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What is Visual Organization?
Are you a visual learner who needs to organize your busy life to take back control?
Do you desperately trying to find a way to organize everything on your plate?
I can help you with that with a thing I like to call visual organization.
Visual organization is generally thought of as using charts and graphs to make learning easier. However, when bringing organization to the home, it takes a whole different meaning.
After years of trying different systems that have been proven to work for other people, I created a new system that incorporates everything I’ve learned to one cohesive strategy that works at home, at work, on your computer and on your phone.
One of the biggest things I had to learn is that it was okay for me to take pieces for multiple systems, and that writing things in multiple areas wasn’t a waste of time, it actually helped me succeed!
I’ve struggled so much working through systems that failed time and time again, I want to help set YOU up for success.
Sure. Everyone says that, but how does it actually work?
By using different building blocks, you get to create a system that works specifically for you.
Overview
Let’s start with a very broad overview.
Before you can start organizing, you have to have an idea of what you are organizing. It’ll take some thought to create a deep understanding of what goes where.
What are the main areas in your life?
I am a mother/parent, (ex) wife, home owner, employee, business owner, neighbor and community member. I enjoy photography, art, yoga, fitness, nature, gardening, and self improvement, just to name a few. Spend time writing them ALL down. What are your roles and responsibilities? Do you have hobbies and interests?
How do you organize so many areas? It gets really confusing, really quickly.
I broke my life into three main areas.
Home – Work – Self
Home covers anything to do with my home life. My kids, my house, my to-do list, references for home, lists of things I want to get done. These are all actionable or things I need to reference or remember to do someday.
Work is kept solely for work. Anything to do with my job or business.
Self includes anything that improves myself: goal setting, visions, aspiration, bucket lists, things I dream for. I also use this area to take notes for books I read, poems, quotes and things that improve my inner self.
Separate each item on your list into a category. If you aren’t sure where it goes, see if you need to break it down even more or label it differently to make it make sense for your categories. I had to do this a few times where things might fall into two categories.
Creative Names
I like to call things creative names to keep myself engaged. HOME is “Family Adventure”, WORK is “Life Support” and SELF is “Road To Happy”. Come up with your own names. Coming up with something that you relate to and enjoy will make the categories that much more enticing to continue to use.
Spend some time deciding what each category means and what goes into each category.
This will become the foundation for everything you create.
Summary
Organizing the areas of your life helps you understand how to categorize things as they come.
Action Items
- Create a list of all of your roles, responsibilities, hobbies and interests.
- Decide on 2-3 main categories.
- Separate each item on your list into a category.
- Rename your categories into something that is personal to YOU.