Organizing ourselves to accomplish our goals in life is something that is commonly underestimated by most. Many individuals believe that it’s a simple task which only takes a couple of minutes to do, but in reality it is literally a full time job in itself. Even I went several years ignorant of this fact and usually undershot or overshot myself in regards to organization. Organizing yourself needs to become part of your daily routine, it must be embedded into everything you do, almost to the extent of it becoming somewhat of a second nature to you. When you properly organize yourself, you can actually visualize where you are, what you’ve done, and what you can/need do to effectively to reach your goals.

There’s nothing more satisfying than actually seeing your progress and understanding how far you’ve come. And if you’re like me, then having goals is what your life should be composed of, and achieving them is what should drive you and motivate you to accomplish them. From experience I now understand that keeping yourself organized is among one of the key factors in becoming successful, and hopefully by following these 5 simple steps, it will help you too in the process of achieving your goals.

1. Use a Calendar Application - Utilizing a paper agenda/calendar is quite obtrusive and lacks in functionality features when compared to it’s digital counterpart, a Calendar Application. Having a Calendar App. is simple to use and saves time, it is also quickly accessible and can be securely backed-up in case you “lose” your computer or damage it. Most Calendar Apps. will also alert you on up-coming scheduled events, making it easier to keep yourself on track with your daily activities.

There are a variety of Calendar Apps. to download (most of which are free of charge) all over the web, so the first step is to simply download a trusty Calendar App. and familiarize yourself with it. I personally use Apple’s iCal application which can easily sync with my iPhone, letting me always be on top of my game, even when I’m on-the-go. So I would strongly recommend an application which can be synced with your phone.

Several Calendar Apps. that I trust and recommend are, Apple’s iCal, Microsoft’s Windows Calendar, Mozilla’s Sunbird Calendar, and last but not least, Google’s Calendar. I’ve personally tested these out and they all easily let you schedule your daily, monthly, and annual activities, and most can be synced to compatible phones.

2. Understand Your Objectives/Goals - Before you set out on the long journey of reaching your goals, you have to really understand what they are, because a “general” understanding of your goals won’t cut it if you really want to accomplish them. Your goals may vary in size, some goals may be smaller than others, or more important than others, but the constant here is knowing and understanding what they are, and why you have set them for yourself. Only after realizing what objectives are most important to you, then everything will begin to become much clearer, easier to manage, and organize into your life.

I suggest setting your sights on one goal at a time, and after achieving that goal, then focus on the next one. Although you may be as ambitious as I am, you have to remind yourself that you are only one person. You are the creator of your life, but you can also be the destroyer of it, so keep yourself on the ball at all times. And don’t ever let anything stand in the way of you and your goals, remember that those goals are what make you.

Here’s the best practice I’ve come up with, which has often assisted me in understanding my objectives. First, take a sheet of paper (or open up Microsoft Word) and write down all your goals, small, big, long-term, short-term, just all of them (i.e. Buy a MacBook, Buy a Home, Buy some new Shoes, Acquire Google, Become a Silicon Mogul, etc.). Once you’ve done that, read them over and start organizing them in order of which you want the most, to the least one. This will take some time depending on how greedy you got (smile, there’s no shame in wanting good things for yourself).

Now once you’ve looked it over and organized them, take a moment to write under each one why you want it and what it will do for you. This exercise will assist you in actually analyzing and understanding your goals, and put into perspective what they mean to you (don’t be surprised if you trash some of the goals at this stage). After doing this exercise, you have just established a foundation for achieving your goals. Now something that I would really recommend, is to put it away (save it) and read it tomorrow, or within a week from now, allowing you to double check your list with a fresh mindset (maybe you’ll add some more, change it up, or trash even more goals). By better understanding your goals, you will be more motivated and focused on achieving them.

3. Create Mini-Goals - Sometimes the goals that you set for yourself can be quite overwhelming, and at times making it seem as if there’s no end in sight. This negative aspect of a goal will simply daunt over you and wear you completely down, which will eventually lead you into not achieving your goals at all. So to avoid this catastrophe from happening, you need to break up each of your goals into smaller, more manageable pieces.

For example, let’s say that you have had your eye on a beautiful 5 piece living room set, obviously your overall goal is to have the entire set in your home, to enjoy and share with friends and family members. But it maybe simply taking forever to get it, and you currently don’t have any furniture whatsoever in your living room. Well that empty space will only serve to eat away at your motivation, and deteriorate the dream of possibly obtaining the furniture you want. The best remedy is to focus on getting two or three pieces instead of the entire set all at once, this would actually make things easier for you. By simply obtaining even one piece of the set, you will be encouraged to obtain the rest, because you will feel your goal realized and you now know with certainty that it is possible to achieve your full goal, even if it’s one step at a time.

Basically, take the goals you have set for yourself and set smaller achievement points for each one throughout your calender. This will allow for better managing of the goals and will keep you motivated on achieving them.

4. Realistically Schedule Workload - Don’t fool yourself into thinking that something that usually takes a week, will be accomplish by you within a day, that is purely unrealistic. Base your schedule on realistic time frames for accomplishing your tasks. Remember that each task you accomplish is a step closer to achieving your goals, so make sure you keep yourself on track at all times. Hey, we all want to reach our goals sooner than later, but you have to be realistic about things.

It defeats the purpose of being organized if you keep letting things pass you by just because you’re simply re-scheduling everything over and over, due to unrealistic time frames. You could very well suddenly find yourself six months from where you started, on the same exact task you thought would only take you a week in the beginning, and that’s certainly discouraging. If you keep misjudging yourself regarding time frames, then simply keep track of how long things take you in the beginning. Worst case, instead of underestimating time frames for your scheduled tasks, try overestimating them, you’ll always end up happy about your productivity, and soon realize how long each task really takes to accomplish. Overall, schedule your tasks objectively and honestly, because when you’re scheduling for your goals, you’re almost never considering the unexpected. So be smart about what time frames you’re setting for yourself.

5. Track Your Progress - Knowing what you’ve accomplished so far, where you are, and what’s left to be done is very useful and quite important to know. The best method is to track your progress by annual quarters (every three months), this will help out by conveniently breaking down the year for you. I found out the hard way that monthly is way too short and annually is way too long, but quarterly is always just right. It’s enough time to actually see the progress you’re making, and lets you plan ahead. So don’t schedule yourself for only a month or a whole year, best bet is to focus on scheduling yourself every three months. By keeping track of all your accomplishments and activities throughout each quarter, it will assist you immensely on achieving more and working harder for them.

After your first three months you’ll have enough valuable information to easily plan for what’s next. What I personally do is record all my daily set hours for the first three months, it’s a tough task to keep up with, but it lets me know exactly what I’m doing for each accountable hour. This information is extremely valuable, just by doing this I know where I’ve spent the majority of my time on and what improvements I can make going forward. After the second quarter, I can see an increased productivity rate and improvements on my time management, and it only gets better from there. In my third quarter, I’m cutting corners by eliminating anything that is slowing down my productivity. And by my fourth quarter, my goals are being realized and I can plan for more goals. Obviously the time it takes to reach each individual goal will vary depending on what you’re aiming for, but always keep track of what you’re doing as you go forward, because keeping track of your progress will only make things easier for you.

These are simple steps that anyone can do, the trick is actually sticking to it. You must integrate these 5 steps into your daily activities and stay on top of constantly organizing yourself. Soon it’ll become easier for you and less of a chore, because you’ll be too busy happily achieving your goals.