Focus Your Efforts
If you have been having trouble getting and staying organized, perhaps these thoughts will help.
A crucial element of effective organization is to focus your efforts on something specific.
Those who work with me know that I do my best to keep our efforts focused on decluttering and organizing one area at a time. There is good reason for this.
- It is much more effective to spend one hour organizing a small area like a shelf, an unpacked box, or an inbox than it is to spend that hour on a larger area such as an office, a kitchen, or a file cabinet.
- When you only chip away a little bit in many different areas, the impact is minimal and nothing permanent gets accomplished.
- Focusing on a specific space from top to bottom will help you end up with an organized space.
My esteemed colleague, Ellen Faye, COC®, CPO®, calls this her eye-dropper metaphor.
If you put a few drops of water here, a few drops there, and a few more drops somewhere else, you just have little puddles of water; but if you focus your resources into one specific space then you end up with something to show for your efforts. www.facebook.com/EllenFayeOrg
This month, choose one small area to focus on decluttering for 1/2 hour to 1 hour max (e.g., your purse, a linen closet, a few shelves in your laundry room, a closet floor, the inside of your car… ). Set a timer.
When you have finished, drop me an email to let me know how your mini-project went.
Jana Hartwell, CPO®