Finding Your Focus: Organization and Discipline
It’s my birthday month, and as a Divine Virgo, one of the ways I mark the occasion is by reflecting on and organizing my life. Each year as the seasons turn from Summer to Autumn to Winter, I find myself spending first days and then weeks plumbing the depths of my psyche, searching for answers to the tough questions like ‘What do I believe?’, ‘What gives my life meaning?’, ‘What is beyond compromise?’, ‘Who am I at my best?” and ‘Where do I want to be five years from now? Ten years from now?’ I think about what’s important to me. This time around I have been thinking about meaningful relationships, my impact, my place in the world as a part of nature and the Earth’s living microbiome, my beliefs and vision for the future, my hopes, dreams, and imaginings. Once I’ve sketched out my answers to all the mysteries of the universe I set about making ‘to-do’ lists of the next things I need to accomplish to bring my vision to life.
For someone like me who had a Franklin Covey planner before she had a cell phone, color codes her calendar, and whose favorite season is and always has been ‘Back to School’, organization is like breathing, a constant daily companion that sustains me. I love lists. I love post-its. I love pens. I love lined pads of paper and the kind of journals that just have a grid of dots within them. I love organizers and ledgers and staples and tape. I love categorizing and prioritizing and bullet-pointing. I love writing things down in my own handwriting. I love doodling and printing neatly and slanty, sexy cursive. I love it all.
However, alongside this divine calling to organization, I’ve carried on a lifelong affair with procrastination. Procrastination is a temptress, and a trickster, and so despite enjoying a thing, and even loving a thing, all my life getting things done has been a challenge. Like the over-played song from 2013 says, “Sometimes love just ain’t enough.”
“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”
~ Jim Rohn
I saw this quote on a motivational poster on the wall of one of my toughest bosses and possibly the most disciplined person I have ever known. I’ve seen him walk over 60k steps in a day just to win a bet, and he was constantly enduring some diet or another - eating only chicken for an entire week, and then beef, fish, vegetables, and so on. He went to the gym every day, kept every business commitment I ever saw him make, and had a complete college savings and home down payment set aside for all three of his kids. While I don’t think my intestines would appreciate his level of discipline, (I was seriously worried about his digestion), I admire his commitment to keeping his word, first and foremost to himself, and how that commitment permeated every area of his life. Every area except one, actually, but that belongs in a different blog post.
Being in such close proximity to this superhuman specimen of self-control helped me realize the difference between organization and discipline, and why both are needed in order to keep on top of things. When you deeply love organization like me, yet are also in an entanglement with procrastination, dreamily doodling away at making lots and lots of pretty lists can become a way to avoid doing anything to check any one of the items off. There are times the first item on my list becomes ‘Make a list’ just so I can experience the addictive satisfaction of crossing something off, and if this is where you are, don’t underestimate the power of momentum. Write it down and cross it off. As a matter of fact, write down ‘Read blog post’ and then ‘Make a list’ and soon you’ll get to cross two things off because I’m about to get to the heart of the matter. These are the main areas where myself and others are breaking down or breaking through when it comes to getting organized:
Get committed. What are you trying to accomplish or change? Why does it matter? What are the consequences of it not getting done? Have you really decided? Or are you being dishonest with yourself? This is the first step. All change is stressful, and all work takes effort. Work is nothing but energy exerted over time. If you are going to put in the effort, you want to understand the return on your investment. That return may only need to be as simple and straightforward as a paycheck, or, for those in school, a grade. Or it can be more personal and intimate like wanting to feel healthier in your body, or wanting to improve the quality of your relationship(s). What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? Practice ‘five-whying’ yourself: Ask yourself why again and again (at least five times) after each answer until you’re certain you’ve gotten to the bottom of it. And then, once you have decided what you’re going to do, write it down, make it public, tell everyone you can. Ask for the support you need. Sharing our goals broadly within a loving community builds trust, creates accountability, and elicits support and encouragement. When your beloveds are rooting for you, it’s more likely you’re going to follow through.
Get thinking. What are the next three things you can do to move your goal forward? You don’t need to think of everything , just three things. And sometimes there won’t always be three, but more often than not, and especially for the big ticket items like adjusting your communication style, changing a deeply imbedded habit, or managing a long term project, try as much as possible to break it down into baby steps. Instead of ‘Clean out the garage’ you could, for example, add single step items like ‘Take out the trash’ and ‘Sort through items for Goodwill’ or ‘Breakdown cardboard boxes’ - write down the next three smallest practical steps that allow you to measure your progress as you go. When you finish your three steps, write down three more, and so on until you’re done. In this way you can manage multiple projects at once while still pushing them all forward.
Get out from under that email. I can’t tell you how big this one is for so many people. There is a better way than living with thousands of email in your inbox. One of the biggest challenges with procrastination is that the mounting stress over not getting our work done only makes it worse. And potentially lurking within the thousands of email that you let accumulate because you would get to it later, or might need to refer back to it at some point, are hundreds of tiny little tasks you’ve yet to even quantify. This can be a really big one for people, so you might want to set several hours aside. For everything in your Inbox:
Do - Do it now completely, so you’re only touching the email once, and then file it or delete it. Best for small easy tasks.
Defer - Schedule (actually, in your calendar) a meeting with others, or time for yourself to do the work, then file or delete the email.
Delete - Best for informational emails that require no action, read it and if you need to refer back to it later, file it, or else delete it.
The goal here is to touch each email only once rather than spend countless hours rereading emails you’ve already read, but remain in your inbox because you’ve taken no action on them. Become friends with your email, whether you use Outlook or gmail or another email client, binge watch youtube tutorials on tips and tricks to optimize your process. The clean folder function, categories, folders, tasks, dragging and dropping, the calendar - these are the tools that keep me sane and on track through my days of back to back and sometimes triple booked meetings, my life as super-single-mom, amazing girlfriend, and part time business owner and life coach supreme.
Get reliably in existence. This phrase is particular and one I learned from my friend Marie-Jose Kaasenbrood when she taught me to Face the Beast. Getting reliably in existence means having all your work in place within a process where it will reliably and consistently get done without you having to spend unnecessary time, effort, or energy on it. It’s about finding a system that works for you and then working the system. At work I use Outlook where I keep my inbox clean, drag items to do later to my task list, drag items needing collaboration to my calendar to find a suitable time to meet, and drag items to my personal folders as needed for later reference. I have a day planner because I like writing things down in my own hand writing, (I despise electronic planners or using my phone or tablet), and I keep a Black n’ Red notebook for my projects list and next three things. I schedule time in my calendar for things like reviewing my email daily, completing my tasks, thinking/journaling time, etc. It’s so easy to underestimate how much thinking time we need. I don’t keep separate planners for work and life as I find it too cumbersome, and prefer to mingle work and personal together in my calendar and planner. Others find separate planners useful. It really only has to be something you would be willing to keep up with on a regular basis. In all the items you schedule, in whatever tool you use, you can schedule a weekly review of your plan, your lists, your tasks, etc. Regular reflection is necessary to stay in the self-love of discipline.
Get moving. Now that you have your clarity of purpose, and your list of things to do, all that’s left is to do them. There’s an energy around the anticipation of doing a task. The longer we avoid it, the more the energy can build and become its own obstacle. We can feel anxiety, stress, fear, sadness, depression, boredom, anger, or any number of emotions. Whatever you’re feeling, feed it to the fire in your belly - your will to get the job done. Use it to fuel you, to motivate you like a dare. I find that once I get moving, blessed momentum kicks in, and I begin to enjoy it. And if that doesn’t work, make it a prayer or meditation: offer up your work in service or devotion to a higher purpose or calling, and let it bring you closer to your truest and best self. We all have to do things we don’t want to do, and we all suffer with a lack of motivation at times, or even all times. Simply staring at the mountain will not move it or make it any smaller, just as admiring a problem or task won’t make it go away. Whether you want to climb the mountain or move it, all it takes is one step up, one shovel full of earth, one single action, and then another, and another, and another, until you’re done.
Organization and discipline are certainly intimidating, but they don’t have to be. When you think about it, organization is nothing more than reflection on where we’ve been, and a look forward to where we’re headed. And discipline is as much a form of self-love as exercise and green juice - it is doing what is good for us because we love and want the best for ourselves. When coaching a team member or client on how to define the steps and take the necessary actions to achieve their goals, I am doing so because I care about them - that they feel a sense of pride and satisfaction, and that they move closer to a more authentic, capable, and fulfilled existence. I’ve made this my life’s work because it has emerged as the most important thing I have to offer in a 25 year career. It’s what I’m good at. And I am worthy of the same loving and supportive attention I give to others. I am worthy of the same time for reflection. I am deserving of the same effort and energy toward achieving my goals. I am worthy of my best. And so are you worthy of yours.
Be well beloveds.
💖
