Ten Reasons You Can’t Get Organized
Date Posted: October 8th, 2009
Knowing what blocks are keeping you from doing what you want to do is a fundamental step in overcoming your social conditioning. Even with something as mundane as organizing–something that seems to just be a matter of willpower and discipline to execute–you may experience some illusive resistance from your subconscious. In fact, if you’ve tried to organize your life before and failed, I’d bet your lack of success isn’t so much due to your lack of discipline as it is to your subconscious.
Maybe what’s blocking you is in this list.
- Organized People are Not Good people There’s a great episode of Wife Swap (which for the record I don’t usually watch) that swaps a new-agey mom with an uptight uber-clean mom. For all the faults the new-agey mom has, namely not keeping her house clean and not being on time to things, I’d much rather grow up to be her than the uber-clean punctual one. To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s a clip from the show of what uber-clean mom thinks of the value of meditating.When I think of many people who keep incredibly tidy homes I tend to see bits of this personality. That punctuality and cleanliness are the most important things in their life, even though it’s obvious that they aren’t really happy with where they are. Also, new-agey mom, for all her faults, comes across as way happier than uber-clean mom, and again, I’ve seen this in my real life as well. Of course I’ve also seen unhappy messy people too.It doesn’t take much to see how this could turn into a mental block. If leading a clean, organized, virtuous life means that you’ll be unhappy why would you ever want to do that to yourself?
- People will make fun of you for having changed I’ve experienced this in my life. There’s always a whiplash from loved-ones when you make a change for the better. When I started to exercise I remember some of my friends and family asking “what changed”, and not in an encouraging way. Same thing with becoming vegetarian. Same thing with organizing.I think this happened to me because I used to be very antagonistic toward doing any of these things years ago. They’d try to get me to change and it wouldn’t happen. So now out of the blue I have changed and not because of their excellent persuasive technique. So it’s not really that surprising that they’re not entirely happy for me.
- Identity Crisis Maybe you just can’t see yourself as an organized person. If you start living an effective life, if you change who you are, will you still be you? It’s a scary thought!
- You can’t be spontaneous anymore If you know when you’re going to do everything in your life, how can you possibly go off somewhere on a whim? Do you really want to give that up?
- You’ll have to face your limits When attempting to find a time for everything that’s important to you, you may discover that you can’t do it without some sacrifices. Prior to actually using a planning system you can always tell yourself, “If I got organized I could fit everything in”. That won’t work after you’ve done it.
- You’ll look funny Carrying around a day planner is not what most people do. It’s not nearly as hip as an iPhone or a Blackberry and it doesn’t fit in your pocket. If you’re really using it, you’re going to end up taking it out in public, not just at home or in the office. People might stare at you.
- You’ll spend your whole day doing stuff you don’t want to do When you’re in planning mode it feels good to think about getting all the necessary but unpleasant things done. Before you know it your days are full of Work, Laundry, and Taxes. Yuk. Looks good on paper, but not so good in real life.
- Won’t have time to do what you Want Sort of a combination of 7 and 5, in order to do the stuff you need to do and really would like to do you won’t have time to do things that are just fun. Reading fantasy novels. Watching TV. Those are rewards you’ll never get to experience if you use a planning system.
- Actually implementing the organization scheme will take more time than it saves Between all of the writing/rewriting of stuff in the planner and the weekly review, there’s no way you’ll be saving time.
- You don’t have time to get organized In spite of needing to get on top of your life, right now if you took any time out of your day for it you’d be weeks behind. It’s too late for you.
At some point or another I’ve felt all of these things, and many of them have blocked me from successfully using a planning system. They, of course, are not actually good reasons to not use a planning system, and in the next post I’ll show you why.
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