As the midyear point approaches, I’m definitely thinking about all the things I need/want to get done this year. (The actual midpoint, by the way, is the weekend of July 1st in case you were curious.)
I’m an Air Force brat so we moved a lot growing up. I remember when we would move and have to organize a new home and all the stuff that families come with, one of my father’s jobs would be the attic. He was in charge of getting every up there when we moved in, organizing it and removing it when we moved. If I’m totally honest, I can’t remember ever going into one of our attics. When my mother and I didn’t know where to put something, it typically went into the attic. I remember in each home, my father would complain that my mother and I seemed to believe that the attic was a magical place with infinite space and storage.
For some reason, the planning habits I started the year with have gone into hiding. I seem to have forgotten that if I don’t have it scheduled, it doesn’t exist. I have caught myself in the last couple of months, making these long to do lists and telling myself they will get done by the end of the week. But sure enough, the following Monday very few of the tasks on the list have gotten done.
Here is a closely held personal belief:
If you want different results, you need to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Of course there are some notable exceptions but this is totally true about my schedule and bad habits. I can’t continue to treat my time like the attic (an infinite amount of time and space), I need to do something about it.
In Jen Sincero’s book, “You are a Badass” she says, “You need to go from wanting to change your life to deciding to change your life."
I hear that all the time, “I just need to do it” or, “I’ll get it done.” But typically when I ask how, I’m meant with a blank stare. If it were as simple as “just doing it” it would have already been done!
Recently, someone asked me to help them get organized around a large project due at the end of the year that requires a lot of thought and planning. I was floored with the person showed up to our planning meeting without their planner!! I’m good but I’m not magic.
There are two organization methods I’m going to suggest to you today. I think both work for different people and neither is better than the other but some will work better for some than others.
Both are time consuming so you are going to have to sit down and really commit to making this happen.
I heard about Bullet Journaling friend a close friend last year. She is creative and busy. As a work from home mom of three kids all under the age of four years old, she has started her own calligraphy and design business and she is active in her church and mom group. She swears by the Bullet Journal Method.
What I like about this method is that it makes you sit down at the end of the month and take stock of the month and look at the upcoming month. What I don’t like is that my handwriting looks like that of a serial killer so I’m not about having to write/draw it all out. But this works for lots of people (as I learned by going to YouTube) so I offer it up to you as a solution. As I do not know this system as well, I would encourage you to click on the link above and watch the video from the person who devised it!!
Step 1: Start with a list. A long, uncensured list of all the things you want to do before this year is over. Personal, professional, big and small, all of it. Get it aaaallll out and on paper. Don’t zip through this, really take your time and be thoughtful.
Step 2: Knowing that there are 6 months left in the year, look at your list and think about what is most important for you to have come NYE. What will build you up? What will bring joy? What will be the most meaningful.
Step 3: Draw 6 boxes with the remaining months of the year. In the boxes divide up the projects/tasks into the boxes. Post this somewhere that you can see it and refer back to it until the end of the year. I keep mine under my laptop but hanging it on a wall near your desk in your office is a great place for it too.
Step 4: SCHEDULE IT! Now that you have figured out what month things need to happen in, chop the project up into a to do list and assign days/times that you are going to do them. Note: the to do list is not enough. You must actually SCHEDULE the tasks or this entire process is a waste of time. I use a DayMinder brand planner that has monthly and daily break downs by the hour. Don’t under estimate your need for rest. If you don’t plan breaks, it will be easy to get overwhelmed and fall behind. There is nothing wrong with a day off.
Are you ready to take control of things again?! I would love to hear if you went with the Bullet Journal or the big picture plan.
(Just a quick note, I am not an affiliate of nor do will I be paid in any way for my support for any of the sites/books/products I discuss in this post.)
It’s June and we are nearly half way through 2017, I don’t know about you but it has flown by for me. For some of us, this year has not been what we planned for at the beginning of the year. I have seen it with my friends, at work and even for myself. A lot of us started off the year pretty strong, but we have veered off the path we saw for ourselves and now have to reconfigure.
Generally, when I think about organization I am talking about one of two things; stuff and time. I almost always start with stuff because I sincerely believe that living in a tidy, clean space can free your mind to be more creative and productive. We will talk about time later this month.
If you have sat with me for more than 10 minutes in the last year, I have probably told you how much I love the book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo.
For those of you that haven’t…. I love it! I read the book at a time in my life when I felt like I really had no control over so many of the things going on around me. When I read Kondo’s claim that if I followed her method, I would never be cluttered again, I thought that sounded like a crazy and impossible challenge, there was no way. I think she is on to something.
The first challenge in the book is to sit in a space and think about what you want to do, who you want to be and how you want to feel in that space. That is before you get rid of a single thing, before you reorganize a thing. I enjoyed this exercise. It had me thinking about rooms differently than I had in the past. It wasn’t about how it looked but more about how it felt.
The second is to start purging. I’m not going to go through her entire method but the core of it all is that if it doesn’t spark joy, it is time to let it go. As I looked around my rooms, I realized that I had a lot of things around me that weren’t really me. Some didn’t fit who I am today, though they once had. And others never did but they were gifts or hand-me-downs and I felt obligated to keep them. I gave myself permission to shed them.
Finally, she is not a big proponent of buying organization stuff. As much as I love the Container Store even now, she doesn’t believe you need more stuff to get your current stuff organized. Basically, she says that if you only have things that spark joy, you can find a way to organize them that does not require that you go out and purchase a bunch things to put them in, you often use things you already have.
So it’s been nearly a year and a half since I read the book and I have donated, sold or trashed roughly over two dozen trash bags worth of stuff and I still find myself checking if things spark joy or if it is time to let them go. I had no idea I had that much stuff!!
I understand why she says you won’t go back to the way that you once were because it is so much better with things tidied up! It is easier to keep things clean, it is easier to relax, and it is easier to just do life without stuff in the way. I don’t want to go back to how things were before so I can see why she would make the claim that you won’t go back or ‘relapse.’
Time is the only thing we can never have more of. Love and time are the only things of value we can’t buy. After going through and really cleaning, purging and sorting things I have more time to think, work, live than I did before. Cleaning feels like less of a chore and more like self care than it ever has before and I often do it without even really noticing.
If you aren’t in love with your space or how you feel in your space, I challenge you to look around and think about how to love it more. How to love your time more.
(Just a quick note, I am not an affiliate of nor do will I be paid in any way for my support for any of the sites/books/products I discuss in this post.)