How to Organize your Life and Work | 5 Day Organization Challenge

1. Introduction: Having an organized life, in my opinion, is about keeping things in a ride. Proportion Not too much, not too little organization is when you have a system to deal with things that should previously weren't able to deal with high. I'm Philly, but I rides on my block. I create online classes and I leave. In this class. We will go through a five day challenge that will help you to keep your whole life organized, starting with physical organization, moving to digital minimalism, then learning how you can plan your days to avoid the constant business that will not take you anywhere. Next will cover how creating procedures can make your life organized for longer periods of time. And finally, you will learn how the cluttering can make your life more joyful, more simpler and more functional. The great thing about organization is that it plays a role in all the different fuels of your life. First, it helps to increase your productivity because you don't have to deal with all the mess around and so you can focus on the rides priorities. Then it gives you more time to maintain your relationships or to learn new skills. because now you will have a routine that sustains Good habits include behavior and finally , but not less important. You will feel liberated. You will gain a sense of clarity in peace of mind that will help you to make clearer decisions. I'm really excited to have you here, and I see you inside. 2. Why Organizing your Workspace?: Hi and welcome to this class. I really excited to have you here because I recognize the value of having an unorganized life. When your own life is organized, you see things with much more clarity, and you don't feel like procrastinating or wasting your time with meaningless activates. In this first day of the challenge, I will show you how you can organize your own physical space, and I will go through with you all the steps you should take in order to get your space in its proper place. What matters is creating an environment that makes you excited and committed to work on your own goals. And this is only the first day of a five day challenge that will help you to make the leap to a more organized life. As Benjamin Franklin said, for every minute spent in organizing, an hour is hurt. In the end of the five days you will feel in charge and ready to take command of your own life. It does not matter if you work for yourself or other person. When you take a step toe, organize your life. Everything in your life improves, including your career. Chris Bailey the author of the Productivity project with an experiment for one week where he stopped taking here organization and maintenance desks. What happened? He's productivity decreased, and he just felt terrible. Yes, organization is that important in your life, but I don't want you to wait until the end of the five days to get the benefits. This day alone will already impact your life in many different ways. When your physical space is clean and organized, you will be ready toe accomplish more in less time. But our studies that prove this. But I want you to experience this by yourself. Think of how you could improve your career and your finances if you were able to do things in a shorter period of time. You finish a freelance project in less time, so you have more time to find your clients. Are you finished your workload sooner so you can start your side Hustle Possibilities are limitless and think about it when you go about your day with a sense of accomplishment, you feel happier when you feel a sense of accomplishment. You interact with other people in a much better way, and those could be your friends your colleagues, your family. Being more organized will in fact, your relationships. When you feel better, you show up better for other people, too. But I know there are still a lot of you that struggle with keeping productivity in high levels or having trouble getting social relationships in place. And this sometimes happens because we complicate things way too much, and I've been there. I've been the person thinking every single step of the way, overthinking everything and not being able to take action when I should have. Thankfully, I read dozens of books and a lot of online courses and YouTube videos, and I learned my lesson and honestly the way I organized my life. Right now, it enables me to be more productive, to keep better relationships, to deal better with my life and my finances, my career, those few steps that will make a real impact in your life. But I don't think that making things more complicated for you is the right solution. Honestly, I think the simpler strategies aren't the more we will be able to keep up with them in the long term, because, yes, you can create a complex system that you will follow along for one week, but in the end of the one week, you'll get tired of it. So I'm actually in advocates of simple solutions that sold my problems. I don't want complex things because I know I want to keep up with them in the long term. So I tried to make this class very simple. But all the strategies and steps are very well thought, and I know they work because they have worked for me and work for many other people. Sent Golden, the author of dozens of best sellers, says, It's very well on this little book. Challenge is getting you to be habit of starting, so don't think too much and just start this challenge and commit yourself to going through . Until yet I hope you are as excited is I am in the next video, we'll cover three principles that are really simple but will help it to organize your physical space once in for all stick around because this is just the beginning 3. Framework to organize physical space : Welcome again and let's go straight to the topic. This approach consists on three simple steps, and I call it the calm approach. Starting with this, he extends for cleaning. But this is not equating lesson. And so the only thing I want you to focus on right now he's cleaning your whole working environment. This can be a big space, like a big office for just a desk where you produce most of your work. When I look around my desk and I see dust on it, you know, just can't properly focus in order you turn south. You can clear space in just a few minutes, and it really makes a difference. And once you completely step, this will give you momentum to continue building upon your own physical organization. I highly recommend you to do the best test, which basically you just past your finger on the surface. And if it comes clean, then you're good to go. The second step is all about organizing. Well, desk. He's easier to organize, then it is a filmmaking studio where you make most of your work. The first step off the organization step is all about selecting all the resources you need and get them all around your own working area. This might include journal spends notebooks, your computer or your phone, but make sure you have all these necessary materials around you. But the most important thing is besides keeping all the things you need, he's putting away all the others that you don't need. This includes your phone. In most cases, you might need your phone to work. That's OK, but if you don't put it away, basically put away all the items that don't at any value to the same you're currently doing in your working area. The second thing you should take into account off the organizational step is all about location. This basically means that you should select a place in your working area where you will put Render thinks that you encounter. So let's say you've got a few pieces of paper around. Make sure you always put them in the same location so you can later deal with them by having a specific place to put these items, you basically make sure that you always have your place organized and you know exactly where those things are so you can deal with them later. Either way, it looks fairly simple. But in the end it will make your working space look like you. The third step is all about maintaining. What I mean by this is you must have a strategy to always make sure you leave things in the right place at the end of the day. So I've got these three notebooks that I always carry around when I'm working and I also have my bet. And I realized that I was basically having this bad habit, It always leaving the notables on the on the table and they were pretty much really disorganized. Now I've got this drawer where I put the notebooks in the iPad each time I've finished working. So when I come back the next day, things look much war clean and organized Just to give you a context. We care about cleaning and organizing our work environment because we want to produce work more effectively, better work with more quality and ideally, reached the state of flow. The state of flow was a concept popularized by any high cheeks and me high and psychologist . And basically, when you're in the state of flow, you're working so hardly so committed, so focused that you don't see the time passing by. The best moments usually occurred when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult in worth. Wild, optimal experience is the something that we make happen that are a few factors that can help you reach the state of float, and I highly encourage you to seek more about it. But there's one that is called novelty, and we can bring that to our environment. When we perceive something as new, we have the higher capability to focus in reach of the state of float. This is why people enjoy working in coffee shops, so they get these boosts of novelty and they are able to focus more well. Turns out I'm currently in quarantine because of Corona bars, so I can't visit a new coffee shop every week. So keeping the space where I work at home organized and clean is a necessary step for me to be able to reach the state of flow. If I get to visit a difference coffee shop every week, at least I can experience my own work environment in a clean, unorganized way. Every time moving on, we have the M and the letter and stands for music. That's right. You're going to do the whole process of cleaning and organizing while I listen to your favorites. Fortified playlists. You should sing along the process because it will make it much more fun. Use the discussion of the course to recommend some of your favorite playlists so we can all have fun while keeping our physical environment in place. I've been trying to optimize the whole organization system to gain more clarity, productivity and focus, and that our system deuce indulgence that I would like to suggest the 1st 1 is about giving your working space a single use. What I mean by this is don't play and don't work in the same desk or in the same chair. Try to separate physically this activities because you will have a much easier time when you want to go back and start working. I have this simple rule where I'm not allowed to watch funny YouTube videos while I'm on my desk because that desk is for working. And so when I feel like watching a YouTube video, I'll just grab my computer and watching anywhere else. This is quite weird, but it works, and I've got another another tip that I have. So I have this dinner table where I both work and to study, and I also eat in watch movies. So I actually have ah, space where I sent when I want to work in another space, you know another share where I sit and watch videos or eat, because I know that what I'm on this year I'm working. I'm studying. I'm doing productive work. But when I'm on the other share, I can be eating and can be watching a movie in YouTube video. This allows me to separate the environment without having to have multiple offices around my house. The second thing I would like to recommend is to have a piece of paper around you every time you are working. Basically, it can be a posted notes where you write rent of things that pop up during your focusing sessions, sometimes not working, and something comes up and I have the urge to deal with it immediately. You know, like answering an email as during a message, buying something so do not interrupt my my focusing session. What I do is I grab a post it notes and I right there what I should do when I finish my work. This includes things like calling a friend or buying almond milk. It does not better with letters. He's dumping what you're thinking. So you want to be distracted by the thoughts. And the third recommendation I would like to make is about not obsessing about these whole organizational system. Ideally, you want to have it clean and organized every time you start working, and over time you can improve. The resource is you have around, you can improve the whole environment. You can do all of that. But remember, good is better than nothing to start with what you have right now, Those listen to your perfection. Isn't the thoughts that are telling you that you need to buy more shelves, that you need to buy another desk that you need to have another office? Don't listen to that. Just start with you what we want you have right now and follow the few principles that will really help you out cleaning, organizing and thanks a music to have some fun along the way organization is a journey, not a destination. Giving your office in life organized does not have to take much time. In fact, you can do it in like 10 minutes every week and every day you just need to put things into their proper place. Still, I understand the struggle, and I know that sometimes we forget to do those things. But what matters is pushing forward and not stopping this great habit. Don't let past failures dictate how we're going to behave now and start today organizing your working area and you will feel better immediately in the next videos. I'll show you how it can create procedures so you will not sleep off during this whole process. But for now, get up clean and organizer working area while listening to a great playlist. Next, take a quick photo of your working environment imposed in the discretion below. I want to see all of your working areas, thank you very much, and I see you in the next video 4. Organization Check-List: In the last video of the first day of the challenge, I decided to create a tool that will help you to maintain your whole working environment in place. It is basically a quick checklist that you can go through every time just to make sure you have everything in the proper place. It will take you two minutes to complete this. It's easy to forget or neglect some steps, so having this quick checklist will help you along the way. So let me just open it up with you to show you how it looks like. As you can see, we have become strategy they want. And then we have the three things we covered, the cleaning phase, the organization face and the music and on each continually. We have three steps that you can complete very, very easily in just a check. If you have everything you write place Great. Thank you so much for completing the first day you want already immersed in the process of figure in your life organization once in for all. Honestly, a lot of people are struggling with keeping their lives organized, but they're not taking this first step. But you didn't take the first step. And so I want to congratulate you for taking the initiative and having the discipline to be here, to stick to the videos and, too, and the most important thing to actually do this and put this into practice by cleaning and organization, organizing your whole working area. If in the past you've tried to organize your things and keep your life together and things didn't work out, it might be because you are not following a simple and clear strategy. Perhaps you were adding too many steps to the process, or you're complicating things too much, but remembered that to keep your physical organization in place, you just need three steps cleaning, organizing and putting some music. This is one of my favorite books by Derek Sievers, and he puts it very well. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working so you can dump all the other strategies that were not working and start this one and see how it goes for you. It's very important that you keep your physical space in place, so make sure you snap a sister and you posting discussion blow. I'll be answering everyone. Don't forget to download the resource because it's a simple checklist that can help you to , you know, just market over every day and make sure you have your physical space organized every day, and I see you tomorrow. 5. Why Organizing your Digital Life?: hi and welcome to the second day of the organizing your life challenge. Yesterday we talked about organizing your physical space so you can increase your levels of focus in productivity. Today we are having to your digital life in times where most of us produced our work using a computer or a smartphone. Having your whole digital system figured out is as important as keeping your physical one in place. The time wasted looking after files or actually losing them makes everyone go nets. Also, if you have important files or photos from your holidays, you must take important steps to make sure that you have a second copy of them. The thought of losing things might be a burden for you. That's why in this class we're going to cover what you can do to prevent that from happening. Mark is a really is that you see how few things you have to do to leave a satisfying and reverent life. And, yes, digital minimalism is one of those things. This module is especially important if you do your work or line. Really, this knowledge alone can transform the way you organize. Your work can transform your career and even personal life. When it comes to our physical space, we have a limit to things we can't store. But when we're talking about digital, thanks, pilot very quickly. I understand why most people struggle with this. It's much easier to keep two or three documents in your desktop as you are always using them. The problem is that two or three documents are quickly become 10 or 20 or 50 items. I'm pretty sure you also being from the trouble of naming a folder, we vowed to suggestible name and then spent hours looking for it. I've done everything else I described, and in fact, if I don't discipline myself to go through the organization system, things pile up very quickly. For me, it's much more challenging to keep my desktop organized. Then he used to give my physical files, so I have to come up with a simple but intuitive system that helps me to figure out my whole digital organization without meaning to rely on short term motivation. Joeckel Welling reinforces this idea of motivation by sake. Motivation is a fickle. It comes and goes. It is unreliable, and when you are counting on motivation to get your goals accomplished, you will likely fall short. So what we want here is for a huge rural life on systems and not on your motivation, because motivation comes angles. So by the end of the day, you will learn how to organize your digital files, how to create copies off them so you won't lose them if something happens to your computer . And also in probably my favorite part civil. How to create your personal organization system inside your computer or smartphone. And I see you in the next video. 6. How to Organize your Digital Life: hi and welcome again during this class will cover three steps that will help you to put all of your digital system in place. We will start by organizing your desktop, but how can you do it? So the first step of the whole digital organization is about starting with creating specific folders for each of your documents, and each documents should go inside one folder and that one folders should go inside another one. So this is also called the tree Structure. So don't put all of your photos inside a folder that is called photos. Nor put all of your downloads in a new folder called Downloads. So if we head over to my computer, what we can see here is a folder called Media and Inside Media. I've got photos, and if we go inside the folder photos, we'll find another one called Travel. It's Trouble will find different folders, and once I opened Japan, I will find three folders that basically have all my photos from the three different cities that I visit it. So, as you can see instead of having hundreds or even thousands of photos inside a folder called photos, I've got everything really organized, so I can find things very, very quickly. This seems very easy in straightforward still. Sometimes it's difficult to keep up with the digital system, so I highly recommend you to create your own structure of where to keep your files in inside which folders. Basically, what we want here is about building a DRI structure. So you have a main folder, and inside the main folder you got other folders, and inside those folders you've got more folders. It's basically like creating a tree as you can see my desktop. I've got two folders, my folder in another one that is called Screenshots. But once I opened my name, I mean my folder. What I see is this organizational structure. I've got different folders inside. The 1st 1 is blocking The next is college exercise media, personal prop programs and projects. So you can basically green this structure for your own life. Now, if I open um, media, what I have is all your books, courses, e books, photos and videos. So basically all times of media are inside the folder media, so it's very intuitive for me to find anything. And if I go inside the folder College. What I find is different folders, um, for each year. So the first year, the 2nd 1 in the third and inside each ear, I've got it divided by semester's first semester in second semester. If I open up second semester, what I see is all of the subjects that I had. So everything is really organized. Now that recovered how to organize your own files. It's time to back them up. What happens? You've sent Lee. Your computer stops working. Yep, let's prevent that from happening in. The second step has to do with backing up all the advice you can use either. Amazon, Dr Google drive, Google one Dropbox, you name it. But what matters is keeping all of your files secure in a non in place because one is none and two is one. A digital file system is basically place where you keep all the important information from different areas of your life, and this makes the third step and also the one that I feel the most excited. Basically, it is a space where you keep all of your important information from your personal lives, your business to your career, you name it so if you run a business, you will have a dedicated place for business inside business. You might have clients you want have projects. You might have meetings or schedule. It's like basically having physical notebook. So if this would be the business notebook inside, I would have different categories of my business, and that's what you're going to do. But inside your computer, what? I started being really organized with my personal, my business, my career, everything the whole thing started to progress. Really Like I feel like I grew a lot since I started using this more often because I didn't make progress towards my goals much quicker. Basically, the software I used to keep track of everything is called notion, and now I want to take you inside my notion account so you can see or less how I organize my own life and what I want to show you with how it looks right now. But I'm pretty sure I'll be updating adding more things, organizing in in a different way. So basically I'll show you how it is now. But keep in mind that I'm always adding more information. I'm always changing things so they can look. Basically, you can organize your notion accounts through work spaces. And here I've got one that is called business. And as you can see, I've got two categories here online classes and block inside workspace. You're gonna have all their folders. So if I would open block, I would have content calendar in block posts. So everything is really were organized. And again, it looks like the DRI structure, like we built when we organize the folders. If I open my personal work space, I've got goals And inside Golden what I've got weekly monthly and yearly goals. So everything is also very well structured. I also have procedures, which is something we went to cover it next classes. I've got finance. That's basically what what I have right now in my personal of that, I've got the learning time which basically contains all the notes I took on online classes , on books, on articles. I've got other work space here called goals and habits because I share it with another person. He's not in the same place as younger ones. And if I open it up, I basically got my habit, trucker, and you can just create have its year and track how well you're doing. So I mean, I've got you were couch meditation riding, studying and a new one that I recently had, which is to rate read of Financial Times article every day. Now there's do all their work spaces that I've got here. Uh, the 1st 1 is college, and so I basically have it organized through the different subjects. And then I've got my ideas, and I really want to state this to you because keeping your ideas in one place is really important. Have you ever had that $1,000,000 idea that you've forgotten? In next 10 minutes? A study published in the Journal of Psychology showed that we tend to think that we will remember something important for more time than we actually do. So when we have a business idea or any other idea, we think we will remember it for a long time. Turns out stand minutes later, weekends. Remember it. That's why I included ideas in my digital file system, so I can always keep up with my flow of thoughts. But don't worry. In the next video, I'll give you a tool that will give you some ideas. Fuller's in workspaces that you can create your own personal organization system. Now, after learning how to organize your folders held, you back them up and how to craft your own organizational system. I really want to give you a few tips. You're probably going to hate me each time you have to access a folder that you use every day. But to get there, you have to open a sequence of folders. Thankfully, I've got you covered because regarding of using a Mac or windows, you can add folders as your favorites, so basically you can access to them in a few clicks. The let's say, island favorites my block folders, So I have access to it much faster. What I do is I open it up and I drag it to my favorites, and I'll just stay there so I can quickly get around it. And the second tip I want to give you that's really important. He's about respecting the tree you created. So always add the files in your respective folders that I inside other fools air inside out , if older than inside on Fuller's. Otherwise, everything will end up as it was before a mess and confusion. Now I get. It's difficult to maintain the system in, sometimes whistling off, but what matters is having the discipline to clean up the mess we made again. Don't feel the storage of these weak you like all those enrolling screenshots pileup. Take a few minutes organizer things and start again. And so I encourage you to have the discipline to keep up with your system. But don't beat yourself off when friends remember that you can always go back on track and experience the whole advantages. Have having everything organized, so you don't waste any time finding information or losing files in the next video. I'll give you a tool that will help it to organize your digital organization system. All presented the study, and we will wrap up today's challenge. Thank you very much. 7. Ideas for your Digital System: Well, I absolutely know the feeling of having everything in dozens of different places. Every time I took an online course or I read a book, I would take notes on it, which is a great methodology. But I have notes on those things in many different places. I had a physical load, books I had ever note. I had a Google locks. I have a word. Documents, you know, it was a miss then. My cloud system consisted on three different websites. Dropbox, Google Drive in Amazon, right? I had dozens of files on my desktop. You know, Screenshots were always piling up and I spent a lot of time finding things. But this whole necessity to change the system actually came when I spent 30 minutes trying to find a motivation letter that I wrote. You know, I spent 30 minutes trying to find it, and I could not find it. And so guess what? I was forced to write another one for, like, two hours on Lee after writing it that I find the previous motivation letter and it was, you know, below other files. And it had the name. What's Mong? So I didn't give it a logical name. I didn't put it in the specific folder, and so I ended up losing three hours of my day trying to find it, not finding it, creating another one. So I was so frustrated that I basically forced myself to figure all of these system outs. And yes, there are a lot of things that I still have to feed your out and things that I will improve in the future. And I'm always seeking for that. But like Seth Godin set, waiting for Perfect is never s mart as making progress. So I urge you to make progress right now and don't focus too much when trying to make things perfect in the first time. So start by organizing all the files into proper folders by creating a tree structure than upload those documents to a drive and finally figure out your organizational system. And to complete the challenge, you must take a picture or a screen shot of your desktop with just one or two Fuller's. So I really want to see that because I know so many of you who have the desktop really disorganized, like mine. Waas. And I know that having everything in the proper place just so much easier to work now. Like I said, I created a tool to help you start your own organizational system Inside notion or inside Evernote or inside Google Drive. You decide, and this is basically how it looks like you have here Day two, and then you have different. Continue Aries For your own digital system, you can start by business. Then you can have a personal you can have learning where you keep your notes from online courses like this one. Articles, books, skills. Then I've got ideas. Like I said, it's very important to keep track of your ideas. You can create separate, separate folders like business, personal ideas for life improvement or experiments. Finally, I've got college and career college. I, you know, subjects your great schedules. You name it inside career. I've got resume. I've got motivation letters. You know what? I learned the lesson. I've got portfolio application truckers again. Thank you so much for staying till the end. He just shows your commitment to make your life better because you will. And I have no doubt that every day you're getting closer and closer to the painful organization seems like a very small piece to getting where you want to be and is. But it's a small piece that makes impact on all their big projects of your life, and that will make her life much simpler. Organization can be just a small detail of your finances, of your business, off your relationships, personal growth, a career. But it's a small detail that makes differences in very different of parts of your life. And so we can really. In fact, if you have everything organized and you are on the right path to improve all of these areas, thank you so much for watching and I see you tomorrow. 8. Why Planning makes you Productive: hi and welcome to the third day of this. Organizing your life challenge. In the previous days, we covered everything about physical organization which included the C O. M strategy cleaning, organizing in music. And yesterday we talked about digital minimalist things, like organizing your folders in creating his three structure, putting them on the cloud and finally, how to crest your own personal system. Today, we're heading to blend in your day in making your goals a priority. Now that you have everything in its proper place, it's time to decide which things you're going to do every day to make your life advance. You will learn strategies to plan your day and accomplish more than you ever thought you could. When you take a few minutes to plan your day ahead, you will gain more time and you will gain clarity in energy. This will allow you to have more time to focus on your relationships, to learn and use skill or to start a new side hustle. Brendan encourages us to start dreaming again, sent a plane. Remember your strengths. March on with enthusiasm in love, and all will be well playing their day ahead. Don't take much time. But still, most people don't bother to do it, mainly because they believe that planning and structuring their day will steal from their freedom. I totally understand this mindset because I had the same, too, and they referred to go about my day without anything. Well, the problems arise when you don't make progress in any of your goals or you don't finish a work project on time because you suddenly found herself out of time. Do you call this freedom? It's not. When you don't plan and design your day, you will be dealing with things. But those will not be the most important things in what I ask you is, Do you prefer being busy or do you prefer being productive? Being busy is all about feeling her time with activities that don't move the needle forward and being productive. It's all about accomplishing your goals in doing meaningful tasks. It's called Newport Set. If you service slowing packed activities, therefore you are taking time away. You could be spending on higher impact activities. It's a zero sum game. It was only when I started planning my days that I had more freedom. I was not being surprised by that lines. I was fulfilling both my obligations and the things I wanted to accomplish. I was having time to study time to read, time to go out with friends. Time to travel, time to watch YouTube videos and watch Netflix. You know I have time for everything. Now, which activity do you think we'll give you? More freedom, Planning your day or just going about your day? Hopefully, you picked the first option. But still, if you're not convinced yet in the next classes, I'll show you how you can plan your days. In a very simple way, I will also be teaching how you can focus more intensively. And in the end of the class, I'll actually give you a tool that will help you plan your days in weeks. If you could only complete one day of the challenge, I think this would be the one. But I know the importance of joining all the activities that were previously covered in that we're still going to covering the future. Because Wendy's are all joined together. You're able to do much more in less time, so stick committed, apply what you learnt. They watch your life turnarounds 9. How to Plan your Days: welcome again to help you plan your day. I will show you to difference approaches that work equally well, but you might prefer one over the other. The first approach is about blocking your time, and this is the one I use every single day to plan. My days basically consists on the fighting your day by blocks of time. So from 7 to 8 a.m. I'll be doing my morning routine. What you can check in another class next from 8 to 9 a.m. I scheduled my first block of working time that can be studying, working on a project, writing and course writing a post. You know, basically, it's when I start working, and I continue this approach of the writing my days into blocks of time and choosing which activities I'll be doing until more or less the afternoon. Now the best thing about walking your time is that you can block time for watching Netflix reading a book or simply going outside. As long as you are aware of how much time your spending on each activity your days are being craft for success. This method of blocking your time works because you attributed a period of your day toe work on the activities that will move your life forward. But you also scheduled activities that will help you to rest in ST on track when you don't take the time to plan your day ahead. What happens is you will end up spending 23 or five hours watching TV series when you did not want it to. There's nothing wrong with watching that flakes all Sunday, but if you're planning your day, you basically have control over the activities where you're spending most of your time. So I don't complain if I spend three hours in my day watching my favorite TV series. As long as I am aware of activity as long as in the previous day, I've locked my three hour period to watch the series again, walking your time. He's not stealing your freedom because you have the control of choosing which activities to perform during the day. As Brennan birth Chart said, freedom and greatness belong to those who master their day. The other way of planning your day is by setting priorities. Instead of blocking your time, you just pre decided which activities are your main focus and in the next day you focus on those activities but without tell Kaing a specific time to perform them. If your work schedule is constantly changing, perhaps this approach is better for you. As I told you, I use both of these techniques. I used the blocking time method to plan my days, and I used the priority setting to plan my week. So each week I know exactly which things are my priority. And every day I blocked my time to make sure I accomplish those things. Like I said, I enjoy combining both techniques so you might benefit from Is, too. Remember that in previous videos we talked about creating your personal system and we were going to use it to plan our days and weeks. I've been recently using notion to plan my weeks, but before using notion, I just used a plane journal, and if you prefer your totally free to do it, you can use digital or physical as long as it works for you. But let me tell you that having things inked all over my devices is actually good benefit of keeping things digital. Although I use my notion account to plan my weeks. I still use my physical journal to plan my days because there's something very satisfying of crossing each day, something that I accomplished, and I really enjoyed the physical touch off it for me. This system works really well, planning my weeks on a digital system and playing my days on a physical notebook, but again tried for yourself and see how you like it. Don't forget to posted a discussion of the class how your next day we'll look like so you can be an inspiration for all of us. As I promised, I'll be covering doing ideas that will help it to focus when you are working, the 1st 1 is the most obvious. It's all about eliminating destruction, and you might be rolling up your still. Most of us don't fold this rule. It is just a quick instagram. Check a quick message reply with email. You know a week shut out to someone in the house. Every time you switch your focus, your brain switches its context to, and the glory does it. The more energy in focus you will lives as during one message will not ruin your productivity. The problem is that it soon becomes a habit, and you will end up applying to dozens of messages or answering the phone while you're working. And this Beth have it interrupts your state of flow and basically inhabits you from working at your maximal levels of productivity and performance. This is mainly why it takes you two hours to finish something that in other times it took you one hour. Distractions are that big of a problem, and we should be able to sold them just by eliminating the destructions. Most of the times it's just our phone or computer where we access socially. It's called Report. The master of focus. Sat once your brain as being a costume to on the man's distractions. It's hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To eliminate distractions, you can just put your phone in another room or use them extensions on your browser to block certain websites like social media or news. The second idea to increase your focus as about to do with Pomodoro technique. If you're not familiar with Pomodoro, it's basically consists on setting a timer for 25 minutes, and during that period you only focus in one disc after the 25 minutes, you can take a five minute break and repeat the process. I've been using the Poland or a technique for a long time, and it works every time as long as I keep destructions away. The first reason why polled are always so powerful is because it breaks the procrastination cycle. You know, anyone can focus for 25 minutes and want to sit down and start working your rank quickly. Forget the discomfort that you thought the task would bring you in the second reason why formal doors are so powerful. It's because they avoid getting into the habit of checking social media while you work. If you just commit for 25 minutes, do not checking any of those things. Your brain will easily pick up the habit and you want to be this tractor. After all, I've extended my poem Adar technique from 25 to 40 minutes. But if you're not the costume to focusing for such a long period of time, then stick to the 25 minutes and you are good to go. Now that I've presented strategies that are a few tips that I would like to give you the 1st 1 has to do with time blocking, which is the first principle recovered on this class. I'm here to suggest that you should block your time in periods of one or two hours. Don't walk your time every 10 minutes because probably going crazy that's not sustainable. That's not a habit that you will be able to keep popping the long term. So stick to one or two hours. The second piece of advice has to do with leaving one or two hours of your day and filled. This is particularly important if you depend on all their people to produce your work in. Sometimes and expected events will come and you have to deal with them. So it's very useful to have one or two hours available to work on those things. And it also saves you from the struggle of not being able to keep up with your schedule because other things just came up. And finally, just to end a video, I urge you to try planning your day tomorrow because to make such a huge difference in the way you approach your day in your productively, in your efficiency and honestly in the way you feel about yourself, you no longer need to rush through your days or think for 15 minutes what you're going to do next, because everything is already planned. But this requires discipline and daily commitment to stick to your routine and to stick to the habit, doing your own time, blocking every day or setting your priorities. I usually plan my date the night before, and you should try to think of all the extraordinary things you will be able to accomplish if you just have more time. Or, in this case, if you just create more time. And this doesn't mean you'll have to dedicate 24 hours to working. No, you now have the time, and you have the freedom to decide which activities you're going to perform, and those can be resting or watching a movie. I see you in the next video 10. Template to Plan your Days: Like I said before, I use notion to plan my week, and I created this simple template to plan my weeks. So, as you can see on my notion account, I've got the number of the week. So in this case, week 17 of the year and then I've got task lists where I put all the things that I must get done this week and then I've got priorities and priorities are my main focus for the week, and those are the things where I will be spending most of my days and then I've got accomplishments. So once I I finish a priority, I will drink the priority to the accomplishment segment, and you can replicate this very easily. You can use this in a physical notebook or in other digital system that you are using and to plan my days. I usually stick to a physical journal like you see right now, and I just ride the periods of the day in next to it. I write which activity I'll be performing during that time, but because I don't want to miss anything, I created this template that will really help you along the way to playing both your weeks . In your days, you can access to it. In the resource is area where you will see P s from the other classes. It basically looks like this and the pattern is really similar to what I have notion into what I have in my physical journal. If it's better for you, you can print this out and haven't on your side every time you work. Thank you again for making the commitment to watch the videos. Until yet, you might have not noticed it yet, but you're taking an important step to increase your levels of performance. I hope you appreciate your own effort because you could just be watching Netflix. Instead, you chose the path that will lead you to more success in more education. You took the time to learn more about physical organization, digital organization and now about planning. If you sleep all, remember that you can always start the next day. As Ray Dalio said, remember that most people are happiest when they are improving and doing the things that suit them naturally and help them advance. You are already making an important step to advance your life, and you should be really happy because of it. Don't forget to posting to discussions of the class how your day we look like tomorrow. You can use the blocking time or the setting priorities technique sig around. Because tomorrow I will teach you. One of my favorite resource is to improve my decision making process. That helps me to organize different parts of my life. Such as my finances, my relationships, our personal development in my career. Thank you again and I see you two world. 11. Why Procedures will improve your Life: Hello and welcome to the fourth day of the organization Challenge in the first day, recovered physical organization and, more specifically, the c o. M. Strategy cleaning, organizing in music. Next, we talked about digital minimalism and how important it is to have a three structure toe. Organize your folders to keep your files in sync and then to create your own file system. And yesterday we talked about playing the week and today, using the technique of setting intentions and blocking your time. I hope you've been following along the class and also posting your progress on the discussion below. Today we'll be covering something that will make other tasks much easier for you. We will be talking about procedures, basically a procedure. It is a checklist, that guy's you through repetitive activities that you perform every day or every week or every month, and now you are going to learn how to do this safe, and we will specifically focus on organization because that's the whole theme of this class . But you can use the same method to all the areas of your life. Greg McEwen, the author of The Essential Ism, says that checklists are what allows airplanes to fly and walk off the man on the moon. Another powerful example comes from a story that battle go one day explains on his debt talk. The World Health Organization asked East Team to come up with a solution that would reduce the number off complications and deaths during surgery. Their solution was a checklist in this checklist. Reduced complications on surgery by 35% and reduced vets in 47%. Basically, checklists or procedures allow them to break some complex desk into small but easy tests. To accomplish that will lead you to get to your ankle. You're probably not going to save lives with your procedures, but you're probably going to make your life better by depositing all information into a checklist. You basically help your brain, too. Few relieved because he does not have to remember every single detail. And we know that most of the times we forget some of those. If you remember in the first day of the challenge, I gave you a checklist that would help you to keep all of your physical organization in place. That was an introduction to what we are going to talk about now. procedures, since I've people tell me the struggle to wake up early. But when they actually managed to wake up early, they end up wasting a lot of time making small decisions like what to eat, what to do when you do your morning routine or what? Actually too, including your morning routine. What exercises to perform if you're waking up early to get into these cycle of frustration ? I totally understand why you feel like not waking up early. I remember being the worst person. After waking up. I would just sit down in my bed looking around and thinking for 20 minutes, watch to dress up with. And then I would spend the same amount of time deciding what to eat or what to do next. The thing Waas i waas and I am a morning person, so I had to understand how I could optimize my mornings because those were the times when I felt the most protective. I decided to craft a checklist or a procedure for my morning routine, and I stick to it every day. My morning routine starts the night before, and it starts with choosing which clothes I will wear the next day what I will eat. And also I plan my day. So the next day I'll just go ahead and do whatever I planned. This was life changing, because suddenly I was not the worst person in the morning, and I still was able to perform what I have decided the night before without being really annoyed and frustrated all the time. Then I expended this procedure method from my warning routines to all different areas of my life, and I've been harvesting the benefits ever since. This is exactly what I want for YouTube. So in the next video, I'll teach you how you can create your own procedures for a different areas of your life so you can enjoy yourself more. See you in the next video. 12. How to Create Procedures for various Areas: in this class. I'm going to show you the steps that you need to Jake. In order to create your own procedure system, you can implement procedures in every area of your life. But for now, just stick to one area and later you can create more because this sick last about organization, it makes sense that we focus on the first step is all about brainstorming. You just need to grab a sheet of paper, award document and dump to the documents. Everything that you remember that makes parts of your digital decluttering region as we saw before. This includes organizing your folders through the tree structure, giving them logical wings and then backing them up, basically go through the whole process and just write a few things down. The second step is about sequencing the steps that you brainstormed before to speak the sequence of all the steps and decide right now which will be the 1st 2nd 3rd they saw. The third step is all about time. So you just need to estimate how much time each activity will take. And then you should also the site when you will be going through the procedure. If we're talking about a morning routine. Then you would go through that procedure every morning at 7 a.m. But because we're talking about organization and we're basically doing it on a weekly basis, we can check it every week. The fourth step has to do with performing the procedure you just created. So you just start the procedure from start to finish and you'll see if you're forgetting something or if you actually need to take something out. Now, I will go straight to my personal organization system, and I will show you how it created procedure from start to finish. So first I will create and you template, because templates make everything easier to cost a mice and replicate. And assuming I've already done the brainstorming phase I've got here, the steps to keep a digital environment in shape and those are the ones recovered in the previous videos. Creating procedures is very useful because it helps you to understand the dependencies you have in your own life, like things you must perform every day or every week to keep your life in shape. This includes morning routine shopping, organizing, cleaning meal prep objects that you take every time you travel the procedure to learn and use kill, which is something that you can learn on offer classes and much more. If you think about it, your whole life is assistant. If you are here, I mean, not physically. But if you're here watching this video, you have to follow a set of steps to get you there. Maybe they were not conscious steps. You just clicked here and there. You were not very conscious of the process, but still, you are making decisions along the way. If you want to accomplish your goal, what will take you? There is a set of decisions to decision to wake up early and work on your main priority. The decision to plan your day the previous day and many other things. So the more control you have over your processes, the faster you reach what you want. Now that you know how to create your own procedures, that are a few things that I wanted to cover. The first consideration you should have in mind is that procedures don't last forever. You should always be questioning and challenging your own routines so you can make improvements. Things are not static and they should not be static because we're constantly moving and we're constantly improving. So if you notice something that potentially could be brute, go ahead, change it out and try it again, because we are here to make things better. This leads me to something that I recently found about the rise of Facebook Peter Feel and can Army both venture capital. It's decided to invest on Facebook early on because they understood something that most people did not. What they did was questioning the facts and actually digging deeper to understand why those facts were true. Prester, a social network at the time We're having a lot of users leaving the platform, and so that my mean that people were not interested in social media. But that was far from the truth. And the two investors were astonished by the amount of time people spent on that social network, even though the site was constantly crashing. So he wrote a $500,000 check to Mark Zuckerberg that was sold for almost $1 billion.8 years later. I tell you this to encourage you to question your own processes and assumptions, you might be missing an important point that will lead you to a more promising future into better processes. Better routines in accomplishment, off a gold much faster. But and this leads me to the second point. Don't make it to become an obsession. What I mean is, don't spend hours of your day trying to perfect your routines Is that starts now and along the way you will be able to make things better. Now, open up your organization system and create a routine that will implement every time going toe organize something it can interview your digital space or physical one. In the next video, I will show you how I crafted my morning routine procedure. 13. Checklist for your Procedures: welcome again, and in today's class, I'll show you the procedure of my own morning routine. And how can do the same very easily for your old? I just follow the approach that I talked to you before, too created. I brainstormed all the activities that I want to be performing on my own morning routine. Then I ordered them according to my desire, and I finally said, the timing for each activity. I have got a common section around this area, just in case I want to reference something regarding the activity or how it is working for me as I won't look down because grown of artists, I've been having more flexibility to change my routines. So I've been trying to wake up an hour later and to do my workout routine right before lunch. Previously, my routine was not like this, but this shows you the importance of questioning your assumptions in trying to make things better for you, at least for the moment. Anyway, if you're interested in learning how you can design your own morning routine, make sure you check my class on the topic. As for today's tool, I'll be giving you a very convenient one. It's a checklist for coming up with your old checklists. He's quite easy to go through, but it's really helpful, so we will not forget any step of the process. Thank you so much for watching this class, and I see you tomorrow. 14. Why you should Declutter?: hi and welcome to the last day of the five day organization Challenge. In the previous days, we covered physical organization, digital minimalism, planning and yesterday recovered how to create procedures to make sure you won't sleep off with any of your routines. In this last day of the challenge, we're covering something that might scare some of you, but it's necessary to make sure your life it's exactly your needs in your purpose. We're talking about to declare it because now that everything is in place, you might look around and find things that no longer at any value to your life, this could either be digital files or physical things. You know, close that no longer fit books that you never enjoyed or never read before random photos or print screens. Everything is included in this category. The reason why I referred to declutter after organizing everything is because now that I have the system set up, I can immediately see which things are not adding value to the proposition. If I look in my computer, I can see a bunch of folders, and if I opened them up, it's much more easy right now to immediately understand which things I can delete and honestly the warrant discipline yourself to let go of things that are not adding value to your life. The last time you have to spend organizing in doing all the things that we covered in the previous videos, when you make the effort to detach yourself from unnecessary items like files, clothes, books, sometimes people, you get the power of having a few but having meaningful things around your life. You give more value to the things you own when you learn to detach yourself from all the things that you no longer need in your life. And I know a lot of you struggle with this, especially if we're talking about I does that spike some kind of emotion from you? I mean, maybe a T shirt that you bought in the first trip you did with your friends. You know those items they do sparks something inside us, but if we keep adding them up, they will quickly recover pilot and used items that are only adding to our spaces in terms of physical space. They're not adding any value. I also struggled with this for a long time. I kept everything I just, you know, I bought everything it was given to me. My room was a pile of mess, whatever. Until I came across the work of Mary Condo. She now as the next likes movie, and a lot of people know her. But I came across her work through the book that she wrote that he's called the magic of tying up, and I remember reading it in. One sits and I spent the whole night decluttering my room and everything around me. And yes, some items are much more difficult to detach from. Like I said, if they make any emotion spark. But if we keep adding them, you know it soon becomes a burden. It soon becomes boxes and boxes feel filled with things that you don't need. But the clattering is one step of the process. It's about getting rid of things. But most importantly, is the mindset behind it. So I mean, I get I've got a few T shirts that remember you very good moments that spend in the past, but I'm not going to wear them right now, so why am I see keeping them in my wardrobe? And this is a line set because you learn to detach from things, not just because you want to free some physical space, but because you also want to free your mind from having too much clutter around. Basically, the life set behind it is improving your consciousness about the utility of some objects. Steel. There is one category of items that I still struggle with. It's not because they have intrinsic value for me, but because I'm not disciplining myself to keep up with those items. And I'm talking about paper. I mean, received magazines, notebooks, warrants, you name it. Those pieces of paper are something that I have not completely figured out until today. So in today's challenge, we're going to focus on declaring when the specific emphasis on pieces of paper, because I still need some accountability to, is very kind of set the question of what you want to own. He's actually the question of how you want to live your life in the next class. I will give you a few steps that will help you to guide the process of declaring on any category you wants. Decluttering is not only about freeing physical space, but also freeze pace from our own minds, and I think that's the real value of declaring our space. See you in the next year. 15. How to Declutter (step-by-step): These are my do drawers that look like a mess. They are my wall of shame. I still have not figured out the system to keep up with all of these things that are always piling up. So we or should I say I will learn to keep things organized. And I'm teaching you one approach that I used to declare all the other categories of items in my life. And I'm pretty sure you can replicate the strategy on anything you want to get rid off. The first step is about bringing everything together. What I mean is basically emptying all the places where you have the things you want to get rid off and place all of them into a service. The second step is all about sorting the items that you just brought together. Basically, you'll separate them into two parts things to let go off and things to keep. The third step is all about deciding right now where those items were going to be placed. From now on, if we're talking about books through probably going to place, I mean bookshelf you from talking about clothes in your wardrobe and you for talking about random pieces of paper. It's important to pick a place to keep all of those into one single space. The fourth step has to do with scanning your space. This means should I really get rate of this warrant, or should I scan it and save it on my computer? Or should I really keep this T shirt if I never wear it in my whole life? Basically, it's a personal process, but you should think really clearly if the things we're keeping our adding value to your life. The fifth step is about committing to not bringing home and necessary items that will not provide you value in the long term, or to commit to throw and used items or random things every week. I highly recommend you create a procedure where you decide previously that you will go through some of these categories often like once a month or once every three months, to make sure you're only keeping the things that give you value. Like I said, I still struggle with keeping some random pieces of paper away because I'm not being committed nor discipline to go through all of these boxes of random things and sort the amounts, throwing some away in keeping others but still having the discipline to every Sunday. See if around my room I've got any pieces of paper that I should get rid off. Decluttering or minimalism are buzz words right now, but I want to simplify things a little bit for you. I believe that our three different ways of approaching minimalist the 1st 1 is about throwing everything away just so. One week later, you figured out you need to go shopping again to buy more shiny objects. The 2nd 1 is about throwing everything away and making your life more complex, more difficult and more and practical, like giving away all your winter coats just to figure out that winter still happens every year in the third way, and it is my favorite. One is about being mindful of the things we keep into things we let go. I'm not going to throw away all my winter coats because when they're still happens every year, and I'm not only going to keep one winter coat because I like to diversify a little bit in my clothes, this is a personal process, and it's about you figuring out which things you want to keep that are adding value to your life and which things you want to let go as very Cold said people cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking. Here's another example in Mary conference book, she basically tells people to give away most of their books. No, I'm not okay with giving away my books. Books are those objects that add a lot of value to my life, and I want to have my own personal library and I'm not going to give away my books. The only thing I did was select a few books that I did not enjoy or I did not read, and I would probably never going to read them. And yes, I gave those away. But those books that I really enjoyed, books that I'm constantly going through I don't want to give them the way that being said, there are a lot of people who are totally fine with keeping five or 10 books at home to look. You can see this is a personal process that you should try to figure it out by yourself, and it's actually a great way to learn more about you. But what I actually did regarding books is instead of buying a pile of you books, what I do is before buying your book, I tried to get familiar with the contents by reading your review by visiting the authors Blogger were podcasts, and only then I decide if I want to buy the book. Or first, I can read the book digitally or less into your in your book. And then I decide if I want to bring the book to my shelves. So hopefully I've convinced you to go through this process by yourself, start with the category and then move along to the other ones if you feel like doing it. But honestly, try this for yourself and see the benefits that can bring you to your life. Making small progress is much better than making no progress at all. And because of it, I've been giving you throughout these five days small challenges that you can start with very quickly in 15 minutes. And remember that if you keep your systems in order, your life will follow the same path. But you must build consistency and resilience. It's the only way to get our lives to get. So please share in the discussion below the progress you are making. Which things are you declaring? Which contiguity are you starting to go first? See you in the next video where I will go through a case study with you and you'll also have access to a tool that will help you a lot. 16. Check-list for Decluttering: hi and welcome to the last video of these Challenge. As I told you before, Will will go through a case today, which is my personal case study of getting rid of all of those annoying pieces of paper around my drawers. Remember, the step one is about bringing every piece of paper to a surface. So I just collected everything that I found on those two drawers in other places, and I brought them here. The next step is all about sorting, and this is exactly what I did. Here are the two vials, As you can see, most are things that will go away. The third step is about figuring out a place where to keep those items that I will say. I found this box and it is quite small. But thank God it is because the more the bigger it is the warrant trash. I will accumulate here because I've got a few receipts and warrants that I want to keep ah , liquid quick skin and save them in my digital file system. And then I will upload those documents to my cloud system to finally and to make sure I won't let things slip off again, I will read a procedure and this is how it looks like as you can see such a big difference . And this took me 20 minutes. So it's something very easily, very fast that you can apply in your home life right now. And it will help you to figure out ah lot of areas that are really messy and you have the ability to put them into their proper place. As for today's tool, I will give you access to all the details steps to replicate this declaring process with your own things. Just make sure you download the pdf and go through every item and you're good to go. Well, this is the end of the class, and I'm so happy that you went through all of this with me and you have the patience to watch all the videos. And most importantly, I really hope he took something out of these class. If you have not started any of the challenges, please make sure to do it today because it's so important to build momentum, and when you start, you will be able to complete the other challenges match faster. The class project is exactly that one sharing your progress. You can either share the progress in all the challenges or just one. Make sure and take a picture and sharing how you are doing it. Having your life organized will give you more productivity, more clarity and more freedom. And by having this three things in place, you will be able to produce work that really represents something for you. If you aren't already reaping the benefits of having your life organized, make sure you share this class with a friend of yours or a family member, so they can also experience the benefits of this class. Learning becomes more powerful when we share it with other people. You are now ready to take your life to the next level. Please make sure you leave me review so I can know exactly which things you liked or didn't like. I have been acting on the feedback you gave me by giving more practical examples and also by offering tools and pdf's to help you alone. The journey. I really hope you find them useful. Thank you again for watching Andy for interested. Check all the classes of mind and you might find something useful for you use the discussion of the class if you have any questions, or simply visit my log to find my email, and you can contact me direct. Thank you again and I see you in all the classes. 17. Get inside the Facebook Group: Hi. Just a quick video to tell that I recently created a Facebook group that you can now join to be part of a community of people who are interested in personal development in constant growth. See you there.