Self-Organizing: Three Ways it Might Just Keep You Sane
Who here remembers those ugly old school planners you were forced to use in grade school? 🖐️
Yeeeahhhh. That gray planner crushed my childhood freedoms. But little did I know that I would come to crave structure and organization. Crazy, huh?
Before you come at me about how awful plans are, I know that plans can be restrictive, if forced in a certain way and not applied to how people work or how a team works. But with all the tools and techniques available now, planning anything now is a game-changer! The sky’s the limit when it comes to planning your life activities.
I’m referring to this as “Self-Organizing”. It’s exactly how it sounds but I’ll break it down: Self-Organizing is a bit like someone coming over and dumping out 5,000 teeny tiny little puzzle pieces on the floor and then you having to sort out the edge pieces, or the similar colors. It’s a mess if you don’t start to separate it out, and you wouldn’t know where to start without it. Yet, once you start attacking the challenge, it feels a little better. And then more and more, until that puzzle is complete. So, organizing our own lives a bit at a time so that we’re not running around feeling crazy all the time.
Now, I 1000% agree our lives aren’t perfect puzzles or perfect puzzle pieces by any means, but organizing yourself can be a cathartic experience. Just like that feeling you get when that giant puzzle is a completed masterpiece and you get a little puff of accomplishment in your chest, practicing a bit of self-organizing can help you stay - at least a little bit - more sane.
Here are three ways planning could help:
#1: You (Might) Actually Know What’s Going On
It’s a wonderful feeling to wake up on the weekend and not have anything you have to do. But that rarely happens, am I right? How does it feel when you have to do a million things at once? You feel extremely overwhelmed, overworked, constantly running from point A to point B, carpooling kids to school, getting groceries, running errands, cleaning your house, etc - and maybe your last shred of sanity is keeping from standing upright. I don’t have a magic planner that will magically make your activities all disappear, sorry! But even a simple daily list can help keep your priorities aligned.
💡 I love adding priorities to my to-do lists, and it makes it far more manageable if you can break it down. You could do this by color coding the most important items for the day, or adding a 1-2-3 numbering system to your tasks.
#2: You Feel a Sense of Accomplishment
Let’s say you have a full page of tasks to get done today, and you’re able to apply a level of priority to each item, just imagine the satisfaction you’re going to feel at the end of the day when all (okay, most) of the tasks are crossed off as “done”? I can’t speak for everyone, but I love feeling productive on busy days.
💡 Sometimes the more we start getting done, the more we feel motivated to finish the entire list. Especially if we didn’t think we were going to be ABLE to get to those activities, we did, and we crushed it (of course!). Like a snowball, sometimes you just need a little push to take off and accomplish more than you expected.
#3: Give Yourself Mini Celebrations
Have you ever been out running errands and stopped by to treat yourself a delicious frothy coffee beverage? Or maybe you delayed your errand just a teeny bit by trying on a cute outfit off the rack at the store? Just me 😆? If you have an entire list of things to get done, YES that can be very daunting. By adding priorities and crossing off things you have to do, the list gets better and better looking. Sometimes it helps to celebrate little victories throughout the day to keep you going!
💡 If it helps, set your phone timer for a set amount of time to complete a task, and then take a break after. So, if you’re at your desk with a mountain of emails to get through, set a timer for one hour and give those emails your focused time for that hour without interruptions. When the timer goes off, take a break, go get a coffee, stretch your legs, etc.
Try some of these practices on your next busy day.
YOUR TURN: What are ways planning has kept YOUR sanity?
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