Learn to Organize – Learn to Live

It’s 6:30 a.m. Coffee cup in hand, still half asleep, you’ve just entered your office. You are hoping to get a jump on the day by reading your accumulated email. The phone rings. No, it can’t be! Darn! It’s your boss calling you to his office. “What’s the matter with this guy? Can’t he sleep? Hates his wife or kids?”, you are wondering, while madly shuffling through your paper-piles on your desk, trying to find the report this insomniac slave-driver just asked you to bring along. Ooops, there goes the coffee cup!

As you are trying to collect yourself, you vaguely remember a 7:30 a.m. meeting. You are supposed to present! Is it today, or maybe, mercifully, tomorrow? You return to your desk, wishing the boss dead. Then it downs on you: the meeting you were wondering about, is on, today. In just fifteen minutes! And it’s only 7:00 in the morning. Phew! Beads of sweat start running down your neck. Is it hot in here? You scramble to find the presentation slides you made, last Sunday. Where are they? You randomly tug on a few foils sticking out the piles. They turn out to be vintage, from last year. You’ll call in sick – it crosses your mind – except…you are in! Time to panic!

And so, it’s shaping up to be just another typical day in your life. Life? What life? 9:00 to 5:00? Vacations? Playing with the kids? Reading for enjoyment? They are no longer in our vocabularies. Work-life balance is prominently stated in your company’s list of values. Words! We live in a highly accelerated, fast paced world. The paperless office has yet to be implemented and the information overload is becoming unbearable. What are you to do? You are not likely to change the world any time soon. But you can do quite a bit to help yourself.

A lot of the stress you experienced this morning was, likely, self-inflicted. The extra hours of work and the frustration stem largely from our lack of organization. Clutter, ineffective email handling, lack of planning and task scheduling rob us of precious time and, more importantly, peace of mind. You claim you are not an organized person. Never have been. You were born this way. You can’t deal with details. It would take you too much time to get organized. As a Professional Organizer I have heard these objections…umm, really excuses…far too often.

I have news for you: anyone can get, and more importantly, learn to stay organized. It doesn’t require the “organizing genes”. And it won’t take forever. Getting organized doesn’t require rocket-science either. How do you do it?

Admit to having the problem (of being disorganized);
Work up your motivation to do something about it;
Educate yourself about the simple, but very powerful systems, tools and processes, which will help you to get and stay organized;

Learn the tips, tricks and best practices of organizing, planning, time and task management. Often, these are deceptively simple, but extremely powerful techniques.Unfortunately, these skills are not thought in school. Don’t blame your teachers. They, too are lost in the “data smog”. Take a little time to arm yourself with the tools and processes of organizing. You are not spending time by getting organized. You are making a one-time investment, which will pay dividends day-in-day-out, year after year. Staying organized (i.e.: daily maintenance) takes minutes a day. Now, that’s a goal to look forward to.

One little tip to get you started: Don’t try to get organized in one day! Remember how to eat an elephant? Yes, a bite at a time. Pace yourself. Do it in small chunks of time, say half to one hour a day. But, do it daily.