Organize Your Life Into Categories (my 5-step checklist)
Learning how to organize your life into categories is an awesome way to build new habits, boost your time efficiency and increase productivity.
So welcome to my guide on creating (what I like to call) life buckets.
But let’s skip the small talk.
Let’s dive right in.
Hey there, just a heads up that some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. That means I earn a small commission. This is at no extra cost to you, but helps me keep the lights on. Thank you for your support!
Why Should I? (benefits of life buckets)
Putting your life into categories, or buckets, is a great productivity hack.
It’s been a serious game changer for me, letting me organize my life with a simple checklist.
Here are some of my favorite benefits that I experience:
Get super clear on what’s most important to you
Systematize things
Reduce your stress
Make better decisions
Improve your focus
Reach your goals more effectively
Better prioritization
More accountability
Better time management
Supports personal growth
Increased self awareness
More control over life and things
Better organization = better memory and less forgetting
How to Organize Your Life Into Categories (my 5-step checklist)
The steps below will walk you through how to organize your life into buckets.
You can check off each step as you go until you finish.
But keep in mind that categorizing your life this way will look different for everyone, so although I provide examples for inspiration, don’t be afraid to go off script a little bit.
1. Brainstorm Categories
Step one is getting clear on how you want to categorize your life.
Everyone has different goals, responsibilities and circumstances, so the idea here is to hone in on your personal top life buckets.
This is the brainstorming phase.
Here are a few of my core buckets (which you can totally steal):
Social
Financial
Career
Health
If you’re struggling to come up with some ideas, using AI (artificial intelligence) is a great way to get inspiration and fresh insights.
ChatGPT is probably the most popular option here. But there are definitely other choices (as more and more AI tools seem to pop up everyday).
For example, Bing recently released their new AI chatbot and Google has Bard.
It’s an exciting time we’re living in and learning these new tools isn’t just helpful for personal life brainstorming – it’s an excellent way to learn new skills and find new opportunities.
2. Prioritize + Organize
Once you’ve got a shortlist of your top life categories, it’s time to organize things.
This next step is getting clear on what your priority buckets are and organizing them in a way that makes the most sense.
I like to organize my buckets into a time- and focus-based hierarchy.
For example, my personal finance bucket is important, but I don’t spend a lot of time on it everyday.
It’s something that runs itself and is more passive, operating in the background with a long-term framework.
My Personal Life bucket however is something I like to devote time to each day. It’s a priority of mine and relates to my core values and goals.
So my Personal Life bucket is organized higher than my Financials bucket.
It can help to make things visual here too.
You can use a (free) tool like MindMeister to create an aesthetic mind map, which I’ve done here.
Whether you’re creating a digital mind map or writing thing out on pen and paper, visualizing your categories in this way is incredibly helpful for clarity and strategy.
3. Create Bucket Goals + To-Do’s
After you’ve organized your categories into a hierarchy that makes sense for you, it’s time to build them out.
Each category will have a collection of individual goals, tasks and to-do’s.
This adds important intention and strategy to our buckets and helps us grow them, organize things and meet various goals.
I’ll use my mind map from the step above again to show you what this looks like.
Again, your life categories and tasks (or how you prioritize things) may look completely different, but making things tangible (by creating a mind map, for example) really helps with motivation and clarity.
Some other (free) tools worth checking out are Todoist, Notion or Google Sheets (or even your phone’s Notes app).
However you decide to remember your categories and bucket goals, isolating the mini goals within each category will help you stay organized and strategic.
Bonus Tip: Try reverse engineering your big goals into smaller pieces. For example, one macro goal will have multiple micro goals, and each micro goal will have multiple nano goals to work on each day.
4. Create A System for Each Bucket
After you’ve filled your life categories with specific goals and tasks to do, what’s next?
Creating a system for completing those things.
This next step will put your life buckets to work. We’re turning theory into action and templates into to-do’s.
A system is a personal organization protocol. It’s a set of procedures, rules and processes for working on tasks and meeting goals.
Here’s an example of how I approach things using systems thinking:
Identify your goals. What do you want to achieve in each category? Be specific and realistic.
Break down goals into smaller steps. This is reverse engineering (from the bonus tip above). It makes things less daunting and way easier to achieve.
Create deadlines for each step. Parkinson’s Law states that a task will take just as long as the time you give it to take. Deadlines can help you stay on track.
Create a personal system for working on tasks and steps. You could timebox your daily to-do list, use a spreadsheet for tracking and journal for self reflection.
Review things regularly and adjust as needed. Life happens, so don't be afraid to change your plans if necessary.
These are just a few tips and a sample workflow.
The most important thing is to find what works best for you and to be consistent.
5. Review + Reward
Life happens. Things change. Everything is dynamic.
So organizing your life into categories isn’t necessarily a one-and-done situation. We should keep things open for review.
We can also use rewards to recognize and celebrate your progress.
For example, each time you check off some nano goal (however small it may seem), you’re bringing yourself closer to checking off a micro goal (which further closes the gap to meeting a macro goal).
You should reward yourself for this awesome achievement.
This helps foster motivation and reinforces your system and life bucket organization.
Either way, I think it’s most important to just have fun with this exercise.
Creating life categories is part self-reflection and part strategy. It’s part analysis and part creative.
But at the end of the day, it’s just kind of fun.
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