Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

For chaos-free happiness
By N. Dilshath Banu
Look at your room right now. What do you see? You just may be faced with all kinds of papers; from current examination papers to last years’ newspaper articles, documents and somewhat reasonable tasks handled on a day-to-day basis piled and spread around. The clothes go through a similar fate.

ometimes, the worn garments are just lying on the ground. Not forgetting the bed, which seems like it has not been arranged for weeks. And whenever your mum peeps in, you’ll hear the greatest lecture ever delivered on the subject!
Maybe you’ve tried several methods to get things in order, but everything you tried never worked out or worked out only for a short time. Every time, you think of organising, papers keep on piling up on your desk. And more than anything, you just don’t have time to get organised as you’re busy doing loads of things together to keep you on top of this most hectic world.

But not all of us go through cleaning up the mess all the time, sometimes wasting our precious time. We have to accept the fact that some of us are born with the talent to keep everything in its place. However, it’s true that most of us are somewhat walking on the middle of the tightrope of organisation and messy haven.

“If you love the mess and if it isn’t a problem for you, then it’s nothing to worry about. But if it’s counter productive, then you have to think twice about being messy,” says Dr. Asoka N. Jinadasa, Senior PR Consultant at Rowland PR, adding, “People who think analytically, that is from the left side, tend to be organised. But being organised could be a problem to creative people. Organis-ational skills, however, are not entirely about keeping everything in place, but about being efficient.”

It’s like this, your school starts at eight and if you get up late and you haven’t organised your books and the other items, your mind will be chaotic and you won’t be able to organise things effectively. Thus, you will not only be late to school, you will also probably be missing some important notebooks as well, says Dr. Jinadasa.

According to Dr. Jinadasa this efficiency applies to everything in life. “If you’re shopping, you should be aware of what you are going to be buying. You should ask your self what you need. Similarly, if your room or any other area, which is occupied by you, is in a mess, you could be spending at least half an hour to search for the things you need. But even if you take one whole day to clean your room, you’ll see that you don’t need to spend time on digging up heaps of things everyday to find what you want.”

If you accumulate the time you spend each day trying to find out things out of mess, you’ll see that it’s taking much more time than spending a whole day dedicating to arrange things. So what’s important is to see is that whether organising has returned the time invested arranging things.”

It’s the same with money. “When you get your salary, write down all the expenses. Then divide your expenses into categories such as food, travel, clothes, entertainment and miscellaneous.

Each day write down how much you spend on each category. And after a period of time, maybe a month later, you can calculate how much you spend on each category. If you have spent more on entertainment, you could cut down the cost for entertainment for next month. If more money has been utilised for food, you can do the same provided that you eat well-balanced food. When you write the details down, you will be able to focus on how much you spend. This is the same method used in most companies.”

“To organise anything, it’s important that you should write down details, as a record. This will make you to use your time effectively. Thus you will find yourself on the road to becoming an efficient person.”

Few tips for better organisation
Prioritise
One of the worst mistakes that can block any of your attempts to get organised is losing sight of priorities. It’s easy to do – the tendency is to concentrate on those tasks that scream for attention.

Prepare
Spend ten minutes at the beginning of the day organising your thoughts, goals and tasks, which can often save hours over the course of single day.

Simplify
Don’t make your normal everyday tasks more complicated than they need to be! Learn the most effective ways to handle them then repeat the process, Remember, Keep it simple – the wheel has already been invented, take advantage of that fact and don’t try to re-invent it!

Keep track
It’s impossible to be an organised person without being able to maintain a running record of what has (and has not) been done on a regular basis. Find a system that you are comfortable with and get into the habit of using it on a daily basis. A simple “to do” list is probably the easiest way of keeping track.

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