Paauwer Tools is a Monthly Ezine
May 2003
Issue 39

“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.