Wouldn't our lives be so much better if we all had secretaries to plan them out for us?
Now while some of us get to experience that in our professional lives, we don't have that in our personal lives. It's up to us to be in charge of organising, managing and maintaining all the aspects of our lives.
While this can be an overwhelming fact to digest, what makes it easier is bringing some work tactics into play in our personal lives as well.
Here are 7 ways to be your own secretary and live a productive, organised life.
Keep track of all the aspects of your life
We have a lot going on in our lives at the same time and it can be hard to just be on top of every aspect of our lives. At any given time we usually have to manage our personal life, social life, work/ study, hobbies, finances, chores, etc. Put all this together and getting overwhelmed can be really easy.
In order to stop your life from getting chaotic, we can come up with a system or a routine that we perform after regular intervals of time, say every Sunday. During this routine, we can go through every single aspect of our lives, check how we are doing on that front, come up with ways to improve if necessary and repeat this routine on a weekly basis.
This can help us sort out all the different things we have going on and get an overview of our own lives.
Have 'meetings' with yourself whenever required!
Rarely do we sit down with ourselves to go through the ideas we have or to break down certain thoughts we have been having. Whenever you feel like you're at the brim level in terms of things you want to sort through or ideas you want to consider for your projects/ other aspects of your life, have a meeting with yourself.
This is the same thing we would do in an office. Whenever there's a brainstorming session required, there's a call for a meeting. We can do the same with our lives.
Start setting up appointments for yourself
Transitioning into adulthood is learning to deal with our own appointments and taking charge of our schedules.
We already do that for all our work meetings/ calls/ lectures etc so why not extend it to other aspects of our lives as well?
Say you're talking to a friend about catching up or networking and you happen to decide on a date for a meeting/ call, go ahead and set that appointment for yourself. Taking initiative to fix up appointments with the people we want to meet let's us be in charge of our schedule and make other plans accordingly.
Create reminders for important tasks or events in advance
There are so many miscellaneous tasks we deal with on a day-to-day basis, it's hard to keep track of all of them at a time. We can make use of our technology to automate things and make these tasks easier to remember. Create reminders for tasks that you know are going to come up. Set these reminders up in advance so you don't have to rely solely on your memory to keep a track of everything.
For eg, my phone bill is due at very odd intervals of time which is quite a hassle if I try to remember it for every single time. What I do instead is that whenever I pay the bill, I set up a reminder for the next due date immediately after, so that I don't have to be bothered about it anytime in between.
Start maintaining a calendar or a planner of some sort
Calendars and planners are not just for straight A students, busy professionals or stationery enthusiasts; after a certain point, I think everyone ought to start using one.
Things can get very sorted and easy to navigate if you have some sort of time-management system that's reliable and easy-to-use.
My personal favourite combination is to use to my bullet journal to plan and organise my life and to use Google Calendar to keep an eye on how I'm spending my time.
There are so many systems, planners, calendars, apps to choose from nowadays that you're bound to find something that can work for you. Do your research and get started with planning your life. It can be a game changer.
Keep all of your necessary information handy
We deal with so many email accounts, passwords, login id details, financial documents, numbers and identification documents in our life. And the number only increases as we progress through life. Sorting all of this information out and keeping it handy can be a real life-saver.
Some tips to do that are:
Keep a separate folder/ binder to hold all of your important papers and documents. You can have separate sections for finance/ IDs/ investments/ tax information and whatever other aspects that are applicable to you
Use Google suggested passwords, security extensions on Chrome or save your passwords for miscellaneous internet usage. Make sure you don't use these services for any kind of sensitive information.
Keep your frequently required data in a notes app/ document that can sync between your devices. I use Google Keep to store any links, details, notes I want to be able to access easily and on-the-go.
Keep all the contents of your life organised
Whether it's things in your digital space or your physical space, having an organisation system for everything will save you a lot of time in dire, problematic situations. Come up with your own organisation systems that make sense to you.
Here are some guidelines to keep in mind while creating a system:
The system should make things easily findable
It should give your activity/ process a flow
It should be a sustainable system - one that can last long
It should be an easy system that makes perfectly clear sense to you
I made a video on this topic, check it out here:
I hope you found my 'Be your own secretary' way of dealing with life appealing and useful.