Paauwerfully Organized: Decluttering schedules, spaces and minds
Published by Kathy Paauw
Organizing & Productivity Consultant
Certified Personal & Professional Coach


Paauwer Tools is a Monthly Ezine
May 2003
Issue 39

Reaping the Harvest:
Are the weeds crowding out the fruits of your labor?


      

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds you plant.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson

I recently heard a story about a woman who went into a store and found God behind the counter.  He asked her what she wanted, and she said “I want to buy a little joy and prosperity and a lot of peace -- not just for myself -- but for everyone.”  God replied, “We don’t sell the fruit here…we just sell the seeds. Once you get the seeds, you have the power and authority to produce the fruits yourself.” 

What a great way to illustrate our lives.  We have the power and authority to produce from the seeds (our talents and passions) that we have been given.  We also have the ability to choose when and how to cultivate those seeds.  Of course, we often find weeds growing alongside the fruit.  If we ignore the weeds, they’ll eventually take over the garden.

One of my highly creative clients (I’ll call her Kate) used to think she could never be organized. She had always believed getting organized meant that she’d have to give up her creativity, self-expression and spontaneity and become a rigid and compulsive person.  She had decided long ago that she would rather stay disorganized than to use systems and stick to boring routines that she believed would squelch her creativity. 

Kate’s work required high creativity – something she had developed quite a reputation for.  Her employer counted on her to deliver quality work, and she did…but usually at a great personal cost.  She typically had to work late into the evening and on weekends in order to meet deadlines without compromising the quality of her work. These late-night working sessions frequently consisted of spending several minutes to several hours each day frantically searching for important information that contained critical specifications required to complete her work.  But in the end, Kate always met her deadlines and delivered a quality product. 

All was well with the world…until eventually Kate had taken on more responsibility than she could handle.  She began running late, missing appointments and deadlines, and not returning clients’ phone calls.  And things were no better at home. The stress was doing her in, and she knew that something had to change.  In essence, the weeds were choking off nutrients to the fruit-bearing plants she had been cultivating in her garden, and she was no longer able to produce the same quality or volume of fruit.

As much as Kate wanted to preserve her freedom of self-expression by NOT getting organized, she realized that she could be much more productive at work and at home if she didn’t waste so much time looking for things.  Kate was ready to make some changes, so she read some organizing books and tried to implement the ideas on her own.  That didn’t prove to have lasting results, so she hired a professional organizer to help her gain control of her work area.  But by the end of the following week, her desk had reverted back to its original state, and her email and phone messages were out of control, too.  The weeds were starting to sprout again and choke off the fruit-bearing plants!  Kate felt very discouraged and defeated. 

By the time Kate contacted me, she was ready to do whatever it took to turn things around.  Once she quit viewing “getting organized” as an enemy to creativity, she began to discover that creating some systems and routines actually freed up her time and thoughts so she could exercise more self-expression and creativity.  This time she started pulling the weeds from the roots so they wouldn’t grow back…and the nutrients began flowing again to the fruit-bearing plants.  By organizing from the inside out, Kate was able to begin making lasting changes in habits that had been costing her a lot of time and energy. 

How did Kate and I get started?  We used the 7-step process below.  We went to the root of the problem instead of just pulling up the tops of the weeds. 


7 Steps to Lasting Change

      
 “Sow an act...reap a habit;
Sow a habit...reap a character;
Sow a character...reap a destiny.”
-Anonymous

To demonstrate these steps, I’ll use examples related to getting organized, although you can use this process in other areas of your life, as well.

1. Identify your motivation.  Answers to these questions might help you identify motivations for getting organized:
  • If you were to get and stay organized, what different results would be possible?
  • What will getting organized enable you to do that you are not doing now?
  • If you don’t get organized, how will that affect your future?

To read more about motivation, visit my April 2002 newsletter titled Getting Motivated to Get Organized.

2. Visualize your success.  Imagine that you are already organized.  How do you feel?  Imagine going through your day and your week being on time, feeling in control, getting home for dinner with your family, and finding what you need with ease…or whatever it is that you want to experience as a result of being organized. 

Behave like someone who has already arrived where you want to be.  Claim your desire to accomplish a goal by affirming your joy in having already achieved it.  For example, repeat to yourself, “I love being organized!” several times a day.  By focusing on how pleasurable it is to achieve a desired outcome, you'll begin to install new beliefs in your subconscious, which will increase your chance of staying motivated and inspired. 

3. Identify your obstacles.  What’s getting in the way of you having what you want and being who you want to be?  What behaviors or habits need to change?  If you’d like assistance identifying your organizational obstacles, check out this organizational assessment tool.

4. Identify new strategies and habits, and state them as your intentions.  A powerful intention keeps you focused on where you want to go. To keep you on track, create an intention statement that you can put in writing and keep in view.  Here are some examples:
  • I intend to review my mail daily by choosing one of these three options for each item in my Inbox: file, act, toss.
  • I intend to return phone calls within 4 hours.
  • I intend to check email only twice daily for no more than 20 minutes each.

If paper is a challenge for you, I offer many free tips and free teleclasses that provide concrete ideas you can begin implementing right away.

5. Create a plan to support your intentions.  Start small, and be consistent.   For example, if your inbox is overflowing and you have an intention to go through it daily, schedule dedicated time to do it daily.  My De-clutter Your Life teleclass series will provide concrete tools and a planning process to help you follow through with your intentions.

6. Maintain your success -- build in accountability & support.  Sharing your intentions with someone else will increase the likelihood of you following through.  Ask a friend for support, or hire a coach.  To learn more about coaching, click here

7. Acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments.  Reflect on the positive changes you make…even the little successes.  They are stepping stones that will provide the foundation for lasting change. Celebrate that you tossed that piece of unwanted mail immediately instead of allowing it to collect on your desk, or that you kept that appointment with yourself to go through your inbox.  By acknowledging all your accomplishments – no matter how small -- you train yourself to appreciate steady progress rather than expecting overnight success.


May is Business Improvement Month

If you are overloaded and …
   …Have trouble finding what you need.
   …Forget important follow-up or miss key deadlines.
   …Feel so overwhelmed that it's hard to focus on what's most important right now.
   …Try and manage it all...but at a cost to you in excess stress and little peace of mind.
...Then I can assist you in taking control of the clutter that's clogging your schedule, space and mind, so you can focus on what is important to you. 

I offer the following to help you be more productive:



Our Mission
I help individuals committed to moving their lives forward in powerful ways
by decluttering their schedules, spaces, and minds.

More Paauwer Tools Articles
Products

Paauwer Tools is a free monthly newsletter.

To subscribe to this newsletter click here.

We appreciate your forwarding this to your friends and colleagues you think might benefit from reading it. Your recommendation is how we grow. Anyone can subscribe. We request that you keep the broadcast intact, including the contact and copyright information.

You are free to use the material from my articles in whole or in part on your web site or ezine (email newsletter) as long as you include the attribution below and also let me know where the article will appear.

This article is by Kathy Paauw of Paauwerfully Organized. Kathy's web site is a comprehensive resource devoted to helping busy professionals and small business owners de-clutter their schedules, spaces, and minds so they can focus on what's most important. Kathy is an organizing & productivity consultant, certified business & personal coach, and speaker. Contact her at kathy@orgcoach.net . For free resources and valuable productivity tools visit http://www.orgcoach.net .

E-mail your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletter content to me. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Warm regards,

Kathy Paauw, Paauwerfully Organized
425-881-6627
kathy@orgcoach.net



Tell a friend!

Know someone who would benefit from our free tips and free ezine. If you'd like to tell friends, relatives, or colleagues about this site click here.

Copyright © 2000-2003 Kathy Paauw, All Rights Reserved.