4 Tips to Improve Your Child’s Organization

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Kids are not necessarily known for their organizational skills, but its something they will need to learn if they want to stay on top of their school work and personal life when they get older. As a parent, there are few things more infuriating than seeing a child with terrible time management; it can affect you, their friends, and your child themselves, so here are four tips to improve your child’s organization. 

Don’t Hoard 

Encouraging your child not to hoard is perhaps one of the most important ways to improve their organizational skills. However, it can be a challenge. Kids don’t really like getting rid of anything, especially when they get to an age where they are convinced they will use something again.  

But, it’s unlikely they will, so if you want to make sure they don’t fill their closet with clutter, encourage them to sell game consoles, clothes, shoes, instruments, and anything they will never use again. They might protest, but you know better. 

Break Down Tasks

Many tasks can be daunting, especially if they feel like mammoth chores that will take hours. This can make your kids procrastinate, which means the duties will never get completed, anyway. 

To overcome this, you can get them to break down the tasks into smaller and more manageable chunks. Rather than asking them to vacuum the house, get them to do it room-by-room. This doesn’t sound so bad, and if they do one room, they might feel they have the time to do another. By the time they’ve finished, they will feel they’re on a roll and be happy to do all the vacuuming in one go. 

Help Them Create a To-Do List

To-do lists are useful for a variety of reasons. They stop your children forgetting their chores and responsibilities, and the satisfaction that comes from crossing something off will motivate them to keep going. 

These to-do lists can also be daunting, though, so you can advise them to separate the list into easy things, such as doing the dishes or taking the dog for a walk, and difficult things, like their essay. This will help them decide which tasks to prioritize. 

Establish a Routine

Routines are something that you kids will need to get into as they grow older, so they may as well establish a routine as early as possible. Otherwise, they risk sleeping in too late every day, which can waste their days off, and this means they don’t have time to do anything. 

By helping them establish a routine, they can organize their day more efficiently, giving them the time to do all the serious hard stuff like homework or chores, and still have time to relax and enjoy their evening once they are finished. 

Neat and Tidy

A tidy room creates an orderly life and mind. Not many people realize it, but clutter and organization can have a severe impact on stress levels and focus. As your kids have enough to worry about when growing up, such as school, crushes, and their future, getting them to stay organized can give them one less thing to worry about. 

Making More Time For Your Family

In today’s world, where we are bombarded with distractions vying for your attention, it can be difficult to make quality time with your family a priority.  Indeed, even with things like movie nights where the focus should be purely on eating popcorn and watching a film have turned into a multitasking distraction fest.  Like Pavlov’s Dogs, we all seem to be living in reaction to the dings and vibrations of social media alerts and emails coming through every waking hour.

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In such a hectic and fast paced world, it’s important to balance your time whilst also making enough money to survive and nurture your career.  Time is an often overlooked and under-appreciated gift.  We are each blessed with 24 hours every single day, yet many of these hours are spent doing things that aren’t as important or meaningful to our lives as they could be – which is where making more time for your family comes in.

Check out these three time management tips to help you squeeze the most from you working day and free up your time.

1. WORK REMOTELY

If you are able to work remotely, from home, this will enable you to work more flexible hours meaning your work can fit around your family life.  Similarly, if you were to study say a professional microsoft outlook class there’s no need to attend a physical course, as today there’s a plethora of online courses available; anything from vocational short courses to advanced degrees.  The flexibility and time saving nature of these courses can help free up a lot of your time.

2.. ORGANISE YOUR TIME

We all seem to spend far too much time living in reaction to work – trying to fit our lives around work, yet it doesn’t have to be that way; the key to overcoming this is investing in a good planning system.  This way, you are living your life in response rather than reaction – which is a much calmer and productive state to be in.

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3.  THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule suggests 20% of our activities account for 80% of the outcome.  In simple terms, you want to focus on what tasks are going to have the greatest impact and get these done first.  Often, we can get lost in the small tasks that create a lot of “busyness” in our lives and detract from the time we need to manage our “business” – be that in a commercial or personal context.

BONUS TIP:  WORK WHEN YOU WORK AND REST WHEN YOU REST

Brian Tracy, a pre-eminent time management expert advocates the idea that you work when you work and rest when your rest; meaning, if you are sitting down to work – ensure you have a singular laser like focus on the task at hand in a distraction free environment.

Today, particularly when working from home, people multitask by working with their laptop on their lap whilst having the TV on in the background, or even dropping in and out of a conversation with their spouse.  By fully working when you work, you can reduce the amount of time you are needing to work – and you’ll get the added benefit of being able to fully rest when you rest.