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The Long Road To Becoming Organized

Published by Lorne S. Wellington on

I want to be organized. I want a clear desk. I want my paper and email in-boxes to be as minimal as possible. Being organized means to me that I am current and nothing is slipping through the cracks. This has been a goal of mine for all of 2014 yet my progress is nominal. Why? Because it is a lot of work getting organized, it is comfortable to stay at status quo or the desire to be organized is not stronger than the current feeling resulting in procrastination. It is probably a bit of all three plus a few more Jedi mind tricks yet if I want to achieve anything I need to be organized. For example, I want to acknowledge birthdays, write more often and be able to pull up records with ease. I have the tools to operate organized and efficiently. I have a laptop, a separate CRM system, Outlook (both the web based version that syncs with my PC version), an in box tray and etc. I have read books on being organized and procrastination, created a detailed how two guide just for me and asked friends who are much better at this for help. Now it is all about getting it done, doing the work, to become the organized Lorne I aspire to become.

So when do I fall off the wagon? It is normally the day or two after the big push day. I am exhausted mentally and take a day or two off. Typically that turns into a longer period of time than planned and I end up right back at unorganized. After reading this a thought came to mind, maybe try doing half a marathon. Alright I will try that and see if I can stay on target for a week.

Another aspect of my personality is the novelty of the small celebration. That doesn’t seem to work for me. If I make any progress I can’t just celebrate getting to first or second base, I want to go big with a celebration after I pass home plate. After I hit a benchmark, I tend to see all that is left, and not what I accomplished. So maybe my benchmarks need to change or? I await inspiration to answer that question.

Today I will do something inspired so that I feel like to accomplish something. I promise to update later.

Update: I archived a significant amount of old emails. With that action I can say that my Outlook in-box has been sorted, merged, purged and scrubbed. With what was left I archived 80% and hope upload those into my CRM, just so that I have a record of the communications. I must celebrate that achievement, I must! I don’t feel like it but I know I must celebrate. I will tell you what I did to celebrate later this week, if I don’t hold me accountable.

Currently my in box is now 4.7K emails, which is a big difference than the 32K new emails from earlier this evening. Now the next question is how can I get that down to 0? Now that is the question that I am looking forward to receiving the answer. Next priority is addressing my desk. There are probably a few fires beginning there. Another bright idea that came to me after rereading this post is to make Monday desk day. It is a work day and a no client day. I am going to sleep on that idea and decide in the morning.

The Way Forward: I created a program using “Getting Things Done” and “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. The goal this week is to use the system every day, to just do the work daily. Tonight before I go to sleep I will look at schedule for tomorrow and set the one priority for tomorrow. I want this, being organized as a habit, because it will allow my life to flow and open me up to act on opportunities.


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