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Do you sometimes wish you had a little more predictability or stability in your life?
When there’s a lack of structure in our lives, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, disorganized, and even a little unstable.
Not having a firm structure in our lives can also lead us to feel unmotivated and distracted, which hence compromises our efficiency and output.
On days when your workload feels scattered and stressful, having a structure to fall back on can help to refocus your efforts, while also elevating your sense of control.
If you’re wanting to add more structure to your life and increase your efficiency, follow these 7 tips.
7 Ways to Add More Structure to Your Life
1. Outline your plan for the week on Sunday. If you’re someone that feels unprepared when Monday rolls around, or that you’re just not a Monday kind of person, use your Sunday to change this. Go over your calendar, plan out your meals, or highlight your most important goals for the week. Essentially, use your Sunday as a planning day to prepare for the week ahead.
What to do on Sunday to prep for a productive week.
2. Stick to a fulfilling morning routine. Routines are what makes our lives more consistent, and therefore predictable. They also help us to manage our time more efficiently, even when we feel overwhelmed or stressed. Having a purposeful morning routine is an excellent way to add more structure to your life, while also ensuring that you accomplish a few things straight away in the morning. This way if the rest of your day doesn’t go as planned, you can at least take comfort in the fact that you were able to complete a few tasks this morning.
3. Plan time to chill out. Just as you would need to make time to plan for an important meeting, make the time to relax throughout your day, week, etc. Everyone needs to have time to relax and unwind, whether it’s at the end of a long stressful day, over a lunch break, or even first thing in the morning. Maybe you like to meditate before sleep to relax, or maybe you need to go on a run in the morning to de stress for the day. Whatever it is that brings you peace and tranquility, schedule it into your life as if it’s an important meeting or deadline that you have to meet.
4. Set meaningful goals. Setting goals not only adds more structure to your life, it also adds meaning. Think about it. How often have you asked yourself, “why am I doing this?” Having purposeful goals to work towards leaves less room for doubt, and provides a deeper sense of meaning and motivation for what you do every day. To learn how to set meaningful goals that can ad more structure to your life, check out this article.
5. Use your planner. If you haven’t invested in a planner already, do so now. Your planner is your best friend when it comes to giving your life more structure. You can schedule everything from important deadlines at work, your weekly grocery shopping, an outing with your friends, to your annual check up.
6. Declutter. When your work and living spaces are cluttered and messy, it’s hard to feel structured in your life. Take the time to declutter these spaces. You’ll find it’s that much easier to focus and accomplish tasks when your space is clutter free and organized.
7. Batch similar activities. Batching refers to grouping similar activities together, which helps to make your workload more efficient. Take a look at your weekly schedule. Which tasks are similar? Which ones can you group together? See where you can group these activities together. You’ll find that it’s much easier to stay focused when you’re already in the zone for a particular task.
