If you find that you’re always losing keys, missing appointments, turning up late, or forgetting important dates. It might be time to introduce some good habits into your life. Although some people tend to be more organized than others, the great thing is that organizational skills can be cultivated by adopting some healthy behaviors. Anyone can learn to be efficient and organized. All it takes is a little practice and some daily routines to get you into the swing of things.

Declutter

Making time to regularly declutter your living spaces is crucial to staying organized. After all, you know what they say – a tidy home is a tidy mind! Decluttering is not only a great way to foster a healthy home environment, but it also gives you the satisfaction of completing a task while leaving you with a space that feels tidy and organized. But be warned – decluttering once isn’t going to help you to stay organized! Like everything else on this list, this is a habit you’ll need to keep working on to feel the benefits of it. Pick a time every week when you can spend 10 minutes tidying and decluttering your space. The more you do this, the more of a habit it will become.

Make lists

Ever gone to the shops and wandered aimlessly around trying to remember something that you needed to pick up? We’ve all been there. A great way to get around this is to start making lists. Start every week making lists of things you need to do, shopping you need to collect or appointments you need to remember. Keep these lists somewhere obvious, like on the fridge, or by the front door so that you regularly see them and remember what you need to do.

Avoid procrastination

If you’ve ever continually put something off only for it to cause you more and more stress, then you’ll know that procrastination is a really bad habit to get into. It affects most of us at some point or another and can really impact on achieving long term goals. As Dr. Patricia Cardner and Gareth James’ discuss in their book Purposeful Practice for Poker, it’s important to understand that the most common reasons for procrastination are that we anticipate a task being too painful or boring or frustrating when actually, most of the time, they are not as bad as we make them out to be in our heads.

Use a planner

There are some people in life who manage to remember every birthday, important date, and meeting. And there are those of us who need to use planners! Planners have come a long way since the cumbersome Filofaxes of the 1980s and are now the ultimate sleek and chic tool for time management, motivation, and organization. A place for budgets, lists, trackers, goals, ideas and so much more, planners may well be the single most important habit you create. Using a planner not only increases organization, but it also boosts productivity, reduces stress, helps you to stick to deadlines, and gives you something to look back on.

Reduce spending

There’s no point getting into a good decluttering habit only to replace the items you have removed with more stuff. The best way to avoid this is to address your spending habits. Each time you’re tempted to add more things to your shopping basket or online cart, really think about whether you need it or if you’re just impulse buying. Emotional spending can create all kinds of clutter while reducing bank balances and leaving us feeling pretty unfulfilled. As hard as it might be, try to replace the urge to spend with something more productive instead.

From making lists and keeping a planner to decluttering and avoiding procrastination, there are plenty of healthy habits that you can adopt to go about organising your life. So, why not get started today? You could be super-organized in no time at all!