How to Finally Get Organized: The One Percent Rule
We’re the ones with good intentions but messy houses and overflowing inboxes. Every year we vow to finally get organized—to tame our schedule, sort out our documents, and clean out the garage. But then life happens, clutter accumulates, and minor emergencies eat up our time. Our goals are good, but life just seems to intervene.
What’s to be done? I recently stumbled across two complementary suggestions, one from a psychologist and one from a design expert. Together they offered the perpetually messy a way to finally get organized and feel more in control.
The first part of this insight comes from a recent New York Times article rounding up tips to get your life organized. Lots of the advice on offer was excellent. (I particularly like the idea of boosting your motivation by identifying why exactly you want to get organized. To impress guests? Stop wasting time searching for stuff? Feel more zen?)
But the insight that hit closest to home was a comment by University of Michigan psychologist Stephanie Preston identifying why so many of us fail to get organized. Obviously there are many reasons, from life circumstances to neurological differences, that can cause people to be disorganized. But for a big chunk of us, Preston says the problem is simply feeling overwhelmed.
Preston identified the root cause of the difficulty many of us face when it comes to finally getting organized. But the solution to this issue came from another, unexpected source—an interior design blog.
One of my favorite ways to unwind for a few minutes at work is by ogling other people’s perfectly presented homes, so I recently found myself browsing through Apartment Therapy. One article promised a way to make my home feel instantly nicer. Reader, I clicked.
The 1-Percent Rule, Blakey explains, comes down to this: When you are feeling overwhelmed by everything you need to do to get organized, “put aside the list and JUST do ONE small thing to make your home (and head) one percent better.” It could be something as small as making your bed, hanging up a single jacket, or untangling a cord.
This message is accompanied on Instagram by images of Blakey artfully arranging flowers and tidying stray toys in an otherwise immaculate home. But her approach isn’t just backed up by envy-inducing aesthetics. Science offers reasons to believe she’s on to something.
Recent research confirms that breaking down big goals into smaller, less intimidating chunks makes people more likely to reach them. Small wins are motivating. When we tick off seemingly minor accomplishments, we create the internal momentum to complete major ones.
“At first glance, breaking down a bigger goal into smaller pieces might seem like a superficial ‘reframing trick.’ In actuality, it is a versatile goal-setting strategy that you can apply to almost any target,” wrote five leading behavioral scientists in Scientific American last year. If you want further convincing, the article runs through the studies confirming the effectiveness of this technique.
Apartment Therapy suggests using the 1-Percent Rule to keep your house tidy. But it struck me as equally good advice for entrepreneurs and others who struggle to keep their work lives organized. After all, sorting out your pantry isn’t that different from sorting out your document-cluttered desktop or chaotic onboarding process.
So if you’ve been meaning to do those things for months but keep getting derailed, maybe it’s time to stop aiming for a complete solution. Paradoxically, you’re more likely to get things fully organized in the end if you just task yourself with making them 1-percent better today.