Sneak Up On Your Dreams

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One of the things that can most hurt your ability to reach your goals is a lack of organization.  I know there are some people out there who are naturally organized and are easily capable of finding a place for everything and then putting everything where belongs. They can do this with their time as well.  Unfortunately, I haven’t met many of those people.  Most people I know tend towards the disorganized, many successful people, though figure out a way to force an organization scheme on themselves.

As a child, my room was always a mess and my school work seemed scattered all over. I never knew what I needed to do when and it made me anxious. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to finish all my work for school.  I even wanted to write the papers my teachers wanted me to write, but I couldn’t seem to get unscattered. I envied anyone who had everything neat and orderly.  At some point, well into adulthood, I realized that it’s not just some trait that the lucky few are born with, but something you can teach yourself.  Organization can be learned and then adhered to.

There’s little easy about it.  Figuring out how to take the chaos of the world and sort it out by what’s important an what you want to be doing is a pain.  I rarely want to do it, but I know that  when I stay organized I get far more done and done well.  The other benefit I found about being organized was that I ended up with a lot of free time since I spend my work time doing work instead of figuring out where my work was and what needed to be done next.

Tips for organizing yourself.

First, realize that it doesn’t have to be natural or even comfortable to work.  There will be a lot of forcing yourself to follow whatever method you choose and that’s fine.

Second, do a search on the Internet and read up on the different methods that are used for organizing both space and time.  There are many out there. Just because the whole idea of organizing may be uncomfortable doesn’t mean you have to pick just any method.  Read through the methods and see which one might fit with you.  For the papers that continuously sneak into my house, I like to have a central bin that I put all the papers I want to keep in.  I recycle anything I don’t want pretty quickly, but other stuff I just put in the bin.  About once a year I go through the bin and file the important papers in my file cabinet. Until then, though, if someone asks for a paper or I need a paper for something I just sift through the bin of papers to find it.

Third, learn the method you chose and start using it.  It will probably feel awkward and like you’re spending a lot of extra time organizing instead of gaining extra time. Remember that there is a learning curve with anything and the organizing will take a while to seem second nature.  Give yourself a couple of months to see if the method makes your life a bit easier and less filled with anxiety.  If it doesn’t then try a different method.

Fourth, once you have some organization going, evaluate and make sure it’s working for you. Are you gaining more time to be productive? Are there any problems left?  If there are still problems work to see what you can do about them.  As I mentioned, I have a paper bin for important papers that I want to keep. I recycle the ones that aren’t important and I don’t want to keep, but there was one pile left, papers I need to do something with soon.  Those kept ending up in a pile next to my computer which is on the kitchen table.  To solve this problem, I found a wall hanging that was meant for magazines and put it on the wall next to my computer. It has 8 or so pockets, the right size for papers.  I put all actionable papers in there and then when it gets too filled I go through the papers and either recycle them, do what needs to be done or move them to the “file-later” bin.

Part of my evaluation of my organization method also involved giving myself a break. I do a good job with time and space organization. I do better with time than space.  I’ve had to give myself some leeway on space.  My papers are now in acceptable places, but the rest of the house is not that clean.  I have a small house with five residents, three of whom cause more mess than clean.  I have had to give myself a break and realize that I’m never going to be able to keep the house clean at all times when I have three children who put real effort into messing it up each day. I’m just not a person who can clean every night. I strive for "good enough."

Fifth and last, try to enjoy the extra time, productivity and calm that comes with having a firm structure to your time and space.  It’s hard to achieve and may never feel all that comfortable, but the benefits good organizing procedures provide, are well worth the effort.

One of the biggest obstacles I face is the recurring thought that there are so many other people who are trying to do what I am and there’s no space left for me.  Every time I see something written that is similar to what I would have liked to write I feel a twinge of panic.  I feel like I’m late and all of my ideas will all have been “stolen” before I can get to write them.  Of course no one steals my ideas because I haven’t gotten them out there and ideas aren’t just in my head, everyone has them.

What I realize, though, is that the same ideas are generally out in the world over and over again.  They’re rehashed and re-framed and rethought of in many ways and that’s the way we, as humans, grow and evolve and communicate.  What works to communicate with one person may not work for another.

A story: recently my mother was talking about writing a small book in a very niche topic, EMDR therapy.  She wanted to self-publish and self-distribute.  I told her I thought it was a great idea and she shouldn’t have much difficulty at all since she already knew her audience and wasn’t trying to make lots of money from it.  A few months later I asked her how that was coming along and she said that someone she knew talked her out of it.  The person told her that someone else she knew was already writing a book on the subject and that was all that was needed.  My mother thought that maybe she was right so she stopped moving ahead on her idea.  When I heard this, I explained that there are always other people writing or even having published similar books or ideas, but that doesn’t mean that hers wouldn’t do well.  Perhaps she’d explain things differently than the other person, maybe the other person wasn’t actually more of an expert.  Maybe the other person didn’t know how to market as well.

Who knows why some things become popular and others don’t Everyone in business has been trying to figure this out for the past bunch of years. It’s the key to earning money.  No one really knows all the answers. It seems that it’s a combination of things like timing and what else is going on in the world and luck and quality and so on and  so forth.  We shouldn’t set up obstacles in front of ourselves deciding we can’t do something just because others have already done it.  It’s better to go ahead and fail (or succeed).  perhaps what works is just a little bit different from what others have done.