New Year's Resolution #2

Get organised - another common resolution – by the way, you’ll notice that these continue to come although it’s not January 1st. This is because that doesn’t matter. Whenever you decide to make a difference is fine, don’t put it off till next year, or even next Monday.

Being organised is often lumped together with decluttering. While you can do one without the other, it’s really a two-step process. If it’s worth doing…

Refer back to the top ten tips, they hold true for all resolutions. Especially be clear about your reasons for wanting to do this – what are the benefits? The first step, the initial sorting and decluttering is often the most difficult – and time-consuming part – it gets much easier once you’ve done that. Plus knowing how much effort that took will motivate you to keep up the good work.

As always, don’t be extreme. Decluttering doesn’t mean throwing out everything – is minimalist still in, you see, it passed me by. William Morris said, ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’ The way I’ve chosen to interpret this in my life, is that if I love something, or it has sentimental worth to me, I don’t need to part with it, that stops me from feeling guilty that I’m not being brutal enough with my purge.

No one’s making you do this, it’s not like your mum making you tidy your room, so don’t approach it in that way. As with all tasks, break it down into manageable steps. Complete one area of your life, home, desk, whatever, then you have it there to prove that you can do it, experience the difference it has made to you and to motivate you to complete all the areas you wish to address.

Key to being organised is list-making in whatever guise it takes and whatever fancy name you want to give it – to do list, time management, project plan, gant chart – it’s how you’ll see everything that’s to be done, prioritise it and have a record of your progress. The satisfaction of crossing things off our to do list is not to be underestimated – I have a friend who includes things she’s already done so that she can start by crossing things off. Whatever gets you going. However, don’t kid yourself that the action of making a list is action in itself, it’s really not. It’s the first step in making progress, but it’s preparation rather than results.

Take action as soon as you can. If something is quick to do, do it. Don’t even take the time to put it on your list. In the time it takes to do that and review it, you could’ve done it. Having beaten my piles of filing, I now deal with post as it arrives. When I pick post up from the mat, I open it straight away and decide what to do with it. An awful lot goes straight in the recycling which I found to be a bit positive step in itself, it didn’t even get a chance to make my admin pile any larger.

At The Work Foundation, I attended a great workshop run by the Enterprise Development Group about innovation. One of the most useful tools I learnt on that course that I’ve used with coaching clients since is a way of prioritising our tasks. Make a grid of four boxes. On the vertical axis is URGENT - LESS URGENT and on the horizontal axis IMPORTANT - INTERESTING. (You'll gather from this, I can't manage to draw this on here. Drop me a note if you'd like me to e-mail this to you).

Write your tasks into the quadrant which is most appropriate – it helps prioritise when you feel overwhelmed by all there is to be done.

Once you’ve organised yourself, keep doing it, otherwise you’ve only completed the first couple of steps towards your goal which is about being organised. Sorting yourself out in the first instance is what you need to do so that you can be organised.

If you don’t like the sound of any of this. Find yourself a Virgo – they’re excellent at it and seem to like it…