Organizational Tips for Busy Men

Between spending time with your spouse, working full-time, and helping raise your child – or even children – “busy” might as well just be your middle name.

The household chores and the to-dos from your boss seem to just keep piling up and you find yourself forgetting tasks and losing important items – such as that anniversary card you just bought for your wife…

You remembered your anniversary was coming up next week so you bought her a card in advance to be prepared, but now you’ve somehow lost it among your busy, and seemingly unorganized life.

Some people – women especially – seem to somehow make being organized look so simple. Just by taking a look around, one might assume that if you just grabbed a cute Lily Pulitzer planner, then you would magically have it all together…

If only life worked that way.

But, what are the options for busy men?

How do you organize your day and your life while juggling all the tasks that being a man, husband and dad entail?

Simple...

Start with a plan, then apply these organizational tips:

Keep your priorities in line

Especially for men who are perfectionists, it can be easy to make a to-do list of everything you need to get done. Your to-do list on Monday might start out with a list of tasks which need to be completed on Monday and continue all the way to stuff that might not even need to be looked at until Saturday…

That is most busy people’s first mistake.

You simply cannot do one week’s worth of work in one day – unless you are Superman of course. But, unfortunately, chances are that you are not actually Superman (even if you think you are).

Start by prioritizing your tasks by order of importance. Next, once you have it broken down to just what you need to do each day, organize it again by order of importance:

What needs to be done before noon?

What is the hardest task and simply cannot be finished the last five minutes you have before running out of the office to your daughter’s soccer game?

Try using some of these organizational tools to enhance your priority list.

Get up earlier (if needed)          

Are you one of those people who stays in bed until the last second each morning?

Maybe you aren’t the best morning person, so you and your alarm will just never get along.

Unfortunately, though, waking up early can be essential to keeping your day organized and your to-do list at bay.

Even an extra 30 minutes each morning can make all the difference – and, isn’t it worth it if you can avoid working on the weekends just to get caught up?

Set up email rules

If you struggle to stay on task at the office, email rules are a great way to keep you in check. You can simply go into the settings of your email platform and control how each email is automatically sorted…

For example, if you get weekly meeting updates from your boss, you can have those automatically go into a “Weekly Meeting” folder. Then, you can only check each email box at the necessary time.

So, if you only need to see the emails from the “Weekly Meeting” folder on Friday, don’t bother with them ahead of time. They will already be sorted out waiting for you.

Final Thoughts

Organization in itself takes time, but organizing both your daily tasks and your life will keep you on track to being successful and efficient.

In addition, it will help alleviate stress and anxiety as you know you are being productive.

So, before you start going gray at age 30, or just pulling your hair completely out, try getting organized first.

What are you waiting for?

Grab your planner, your stickers, and your to-do list and let’s get to it!