Spend Your Time Doing the Things You Want

What is it that you want out of life right now? A successful business? A romantic partner? An organized home? A vacation?

Professional Organizer, Alaia Williams, shares her 6 favorite tips for making time for the things you really want out of life.

1. Grab a piece of paper, a journal, or open up a new document on your computer. Ask yourself, "what's taking up my time?" Make a list. Here is an example of things you might include: work, time with your spouse or kids, time with other family, time with friends, volunteer commitments, spiritual development, errands, home improvement, etc.

2. Examine your list. Your list reflects who you are - but is that who you want to be?

What do you want for your life? Do you wish you could adopt a dog, yet you have a schedule that keeps you away from home 18 hours a day? Do you share with your friends how much you want to have a "special someone" in your life and yet you don't leave room for dating?

3. Take time to carefully plan out what you can scale back on or cut out entirely so that you can create room in your life for the things that you want. For example: if you really want to take a trip to Argentina you may need to put in more hours at work, curb any unnecessary spending, and apply for a passport.

4. Turn these things you want into tangibles? Ask yourself, what would one small step be this week to get me closer to my dream?

5. Figure out what you need to do to get what you want.
Turn the list of things you need to do into goals and priorities. Visit my blog for more tips on how to do this.

6. Create milestones and deadlines for your goals.
Tell people you trust about what you want to create accountability and support for yourself. Dream about it, but make sure you back those dreams up with actions. We're given 24 hours in a day. Leverage your time.

Alaia Williams is a Professional Organizer who loves helping people create spaces they can feel good about. You can find out more about Alaia at her website oneorganizedlife.com and get more organizing tips at the One Organized Life Blog .


Photo by Margalit Ward