Personal Organization
The Personal Context and Consequence of Essential Organizing Skills
Personal organization skills are only one half of the twin skill set for organized living.
The other half of the twin set would be space utilization. Both are necessary but it is the organization skills that you personally bring
to any situation that will be the driving force in bringing about order and stability in your life.
You may think that reading books about how to get organized and then purchasing organizing supplies will be
all that is necessary to create an orderly space and lead an organized life.
But getting organized involves much more than just efficient space utilization.
No matter how much time and effort you put into organizing your space, without good personal organization skills
you will not be able to maintain that space and things may go back to being cluttered, disorderly, and stressful again.
Why should you want to have orderly living spaces?
An organized environment is healthier on the physical, spiritual, and
emotional level.
That is why it is so important to understand your own personal organization skills and to develop good habits that keep your spaces organized.
Personal organization skills include things like setting priorities,
decision making,
assertiveness and communication. Sorting and categorizing are also important.
Setting Priorities
Not all things or circumstances in life carry the same importance. That is a fact!
However, failing to attach different levels of importance to things or circumstances means that you
interpret everything to have the same level of importance. This makes it difficult to decide what must be done
first and what can wait.
If you do not know how to set priorities
you may be overwhelmed with too many things to do, or you may find your self surrounded by clutter.
Decision Making
Good personal organization skills include making timely decisions.
Do you put off making decisions?
Are you afraid of making a bad one? Perhaps you do not know how to make a
logical and well informed decision because you allow too much emotional interference with the issue that needs
deciding?
The fact is the more decisions you make the better you get at it and you cannot learn to make a good decision
if you never make a bad one.
Here's What Can Happen if You Don't Know How to Make a Decision
You may engage in procrastination and put off making necessary decisions.
A variety of delayed decisions will
lead to stress as well as mental and physical clutter. Every single bit of clutter in your environment is a
constant reminder of a decision that needs to be made.
Assertiveness
Assertiveness is simply a way of looking after yourself.
First you have to prioritize your own needs and then learn some skills to communicate these to
others so that the needs and feelings of other people are not hurt or diminished in any way as you
try to express your own needs.
Here's What Can Happen if You Constantly Ignore Your Own Needs and Wants
Eventually you will not be able to express what you want because you will not know what you want.
This is not only a recipe for depression but also a recipe for
accumulating other people's stuff in your space.
The literature has established that clutter and depression are closely linked.
Communication
The importance of communication in organized living should not be
underestimated.
Communication is really about mutual understanding. Developing good personal organization skills
means that you will be listening more than you are talking - that's why you have two ears and one mouth!
Here's What Can Happen if You Cannot Achieve Mutual Understanding With Others
You may feel frustrated that other people
do not understand you. If the true meaning of interactions are not validated and agreed to by all parties
then mutual understanding is not achieved and you may become
confused and
frustrated.
You cannot achieve organized living when confusion and frustration are present.
Sorting and Categorizing
Essential to all areas of personal organization are the skills of sorting and categorizing.
The ability to group like items, information, and tasks together is essential for establishing and
maintaining control in your life.
Sorting and categorizing are essential organization skills that help you to set priorities, manage time, and store you stuff in a logical and meaningful way
so that you can find it when you need it!
Here is an example:
If you have 10 things to do and you view these ten things as separate things you may feel more hurried and worried that you cannot get them all done on the way home from work. But by sorting these tasks and categorizing them as "banking tasks", "mailing tasks", and "not important for today", you narrow it down to two stops on the way home from work and the other few items can wait!
Can you see how organization skills work together?
Personal organization emerges from using all organization skills together in your daily life and
doing them consistently so that you do not feel overwhelmed, confused, or frustrated.
Nobody is perfect so you cannot expect to be perfectly organized all the time,
but using the 80/20 rule you can judge your own level of personal organization by whether or not
you feel in control of your life and your stuff about 80% of the time.
Stumble It!
