happens daily, as well as what needs to be postponed to the next day. No need to rewrite everything, and it saves paper.

What about you? What do you currently use for your scheduling? What works well, and what does not work?

2. Financial Management - Budgeting/Accounting

Another critical area of life is to have a good understanding of our financial situation. For that, it is super useful to keep track of all our spending and be able to compare it to our intended budget. It’s also important to keep track of the balances of all of our bank and investment accounts. Many systems exist to make this possible, from paper systems to Excel spreadsheets, and even apps that automatically track your expenses and categorize them for you.

As the CFO of our household, I’m in charge of keeping track of all our joint expenses and account balances. Like for time management, I exclusively use digital methods but not automated applications. I keep track of our expenses on a weekly basis in a shared Google Drive Sheet with my husband, with all the spending categories listed in separate columns, with a different tab for each month of the year. For our accounts and balances, I use a different shared Google Drive Sheet where all our accounts are listed - personal and joint ones, checking, savings, retirement, brokerage, etc. Account balances get updated every quarter so that we have a clear picture of our asset allocation and net worth over time.

Your turn! How do you keep track of your spending and savings? What serves you well, and what could be improved?

3. Documents Management - Filing

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by paperwork! Thankfully, in this digital age there is a way to limit the tsunami of paper and store a limited amount of physical documents. But if you have not dealt with your paperwork in a while, it might be painful to get started depending on your specific situation.

I’m actually in the process of reorganizing all my personal documents, as well as our joint household documents. I’m planning to shift from a vertical filing system to a binder system, and convert as many documents as possible to a digital version. Eventually binders will be used for all the documents that I need to keep in paper version, with some boxes for manuals, booklets, etc. whereas everything else will be stored digitally in personal and joint Google Drives. By the way, I strongly recommend couples to create a joint Google account, so that you have a joint Drive to save and easily access household documents.

And you, how are you organizing your documents? What is easy? What is challenging? What could support you in this area?

4. Household Supplies Management - Organizing

The last area that I’d like to discuss is how to organize our possessions and household stuff. Decluttering our possessions is useful to do once per year, to prevent the accumulation of unneeded stuff. Organizing and managing the supplies that we consume on a regular basis is another essential task to add to our routine so that we always know what we have, what we don’t have, and we can find what we need!

It’s inefficient to constantly buy more rice or laundry detergent because your stocks got lost in the back of your pantry or cabinet. Food could be wasted that way, and you could find yourself regularly buying things that you actually already have buried somewhere. Conversely, it’s frustrating to have to drive to the store at the last-minute because of running out of essentials.

For our household supplies, all the consumables that we regularly use are listed in a - you guessed it! - Google Drive Sheet in a checklist format. Once per month, I go through all the cabinets in the house where we store those supplies to check the status of each item and I check all products that I need to order. Most of our regular consumables, including food staples like rice, dog food, etc. are purchased online to get the best prices. With this method, we never run out of what we need, we avoid having to visit many different stores in person, and we get the best pricing on everything.

What’s your method for keeping track of your household supplies? How do you avoid running out of essentials, or having unnecessary duplicates?

Conclusion

Working on our organization greatly supports our self and what we want to accomplish with your life. Systems are useful because they free up energy for what truly matters, and that’s why it’s well worth the effort to establish them in the first place. Once created, we just need to maintain them on a weekly or monthly basis, and things effortlessly stay organized. You can start small, take your time, and before you know it, you will feel more grounded in this area of your life, and everything else that is truly important to you will work a little bit better!