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Figuring out how to get your life together can feel like an impossible challenge.
And that’s on a good day. How are you supposed to get control of your life when it feels like the entire world is falling apart around you?
If it feels like your life is in a bit of a mess and there’s no way out, that’s totally okay. Believe me, you’re not alone.
In fact, one of the main reasons I wanted to write this article was to help myself try and get things back on track. Most days, I’ve been feeling like I’m just reacting to everything around me and trying to keep my head above water.
For me, the way through it has been to take tiny, measured steps each day to bring some clarity and control to my life. Each step is small enough to be manageable and give me a goal – but together, they form a pattern that I think is really helping me get my life together.
So with all that said, I’d like to share with you this list I made that has helped me feel so much more positive about life and the future.
I really hope you find it helpful, and it gives you some motivation to get out of your rut and start kicking some life goals.
Organization & planning
1. Make lists and keep notes
One of the simplest and most effective ways to get your life together is to start using tools designed for organization.
The most straightforward place to start is with a to-do list app. Personally, I use Google Keep, but there are many options, like Evernote and even Google Docs.
If there’s something you need to get done, just add it to the list. And when you complete the task, tick it off and feel the satisfaction of watching it disappear.
I use lists to track all sorts of things. Bills to pay, shopping lists, ideas to explore, and personal chores that I need to get done.
It sounds so basic and obvious, but I honestly just never committed to it before, and it’s really changed my life for the better.
The other big thing I’ve done is to keep notes of all the ideas, goals, issues, and successes that I experience.
Some people might call it journaling, but I just have a document for each category I care about. For example, “things I want to achieve this year,” or “bad habits I want to break,” and then I just add new notes when I think of things.
More than anything else, list-making and note-taking have helped me feel in control of the chaos around me.
2. Analyze your habits
Making an honest list of all your positive and negative habits is a powerful way to help get your life together.
It took me about a day to think about everything I do (and why I do it) and come up with a good and bad list.
To be honest, I didn’t even go too much beyond that and figure out how to eliminate the bad habits and increase the good ones.
Just writing the list made me super conscious of all the harmful habits I’ve developed. And now I feel guilty every time I find myself about to repeat a destructive pattern.
As an example, analyzing my habits helped me identify the scary amount of hours I was burning each week watching YouTube videos. As a result, I’ve cut it right back without even trying.
3. Use a calendar app & email
A calendar app has also been a valuable tool for me to get some control back into my life.
I already used a calendar to track work meetings, and I’ve expanded it into every aspect of my personal life. It basically becomes a reminder tool for anything I need to get done.
If you need to get something done by a particular date, put a reminder in your calendar. If it’s a more significant thing (like a school or work project), remind yourself when you need to start the project and when it needs to be finished so that you don’t leave things to the last minute.
Because I’m tracking pretty much everything I do in a calendar, it’s even become a great motivational tool for me. I can look back over the past month and see all the stuff I did and the things I achieved.
For example, all my workout sessions are color-coded in the calendar so I can see all my excellent work at a single glance.
4. Organize everything in your life
Are you constantly struggling to find things because there are piles of crap everywhere or drawers crammed full of random stuff?
Organizing everything you own into logical and well-thought-out places feels fantastic. It’s like decluttering on steroids, and you can feel your brain relax as you do it.
It’s also an opportunity to go through everything you own and throw out or give away all the stuff you don’t need or never use.
I’m not suggesting you become a minimalist (that’s really not my thing). But getting rid of all the useless stuff you don’t need will create space for better organizing all the things you do use (and need to be able to find.)
Another thing I did was identify all my everyday tasks that were needlessly difficult and figure out a better solution. For example, I’m constantly opening Amazon boxes, but I never had a sharp knife handy. I bought one and put it in a convenient spot, so I always know where it is.
5. Clean your spaces
It sounds simple, but cleaning your house, car, work desk, closets, and everything else will have a substantial positive impact on your life.
And once everything is clean, you’re much more incentivized to keep it clean because it feels so good.
Another advantage of cleaning is that it forces you to declutter and throw out all the useless stuff you don’t need.
And if any of this sounds like too big an undertaking, consider how much more productive you’ll be when your environment is clean and tidy.
Passions & dreams
6. Find out what you’re passionate about
A huge reason that many people feel lost and directionless is that they don’t have a passion in life.
The first thing to say about passions is that you’re not a failure if you don’t have something that you’re passionate about. Some people don’t need a hobby, job, or cause that they’re obsessed with to feel fulfilled and satisfied with their life.
And for others, their passion might be something perfectly “ordinary,” like spending time with their family, and they’ve never really considered it a passion.
But if you feel like you’re searching for something to get you motivated and out of bed every morning, then maybe you’re missing a passion in life.
For many people, the ideal passion is something that they can do that also combines work. There’s no better feeling than doing what you love most in the world and getting paid for it at the same time.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always going to be possible. If there’s no way for you to combine your passion with your career, then the trick is to think about ways for your job to support your passion.
This might be as simple as finding a job that gives you more time or flexibility to pursue your passion. Or perhaps it’s the ability to save some more money to put towards your passion.
How do you go about finding your passion?
If you’re trying to find your passion, the most straightforward place to start is to make a list of all the things you enjoy doing. Is there anything on the list that gets you really excited? If you had more time to devote to it, would it make a positive impact on your life?
Another good idea is to think about what you’re good at. Is there something you do that other people value that could evolve into a passion? Adding value to other people’s lives with your skills can be all the passion you need to stick with something.
And finally, you just need to be open to trying new things and new experiences – especially if they take you outside your comfort zone.
If a friend invites you to an activity you’ve never tried before – say yes! Even if you know you’ll suck at it, you might stumble into your next great passion in life.
I have a friend who was invited to a Japanese flower arranging class. She was super intimidated by the vibe and almost didn’t go. Two years later, she’s running her own courses and making an excellent income from them.
7. Figure out what you’re good at
Figuring out what you’re good at is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.
Why? Because simply being good at something will automatically provide you with a sense of purpose, direction, and confidence in your life.
If you hate your job and need a complete career change, figuring out what you’re good at can help you find your way.
However, just because you have a skill, it doesn’t mean that you have any obligation to keep doing it or try to turn it into a career.
How do you figure out what you’re good at?
This seems like a simple question, but there’s more to it than you might think.
The first step is to write down all the stuff that you know you’re good at. Then, you need to expand the net and add in all the other opportunities that your skill opens up for you.
Let’s say you’re good at writing. Suddenly, one list item can become many because you might include blog article writing, copywriting for marketing, technical writing, short story writing, etc.
Also, make sure you include your more intangible skills. For example, what if all your friends have told you that ‘you’re easy to talk to.’ It’s not a great leap to think that you might be an excellent communicator and train yourself to turn that skill into a new career opportunity.
8. Be honest with yourself
When you’re thinking about your passions and dreams, it’s essential to be really honest with yourself.
It sounds obvious, but hear me out. People convince themselves to do all sorts of things in life that deep down they know don’t make them happy.
The classic example of this is staying in a high-paying job you really hate because you can’t handle the idea of letting go of all the money.
Sure, you drive a nice car, but at what cost? You hate every waking minute of every day, and the car almost feels like it’s laughing at you.
Imagine a world where you got paid half as much but loved every day and felt deeply satisfied with your life.
9. Be realistic
Another thing it’s important to spell out is that you need to be realistic about your passions and dreams.
There’s no point chasing after a passion, only to discover that it’s not what you thought or it’s entirely beyond your ability to achieve.
Plenty of research and talking to other people can help you determine if your new passion is everything you thought it would be.
And being realistic about your age, height, skills, experience, and personality will help you make an honest assessment about whether a particular passion is compatible with you.
By all means, set the bar high and go for it, but just make sure you’re not setting yourself up for complete failure.
The best way to make sure you don’t fall into the trap is to set meaningful goals that can be broken down into discrete, actionable steps.
That way, you can clearly see the path forward and anticipate the roadblocks in front of you.
I’ll discuss more about goal setting in the next section.
Goal setting
10. Define short, medium, and long term goals
Once you vaguely know where you want to go, it’s time to get down and dirty with goal setting.
This is how you’ll figure out how much effort you need to put into your new passion or career and how far away your goal is from actually being a reality.
The best way I’ve found to manage goal setting is to break them down into short, medium, and long-term goals.
The long-term goals are the overall thing you want to achieve and can be very high level. For example, your goal might be ‘Next year, I want to make 100,000 dollars.’
The short and medium-term goals are all the things that feed into the overall goal. They are smaller, discrete goals that you need to achieve to make the long-term goals happen.
- Short-term goals should be achievable within a few weeks at the most.
- Medium-term goals should be possible within 6 months at the most.
- Long-term goals can take as long as they need and might be years in the making.
Of course, you can use goals in your day-to-day life without a larger objective in mind. For example, a short-term goal might simply be to eat healthy food for a week.
11. Make your goals actionable & achievable
Your goals must be structured in a way that will help you achieve them.
If your goal isn’t actionable, then the chances of achieving it drops dramatically. You need to make yourself as accountable as possible to give yourself the best chance of success.
A popular goal-setting framework is known as SMART.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and anchored within a Time frame.
There are lots of resources online that can teach you how to write SMART goals.
My two main takeaways when it comes to writing goals are:
- You need to be very specific when articulating your goals. Use objective verbs that make clear you need to do something to achieve the goal.
- It’s important to clearly define the goals’ success (this is measurable in the SMART framework).
12. Make sure your goals motivate you
If your goals don’t motivate you, how will you force yourself to put in all the hard work needed to achieve them?
Your goals must give you a sense of purpose and aren’t just tasks on an arbitrary list.
For example, let’s say your long-term goal is to publish a book by the end of next year. What does publishing the book actually mean for you? What will it allow you to do or change in your life? How will people be better off because of it?
If the answer isn’t clear, take some time out with yourself until these questions can be answered clearly. It will massively help you to get up in the morning and face your goals when things get hard (and they will.)
13. Reward yourself for success
It goes without saying that achieving your goals is going to take a lot of hard work.
It’s essential to plan how you’re going to achieve your goals and how you’ll reward yourself when you make it happen!
In many cases, achieving your long-term goals will be so fulfilling and potentially life-changing that the best reward will be built right in.
But there’s no harm in really treating yourself after you’ve put in so much effort. When you eventually get your book published, you definitely deserve that tropical vacation you’ve been dreaming about.
Just make sure your rewards align with the amount of work you’ve put in to achieve the goal. Short-term goals deserve small rewards, and long-term goals deserve big rewards.
Work habits
14. Get up early
Getting up early is a great way to set yourself up for success. You can use the early morning hours to get some quiet time in before anyone else wakes up, and you have no choice but to be social.
Getting things done at home, work, exercising, and meditating are all good ways of using your early mornings wisely.
There are plenty of people online who advocate getting up at 4am to get the early morning hours to yourself. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then go for it!
Personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse – 6:00 am gives me a good balance of extra productive time and reasonable sleeping hours.
Just remember, getting up super early only works if you’re going to bed early enough. Otherwise, you’ll just be dragging yourself through the day exhausted and out of energy.
Most experts recommend getting between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, but it varies between individuals. The most important thing is to get enough quality sleep so that you’re not an unproductive zombie during the day.
15. Don’t procrastinate
Procrastination is a widespread (and annoying) habit that almost everyone suffers from at certain times.
The two most common reasons for procrastination are feeling bored of life, and fear of failing at your task or goal.
The good news is, if you follow all the tips in this guide around goal management and attitude, you’ll be much less likely to suffer from procrastination!
If you’re really struggling with procrastination, my advice is to replace whatever it is you’d planned to do with some very low-priority tasks that you are guaranteed to complete.
Just make whatever you choose something that will enrich your life somehow and tangentially help you with your overall goals. Obvious examples include cleaning your spaces or organizing all your stuff.
They’re not challenging tasks, but they are rewarding, and they might be enough to drag you out of your procrastinating mindset.
But, at the end of the day, you have to be accountable for the goals that you’ve set yourself. Sometimes you just need to suck it up and force yourself to get started.
I always find that as soon as I have an actionable goal in front of me and just start, the rest becomes much easier.
16. Work hard
I guess it goes without saying that if you want to achieve anything in life, you have to work really hard.
But how can you be sure that your work ethic is on point?
The best way is by being totally honest with how much effort you’re putting into the tasks in front of you each day.
Like many other things in this list, it’s about holding yourself accountable for the hours you put in and ensuring that the work you’re doing aligns with your goals.
17. Keep a schedule
The simplest way I’ve found to keep myself accountable for how much work I’m getting done is to keep a work schedule and stick to it.
I first spent a couple of weeks recording the number of hours that I worked to get a feel for what I think is a reasonable effort.
Then, I just blocked out the equivalent amount of hours in my calendar each day and made sure I showed up to get it done.
For some people, blocking out specific hours of the day is the best way to schedule work.
I find that I need the flexibility to do the work when I feel like it throughout the day. The time the work happens is negotiable, but the number of hours each workday is not.
18. Learn to focus or practice
Showing up at your desk (or wherever) to get work done is excellent – you’re halfway to success already!
But how do you make sure that the actual work you get done is high quality and done as quickly and efficiently as it can be?
Deliberate practice
If your goals involve learning to do something new and complex, efficiency and high-quality output aren’t your goals. You’re going to suck hard at whatever you’re learning, so you need to find another metric for success.
The best way to learn new things is by engaging in deliberate practice. This is how you can get better results in less time and make sure you’re getting the most out of your work.
Focus
Learning how to focus on the task at hand is one of those skills that sounds super simple but takes a long time to master.
There are many apps you can use that will help you learn how to focus, but there are a few fundamentals that have to be in place first.
The most important thing you need is an environment free of distractions. If you’re half-watching Netflix or talking to your partner or kids, it’s never going to be a productive work time.
You also need to be well-rested, have a comfortable place to work, and make sure you get up and take a break every hour or so.
Finally, you also need to recognize when your brain is fried for the day and walk away. I’ve lost count of the number of hours I’ve spent wasting time trying to focus when I’m too mentally tired.
Attitude
19. Manage your emotions
When you’re trying to get your life together, it’s essential to manage your emotional state.
Things are never going to turn out how you want them to all the time. There will be days when everything goes right, and other times where it feels like everything is falling apart around your ears.
When things are going well, you need to take a moment and celebrate how awesome you are. It’s also vital that you don’t take your foot off the gas when things are going well – keep working just as hard on yourself and your goals.
When things aren’t going so well, it’s important not to let defeat and anger get the better of you. Once anger or disappointment takes hold in your mind, it’s a lot harder to recover and get back to the business of being awesome.
Getting emotional about things is also very unproductive. It wastes a lot of valuable time you could be spending on achieving your goals.
20. Learn how you react to different situations
The first step in learning to control your emotions is to understand how you respond to different situations.
Learning how you react to different situations is something you can only do by paying attention and noticing how your emotions change as things happen.
Once you get an idea about how your emotions react during specific experiences, it’ll become easier for you to take control.
Identify and name your emotions
Identifying and putting a name to your emotional experiences is a potent tool.
It allows you to look at your emotions objectively and rationally rather than just being swept up in how you feel with no knowledge of the how or why.
It also lets you assign a clear cause to your emotional state and identify patterns in your behavior.
Once you consciously see the same patterns occurring repeatedly, it’s so much easier to take the following steps to break yourself out of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, or disappointment.
Reframe the situation and boost your mood
Once you understand your emotional states and what triggers them, there are things you can do to help get your mind back on track.
The first thing to do is try to reframe how you think about the situation. For example, imagine going into a social situation and feeling anxious because no one will talk to you. With practice, you can reframe how you think about the situation as a chance to meet new people and improve your social skills.
The next step is to do something which boosts your mood. You could go for a walk, eat your favorite food or listen to some of your favorite music for a while.
Once you’ve reframed how you look at the situation and boosted how you feel, it’s much easier to take control over how things play out rather than being pushed around by your emotions.
21. Accept the things you can’t change
A big part of getting your life together is learning to accept things that you don’t control and can’t change.
Your time and energy are much better spent on things you can influence rather than getting emotional about situations you have no control over.
Accepting things you can’t change also helps with letting go of the past. Once something has happened, there’s very little point dwelling on why or how the situation could have been different.
The best way to learn how to accept what you can’t change is to focus on what you can change now and put all your energy into that.
22. Don’t expect everything at once
When you’re chasing your dreams, it’s easy to get disappointed when things aren’t happening as quickly as you’d like.
You mustn’t expect everything at once and understand how to take small steps towards your goals.
The reality is that almost any serious goal worth achieving will be super hard and take a lot of time. If you want significant results, it’s unrealistic to think that you can get them without working hard and putting in a lot of hours.
This is why short, medium, and long-term goals are so important. They give you more chances to see tangible progress and get some wins on the board along the road to your overall objectives.
23. Don’t be afraid of failure and always learn from it
Learning how to accept failure is another significant part of getting your life together.
If you’re doing something new or challenging, you’re going to fail a bunch of times along the way. Hey, you might even end up failing in your overall long-term goal.
If you can accept that failure is inevitable, then the only thing you can do is make sure you learn from your failures and don’t repeat them.
If you constantly fail at something in the same way, something serious is missing from your understanding of the problem, and you need to take a few steps back.
When you fail at something, the most important thing to understand is why. What were you missing that caused you to fail? Was it a lack of understanding? Lack of practice or effort? Unintended consequences of your actions?
Once you know how to avoid the same mistake again, you’ve learned a valuable lesson that will help you take two steps forward before you take another step back.
24. Stop making excuses
Excuses are how people justify not taking responsibility for their lives or how they explain away the problems that are holding them back.
You know how it goes. You blame everyone else but yourself and make up some convoluted story to explain why this time is different from other times when things went wrong.
The problem with excuses is once you start using them, it becomes a habit. Behavior patterns like this are hard to break out of because your brain loves how easy they are to use! Once something becomes an automatic reaction in your life, stopping it can be really difficult.
If you want to get more done and control your life, stop making excuses for everything that doesn’t go according to plan.
25. Be grateful
On the other end of the spectrum, being grateful for all the positive things you have in your life is a great way to enhance your wellbeing.
Gratitude is the antidote to negative emotions like anger, envy, jealousy, and bitterness because it helps you appreciate how fortunate you are.
If you can train your brain to look for things that make you grateful every day, your brain will slowly learn to focus on the positive and more easily reject the negative.
Gratitude is also a great motivation booster. When something goes right in your life, taking the step of recognizing how great it makes you feel will motivate you to keep pushing harder.
Physical & mental health
26. Exercise
The benefits of exercise for mental health are well documented, and it’s a great way to show yourself some love and give your life that extra edge.
Once you start exercising regularly, it becomes a positive habit that starts to impact other areas of your life as well.
Regular exercise reduces stress and anxiety by releasing endorphins into your brain. Exercise also helps you sleep better at night, which is how your brain repairs itself.
Exercise is a routine, which trains your brain to be more consistent and reliable. It makes you better at sticking with things because exercise is one of those rare areas where consistency really does bring great results over time.
Exercise also helps build your discipline muscles so that other challenging tasks are easier to accomplish.
27. Eat well & drink plenty of water
Eating well is a significant part of getting your life together because it’s vital for brain health. Eating lots of healthy, nutritious foods will give you all the energy and nutrients you need to succeed at everything else in your life.
Drinking plenty of water is also great because it helps flush toxins from your body, promotes weight loss, and even increases your energy levels.
28. Practice being present in the moment
The art of living in the moment is also known as mindfulness.
When you’re being mindful, all of your thoughts are focused on the present moment, and you’re not worrying about the past or trying to predict the future.
It’s very easy to spend most of your time worrying about the mistakes you’ve made in the past and planning for a future that may or may not happen.
However, this type of thinking stops you from living life to the fullest.
You miss out on appreciating what’s happening to you right now because you’re stuck in the past or constantly looking ahead to what could be.
People who have trained themselves to live more in the moment have been shown to have less stress, greater optimism, and deeper overall satisfaction with their lives.
Relationships
29. Nurture your relationships
Nurturing your relationships means putting in the time and effort to stay in touch with the people you care about the most.
It’s easy for your friends, family members, and co-workers to all fall by the wayside when you get too caught up in your hectic life.
It’s important to remind yourself that your relationships are an essential source of happiness, joy, and fulfillment. If you can stay in touch with the most important people to you, it will make a positive difference to how happy you feel every day.
Maintaining positive relationships also helps you to be more successful.
Positive relationships act as a form of social support, making it easier to cope with life’s challenges. When you’re struggling at work or having some other type of problem, the people you trust the most can help you through it.
Positive relationships also motivate and inspire us to be our best selves, which helps us reach new heights in every area of life.
30. Remove toxic people from your life
Toxic people are always negative and never make any positive contributions to how your life unfolds.
Whether it’s a family member, friend, or co-worker, removing someone who isn’t good for you will allow you to improve how happy, successful, and fulfilled you feel daily.
It can be hard to let go of the past, but the truth is that toxic people are holding you back from being your best self.
31. Ask for help
No one is expecting you to get your life together all by yourself.
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It’s actually a powerful and courageous act.
When you’re struggling with something big or small in your life and don’t know how to get things back on track, asking someone else for their advice can make all the difference between success and failure.
The people who care about you will always want to do what they can to help you out when life gets tough because that’s how supportive relationships work.
The same goes when you need guidance or advice to learn new skills or achieve your goals. Most people are happy and proud to share their knowledge and expertise with you when you ask them.
32. Seek constant feedback
The best way to improve in pretty much any area of your life is to ask for feedback from other people on how you can improve.
This can apply just as much to your personality as your technical skills.
For example, if you want to learn how to be a better listener or speak up more, ask the people around you for their honest opinion on your strengths and weaknesses.
Many of us tend to shy away from seeking feedback because we’re afraid of what others might have to say about our flaws.
However, if there’s something you need help with that is holding you back from being happy and prosperous, then asking other people how you can improve feels like a brilliant move.
You might also like: How to read people: 20 proven psychological tricks
33. Give your knowledge freely
I’ve already discussed how important it is that you ask for help when you need it.
In the same vein, you should also be generous with your own knowledge and expertise when other people ask for help.
Not only is it good karma to share your knowledge, but you can meet some of the most interesting (and valuable) people in your life.
Giving your time and advice is also a great way to hone your own skills, so it’s a win-win situation.
Financial health
34. Make a financial plan
Making a financial plan is how you get your life together when it comes to money, and you don’t have to have a high income to have financial goals.
By creating a financial plan that’s realistic and achievable, you can start to feel more in control of how you spend your money and save for the future.
Financial planning can be as simple or complex as you want to make it, so long as the process helps you use your money in a way that makes sense for your lifestyle.
Worrying about money is one of the most significant stressors you can have in your life. Having a solid financial plan can help ease a lot of that anxiety.
Identifying specific financial goals will also help motivate and inspire you to achieve your financial dreams.
35. Have a budget
A financial plan allows you to track your long-term financial goals, but a budget helps monitor your day-to-day spending.
Creating a budget doesn’t have to be complicated.
At the very minimum, you should track how much money comes in and how much goes out each month. That way, you know exactly how much is left over after all your expenses are covered.
It’s a good idea to take things one step further and create categories of spending to get a clearer picture of how much you spend.
Simple categories like how much you spend on rent, how much goes to groceries, and how much is spent on entertaining and discretionary purchases is an excellent place to start.
If nothing else, it will help you identify any areas where you can save more money.
36. Delay gratification
We’re used to having everything we want at our fingertips, and anything we could possibly want is instantly available in today’s world.
On top of that, credit cards and other financial services encourage us to buy now and pay for it later.
This is great, but if you’re not careful, it can lead to debt and bad financial habits that are hard to break.
Delaying gratification is a great skill to have when it comes to how you manage your money.
Wherever possible, delay buying things you don’t really need until you can save up the money you need to buy it.
This might seem obvious, but how often do you actually put this into practice?
37. Don’t let material possessions define your happiness
A lot of people make the mistake of connecting their happiness and success to material possessions.
It makes sense because advertising constantly reinforces the idea that the things you buy will make you happy.
However, this mindset can be incredibly destructive. It’s easy to become trapped in the cycle of chasing happiness through material possessions and spending money on things that don’t really matter.
What’s truly important in life are your relationships, how happy you feel, and how healthy you are.
I’m not about to tell you that money isn’t important. It totally is, and it’s a tool that can help you have a wonderful life.
But at the end of the day, how much you have in your bank account doesn’t need to define how happy or successful you are as a person.
