There seem to be two kinds of people: those who have the gift of organization and those who don’t. If you’re not one of those naturally organized people, you’re likely to be disorganized at best and a disaster at worst.

People who know me and/or have been in my office know that I am not the king of the organization. Fortunately, my wife Lauren turns out to be particularly talented in this area. She has saved my neck more than a few times.

So, with the admission that I’m still struggling with this as well, here are the four D’s of organizing: Do it now, delegate it, briefly delay it, scrap it.

Do it now

Clearly the most preferred strategy. When something comes your way, make sure you tap it once, do it now.

It’s so easy to put it in an ever-growing pile on your desk, on the counter, or in your brain, rationalizing that you’ll actually do it later. One problem with this is that another way of spelling rationalize is rational lies. This is very fertile ground to breed that great enemy of doing things and simplifying your life: procrastination.

Adopting a do it now policy has several nice benefits:

¨ Clears and prevents buildup on your desk and in your brain

¨ is a sure killer against procrastination

¨ It also prevents that fun little hallucination that comes with procrastination, where simple jobs seem to get bigger and bigger and you’re convinced it’s going to take hours to finish a 15-minute project.

¨ Best of all, you end up doing things!

Here in the real world, however, we can’t always do it now. For those situations we have:

delegate it

Contrary to popular belief, we don’t have to do everything ourselves. Somehow, as part of the disorganization picture, we think that we are the only ones who can do what needs to be done. It’s just not true. Pass it on to a family member, ask friends for help, hire someone, use whatever resources you have at hand. It is foolish to do things that are not in your area of ​​expertise if you have access to people who are better than you at certain tasks.

delay it

Briefly. And I mean briefly. There are times when I just can’t do it now or delegate it. The danger here is that the task could fall into the “I’ll do it later, I’ll do it sometime” wasteland, never to return.

If you find that you need to delay something, set a time limit for when it should be completed: at the end of the hour, at the end of the day, at the end of the week, or at the end of the month. Usually at the end of the year it doesn’t work unless it’s December.

Dump it

Some things that come our way can be thrown away immediately. It’s not something that needs to be done, it’s a waste of time, or you just don’t need it in your life. So throw it away.

However, there are other things that need to be discarded. I am constantly amazed by the amount of garbage that we are capable of accumulating. Projects we’re going to finish, articles or books we’re going to read, the box we’re going to check, and the list goes on.

Here’s a little trick that seems to work: make an agreement, with someone to enforce it, that you’ll take care of whatever it is by a certain date or it will be abandoned. If it’s important, you’ll do it. If it is not important, it should be discarded.

The four D’s are simply a system for getting organized. There are many others. Just remember that a system saves you time, energy and money.