Get Organised!

A place for everything, and everything in its place. It’s an old saying, and just indicates a desire to get organised for the sake of simplicity, but some would say having it as your mantra indicates that you’re a control freak, and suffer from OCD.

Whichever is your standpoint, if you get organised it will very likely place you in a better position in terms of memory.

Why ‘Get Organised’?

Being organised is an outward sign of an inward state. It’s a sign that you’ve made an effort to better organise your thinking. If you allow things to continue in a disorganised fashion, you’re swimming against the tide if you’re hoping to improve your memory. The most you can hope for is to learn a few memory techniques and apply them here and there, haphazardly. That’s if you can actually remember to use them, and in which situations!
 

You really do need to make an effort to get organised, in every area of your life. I’m not saying you need to become obsessive about it. Just that you will benefit from a more carefully thought-out, structured approach. And as well as it helping your memory work, you’ll see benefits in your health and fitness, your diet, your working methods, your finances, and everything else.

Getting organised creates order out of chaos

Organize


When we try to memorise things, what we’re doing, in effect, is trying to create order out of chaos by putting those things in a certain ‘place’. We just want to get organised! It’s a method of mental organisation. Regardless of how much you’ve memorised, if it’s been done properly then the facts, or items, will be available to you. You’ll be able to recall them, for the simple reason that they will be there, exactly where you left them. In this way, it’s very similar to the physical world.

If you have a very small den in your house, as an example, and it’s crammed with tools of all kinds, and paints, and buckets, and ladders and screws and nails and light bulbs and brackets and rolls of tape and extension leads and all the other bits and scraps that tend to accumulate, then it can become a nightmare to find what you need.

There ... see what can happen when you let things get disorganised?? :/

There … see what can happen when you let things get disorganised?? :/

Every time you go into your den, the thing you want isn’t where you remember leaving it. Why? Because, with the den being so crammed full, you have to keep moving and shifting and rearranging things to find what you need, or to make a bit of space for something new. Consequently, the next time you want something, you can’t find it! ‘Cos everything’s been moved, and you find yourself wondering, yet again, how to be organized! Everything’s in a state of flux.

Your den has become a physical representation of your mind (if your memory is untrained and unreliable) – the facts you need (although they’re in there somewhere!) are never close to hand. You know they’re there, but you just can’t find them (i.e. remember them)! At this point, you’d grab at anything that promises to help you get organised, and show you how to de-clutter.

Getting organised helps you clear out the mental clutter

Sound familiar? We’re all guilty of this kind of mental clutter (most of us, anyway, and I certainly include myself in that), and I welcome anything that can help me get organised. We just can’t seem to get organised easily. Is it any wonder we can’t remember stuff? With a world of chaos going on outside (i.e. in the ‘real’ world), it’s only to be expected that our internal world is in a bit of a state as well. That’s why getting organised can be a great help in a quest to achieve a better memory.

Make an effort to create order in every area

But trying to ‘get organised’ is a monumental task, because there are so many areas of your life that need to be sorted out. And the bigger the task, the more likely it is that you’ll put it off and never really get round to it. That’s why I’ve put in separate pages dealing with different areas where getting organised can make a difference.

Still think the idea of getting organised is just too much to deal with? Okay, consider the alternative; just keep on living in a world of mental and physical clutter and chaos. It’s what they call a no-brainer, I believe! One way or another, we all need help to learn how to be organised. We need to learn how to de-clutter. Basically, when we look around at the mess that surrounds us, we just need to get organised!

I’m not saying you literally have to have ‘everything in its place’, but working on the various areas of your life and trying to achieve some decent level of tidiness in each one can make a whole lot of difference.

Several more pages dealing with this topic, all listed in the sidebar.

Top

>> Get Organised! links in the sidebar >>

Home

Would you like to submit a page for RMI? It's easy, just fill in the details below.

8+2=