Do you ever think, “Man, it’d be great to get organized, but I just have too much. I’ll never be able to get through it all.” Or maybe you think, “I’d love to get organized, but I just don’t have the time.” And my favorite, which happens to everyone: “I’m super excited to start this! I’m getting started first thing in the morning!” Then, when you wake up, it’s the last thing you want to do. Is there any way to get through these road-blocks, and get to a more organized way of living?
The To-do List
The first thing you have to do is figure out where you are, and where you’d like to be. This can seem both daunting and discouraging. If you really sit down and see what you have to do, chances are, you are going to be overwhelmed and think, “How in the world will I ever be able to tackle this, while also managing all of my normal responsibilities?!?” That is totally fine, and a valid feeling to have. But, you need to make the list anyway. You can’t get to where you are going, unless you know where you want to go.
The Minimum
Okay, you have your crazy To-do list now. Where do you start, especially if you don’t feel motivated to do this at all? The first thing that you have to do is set a minimum amount of minutes that you will work on this every day. It can be something as long as an hour, or as short as 5 minutes. You just need to make sure that it is an amount of time that you could do even on your least motivated days.
Let’s Do This!
Now every day, do at least that minimum amount of time. Some days, it will be everything you can do to make it to the end of that time without giving up. Other days, you might get started, and things just start clicking, and you’ll be there way longer than you anticipated. If you work on organizing every day, even if it’s only 5 minutes, you will slowly get through your To-list. The days that you end up working way longer than you thought are the days that you will make most of your headway. But, you’ll never get those days if you don’t first agree to work on organizing for the bare minimum.
The funny thing is that for me, the organization part isn’t all that hard. Or at least, not in the beginning (after months of getting nowhere, I do tire of “organizing” at a certain point). But I think this post hits the nail on the head when you say to DO the bare minimum each day.
My problem is always getting the doing done, and then after that, continuing through it even when I don’t feel like it anymore. That’s when the schedule goes bust. And I usually make up some reason as to why I shouldn’t DO it anymore–principally, I convince myself that the project or task was stupid or not able to be accomplished. Especially if its a self-imposed task (writing a book independently). I never fully believe in myself I guess, and then I slowly stop. Or alternatively, I’m so afraid of failure and the consequences that come with that, that I convince myself not to do something by telling myself if it was stupid in the first place.
Anyway, thanks for these posts. Maybe I will start with 5 minutes a day…
Thanks for you comment Nicole! I know exactly what you are saying with the being so afraid of failure with the self-imposed tasks. I often will go the complete opposite of the 5 minutes a day and try to cram it all into one day to make sure that I don’t end up giving up later. This obviously creates its own problem. I have actually started a new process that I will have to make a post about. The process consists of organizing all of my To-Dos onto a calendar. I make sure that when I schedule things, there’s nothing overlapping to the point of getting overwhelmed. Then I tell myself I must follow the calendar. This way, I don’t overdo things and try to cram too much into one time when I’m feeling motivated, but also don’t overwhelm myself on the days that I don’t feel like doing anything. If I properly schedule things and follow the calendar, everything has a nice balance.