If you want to set yourself free and get out of the box, you need to put all the things in the right boxes. These boxes are your folders and in this post I will present you the structure of my personal folders that organize my life and give me the freedom to live out of the box, because all things are on their right places.

Believe it or not but your life is organizable. Years ago I have been thinking that I will never set the things up and will live in chaos forever. But step-by-step, with many iterations of trial and error, testing many different productivity/organizing schemes, I have found which works best for me. I believe it will work for you, too.

Here is my life’s folders structure:

First I have created a main folder, called “MyLife”. From the day of its creation this started to be the most important and most popular folder in my daily life.

Under the “MyLife” I have created “2007″-folder. The idea is to use this structure for the next 5-10-20 years (even for my entire life if the system is able to be effective during the years).

Under each “year”-based folder I have created four main folders:

• 1. Goals
• 2. Planning
• 3. Action
• 4. Results

The numbers are added for default sorting in the proper order.

As you can see these four folders follow the natural structure of any human activity: setting goals, planning their achievement, taking action and receiving results.

Here’s what I put in these folders in order to organize, manage and control my life:

Goals Folder

Every year I set my goals. And in Goals-folder I put a document for every goal I’ve set. These documents are named following a certain pattern, which is:

Goal_<TitleOfTheGoal>_<Year>.doc (Ex.: Goal_20000USDPerMonth_2007.doc)

Each of these documents is structured and formatted as others and this structure is:

• Title of the goal
• Short description of the goal
• Picture of the goal (or drawing by myself if picture is not available)
• Deadline
• Goal achievement indicators - how I will know that the goal has been achieved. A list of measurable indicators with their target values
• Why i want to achieve this goal - a motivation paragraph
• Notes

Planning Folder

As I am using Microsoft OneNote to plan my goals’ achievements, this folder contains the notebook files of OneNote. I consider every goal as a project and I create a notebook for each goal. Every notebook has sections. Every section has pages. So, using this structure of OneNote, I assign goal milestones to sections and the sub-goals of every milestone - to pages. In every page I break down every sub-goal to a list of doable tasks. This list is an input for my action schedule.

Action Folder

In this folder I store my Split Daily Schedule files. You can get the template from the free resources area of this site. And more information on how to use the Split Daily Schedule you can read here.

Results Folder

Here is the place for my journals and registers. My main journal is the “Success Journal”. Here I write my ideas, successes, failures + lessons, etc. Some of other journals are:

• Phone calls register
• Meeting register
• Ideas book

That’s the whole system and I call it LIMAS (Life Management System). It works for me since the end of 2006 and I can now share the secret with you:

If you want this system to work, you should use it. Daily. You have to make it a habit. And at last you will feel yourself free of the box of life and chaos, because your life is channeled, organized and under control. Now you are able to live it!