Read Time: 3 minutes

Have you ever spent days or weeks feeling like you don’t have enough time? I have and it’s just not fun. I found myself stressed at bedtime and then equally stressed waking up the next day. I was trying to juggle it all and it was obviously time to make a decision, a life altering choice about how I was managing my life but first I needed to go to sleep.

There are people who suffer insomnia when stressed and others who sleep, I happen to be the latter.  This may seem like avoidance, but when I realized that it was my way of regenerating, I embraced it. Amazing things happen for me after a restorative slumber, and that is what gave way to my ‘Think-Sleep-Decide-Conquer’ methodology for tackling …life.

At that time, my life was very busy, personally and professionally, and I had all the tools to reduce my stress, tension and anxiety; however, I had to decide to use the tools as though my life depended on it because it did.

The Tools:

1. A Calendar – for all my appointments, including drive times and even how long it took to complete groceries. In those days, I even scheduled ‘putting out the garbage.’
2. A Task List with Next Steps – per project and for everything from research to writing my Organized Lifestyle Magazine to booking my next dentist appointment
3. My goals – a place where they were clearly written down and a system to quickly review them each week
4. Sleep – to this day, sleep is one of my survival tools. I think about whatever is overwhelming me, and then I go to bed. After the regeneration that sleep provides me, I can plan, organize, schedule, act and conquer

Using these tools every day changed my life. Over time, my inner anxiety gave way to calm; I now celebrate when I’ve completed a task or a project, I take vacations (with no work and no anxiety about what needs to be done when I return), I don’t turn off my computer to escape I turn it off because I’m done with work that day.

Trust the Process

The idea, as simple as it appears, can be challenging in the beginning because we can’t restore our body, mind, and spirit with one night’s sleep and one productive day after having spent days and months in an anxious state of mind. It took time for my brain to trust that I was capturing everything that needed to be done and that I was rescheduling what was incomplete.

To get started:

• Think about your life – break it down into 4 quadrants: your home and your office, your time- and your spirit – the essence of you!
  • We’ve written many articles and blog posts based on organizing these 4 quadrants since 2006.
  • Settle in for a good night’s sleep and keep thinking about your home, your office, how you manage your time and your spirit
  • The next morning, decide what you want or need to be different
  • Now, decide where you will start (this may take some serious thinking and another good night’s sleep )
  • Decide how you’ll use the Tools (listed above)
  • Commit the time
  • Create a practical system that works for your lifestyle

Sometimes starting can be overwhelming, so ask yourself if you need someone to help you set up the tools in your life.

Organize. Optimize. Profit.
Read more about Optimizing Workflow and Organizing Personal Spaces
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