Being a teenager in this day and age can be difficult. There are more things to keep track of than ever before. School, work, activities, friends, family, hobbies, goals, and dreams. Today’s teenager is responsible for a lot of domains and an organized person can get ahead in life better than one who is disorganized.

The trick to it is to start by organizing your brain. That part of you that thinks the thoughts that will either create order or chaos. Unfortunately, your brain can often feel like a cluttered mess. So, to start becoming an organized person you first have to clean it up.

If you think of your brain like a room, it makes this exercise easier. A room with shelves and cabinets and closets. Now think of your thoughts and worries as clutter in that room. If you think of your brain this way, you can see that it is nothing more than a room that needs to be picked up. And you can do that easily enough.

Start with a blank piece of paper and your favorite writing utensil (maybe a mechanical pencil or a gel pen or a nice, thick marker – whatever makes you feel good to write with). Now, take a look in that room in your brain and write down all the clutter on the floor. Things to you are thinking about doing. Things you need to do. Things you are worried about. Things that are bothering you. Write down anything that is cluttering the floor of your brain. You can write it down as a neat list or you can make it as cluttered on the paper as it feels in your brain. The whole point is to get everything that is cluttering the floor of your brain out of your brain and onto the paper. This is called a “brain dump”. Only stop when you feel that your brain is empty and calm. If there is anything left niggling, keep going until you get it all out.

Once you have finished, take a look at what you have written. Everything on that paper is going to fall into one of two categories: things you can do something about and things you can’t do anything about. Make an honest assessment about the things you can’t do anything about. Then, decide if you want to put them back into your brain. If you do, place them on the shelves and in the cabinets in that room. Perhaps you will be able to do something about them later, but not now. So for now, you have the right to get set it aside.

The things that are left on the paper are the things that you can do something about and you need to figure out how you want to organize these things. Usually it is best to make a list of things that need to be done right away and/or are small and easy to do. Figure out when, in the next week you will do these things. The rest of them you can schedule for later.

For more information on how to organize these items, check back for the next part of a five part series on Organization: How to Organize Your Schedule.

Until then, enjoy your nice, clean brain.