I have a confession…
I’ve always been a bit of an organizing nerd.
I love a good process or system that makes things tidy, clear, and easy to find and use. And I love the clever tools and pretty supplies that often come along for the ride.
Grouping like with like, putting things into a logical sequence — it’s sort of a natural tendency for me. Maybe even a bit of a compulsion.
But it’s probably only in the last few years that I’ve realized how important it actually is to get organizing right.
Good organization can save time and effort. It can remove barriers and lower resistance to taking action. It can provide clarity and help us make better decisions. It can reduce stress and create calm.
But you can also go overboard.
Get too obsessive about it, too mired in organizing for its own sake, and it can become a barrier instead — making things harder than they need to be, and creating resistance to using the clever system you designed to (in theory) make your life simpler.
And many of us also have baggage around the topic of organizing. We label ourselves (e.g., “I’m just not an organized person”) and attach value judgments, as if being disorganized is a moral failing. (It’s not.)
But it doesn’t have to be that complicated or angsty.
Organizing is just helpful structure.
And whether we apply that structure to our ideas, tasks, information, or possessions, it’s something any of us can learn how to do. And it’s also something we’ll keep refining as we go along — each of us finding our own right balance of structure and flexibility, and customizing our approach to fit who we are.
This month, we’ll look at some practical methods for organizing ourselves, our ideas, and our spaces.
But as always, we’ll also explore the soulful side of this topic and look at the deeper principles and identities around which we organize our lives.