If you often feel a little chaotic, or that you struggle with organisation in general, you’re not broken, and you’re not destined to be unorganised forever, you just haven’t found the right system yet. 

Being ‘naturally unorganised’ is definitely a struggle. You see people around you with their lives seemingly in order and you think it’s never going to happen for you. 

BUT it’s possible to get your life in order. Organisation is a skill, not a personality trait, and it can 100% be taught. Here, you are going to get simple, low-pressure systems to help you get more organised without stressing you out. 

Why Traditional Planning Systems Don’t Work For Everyone

If you’ve ever tried to get your life in order (er, hello the 10 unused planners thrown in every drawer!) then you will know how stressful it can be to stick to a system. 

Trying to get organised usually goes something like this: 

• You feel unorganised 
• You tell yourself this has to stop and you need to get your life in order 
• You go crazy and purchase lots of planning tools online and vow to start tomorrow 
• You get overwhelmed with all the new stuff and just go back to your old ways again

You see, rigid routines don’t account for all the little things that happen in our lives that are out of our control. But aside from that, if you’re not used to being super organised, you can’t expect yourself to change overnight. Organisation is made up of a bunch of small habits and habits take time to form. That’s why you need to take it easy on yourself and adopt organisational methods that are easy to implement and even easier to stick to. 

What Makes A Planning System Easy

In order to make a planning system easy to stick to, you need to take all of the stress and maintenance out of it. You need something that requires you to make minimal decisions, something that is low maintenance, something that’s forgiving, and something that works for you, even on your low-energy days when you can’t be bothered. 

But the number one tip I can give to you to take away is: MAKE IT VISIBLE

If your organisation method gets planned out meticulously, and then you shove all your ideas in a drawer, you’ll never see it again. Make sure it’s front and centre and hard to ignore. 

We are going to go through some of the methods you could adopt now. So buckle up and prepare to get organised once and for all!

Planning System One: The One Notebook Method

Most people overcomplicate their organisational systems. There are so many apps, software, and physical planners available that it can be very easy to have one for each area of your life. But then all of a sudden you’re losing track of your trackers, and the very things that were meant to make you feel organised have quite the opposite effect. 

These are the downsides of having too many apps. They might all individually do a perfect job of tracking their specialist area, but keeping track of your trackers shouldn’t be a chore. 

This is where the benefit of having a single central notebook comes into play. It’s simple. But it’s effective. And it’s completely personalised.

Take a simple notebook, decide the life areas you need to track (keep this minimal, you don’t want to overwhelm yourself) and create sections in the notebook to track those specific areas of your life. I’ve written a whole post on how to use the one notebook method here. Go and check it out!

Planning System Two: Visible Weekly Focus

Let’s face it, daily to-do lists can feel overwhelming. You forget to plan for a day or two, and your life feels like it’s gone down the toilet. 

Instead of worrying about planning out every single day, think about your weekly goals instead. Choose 3-5 priorities to focus on and make sure they are visible to you every day (a whiteboard in your kitchen, a list pinned to your fridge, reminders set on your phone). Whichever way you decide to keep track of these is up to you. And these don’t have to be anything crazy. 

Just simple things like:

• Go food shopping
• Post birthday cards 
• Book the car for an MOT
• Pick up prescription

These are not overwhelming tasks. But they could easily be forgotten. So making a few priorities for the week, and making them visible in your home will ensure that you don’t miss them. Find some time on a Sunday (or whatever day works best for you) to think about the week ahead and what you need to achieve. Write a little list, and then get on with your life. It’s super simple. 

Planning System Three: Brain Dump and Sort

There are days or weeks when you just might not have the energy to keep an organised routine. Then all of a sudden everything is on top of you, and you just need an emergency organisation system that’s going to help you get through the day. 

This is what I like to call the ‘Brain Dump and Sort’. This is perfect for when you have a million thoughts, chores, jobs and worries circling your brain, and you don’t know where to start. 

Take a piece of paper, and just write. Write down everything that you’re thinking until your head is absolutely clear. 

Once everything is down on paper, start organising it into things you can action, things that aren’t important, and things you can’t change. 

Things that you can’t change, cross them out – they’re not worth worrying about. The things that aren’t important or don’t have a looming deadline can go towards the bottom of the list, and the absolutely essential urgent tasks and jobs can go at the top. 

Now you have a to-do list, organised in priority order, and hopefully, a much clearer head. 

If you feel this list is still overwhelming, try and break out the tasks into different days of the coming week. Reserve 2-3 essential, urgent tasks for today. Those that are still important but not as urgent can be planned into tomorrow, and the others later on in the week. 

Planning System Four: Time Blocking For Beginners

It’s very likely in the big year of 2025 you’ve heard of time blocking (or have you been living under a rock?) But, a lot of people make time blocking feel like it’s complicated, or only for the truly hardcore organised people. 

But here’s a secret… it’s one of the easiest methods to keep you on track, and you can start right now. 

Time blocking is essentially the opposite of multi-tasking (surely we all know by now that multi-tasking doesn’t exist anyway, but that’s another blog post for another time). 

Instead of trying to do two or more things at a time, you focus instead on ONE single task, for a pre-determined amount of time, in the pure effort to get that one thing finished, or at least a big chunk of progress taken towards it. 

Time blocking works best when you follow this format:

• Make a list of all the things you need to get done
• Work out how long roughly every task will take
• Figure out how much time you have free to get these tasks done
• Slot each task into a time block and focus on that (and that only!) for the pre-determined amount of time

A couple of quick tip for time blocking is to ensure that you plan in time for breaks. If you know you need to focus on something for an hour, but that you have a 15 minute break coming up afterwards, it gives you something to look forward to, and stops you from getting distracted. Also, you’re in control of your day and you probably have a good understanding of when your energy levels peak. So make sure you plan in high energy activities for when you know you’re going to be energetic, and low energy activities for when you know you’ll be tired. 

Pomodoro timers can also really help with this. You can find out more about the Pomodoro Method here. 

How To Stick To A Planning System When You’re Inconsistent

No matter how you decide to start organising yourself when you feel like you’re not naturally organised, the best thing you can do is to stop restarting from scratch every time you feel like you’ve fallen off the bandwagon. 

Instead, adopt a flexible easy system which you can pick back up at any time, which is low maintenance, and which ensures you get the basics done. This is about making progress, not about perfection. It’s also not about making yourself feel bad. 

How To Choose The Right Planning System For You

The key thing to do is ask yourself some questions.

• Do I like structure or freedom?
• Do I plan better weekly or daily?
• Do I need visual or written planning?

It’s fine if it’s a mixture of all of these, but getting an understanding of your preferences means you’re working with your strengths, not against them. 

Final Thoughts: Organisation CAN Feel Easy

Being organised is supposed to be a way of supporting yourself, not a prison to make yourself feel bad. Start thinking of all the ways being a little more organised can benefit your life, but most importantly don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t look perfect. Start small instead of launching into a complete life overhaul, and you will see some progress almost straightaway. This will then help you take the next steps. 

And if you need any more help with organisation, this site is full of tonnes of articles which can help you!