Tips on how to organise your busy life
We’ve all been there. We wake with the feeling that there aren’t enough hours in the day, then sleep-walk to the shower to find there’s no shampoo.
In the race to wake the slumbering kids, we trip over the dog, whose weary gaze reflects our frazzled state of mind.
Battling competing mental reminders, not to mention the guilt of forgetting to create divinely decorated cupcakes for the school bake-sale, we take deep breaths and peruse the contents of our wardrobes, while willing the perfect dress to identify itself for an imminent business meeting for which we rightly suspect we’re entirely ill-prepared.
When no such garment emerges from a hasty then painstaking search, we berate ourselves for not having chosen the night before, then curse procrastination, ourselves, and our seeming inability to better organise our lives.
Daniel Levitin, a Magill University professor of psychology and behavioural neuroscience, understands, better than most, the reasons behind the universal affliction that is disorganisation.
In his new book, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, he explores the ways in which our brains order information and the methods by which we can better run our lives.
Given the ocean of information we absorb each day, focussing on the task at hand can be challenging. Levitin favours off-loading the task of remembering to non-computerised systems; his thinking being that the brain better remembers things hand-written on lists, cards or notebooks, than it does data added to the information-saturated computer systems we use for countless other tasks.
In this, his thinking is not a million miles from the mind-clearing methods endorsed by productivity consultant, David Allen, in his international best- seller Getting Things Done.
In that, Allen lauds the benefits of decluttering our scrambled, overwrought minds by taking time every day to offload to an external place, the mental list of tasks to be done.
Doubtless, anyone whose head is bursting with competing duties, responsibilities, hopes and dreams, would do well to follow this mind-clearing method, if only because research tells us that the brain can only properly consider about four different things at any one time.
Throughout his book, Levitin stresses the fact that our minds have not evolved to best operate in environments of information overload.
He’s right, of course. While our ancestors’ attraction for the novel may have alerted them to threats and provided them with opportunities, ours keeps us surfing the net and makes it difficult for us to part company from our smartphones.
Acknowledging that our hunger for what’s new diminishes our productivity he writes: ‘Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, competes for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how to reconcile with the close friend with whom you just had an argument.’
In our efforts to become less frazzled and more efficient and productive some of us write to-do lists or programme endless reminder alerts into our phones.
Others turn off email and Facebook notifications and suppress the urge to surf the net when their attention should be directed elsewhere. For most, the preferred method is multi-tasking. But this, according to Levitin, is no good thing.
When he explains why multitasking is less about completing numerous tasks at once than it is about fragmenting cognitive capacity and reducing efficiency, it’s easier to get on board with his point of view, than it is when he rhapsodises about the cognitive benefits maintaining a filing system of 3X5 index cards, and overcoming any aversion we might have to establishing and using a household junk-drawer.
But Levitin holds our attention when he cautions that each time we complete a task, the brain rewards us with a shot of the feel-good chemical dopamine.
This, he says, is addictive. If he’s right (and doubtless he is, given his academic credentials) then while multi-tasking, we’re not just dancing as fast as we can, we’re dancing out of control. Either way, he insists that multi-tasking is not something the brain handles well.
You’d wonder whether in reaching his conclusion, Levitin ever watched a head-set wearing, gum-chewing, nail-polish applying, TV watching, tablet-tapping teenager doing homework while simultaneously chatting on her phone.
But that’s his point: while we can do these things at once, something — doubtless the homework — is bound to suffer.
Assets model and former Miss Universe Ireland
I’m a multi-tasker, the type who does 14 things at once. I’m also highly organised. I like my bed made a certain way. I colour co-ordinate my clothes. You’d never find jeans hanging among skirts in my wardrobe.
I have routines for everything, from the way I remove my makeup when I get home, to precisely what it is I do next. No matter how busy I am, life is never a struggle, as I always keep on top of things.
I rise at 5.30am to get organised for the day. My work bag is meticulously organised by item and colour. Before I go on holidays, I decide in advance the clothes I’ll wear each day.
Then I try each outfit on, take selfies on my phone and pack accordingly. That way I bring everything for each look, right down to the smallest accessory.
Entrepreneur, media trainer, Dragon
I rise at 5am. Usually, I work a 14-hour day. In the evening I take pen and paper and make a to-do list, comprised of three bubbles: Must, Should and Could. I never need to look at the list the following day. That’s because the doodle, the visual thing, the creative process of writing a list like that aids memory. Next morning, I wake with a sense of purpose, knowing precisely what I’m doing in the hours ahead.
Sometimes it feels as though I was born with a clock in my head. I’m fixated with punctuality and I’m big into maths and numbers. I prefer to remember things for myself rather than entrust that task to technology.
Over the years I’ve got more done by avoiding what isn’t productive and by concentrating on what I’m good at, rather than by becoming more organised.150
Co-host on TV3’s Late Lunch Live
I’m the mum who makes it to the school gates with just one eye made-up. But by the time I’m on telly at 3.30pm, I look glam. I sometimes feel a bit like Bridget Jones, putting on a good act for the cameras. But deep down, I’m highly organised and much of my life works like clockwork.
Being on telly and having the same routine every day helps me to be organised. I hit the M50 every day at the same time. It’s a bit groundhoggish that way.
I write a to do list at night, because if I don’t write things down I won’t remember them. This gets written when I’m on the couch in my pjs, watching a soap. I don’t set reminders on my phone, mainly because I don’t like beepy noises. They scare the hell out of me.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
