LESSON 1

Lesson 1: First Principles

 

Do you have to wait for the phone to ring before you remember where you left it last? Do you feel like your cupboards make groaning noises? Last-minute car-key searches, hours wandering around parking areas looking for your car, disorganised mail, numerous trips to the supermarket but never getting what you need, -- all of these situations waste time and can put your blood pressure and stress levels through the roof. For those of you who think the only solution for your disorganised home and life is a well-placed bomb, don't give up yet. There's hope for even the most disorganised, uncoordinated, and person.

 

Organisation is a learned skill you just haven't gotten around to yet. It's a whole new game when you take a fresh look at your methods and then learn some foolproof rules. Organising is active and personal. It's a process, and it's about you. Perhaps you need a little help getting your life into shape so that you can exercise more often. Maybe you need more help to get your desk cleared off so that paperwork flows more smoothly and rapidly from you to other people. Or maybe you need the organisational overhaul -- everything from work to home. Whatever the case, let's set the record straight about your new life in organising:

 

Organising is a skill, like learning to tie your shoes, rather than an innate talent. Organising can create great excitement by clearing away physical and mental clutter. It isn't your same old boring task anymore. Organizing can be sustained if you organise around the way you naturally work. Organising is worth the time it takes away from other tasks. In fact, you should build time into each day for organising and maintaining that organisation. Without this modern survival skill, you will likely spend your time on urgent but unimportant items.

In the past, you may have tried unsuccessfully to get organised by adopting a popular slogan such as "touch the paper once and only once," only to be discouraged when the paper came back at you repeatedly like a boomerang. Or maybe you took a friend's suggestion to get rid of anything you have not looked at or used in the last year, but now regret both the advice and discarding the item. The problem is that these strategies work only sporadically because they don't take into account your personal organising needs. Your organising needs are actually based on the big picture of your life.

• Who are you?

• What do you do and how do you like to work?

• When do you like to eat, sleep, and play?

• Where do you live and need to go?

• How do you think and relate with other people?

Defining your identity, and focusing on what is important to you, is the core of effective organising using the three step formula on any organising project, large or small, and create lasting success for yourself at work and in your home environment: Analyse. Strategise. Attack.

Analyse. Take time to define who you are now. Give yourself an answer to the questions: Where do I want to go? What are my goals? Why is it important to me? What is holding me back?

Strategise. Make time to create an action plan to revamp your space and rejuvenate your routine without losing sight of a realistic schedule.

Attack. Save time by attacking last instead of first. Then, you will be able to systematically sort, file, and arrange according to your way of thinking. You can begin to see striking changes when you follow a personal plan.

Organising is not the destination but part of the journey. - It's a vehicle that helps you get to everything else -- work, friends, family, love, housework, sports, fun, you name it -- real life. You don't want the organising part to take up all of your time. You do want the time it does take up to be productive. So, you've got to follow the rules on this course. Otherwise, you'll be back where you were before -- disorganised and on the road to nowhere. But that doesn't mean you can't go off the path at times - being yourself is one of the rules.