1. Write it down.

Writing down your organizing goal makes it more real to you. We tend to stick to our written commitments better than our verbal commitments. Saying you are going to do something is one thing. It creates more resonance with you and a better likelihood that you will stick to your goal if you write it down. Even better, write it down every day from now until you have actually accomplished it.

2. Make it a goal that will make you feel better about yourself.

Think for a moment about the number one thing in your life right now that if you got it organized, would make you feel 10 times better about your life. You know what it is, that one thing that would change how you feel if you got it organized today. Maybe it is an area of your home or of your office. Maybe it is getting your schedule organized or getting your morning routine to go more smoothly.

The reason why it needs to be something that will make you feel better about yourself is because you will be a whole lot more likely to take action on that goal if it is something that will make you feel better about you. It is one thing to be happy that your living room is organized. It is a whole other ballgame to feel better about who you are as a person because you finally got your schedule organized and you are no longer showing up late everywhere.

3. Make it specific.

Writing down a goal like "I want to get my life organized" is not going to help you. Get specific with your goal. The more specific you can make it, the better off you will be. Something along the lines of "I am going to organize my kitchen" is much better and gives you a clear idea of what you are going have actually accomplished once you meet your goal. What exactly does an organized life look like anyway? I know I have not accomplished this one and I am a professional organizer!

The one caution I have here is that you not make your organizing goal too specific. So having a goal of getting the kitchen utensil drawer organized would not be a good one. Setting organizing goals like this means you would be setting a new one every day! Your target here is to have an organizing goal that is general enough so that it is going to take you at least one month to reach it but specific enough so that you have a definite end in sight.

4. Make it measurable.

This goes hand-in-hand with getting specific about your organizing goal. The best way to make your organizing goal measurable is to give it a specific timeframe. So if your goal is to get your kitchen organized, then give yourself a date for when you will have that organizing goal accomplished. Then circle that date on the calendar, put stars on it, whatever you need to do to make that date stand out for you.

My caution on this one: make it a realistic date. Don't overestimate what you can do. You are better off overestimating the time it will take you to get it finished than underestimating it. Yes, there is psychology at work here. If you get your organizing project done in less time than you estimated that it would take you, you will feel better about yourself and about the organizing project. It will also help keep you motivated so that you do more!

5. Believe you can do it and get excited about it!

If you don't believe that you can accomplish your organizing goal, guess what, you won't be able to do it. And if you know with certain knowledge that you can do it, that's even better. When you know, and I mean really KNOW you can do something, you get the power to do it. If this is an organizing goal that you have set for yourself repeatedly but that you have yet to follow through on, ask yourself why. If it is a goal that isn't really all that important to you, if you can't get excited about accomplishing it, then don't bother because you're not going to get it done anyway. The way that you stay motivated towards achieving any goal in your life is by getting excited about it, by getting excited about how your life is going to look and feel different once that goal is accomplished. If you can't work up some sort of passion for this organizing goal, pick a new goal.