OP INION BU SIN ESS

6 Things the Most Organized People

Do Every Day

Your attention is limited and valuable.

You need less information. You need
good filters
Your life is busy. Work/life balance is a
challenge. You feel like youre spreading
yourself so thin that youre starting to
disappear.
Most of us feel that way. But not all of us.
The most organized people dont.
As NYT bestselling author and
neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin
explains, the VIPs hes met dont
seem scattered and frantic.
Theyre calm, cool and in the moment, not juggling nine things and worried about
being done by 7PM.
Its not hard to figure out why: they have help aides and assistants to take care of these
things so the VIP can be in the moment.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

In the course of my work as a scientific researcher, Ive had the chance to meet
governors, cabinet members, music celebrities, and the heads of Fortune 500
companies. Their skills and accomplishments vary, but as a group, one thing is
remarkably constant. Ive repeatedly been struck by how liberating it is for
them not to have to worry about whether there is someplace else they need to
be, or someone else they need to be talking to. They take their time, make eye

contact, relax, and are really there with whomever theyre talking to. They
dont have to worry if there is someone more important they should be talking
to at that moment because their staff their external attentional filters have
already determined for them that this is the best way they should be using
their time.
Must be nice since you and I have to multitask and cut things short to try and get
everything done, stressing the whole time.
But heres the thing: You can be like that too. And it doesnt require a staff of
10.
So who is your assistant? You are. Then whos the VIP? You are. (Yes, I am
actively encouraging you to develop a split personality.)
With enough planning ahead of time, you can make sure youre as calm and
organized as the President of the United States.
(For more on what the most productive people do, click here.)
We just need to get a few systems in place ahead of time. Whats the first step?

The President of the United States is not desperately trying to remember his
to-do list.
He has outsourced to his staff all the things that come next so he can focus 100% on
whats in front of him.
No, you dont have a group of aides but theres still a key principle you can use: Get it
out of your head.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

Shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world Writing
them down gets them out of your head, clearing your brain of the clutter that is
interfering with being able to focus on what you want to focus on.
Everything youre worried about, every to-do, every concern gets written
down in one place.

One. Not scattered across a notepad at home, your iPad in the office, your email inbox,
sticky notes on your monitor, and your unreliable memory.
That scattering makes you wonder if youve forgotten something and research shows it
produces anxiety.
So get it out of your head and on one list. Afterwards, Getting Things Done author David
Allen says break it up into 4 categories:
1. Do it
2. Delegate it
3. Defer it
4. Drop it
Once you have those 4 lists you know what you actually need to do and its all in one
place. Just having that list is a big step toward VIP cool.
Why does this work? Theres some neuroscience behind it. Writing things down
deactivates rehearsal loops.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

When we have something on our minds that is important especially a To Do

item were afraid well forget it, so our brain rehearses it, tossing it around
and around in circles in something that cognitive psychologists actually refer
to as the rehearsal loop, a network of brain regions that ties together the
frontal cortex just behind your eyeballs and the hippocampus in the center of
your brain The problem is that it works too well, keeping items in rehearsal
until we attend to them. Writing them down gives both implicit and explicit
permission to the rehearsal loop to let them go, to relax its neural circuits so
that we can focus on something else.
Research shows that when you leave things unfinished and worry, it actually makes you
stupid. Solution? Write it all down.
(For more on how the great geniuses of history leverage notebooks, click here.)
So you got all the to-dos out of your brain and onto a list. You know what can be
delegated, deferred and dropped and what you actually need to do.
Now how do you get through the day like a calm VIP?

The President of the United States doesnt check his watch. Hes scheduled down to the
minute and aides tell him when its time to go.
You may not have assistants but any smartphone has alarms and reminders.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

Time management also requires structuring your future with reminders. That
is, one of the secrets to managing time in the present is to anticipate future
needs so that youre not left scrambling and playing catch-up all the time.
Ironically, your phone probably interrupts you with unimportant texts, emails, and
status updates but not about the key priorities for your day.
Few of us have our calendar so organized ahead of time that we can let it dictate all our
actions moment to moment.
Whats the key? Alarms dont work with to-do lists.
As Cal Newport recommends, assign every to-do a block of time on your
calendar. Then you can gauge how much you can actually get done:

Scheduling forces you to confront the reality of how much time you actually
have and how long things will take. Now that you look at the whole picture
youre able to get something productive out of every free hour you have in your
workday. You not only squeeze more work in but youre able to put work into
places where you can do it best.
Youre less likely to procrastinate when an activity has an assigned block of time, because
the decision was already made.
And once it has a time block, you can be the VIP. Alarms allow your mind to be
calm knowing youll be reminded about the next thing.
(For more on the schedule successful people follow every day, click here.)
I know what some of you are thinking: But I get interrupted. I get distracted.
But theres a way to deal with interruptions even if you dont have a Secret Service
detail to keep people out of your office.

Every morning the President gets a top secret document with everything he needs to
know from the agencies beneath him.
Whats key isnt what the document contains, its what it doesnt contain: 50 status
updates, 100 tweets, 10 cat pictures and 1000 unimportant emails.
He can focus on what matters because he isnt distracted by what doesnt.
Meanwhile, you probably feel overwhelmed by information.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

Today, our attentional filters easily become overwhelmed. Successful people

or people who can afford it employ layers of people whose job it is to narrow
the attentional filter. That is, corporate heads, political leaders, spoiled movie
stars, and others whose time and attention are especially valuable have a staff
of people around them who are effectively extensions of their own brains,
replicating and refining the functions of the prefrontal cortexs attentional
filter.
I have information overload!, you scream. But as technology visionary Clay Shirky says,
Its not information overload; its filter failure.
Your attention is limited and valuable. You need less information. You need good filters.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

Our brains do have the ability to process the information we take in, but at a
cost: We can have trouble separating the trivial from the important, and all
this information processing makes us tired. Neurons are living cells with a
metabolism; they need oxygen and glucose to survive and when theyve been
working hard, we experience fatigue
A good low-tech solution is to hide for part of the day. Im as serious as a heart
attack. Go where people cannot reach you and get solid work done.
Thats not an option for everyone. I get it. No problem. But people who feel technology
has left them overloaded with information are using it wrong.
Use technology like a DVR to time-shift your communications. People should
reach you when you want them to, not when they want to.
Handle all communications in specified batches: a set time when you
check email, voicemail, etc.

Some people say, I cant do that. But you probably can do it more than you think,
especially early and late in the day.
Maybe your boss wants you ridiculously responsive. Fine. Set up an email filter so
only the bosss emails get through immediately.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

you can set up e-mail filters in most e-mail programs and phones,
designating certain people whose mail you want to get through to you right
away, while other mail just accumulates in your inbox until you have time to
deal with it. And for people who really cant be away from e-mail, another
effective trick is to set up a special, private e-mail account and give that
address only to those few people who need to be able to reach you right away,
and check your other accounts only at designated times.
(For more on how to achieve work/life balance, click here.)
So youve got reminders and filters and youre not running around worried anymore.
But when you sit down to work you realize there is still just too much to do. How can you
keep calm when there are so many decisions to make?

The President doesnt make little decisions. The thousands of people working under him
handle those so only the big stuff bubbles up to his agenda.
But given you dont have thousands of people working under you (or maybe any for that
matter) you handle every decision, business and personal.
As Ive said before, You can do anything once you stop trying to do everything. Be a
perfectionist about it all and youll have a nervous breakdown.
Save your limited decision-making power for the things that matter.
Everything else should be satisficed.
What is satisficing? Its the art of quickly picking the option that is good enough. And
research shows its the path to productivity and happiness.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not

people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they
already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they
dont know it. Warren Buffett can be seen as embracing satisficing to an
extreme one of the richest men in the world, he lives in Omaha, a block from
the highway, in the same modest home he has lived in for fifty years But
Buffett does not satisfice with his investment strategies; satisficing is a tool for
not wasting time on things that are not your highest priority. For your
high-priority endeavors, the old-fashioned pursuit of excellence remains the
right strategy.
Will this decision result in you losing your job? No? Then opt for the good
enough solution and focus on what matters most.
(For more on what the most successful people all have in common, click here.)
Your bosss priorities change midday. More stuff keeps getting added to your list. How
can this not throw a monkeywrench into your well-laid plan?

When changes come up for the Commander-in-Chief he shifts seamlessly because his
aides have already revised the days plans. So he stays calm.
You can stay cool too, but it requires a little bit more effort. New things will come in,
priorities will change and you need to process and adapt.
Always have your notebook ready to capture new ideas and to-dos.
And throughout the day you need moments of triage and active sorting
where you restructure the list from your big brain dump.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

Your brain needs to engage on some consistent basis with all of your
commitments and activities, Allen says. You must be assured that you are
doing what you need to be doing, and that its OK to be not doing what youre
not doing. If its on your mind, then your mind isnt clear. Anything you
consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside
your mind That trusted system is to write it down.
Once you update your list, apply the Eisenhower Matrix.
When you know which category everything fits into, you can attack the list in

(For more on how Navy SEALs, Astronauts and Samurai make good decisions, click
here.)
Okay, you are master of your schedule, your mind is empty and youre ready to focus
Now what?

Ever seen a picture of the Presidents desk? Does it have piles of papers and 1000
random post-its? No.
Research shows a desk that looks like the aftermath of a natural disaster
saps your ability to concentrate.
You dont need to be a neat-freak but when its time for you to stop planning and be the
VIP, have a separate work area designed for focus.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

One way to exploit the hippocampuss natural style of memory storage is to

create different work spaces for the different kinds of work we do. But we use
the same computer screen for balancing our checkbook, responding to e-mails
from our boss, making online purchases, watching videos of cats playing the
piano, storing photos of our loved ones, listening to our favorite music, paying
bills, and reading the daily news. Its no wonder we cant remember
everything the brain simply wasnt designed to have so much information in
one place The neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks goes one further: If youre
working on two completely separate projects, dedicate one desk or table or
section of the house for each. Just stepping into a different space hits the reset
button on your brain and allows for more productive and creative thinking.
According to productivity guru Tim Ferriss, focus is just the product of removing
distractions.
So you want your VIP work area to have what the VIP needs. And nothing
else.
Via The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:

A germane finding in cognitive psychology for gaining that control is to make

visible the things you need regularly, and hide things that you dont.
I can hear the whining already: But I dont have two offices! I barely have one!

This isnt about real estate, its about mental space. Your desk can be where you
plan, but the VIP works on the couch.
Or your desktop computer is for preparation, but the VIP works on your iPad (which
deliberately lacks apps for Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
When its time for VIP work you want everything you need to get the job done and
nothing else.
Your immediate environment should make what you need to do easy and
what you dont need to do hard.
(For more tricks successful people use to make themselves great, click here.)
So how do we pull all this together?

The steps to being as organized and calm as the Commander-in-Chief:

1. Get your to-dos out of your head and onto one document.
2. Lock in your calendar and set alarms so you dont need to think about
whats next.
3. Use batching and filters so you only get the info you need when you
need it.
4. Opt for good enough on the little decisions so you can focus on the
big ones.
5. Regularly capture, triage and prioritize new items.
6. Have a War Room that contains what you need and nothing else.
You used to need a secretary vigilantly monitoring the phone all day then came
answering machines and voicemail.
Technology has come a long way since then and with some planning you can use it to
keep your cool and accomplish great things.
Its hard at first. And, yes, youll stumble. Youll need to tweak and customize. But with
time youll evolve a personal system that works.
And youll learn the lesson that every VIP knows:
The trickiest thing to learn to manage is yourself. But once you can handle
that, you can handle anything.
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This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.