Organize to Reduce Stress

Many people tend to think of stress reduction and stress management as involving therapy, the use of medication, and treatments like meditation and biofeedback.  But there are other treatments than can actually be a lot more simple.  In fact, the best way to treat any problem is to go after the root.  In this case, we’ll be looking at a very common cause of excess stress – being disorganized.

When you lack organization, stress can overwhelm you.  Every event like losing car keys, misplacing important documents, forgetting apointments, and missing birthdays and anniversaries is stressful.  These events can add up and eventually lead to chronic stress.

A simple solution to help ease a lot of this stress is to organize your life better.  Most people aren’t as organized as they’d like to be.  You may even think you’re pretty organized, but if you look at your life, you might notice some areas that are lacking.

For example, do you have a clear way of keeping track of appointments?  Marking them on a calendar might not be enough, especially if you are a forgetful person by nature.  I had a friend who was constantly missing appointments, and I asked her why she didn’t just mark them on her calendar.  “I do!” she responded.  “But then I forget to look at the calendar!”

Using a software program that sends you reminders can be helpful.  If you don’t have a computer, you can subscribe to reminder services that can telephone or text you whenever you have an important event that you ask to be reminded of.

How organized is your home, your office, or your desk?  I’m not asking how clean it looks, I’m asking how organized it is.  Many places appear to be clean and organized, and then you ask the inhabiter to find something and they run off rummaging through endless disorganized drawers and closets full of clutter.

If you aren’t as organized as you’d like to be and you don’t know where to start, you can enlist the help of a professional organizer.  They can actually be found relatively inexpensively, and they often end up paying for themselves in terms of stress reduction and time saved!

If you’re already super-organized, that’s great news!  But if you’re like most of us, you could always use a bit more organization in your life.  Take the time to find out where you could organize your life a bit better.  You’ll probably find several areas where you could become better organized and you’ll save yourself a lot of stress.