Here's an idiom for you to try out this week in your daily speaking practice!
‘Get your act together’ is a great phrase that you might hear in UK TV shows or funny comedy shows, you might hear at school if a child is being naughty and the teacher is giving them a serious talk or maybe parents telling off their kids for messing around in the supermarket.
You say ‘get your act together’ when somebody is either behaving badly or messing around, maybe somebody is avoiding doing something because they’re nervous or they are wasting time doing something they don’t want to do which is causing delays or problems.
You’d say ‘get your act together’ to basically push someone to get organized or sort themselves out, get on with what they’re doing and if they don’t work better then they need to leave, this is why ‘get your act together’ is usually followed by ‘or’ and then a condition ‘...or you’re out of here’, ‘...or I’m calling the headmaster!’
Because it’s usually delivered as a piece of advice, you often hear a modal verb before this phrase, particularly in a conditional sense as explored above; there will be bad consequences if you don’t get your act together.
This is why it’s usually preceded by:
You need to...get your act together
You’d better...get your act together
You have to...get your act together
You should...get your act together
To use it for different people you simply change the possessive pronoun:
> I need to get my act together.
> Get your act together!
> She has to get her act together or she will fail this exam.
> If he doesn’t get his act together, there will be serious consequences.
> We’d better get our act together or will lose customers.
> They haven’t got their act together and that’s why they’re struggling.
Let’s have a look at a few examples.
You’ve been causing trouble all day, if you don’t get your act together I’m going to have to call your parents.
Come on you’re just being silly, get your act together and get on with it.
We really need to get our act together or this project will fail because we are wasting time.
Look at you, you’re a complete mess! Get your act together!
It can seem quite aggressive and I wouldn’t use it unless you know somebody and are friendly with them, you definitely wouldn’t say it to your boss, you’d only really say it to a friendly colleague or personal friend or family member. You can also say it in a sarcastic way, as a joke but again we keep this for friendly conversations only.
TOP TIP: You might also hear 'get a hold of yourself', which is more US English and also 'get a grip' which we also say in the UK.
> 'Get your life together' or 'Get your sh*t together' is a stronger version - use for friends only!
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