Unlocking True Growth

In this article I am going to teach you an amazing method I use to stay highly productive, achieve goals, and live a happy lifestyle. You have to micro organize — But first, I’m going to tell you a little about myself.

I am a husband, father, amateur MMA fighter, and full time entrepreneur. I also do some coaching & consulting on top of that. We have 3 dogs, and a snake, Archiball WitWicky. We also have a house, and 2 vehicles to maintain all the time. In my free time you can catch me at the gym training, playing guitar, and various other things. I say all this because there’s no possible way that I would be able to maintain such a busy lifestyle if I didn’t micro organize. It’s what helps me perform at maximum efficiency.

What does “Micro Organize” Mean?

Simply put, it means to organize every segment of your life down to its bare bones. Sounds complex right? Don’t worry…It’s not that bad. It’s actually quite simple when you break it down. When you live an unorganized life you willingly set yourself up for constant distraction, lack of time, and a stressful ongoing challenge to maintain a healthy life and relationships. Stress when not mitigated, can kill you.

 

The 5 areas of your life you need to Micro Organize right now.

Now, I have gone through rigorous trial and error to find the best systems to use for these things, and I can say with as much confidence that I have that Google manages most of my life. There are other systems you might prefer, or want to try, but I highly recommend Google. Another big key to my Micro Organize method is that everything I use is completely free. That was something I made a point to achieve when going through trial and error. I also wanted to to feel minimalistic. So this means most everything is on a digital platform.

1. Communications

We communicate on a daily basis. We spend most of our lives doing it so it goes without saying that you need to have efficient ways to properly communicate.

• Email/Gmail – This is almost a dying thing in todays world unless you’re involved in business. However, it’s actually a very efficient method of keeping conversations logged and transferring larger files. Gmail from my experience, is untouchable in this arena, and many others as you’ll see below.
• Google Contacts – It auto syncs with our smartphones. It stores all contact information from birthdays, emails, numbers, job titles, images, and more. It also gives you great grouping abilities to keep your contacts organized.
• Google Voice/Hangouts – Voice gives you the ability to create your very own unique phone number. It’s very handy if you’re in business and you would prefer people have a number other than your personal cell number. Hangouts allows you to have video calls with chat with anyone, and multiple people at a time. It’s great for virtual meetings with screen sharing, coaching sessions, and it helps keep a visual relationship with distant family and friends.
• Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. They’re all great ways to keep in touch with everyone as we are all so connected to the web. Don’t underestimate the power of a quality face to face or phone call though. Don’t get so connected, that you end up disconnected from your relationships. One of the coolest ways I communicate with my friends is by replying with audio or video messages instead of a typical text. It’s much more intimate and works wonders. Give it a try!
• Discord – My personal favorite. It’s made by gamers so it’s super clean, up to date with the times, and easily secured. It’s a chat/call/video based app that allows you to create your own servers and chat rooms.
• Calendly – Gives you the ability to create a programable schedule for your clients to interact with. It can automate your booking processes and put you in control of your time!

2. File Management

• Google Drive – Throw out your filing cabinet, and upgrade to Google Drive. It is a cloud based storage system. It’s free unless you need massive amounts of storage. Even then, it’s still crazy cheap. Keeping your computer, and all your personal files organized is a very important thing. If you get lazy, your computer can get very cluttered. You won’t remember where your files are,  and it will make you feel lost. There are some things that I like to keep a physical copy of so I do keep a very small filing system at home, but again, it’s minimal.

3. Scheduling & Tasks

• Google Calendar – The greatest and most important of all things. The general rule of thumb is “If it’s not on your schedule, it doesn’t exist.” and that’s 100% truth. Especially when you live a busy lifestyle. Most everyone has a hard time remembering things. Using a schedule, and combining it with proper “Time Blocking” skills is a must.
• Google Tasks/Reminders – This system is nice because it’s integrated with Google calendar. It has it’s own app, and allows you to set specific reminders for your general to-do’s.

4. Financial & Goal Tracking

• Strides – This is a goal and habit tracking system. It’s designed to help you break bad habits, develop good ones, and you can also use it to track specific goals/milestones. It’s important to have goals that are measurable so that you can see your progress. Loops is also a great habit tracker for android.
• Goodbudget – Is an envelope budgeting system that allows you to keep your finances organized so you can create an efficient budget that will allow you to control your debt to income ratio better.
• Mint – Is also a budgeting system that allows you to manage your finances online. It provides credit scores, budgeting, bill pay, and a few more things.

5. Project Management

• Trello – Trello is an all around project management power house. It’s by far the best system I have ever used for this purpose. I use it specifically for a special goal setting and tracking method that I created myself. The system provides complete project management and gives you collaboration abilities as well. If you’re interested in learning my personal, highly efficient goal setting and tracking process please reach out to me. I teach this exclusively to my coaching students.
• Evernote – For general notes, collaboration, presentations, projects, and more. Evernote turns all those scratch papers, sticky notes, business cards, etc into digital notes. You can attach images and media, make audio notes, set reminders, make checklists, and so much more. Go explore it!

BONUS

My all time favorite tool, has to be Airtable… It’s such a robust database style tool. It’s helped me micro organize so much of my life and businesses it’s not even funny. With the right imagination and database knowledge, you can craft some insane solutions inside of Airtable for a wide variety of areas in your life. It could apply to virtually every sector I mentioned above, especially project management.

Is That It You Ask?

Negative… These 5 areas are the organizational model I go by to keep my life structured and clutter free mentally, and physically. There are some other very specific things that I do to maintain a highly productive lifestyle. You can get a good understanding of them by reading the following articles I have written below. Or, you can also dive into Operation Optimize and I can personally work with you to help you reach optimal performance in all areas of your life.

• How To Get Organized And Find Balance In Your Life
• 7 Key Investments For A Successful Life.
• Time Blocking – Run Your Schedule, Don’t Let It Run You.
• How To Have A Productive Day, Everyday.

It’s very important that you take the time to read these articles. I have went through years of trial and error for you to find what works best and my systems are very effective for a high performance lifestyle, and I am providing all this knowledge to you for free.

The main takeaway from this post is to take general organization and flood it into every segment of your life and create systems. You want to break everything down, and Micro Organize it. When everything is in it’s place, you no longer have to rely on yourself to remember everything, your life will have less stress, and you will gain back time that can be better spent on valuable things such as building stronger relationships, family, and making fat stacks!

You will also get insane amounts of work done in a much shorter period of time.

As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope this helps you in your life. Please share this with any friends you think it may help also. If you have any questions please feel free to drop a comment below!