#7: The Top 10 Qualities of an Organized Person

What does it mean to be an organized person? It's not just a simple definition; it's a way of life. Being organized goes beyond mere terminology – it's a fundamental quality that empowers individuals to effectively manage their own lives and the lives of those they care for. Organization is a skill that can be cultivated and built over time. Stay tuned as we explore the nuances of this essential attribute and how it can be nurtured within ourselves and others.

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Credits: 

Song: Green Lights
Performed By: DLP
Written by: Daniel Labate (BMI 100%)
Published by: Boss Soundstripe Productions (BMI 100%)

Song (Trailer): Epic Hybrid Trailer Music
Performed by: by 2CoolFire
Licensed by: Envato Market

Cover Photo: Angela Clifton Photography
Hair and Make-up: Casey J. Cheek

Transcript

This is The Neat Lifestyle Podcast, episode number seven. Today, get ready for the top 10 qualities of an organized person, so stay tuned. 

Welcome to The Neat Lifestyle Podcast. My name is Katia Mesquita. I'm a personal organization expert, an online business entrepreneur, and your host on this weekly variety show. I'm excited to bring you an extra dose of inspiration to become more organized, stay organized, and make things work better for you. My goal in this podcast is to help you achieve a more functional, harmonious, and meaningful life. I can't wait to connect with you today. Thank you so much for tuning in, and now let's begin. Hello and welcome to The Neat Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Katia Mesquita, and I know, I know not everyone is organized, but the good news is that is an attribute that can be developed. So don't worry if all of these top 10 qualities of an organized person are not part of your life yet. They can be part of your life as soon as you decide. 

As soon as you decide it's time to be more in control of your life, more centered, more confident, build more foundational structure for more significant achievements in your life, have a more functional, diligent, and reliable lifestyle, OMG, so many good things, reduce the effects of stress, be more prepared for life events, enhance your decision making, increase peacefulness and remain centered even when things are not going exactly your way. But what does it mean to be an organized person? Defining an organized person is not like just defining a term. It's more than that. It's a state of being. It's a quality of a person who is in control of running their own lives and their dependents' lives in a more comprehensive way. So, being organized is not just putting stuff away or knowing where things are. Yes, an organized person is typically aware of their belongings' location, but more than that, they are also aware of their current situation and what they are doing. 

They have clear goals and the destination they want to reach and they take action towards these goals. Note that being organized involves three essential elements: awareness, clear goals, and action. So, if you feel like you are running in circles and getting nowhere, always starting over, especially if you start noticing some synchronicities, like an undesired situation that keeps reappearing over and over, it's time to pay attention to those three elements, evaluate them and identify which one of them you need to work on a little bit more. Self-improvement will definitely help you with that. And why is that so important? Because when you are aware of where your things are, your current situation, and what you are doing, when you have clear goals in life and when you take goal-oriented actions, you aim for success. These three elements combined are essential for success. Once I discovered that, I became unstoppable. Even when we experience temporary defeats, they are lessons we learn that help us get stronger to overcome challenges and continue pursue what we want in life. 

And when we connect with people who have similar values, boom! A lot of good things and synchronicities start to happen because it creates an open door to intensify the exchange of information, insights, help, tools, good energy, incentives, and so on. But being more organized doesn't mean having extremely orderly habits because when taken to the extreme, it actually has the opposite effect. It can act as a distraction that leads to stagnation, preventing people from achieving anything. So, no extremes here. I'm talking about the essential, the basic level of organization that allows you to have a more functional, meaningful, successful, and harmonious life. Functional in a sense of being diligent, facilitating the flow and developing a reliable lifestyle, meaningful life in a sense of living life with a purpose, successful in the sense of building the life you want and feeling happy with that, and harmonious in a sense of being mindful and considering eight vital areas of your life to pay attention to on your weekly plan, such as health, relationships, time, work, finances, personal growth, responsibilities and contribution to society. 

And why do we need to pay attention to these eight vital areas of life? Because we need to keep monitoring them with a certain frequency to find harmony. Of course, if we just keep monitoring work, finances, and responsibilities and take too long to be mindful of our health or create vulnerability to developing illness, for instance, and illness may get back to us and affect our work, finances, responsibilities and all the rest. And that is exactly one of the reasons people keep feeling like running in circles and getting nowhere. I totally understand that even when we organize and make plans for our lives, there are some exterior factors that we cannot control. Not everything will necessarily go as planned, but we can control how we respond to them. And the thing is that an organized person responds to them in a more favorable way. And here are the top 10 qualities of an organized person. 

The first one is that that I mentioned before. Awareness: knowledge of where their things are, their current situation, and what they are doing. This is their starting point. If you don't know where your things are, if you don't have a full picture of your current situation, and if you're not sure what you're doing, it's difficult to get anywhere or succeed in anything. Goal-oriented: an organized person has clear direction to move towards. Becoming goal-oriented helps you to set priorities, establish boundaries, better use your time and energy, have more fulfillment and self-motivation, and leads you to more significant achievements in life. The next one is create system. They create simple systems to know where their things are and always return items to their usual place after using them. They create and simplify systems to make their lives and projects flow easily. 

The next one is plan. Organized people plan so they can anticipate incidents and have things more under control than just being in the reaction mode of improvising. It makes the difference in increasing opportunity utilization, decision-making, time, money saving. I have a colleague who is a career coach. Her name is Raushan. She's a very intelligent entrepreneur, and when she talks, she's really quotable. She says, "My bad time is no longer the end of the day. It's already the beginning of my connection with the next day." I love that because when we go to bed knowing what's important for the next day, it increases our success rate. If you wake up to figure out later what is important for the day, chances are that you will figure out that you have already lost an opportunity in the morning. Okay, you might be asking, "And what if what we have to do the next day is something challenging, something that would probably make us worry and keep us from sleeping at night?"

Okay, look, worrying is a choice. You can choose not to worry the night before and leave to deal with the challenge on the next day, when the time comes. You can keep your thoughts under control. Knowing what challenges you will face the next day doesn't mean bringing worries to your bad time. You can direct your thoughts to outcome-oriented thinking, and it's actually going to help you overcome the challenges on the next day. I will soon have an episode to talk about the power of our sleeping time, and I have powerful exercises and natural ways for sleeping better to share with you. And still regarding making plans, an organized person tends to be more successful because they often have a plan B in place for situations that don't depend on them. Plans can be changed, rearranged, adapted, especially when something doesn't go exactly as planned. 

Getting close enough to your plan usually provides more successful results than when you go totally unplanned. Planning things doesn't mean not having space to be spontaneous or have spontaneous moments. You can plan things in advance so you can enjoy even more spontaneous moments in your life. You can even include some wiggle room, especially if you are dealing with estimating time. Planning is so simple. Planning can be as simple as using a calendar, a notepad for the details, of course, for projects that don't involve complexity. For projects that involve complexity, you may need a planner, but if there is no complexity at all, just a notepad will do and an alarm clock for alerts. You can use a physical or a virtual calendar on your phone. You can even set the calendar on your phone to send you notification and reminders. Planning allows you to anticipate and prepare, and there is a quote from Tony Robbins that says, "Leaders anticipate, losers react."

Another quality is initiative. Organized people have initiative to do things. As long as they are in a position to have autonomy, they voluntarily act when an opportunity presents itself and follow through with what needs to be done to achieve their goals. Another one is discipline. They monitor their own behaviors and practice self-control, adjusting behaviors more accordingly to a goal-oriented way. Being more organized requires discipline and involves doing what needs to be done, regardless of eventual discomfort. They accept and deal with uncomfortable situations because uncomfortable situations are part of success. They get out of their comfort zone. Being disciplined requires self-control and the understanding that it is important to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. A person who is willing to deal with uncomfortable situation gets stronger. People who only stay in their comfort zones tend to develop weakness over time because what we don't use will atrophy. 

It's like a muscle. If we don't use the muscle, it will atrophy. If we don't use our brain, it will atrophy. There is a quote from G Michael Hopf in his book "Those Who Remain" that says, "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times." It is so true. People who experience some hardship get stronger, so welcome a certain amount of discomfort and toughness in your life. Embrace some discomfort with a smile on your face. In this context, I'm talking about the discomfort, the effort, and discipline needed to be minimally organized. You are going to get stronger over time. Don't wait until life gets really tough to start doing something about it. 

Prioritize the right things. An organized person knows that there is a difference between what's important and what is priority. Many things are important, but not all of them are urgent or need to be done in the same day. They don't waste time keeping themselves busy with the wrong activities. And what's the wrong activity? Those there are not in alignment with their goals. They limit their time to scroll down on social media posts and other distractions. They focus their attention on the most urgent tasks related to the eight key areas of life (time, work, health, meaningful relationships, finances, responsibilities, self-improvement, and contribution to society) that will lead to their goals. 

Another quality is self-improvement. Organized people are aware of their strengths, know what they need to improve, and take action for self-improvement. They know success doesn't come from just one skill and are always looking for opportunities to expand their knowledge and improve their abilities to perform better. They have personal development as an ongoing process that allows them to continue growing and building upon their strengths. Once they start diving deep into self-improvement, it could be by reading books, or participating on coaching programs, or even meeting people who have similar values and noticing their lives gradually being transformed for better, developing self-improvement skills becomes addicting and pleasant. Okay, one more: Organized people value cleaning and tidiness. Some people believe that being organized would be a hustle and a time-consuming task, but it's totally the opposite. Once you have that one-time major organization or cleaning in your home or in your office as a starting point, maintaining is simple. It is just about being disciplined to avoid making a mess in the first place, paying attention to how you use things, establishing new habits to limit how far you will go in taking things out of place while you are working or on some projects, and putting things away after using them. You can also be careful to minimize dirtying, and if something gets dirty, clean it as quick as possible. Things are easier to clean while the dirt is still fresh. Refining your manners will help. As soon as the new habits stick, you start doing them easily. 

And lastly, organized people control time and energy. They don't wait to have time to do what they need to do to be successful. They create time. They say no to things that won't contribute to their goals. They create boundaries to protect their time. They don't say, I don't have time. Time is not something that we have or not. Time is something we make or not because we are not supposed to let time control us. We are the ones to be in charge and control our own time. Same thing with energy. How many things you might be doing that drains your energy? Have power over your time. Don't let time have power over you. Even if you are in a situation in which someone or something controls your time, you can still take charge of the part of the time you can control. 

Time is the first thing we need to take charge to succeed in life, and that is exactly why I really want to invite you to participate in a free live training about time organization that will be a game changer for you. It will set you up for the beginning of a new life, organized for success. The doors will be closing soon. This is your opportunity. It's a 60-minute live training, and for those who might be asking if there will be a replay, yes, but only for those who sign up and only for a limited time of seven days. It's very easy to sign up for. I will make it transformational for you. Just head over to www.needlifestyle.com/programs or simply click on the link in the show notes for this episode. I can't wait to meet you live. I also have a gift for you. It's a free daily focus checklist that helps you stay focused on your goals and mindful about the vital areas of life to organize and set your daily routine for success. It is also on the show notes of this episode. I'm Katia Mesquita, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye!

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to share it with those you care about so they can also benefit from it. If you aren't already following me on social media, do so by clicking on the link on the show notes or simply by visiting my website at neatlifestyle.com. I appreciate you so much. I hope you have an amazing day. I'll see you in the next episode of The Neat Lifestyle Podcast.