Journal Prompts to Organize Your Life

Take some time today to reset and organize your life with these 10 journal prompts!

These past few months I’ve been so focused on passing my exam that I’ve put off many other projects and hobbies. However, I just passed and received my certification!

Now that I have that goal out of the way, I need to refocus and reset my life! With this, I’ve been planning on how to spend some time on all the projects and hobbies that I’ve been putting off.

I’ve created some journal prompts of the questions I typically ask myself when trying to declutter my thoughts and my environment. I hope these can help you as well!

1. What are your organization goals for this month?

The first step in organizing your life is to determine which direction you need to follow. To find your direction, you need to create measurable goals for you to achieve this month.

Make sure to include a variety of goals. Write down simple decluttering tasks to build up momentum and increase your confidence.

Also, include one or two (or more depending on what you believe you can achieve this month!) challenging organization goals.

2. What is your #1 time-waster?

Most advice you will hear about productivity has to do with working on the actual activity.

Whether it be focusing on staying disciplined or attempting to increase motivation, this mindset has you focus solely on the task at hand.

In order to organize your life, you should focus on how to shift your mindset towards the distractions. And no! I’m not saying to get distracted!

What I mean is that while you are trying to focus hard on doing your tasks, you should also focus hard on eliminating distractions. 

While we do work, it’s so easy to tell yourself that you’ll only go on your phone for a few seconds at a time or play a show in the background.

These distractions prolong getting your work done, so you need to find a way that works best for you in eliminating these distractions.

More questions to support this journal prompt:

• How do you plan on doing less of this distracting activity each day?
• Will you only allow it after you do your other daily tasks?
• Will you be stricter and do a time limit? (Ex. Only 1-2 hours a day)

3. Which sections of your home or life do you need to organize?

A cluttered environment can equal a cluttered mind.

Write down each section of your home that you need to clean and/or declutter.

For each day of next week, assign each day to tackle each section.

Once you have those penciled into your schedule, break down how you plan to declutter each section.

4. What deadlines do you have coming up this month?

Organize your schedule to reflect these deadlines. This prompt will require you to prioritize certain tasks.

Your activities should be spread out to give yourself some time to complete the task by the appropriate deadline.

Try to spread this in a way where you only need to do a little bit each day. This way you would feel overwhelmed, and you will also notice the compounding effect this can create.

5. What processes can you set up to streamline your everyday tasks?

Instead of doing a massive cleaning session every weekend, find ways that you can create a process to automatically keep your place tidy.

For instance, every time you receive a package, make it a habit to open the package right away and recycle the plastic or cardboard box.

You can also do some of the following:

• As Marie Kondo explains in her book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” make sure every item has its home. Once you finish using an item, always make sure to return it to its place!
• Every night for 10 minutes, write down the tasks you need to do the next day.
• Set certain days to meal prep for the week.

6. What are the 10 important projects you hope to complete by next year?

Write down your 10 significant yet not time-urgent tasks.

These tasks should be things that you’ve been meaning to do for a while but never made some time to get them done.

After writing these down, plan out how you will now pencil in some time to work on these tasks to completion.

7. Envision your most organized self.

What does that look like?

What steps can you take to get closer to this vision?

Take these steps and schedule them into your calendar.

8. Why do you want to organize?

Knowing why and reminding yourself of your reasons will help you stay motivated towards your goals.

For instance, you may want more time to focus on other hobbies instead of worrying about constantly reorganizing.

It’s important to be fully honest about this to make a difference. Other than the common “I want to feel less stressed” reasoning, don’t forget to include some specific reasons.

One may be a weird hobby you have that you wish you have more time for. Or it may be that you just want to feel cool because you seem to have your life together.

By all means, whatever it is – write down your honest reasons to push yourself towards your goals!

Don’t worry! When you write these down, this list will only be for your eyes anyway. Do your best to try to check this list daily.

9. Why aren’t you as organized as you want to be?

Sometimes you need to go deeper to find out a solution that works.

What internally is preventing you from being your most organized self?

Too exhausted after the workweek?

Maybe only spend 10 minutes a day to tidy so you don’t need to do a big haul on the weekend.

Feeling overwhelmed?

Write down easy-to-do tasks and only do a few at a time. Feel proud that you’ve done it.

Remember this is a step closer. Over time, when you feel more confident, you can add more tasks to reach your goals. Do what you comfortably can!

If you need more tips, check out my post: How to Be Productive with Anxiety

No space?

Maybe it’s time to let some things go! Focus on what you use and what makes you happy. There are probably so many things you forgot and may not even ever use in the future.

10. Draw areas in your home or work as to how you envision it to look organized.

Instead of writing. Draw!

Pick certain places in your home or work that you know you really need to declutter, then draw how you plan to have it.

After, go and make it look like that. Any excess items will need to be put away into their own “home” or in the trash if it’s no longer needed.

Journal Prompts To Organize Your Life 

I hope these prompts can help you reflect and find the best way to organize and reset your life!

1. What are your organization goals for this month?

2. What is your #1 time-waster?

3. Which sections of your home or life do you need to organize?

4. What deadlines do you have coming up this month?

5. What processes can you set up to streamline your everyday tasks?

6. What are the 10 important projects you hope to complete by next year?

7. Envision your most organized self.

8. Why do you want to get organized?

9. Why aren’t you as organized as you want to be?

10.Draw areas in your home or work as to how you envision it to look organized.