5 Tips for Organising your life for better mental health
We all know how life can very quickly become overwhelming and difficult to manage. Our mental health can really suffer, especially when we have so much to organise and sort out.
No one teaches us how to do this; we’re not given the tools in school and we are expected to have these skills in our daily toolkit, when in fact they often have to be learnt.
APDO member Bettina Trabant owner of ‘A life Organised’, shares five of her brilliant tips on what some of these tools are and how you can start to use them.
Better mental health
Apart from the usual teenage angst, up until age 23, I knew nothing about mental health and never met anyone who suffered from it. However, this was about to change when during my MA, I experienced my first of several depressive episodes.
By my early thirties, I realised that mental health issues were part of who I am, and I had to make lasting changes to cope with everyday life.
Over the years, I have developed strategies to simplify my life and improve my mental well-being. Below I want to share my five favourites that anyone can incorporate into their routines to make their days less stressful.
Morning Routine
According to bestselling author Hal Elrod, ‘Focused, productive successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days – which inevitably create a successful life.’
While I agree with the above statement, how do we get there? The simple answer is to have a morning routine.
According to Game Quitters, a website helping people beat their gaming addiction, a morning routine is a set of habits that you complete when you get up in the morning:
A morning routine is quite simply what it says. It’s a set of habits or motions that you go through when you wake up. It helps to set your day up in the right way and can have some drastic effects on your focus and productivity.
But there is more to it. While most people have some routine of what they do after hearing their alarm go off, this routine is not intentional for most.
On hearing their alarm, many people press snooze and snooze again until the last feasible time they can drag themselves out of bed without being late for work. Those people then run around their houses like headless chickens trying to get dressed, showered and out the door. They gulp down some coffee or get takeout on their way to work. They start their day being tired and flustered rather than calm and collected, which can impact the rest of their day.
On the other hand, a good morning routine is a set of activities intentionally created to ease you gently into the day.
One of the things I do every morning is to have a leisurely cuppa of my favourite drink while sitting in silence. This practice allows me to wake up slowly while reflecting on the day ahead.
I do two other easy-to-implement things without fail every morning. One is making my bed, and the other is showering and getting dressed, even when I don’t have to leave the house. Both above set me in a working mood and tell my brain it’s time to do business and stop lounging around. It works.
Morning routines improve your mental health and make you more productive.
Avoid decision fatigue by simplifying your wardrobe
There are multiple reasons for decluttering your wardrobe and not buying into fast fashion. Environmental concerns and working conditions are two valuable ones, but as far as mental health goes, avoiding decision fatigue must be the main one.
“You can instantly simplify your morning routine, get dressed with ease, reduce decision fatigue / save brain energy for more important pursuits, and up-level your wardrobe by investing in fewer, better things.” says Shira Gill, author of Minimalista
There are two concepts when it comes to minimalist fashion. The capsule wardrobe, where you can combine the same few items in different ways to create multiple outfits.
The other is a personal uniform, where you wear an identical item of clothing daily. Jenifer, in an article on the Simply & Fiercely blog, defines a personal uniform as follows:
A personal uniform is a “go-to” style that you love wearing, and it is easy to take the stress out of choosing your outfits. Find a formula that works for you, and you can rest assured that you will be comfortable and confident daily.
If you are a fashionista and don’t want to limit the items in your wardrobe, decide the night before what you are going to wear, this will make it quick and easy to get dressed in the morning.
Meal Planning
Meal Planning is an excellent way of taking the stress out of preparing meals and ensuring you eat a healthy and varied diet even when you don’t feel like cooking.
Essentially, it is deciding what you will eat for the week ahead and buying all the ingredients in one trip to the supermarket.
‘What it is: Meal planning is asking the what’s for dinner question once for the whole week, instead of every night, and then shopping for and prepping the ingredients before cooking.’ (Halo Bey Madene)
Once a week, sit down with your diary and list when you will eat what. Coordinating your meals with your life’s commitments ensures that you are not scheduling a massive three-course meal when your partner is out on a work event, and your kids have hockey practice. Roster quick and easy meals on busy days and more elaborate meals or new recipes on weekends.
It sounds stressful to come up with seven dinner recipes each week. Why not recycle your meals by creating several weekly meal schedules once and reusing them on a rota? For example, you won’t remember having scrambled eggs for breakfast precisely four weeks ago or that it was pasta night on the first Tuesday evening of January.
Cook staples and easy-to-prepare meals that you know how to make blindfolded. Choose perhaps one meal you have never done every week to increase your repertoire. Instead, make larger quantities of food than you can eat in one go and freeze or take to work the following day.
Once you have decided on your meals, write down a list of all the ingredients you need and go to your nearest supermarket for one big weekly shop. Doing this only once weekly ensures you don’t constantly waste time in supermarkets.
It’s true what they say, meal planning saves time, money, and improves nutrition! Once you start, you’ll be hooked! (Suburban Simplicity)
Clean your desk every night
You might think that tidying your workspace is just another item on your list of daily household chores. So, what difference does a bit of paper clutter make? First, it doesn’t attract mice or start smelling.
But having a neat workspace allows for higher productivity, less stress and less time wasted searching for that document or file.
A cluttered office leads to a cluttered mind. You will be distracted by all the chaos on your desk, making you slower and less efficient. Procrastination, here we come!
On the other hand, a clean office space saves you time as you don’t need to search for things, knowing exactly where everything is. It will make you complete tasks in a more fast and more efficient way.
"As the saying goes, “a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.” Keeping your workspace clean and organised can have a huge effect on your productivity, concentration, and ability to find everything you need. You might be surprised how much more efficiently you’ll be able to work after cleaning out a junked-up desk." (How to Organise your Desk)
The above quote is something I can completely get on board with. I have been keeping a meticulously clean desk for several years now. I started it while hot desking for IPC Media and have continued ever since.
When finishing work in the evening, clear your desk, put everything away and wipe it. Everything should have its place.
By clearing your desk nightly, your mind will switch off from work. When you work in an office, your commute to and from work serves this purpose, but working from home can blur the boundaries. A tidy desk can help with a switch from work to downtime.
Get Organised – Plan your day
GTD is short for Getting Things Done. It’s a productivity and time management system developed by American business consultant and writer David Allen. As part of the GTD methodology, Allen invented the weekly review, where once a week, you plan the upcoming week by deciding what tasks need doing and when to do them. He suggests creating a daily to-do list.
Life was more straightforward in the early parts of the 20th Century. Our grandparents and parents didn’t have as many distractions or things to do or check off daily. With our distracted lives, it is so easy to feel completely overwhelmed by everything we have on our plates. A to-do list can help you stay focused and reduce stress levels. Rather than feel you must do everything and remember everything, with a well-written to-do list, you do what truly matters and moves your life forward. You will feel in control of your time and tasks.
The above is only a selection of five of my favourite tips and tricks on staying organised and increasing your mental well-being. If you have questions on the above or any other aspect of getting organised and mental well-being, head over to my website, Life Organised or find an APDO member in your local area.