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Living the Systematized Life: How I Get Stuff Done

If there’s something that everyone wants, it’s more time. Time to get more work done. Time to relax. Time to spend with our families. And that time comes when we’re able to push aside the things that suck up our energy needlessly.

A few months ago, I heard about the concept of systematizing your life. Not just develop habits but take the everyday things in your life that suck up time and make them easier.

I thought, “GREAT IDEA! I love to make things easier!”

My first thing was my wardrobe. I love fashion. It’s so creative and fun! But it’s not me. I’m horrible at it. I only want to be comfortable. So I found pants that I love and bought six pairs of them. I also got rid of shirts and sweaters that no longer fit, bought more colors of the shirts I loved, and stuck to them.

As you can see here, I have my blank pants that I wear every day plus one pair of jeans that I like. The one pair of blank pants to the left of the jeans are my shorter pair that shrunk. Lol. I only wear them with flip-flops.

I have this one style of shirt that I love that I bought in all the colors I liked. Yes, the shirts have pockets.

I did the same with my workout clothes too, and I keep a few nicer things for holidays. That’s it. There are lots of prosperous people that have done the same thing. Steve Jobs. Michael Koors. That Mark guy who started Facebook. My day starts easily. No wasted moments.

My second thing was eating. I whittled down my meals to two per day and a snack. I hated having to figure out what I would eat day-to-day. Hated it. And I found lunch time to be the most stressful of all. So I combined breakfast and lunch and made this time of day easier. I can eat breakfast foods OR lunch foods! I know people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it doesn't work for me. I am happier fasting. For meals, I have a menu of stuff to choose from, making it easy to get fed without spending time thinking about it. I often joke that I'm a prime candidate for Soylent Green. Too bad it's made of people.

My third thing was always scheduling my health time first. The prevailing sentiment is that the morning is for creative time. I can't tell you how many writers get up at 4 or 5AM to write, but not for me. I'm most creative in the afternoon, so exercise time comes first.

Out for a walk!

I know that every day I need to spend about 90 minutes working on my movement, if it’s not a rest day. This is usually walking and stretching, and I figured out how to systematize this too. I have a path that I always walk when I’m outside, or if the weather is bad, I have my treadmill. If I walk outside, I listen to podcasts or audiobooks. If I walk inside, I choose a show to watch on my iPad.

I know what you’re thinking… This sounds boring!

And that may be so if you love wearing fashionable clothes or spontaneously cooking whatever you want. Everything I’ve presented here are things that worked FOR ME because I couldn't care less about them. For me, clothing is a nuisance, and food? I’d be fine to pop a food pill and only eat when I really wanted to. These things take up time and space when I could be doing creative things like writing books, creating covers, and building websites.

Writing, writing, writing.

I systematize my life to make room for more creativity and relaxation. If my mind is free from worry about clothing or food, it makes room for things I'm more interested in. And I still get a lot done! I build websites AND edit books AND design covers AND play with my kids AND watch TV AND I do a lot of that stuff all in one day.

Some of you may be struggling with low energy and depression, and I know you may read this and think there’s no way you can do this too. That may be the case, and I'm not exactly the best of examples here. I do suffer from depression on occasion, but it's not persistent. Still, even in those times that I'm down, my systemization has helped. There are days when it's hard to get out of bed and get dressed. But at least, I always know what to wear.

I went searching for more articles on systematizing your life and found these two…

I hope that gives you an insight into how I manage to accomplish all that I do!

Do you systematize any parts of your life? Let me know in the comments! I'm always looking for more ways to make life easier!
S. J. Pajonas