Date Posted: October 14th, 2009
In a perfect world you’d be able to take all the time in the world to set up your stuff management system. But your world isn’t perfect. Every moment seems to be eaten up by important things. You certainly can’t find a block of time in your day any larger than 15 minutes. If that’s the case for you, and you’d still like to have some sort of system in place, then this post is for you.
I do have one big assumption: you aren’t currently making use of your in-between time. By in-between time, I mean the time spent waiting in line at the post office or while you’re driving to and from work or class or that five minutes between when you get home and your next scheduled task. These are the moments this techniques utilize.
I have another smaller assumption: you don’t have a deadline for when your system needs to be totally in place. If you really don’t have the ability to take a large chunk of time out in the beginning, you can’t expect to be off and running any time soon.
So, with that, here’s the technique.
Step 1: Day dream During those in between moments visualize what your system will look like. How it would make you feel to be using it. What elements will it have. Get excited about it. The more clarity you can get the better. You don’t need to write anything down yet, so you can do this anywhere.
Step 2: Read Getting Things Done This system is probably the best for the person who feels swamped. It’ll give you a method for doing things more efficiently so that you may have a few extra moments to do some long term planning. You can get the book from the library or your local bookstore in book form or audio form. If you get the book form, keep it with you at all times. It’s one of those reads that doesn’t take much to pick up where you left off. If you get the audio version you can play it during your commute or your run or whatever.
Step 3: Day dream Some more, maybe with a pencil Focus on clarity. What exactly do you want from your system. When you get the feeling you know what you want, take 10 minutes somewhere… anywhere… to jot it down. Set a timer if you have to so you don’t spend more time on this task than you want to.
The main question to answer here is, what supplies do I need to purchase?
Chances are you’ll probably need:
- A physical planner that holds 5.5inx8.5in sheets
- 8.5inx11in paper
- Three hole punch with movable hole punchers
- A paper guillotine (check to see if your workplace already has one)
- Nice Pen
- Nice Pencil
- Divider Stickers
- Heavier card-stock paper (8.5inx11in) for turning into dividers
- “Today” tabs
Step 4: Purchase items when convenient Keep your shopping list with you. Whenever you’re in the appropriate store where you could buy these things check to see if they’re there. Don’t make a separate shopping trip unless you have time to spare. Remember, there’s no deadline for getting this done. Do it when it’s convenient
Step 5: More day dreaming maybe with a pencil Same deal as before. Don’t spend too much time writing down what sheets you need for your physical planner. (Take as much time as you want to think, though. That isn’t wasting any time.) Action pages? Waiting for pages? Shopping list? Agendas? Figure this out. Then write down your list. Set a timer.
This might not be a bad time to browse DIY planner’s set of pages. Remember, you’ll want to print the 2-up version. It’ll save you a lot of hassle.
Step 6: Print, cut, and hole punch your pages Here you might want to set aside 20 minutes. But maybe you could combine this task with watching TV or something. You can also spread this task out over several days. Do the printing one day, cutting another, hole punching yet another. Again, there’s no deadline here.
Step 7: Fill in your planner during your in between time While you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, write down some tasks you need to do when you get home. Same thing when you’re waiting for a movie at the movie theater, or while you’re waiting for the all-staff meeting to get started. Use the minutes to empty everything stored in your head.
Step 8: If you can spare it, do a weekly review But maybe limit your time to 20 minutes. Only recopy pages that are mostly full. Or don’t even recopy, just add to it. When one’s finished you can get rid of it. Make it as sparse a review as possible. Using a timer’s a good idea to keep it from eating your day.
Using this method it’ll probably take you quite a while to get your system up and running. Maybe a month or two. But that’s OK because at least in a month or two you’ll have a working system. If you don’t do anything, 2 months from now you definitely won’t have a system. And maybe along the way you’ll find that you actually do have more time to spare than you realize. Maybe you’ll be able to get your system up and running way earlier than you expected to. 
Tags:
Organization, Self-Discipline, Stuff-Management.
Posted at
10:43 am | No Comments »
Date Posted: October 13th, 2009
Last week I wrote up a list of some mental blocks that may be keeping you from organizing your life. In this post I explain why those reasons aren’t valid.
- Organized People are Not Good people There are two things you need to do in order to be organized and stay your same sweet self. The first is to make sure organization/cleanliness stays as a means to an end. Using organization as a means to do the things you want to do keeps your mind focused on what’s really important to you, whatever that may be. Being organized is not the goal. Doing the things you want to do is.
The second thing to do is to avoid identifying yourself as an organized person. If being organized really gives you an ego boost it’s only a small step to looking down on people who don’t meet your cleanliness standards.
It’s really not that hard to do either of these things. When your projects are important to you, it’s hard to see organization as anything but a means to an end. And when you see it as a means to an end it’s hard to identify yourself with it. It’s like identifying yourself as a person who brushes her teeth daily. It’d just be silly.
- People will make fun of you for having changed It’s true that this could happen to you, but does it really matter? Their discomfort with your changing is their problem, not yours. If you’re confident that you’re moving in the right direction, that organizing your life is the right thing for you to do, to hell with all of the nay-sayers.
Once you’ve been living this way for a while, people will get used to it. It’ll be your new normal.
- Identity Crisis The truth is people change. You will change. The question is not whether or not you’ll be you, but is this the right direction for you? Is an organized life more preferable to a disorganized one? If yes, then go for it. You’ll get used to your new skin after a while, especially since it’s something you develop for yourself. Your system will be uniquely you. How could that feel strange?
- You can’t be spontaneous anymore If you’re following a rigid schedule, then I guess this would be true, but if you’re going to have a system that really works for you it’s going to have to be flexible. Few things go exactly as planned anyway. If you want to be go somewhere on a whim no organization system can or should stop you. It’ll just make you aware of the consequences of that whim and how to get back on track.
A key aspect of a good organization system is the ability to renegotiate commitments you’ve made to yourself and others. If it’s for the sake of some random fun time, all the better!
- You’ll have to face your limits Yep, you will. But is that bad? Knowing the truth of what you’re able to do right now is important for your personal development. If you can commit to the system, then you’ll have to exercise courage to say no to the unimportant. You’ll be a better person for it. And over time you’ll be able to do more of the things you want to do.
- You’ll look funny You’ll look even funnier when you either have a hard time keep your commitments or do very little with your time. And after a while, you’ll get used to the weird looks anyway.
- You’ll spend your whole day doing stuff you don’t want to do I used to feel this way a lot when I was still in school. If I made a schedule of things I was supposed to do or needed to do, I’d end up spending my whole day doing unpleasant things. I’d never get around to having fun.
The truth is, the amount of unpleasant stuff you have to do is totally up to you. Also you don’t have to get it all done in one day. Spread the work out over several days. Don’t do mind intensive work when you’re tired and you’ll go a long way toward avoiding burnout. Or make fun things a higher priority.
- You won’t have time to do what you want to do The solution to this problem is the same as above. Let your to-do list last over several days and only do mind intensive work when you have the energy to do it. When your brain is tired do something that you want to do.
Of course, if the kinds of things you want to do are mind intensive–taking a leadership position in a club for instance–you may find yourself in a more difficult situation. But you’d be there with or without a planning system. At least with a planning system you can make a more realistic assessment of your ability to succeed in all the things you do.
- Actually implementing the organization scheme will take more time than it saves When you first implement a new organization scheme, for the first few weeks it will take a lot of time to use. You haven’t come up with ways to streamline the system, nor is it set up to your satisfaction. There’s no getting around the growing pains.In spite of that, even in the early stages a good planning system will give you piece of mind. You’ll know what you have to work on, what stage projects are on, what stuff you’re waiting on, what you need to buy at the supermarket. That piece of mind, I think, is worth the extra time it takes to use the system. And in the end, once you’ve set it up to meet your needs, using it should take little time at all.
- You don’t have time to get organized If you really believe this, then you don’t have time not to get organized. Seriously. There’s only so long that you can run on empty before you burn out. Things will slip here and there because your mind isn’t really meant for the task of keeping your life in order, and if you have trained your mind to do that task you wouldn’t be disorganized, would you?
So, as you can see, the excuses don’t really hold up to much scrutiny. (At least they don’t stand up to my scrutiny 
) There is only one good reason I can think of to not implement a planning system, and that’s if your life is simple enough not to call for it. If you already know at every moment what you need to be doing, then you’re all set. That’s the main purpose of a planning system, after all: to confidently know what it is you should be doing right now.
Are there any reasons you have to not get organized?
Tags:
Organization, Psychology, Self-Discipline, Stuff-Management, Subconscious.
Posted at
9:01 am | No Comments »
