 In an earlier video, I talked about how I organize the potential chaos of life and then get things done in a calm and organized way, right? And I talked about the core philosophy of capture, categorize, and calendar. And I talked in that video about the importance of capture and some of the tools that I use to do that. Now, in this video, I want to talk about categorize. So what categorize really starts with is to understand the categories of your life and of your business. So in this video, I want to talk with you, I'm going to share with you about what my major categories are. And hopefully that'll give you some ideas for your categories. And then I hope after watching this video, you will actually determine what your categories are and then really use them to organize the chaos that life can be. Okay, so what are categories? Categories are the core concerns of your life. What are the major projects that you want to be sure you do not fall through the cracks? What are the things that you want to make sure you schedule time for in your life? So let's start with life and then we'll talk about business, right? So in life, I have several core areas. I've got, I'll use my hand as an example because then if you can use something like your hand to remember what your core areas are, it'll be easier for you to remember and to be always looking at that. So one core area, very important is spiritual growth or personal development. And this involves things like my reading practice, it involves my spiritual practice, it involves maybe going to certain gatherings or events that uplift my spirit and further develop my education. It also involves what kind of things I consume to further my knowledge. So podcasts, what kind of books, what kind of videos, things like that. So spiritual practice or spiritual growth. Another area is true livelihood, which I define as doing work that is emotionally meaningful, mentally challenging, financially viable and great for the world. So it's basically doing what our greatest contribution is in terms of our skills and talents, making the world a better place and being able to make a living doing it. I call that true livelihood, basically careers, what some people call that. Another important area is community involvement or politics. So this is how I'm involved in my local community, how I'm involved online in terms of the political issues that I care about, the social issues, environmental issues, things like that that I care about. And by the way, I really took on these categories based on my research of what makes human beings happy. And in the notes of this video, I'll include some of that research. There is also very important is my key relationships. So this is my family, my wife, relationships even with my pets, my nuclear family, of course my mom and my siblings, relatives and of course my close friends, my local friends, my virtual friends, et cetera, key relationships, of course my business relationships as well. So that's actually more in the business arena, which we'll talk about next. And then creative hobbies, let's not forget about that. The creative hobbies that keep the other aspects of our intelligence alive and happy. So it could be music, art, other kinds of creative things that we do. It shouldn't always be about the left brain. We also need to be nurturing and expanding and integrating with the right brain, right? So creative hobbies are extremely important. And then I talked about these five things and all these things integrate to the palm, which for me is healthy living, mind, body, mind and body and emotions, right? Healthy living. And healthy living includes eating well, exercising regularly, mental health, but it also includes the physical environment, contributes a lot to health. So how decluttered is my home, my home office, things like that. So that's sort of like the foundation because without health, you really can't do much in this life, right? So that's why I consider that the foundation. So what about you? So I've given you my major categories. What about you? And you may actually want to pause this video and write down what your major categories are. All right. So let's keep moving and talk about business categories that are important. I'm going to share with you what mine are. So one is very important is client services. And this is what activities am I doing to make my clients more successful and happier? So this is basically analyzing all the times, all the aspects of my business where my clients interact with me and my business. And I kind of look at each piece of it and see how can I optimize each piece to make it more pleasant, more successful for my clients. A second one is enrollment, which is the activities I do to ensure that I always have an adequate level of clients to be able to keep my business alive, right? Third one is content, things like this, making videos like this, writing blog posts, working on my book, engaging on social media, content. I primarily think about content creation, making videos, creating knowledge for the sake of my clients to make them more successful. But it's also for the sake of my audience, the people who, even if they're not my clients, I want to make them successful as well, inspire them, give them tips to make their business more successful, effective, make their productivity, all of you, to help you be happier and healthier and more successful in your business and in your life. So content is extremely important for me, okay? So it's client services, enrollment content, networking. So networking is keeping in touch with my kindred spirits colleagues, kindred spirit colleagues who have a related business to mine. And we help each other because the way I think about it is, when my network is stronger, I'm stronger. And when each person in my network is stronger, the entire network is stronger. So it's about regular activity and keeping in touch with my kindred spirits that may be having a video conference call with them or even recording something that can be shared with our audiences. Maybe it's connecting with new kindred spirits and possibly reaching out about writing guest blogs for their audience if it's appropriate and we're doing a webinar for their audience, things like that. Doing interviews for different audiences, okay? So that's networking. And then very importantly is optimizing. What I mean by optimizing is looking at my web presence, looking at my website, looking at my content, and how am I making my website more effective, more aligned to who I most want to reach and need to be reaching? How am I making my content more attractive and a better fit for my ideal audience? But optimizing a lot of it is about my website and also my email newsletter, the ways that I'm reaching out, the ways that when people see me, how is it aligned with my brand or the message and the being, the values that I want to come across as? And optimizing, the way I think about optimizing is that it's making sure I'm not wasting traffic. When people give me with their attention on my website, newsletter or content, is it serving its highest purpose and giving the most positive impact that it can? So what about your business that I've shared my categories? What are your categories? Of course, feel free to borrow as many of mine as you want, but you may have other categories as well. Actually, one thing I didn't mention in the life category, a lot of people want to put in is finances, sort of making sure you have time scheduled in your calendar to work on your financial life, making sure you are categorizing your expenses, looking at your bank accounts, looking at your credit card statements, looking at making sure you've got the right kinds of insurance, making sure you're saving property, all those things. The reason why it's not in my life categories is because I've worked many years to make sure my finances are in order and that's such a habit for me now. It's so integrated into the way I manage my life that I don't even have to really manage it to really think about it because it's so natural for me now. And so that's why it's not one of my categories I even focus on. But the categories that I did talk about are the ones I do want to focus on, the ones that I do want to habituate even more effectively. So again, what are your life categories and now what are your business categories? You may also want to put in administration that, again, that's integrated so finally into the way I run my business that I don't really think about that as a category but you may need to have that category to focus on to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks. So what is it for you? Pause this video and then un-pause it when you're ready when you've written down your business categories. Okay, so a couple of tips before I end this video is to keep your categories as few as possible. You want to keep things as simple as possible, again, that's the reason why I don't have finances in my life categories. The reason why I don't have administration in my business categories because I've already integrated that. I don't need to be focusing on that. Keep it as few as possible but also be sure not to let anything slip through the cracks. So anything that you go, gosh, I really should be putting regular attention on filling the blank, then that should be one of your categories, right? A couple of questions to think about what categories to keep and to discard is what activities energize you? What activities energize you in your life and in your business? Now the question is, are they included in your categories somewhere? Are they one of your categories if not include them, okay? Another question is what activities drain you? What activities in your life drain you? What activities in your business drain you? You know what? You probably don't have to do those things anymore or you can find another way to reach your vision, to reach your goals, okay? So ask that question of yourself, pause this video, write down those answers and let that inform your categories. Now let's talk about what kind of tools to use to keep track of your categories and I want to kind of speak of these quickly and then in another video I will go more in depth into the tool that I use and love. If you like to use outlining to keep track of your categories, then three tools. One is Google Docs, Google Docs is free, wonderful, wonderfully advanced as well, easy to use and it's advanced and you can easily use that for outlining. You can use many documents, you can do separate document for each category for example and in that document you can have an outline of what are all the subcategories or all the important projects within that category to work on, okay? Another wonderful tool for outlining is Workflowy, Workflowy again, I'll give links in the notes of these videos, one of my clients I introduced him to Workflowy and he absolutely swears by it, loves it, shout out to Nathan Lively. The third tool which is the one I use is called Todoist and Todoist is the way that it's organized is by projects which I think of as categories and then underneath each project you can have sub-projects with sub-categories you can think about and then underneath each one is within each project or sub-project are tasks and then within each task you can have comments. So anyway, I use Todoist and I'm going to create videos later coming up to show you how I use Todoist. Todoport.com is a tool that you can use to try out different Todo softwares and that's really how I started using Todoist, I'll give a link to that. Mind mapping is another way that people love to organize their categories. MindMup, M-I-N-D-M-U-P.com is a wonderful free mind mapping tool that I use right now. Another one mind mapping tool is MindMeister, I use that for many years, very advanced features, very well designed. I'm using MindMup mostly now because MindMup.com instead of MindMeister now because MindMup is free and I always want to use the lowest cost tools possible to really allow other people to have to model to other people that you can use these tools on the cheap or free. If you like a more visual way besides mind mapping, another visual way of doing it is boards, having boards for your various categories and projects and Trello, T-R-E-L-L-O.com is a tool that many people swear by and it's also great to use in a team. So the last thing I'll remind you of is capture all of your ideas, remember to categorize your random ideas you captured once a day or twice a day and then calendar your categories, make sure all of your categories in life and business are in your calendar on a recurring basis so that you're working on them. So I hope this is helpful and I'm always open to your comments and your questions.