Almost everybody feels the need to get better organized. But what does “better organization” really mean? Is it about having a good filing system and multiple to-do lists or is it about more than that? Let’s take a look.

1. Organizing for the long-term

Each day embroils you in daily tasks and short-term tasks. If you only focus on pressing daily and short-term tasks, your long-term tasks will never get accomplished. You must organize your day around the immediate, the short-term and the long-term.

2. Protecting your space

If you let people bother you, invade your space, and intrude on your work and on your thought processes, you are bound to stay disorganized. If you let things invade your space, that also fosters disorganization. It is your job to protect your space from invasions.

3. Protecting your time

You can protect your time or you can give it away. Has a free hour made itself available? You can squander it with some Net surfing, game playing, television watching or email checking or you can work on one of your short-term or long-term projects.

4. Organizing around your life purposes

It is common to organize our lives around our tasks, duties, and responsibilities as opposed to organizing our lives around our life purposes and our meaning-making efforts. Everyday tasks must get taken care of, of course – while, however, you still pay real attention to your life purpose choices.

5. Organizing each day

Each day is a certain sort of negotiation. We can’t do every possible thing we might want to do. We have to make choices, prioritize, and be mature about how much a day can hold. If we mindfully organize every single day, we have organized our life.

6. Organizing each week

Do you set yourself weekly goals? Weekly goals accomplished add up to completed long-term projects. Factor your cherished dreams and your highest aspirations into your weekly planning.

7. Thinking in three-month increments

The mind likes to think in three-month increments. If you map out a three-month calendar for yourself, you will discover that three months is an excellent amount of time to begin to implement a business plan, paint a suite of paintings, or accomplish some other big task. What would you like to get done in the next three months?

8. Managing the anxiety of organization

Because organizing involves making choices and because choosing provokes anxiety, there is always a certain amount of anxiety lurking at the corners of our organizational efforts. Learn how the manage the anxiety of organizing.

9. Using small increments of time

We typically throw away fifteen minutes here and twenty minutes there by checking our email one more time or gossiping or doing something on the Net. Keep a separate to-do list of tasks that can be accomplished in just a few minutes and when you get those few minutes, don’t scorn them or throw them away – use them!

10. Regularly catching up with yourself

Your organizational scheme of today may not serve you or suit you six months from now. Even as life rushes by, we nevertheless must stop and make sure not only that we are organized but that we are organized in ways that make sense for this specific phase of our life.

Organization really helps. Use these ten tips to get you and your art life better organized!

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