Sabotage is an intentional act of blocking or damaging success. While we may be tempted to sabotage someone else’s success, why would we sabotage our own?
When getting organized we aren’t intentional about failing, but that doesn’t mean we don’t block or damage our success. Here are six Timely Tips to unblock success.
Timely Tips to unblock success
ALL OR NOTHING MINDSET
I start here because if you struggle with it, you’re already thinking “I can’t do all of these, so I might as well give up now.” None of us can do it all. Choose one tip to focus on at a time.
When organizing don’t have in mind the whole house, or even a whole room. Narrow your focus to one drawer, one bookshelf, or one cabinet.
Better to do all of one small area than nothing at all.
DISORGANIZED IDENTITY
We set ourselves up for failure when we decide we’re inherently messy and there’s no possibility of change. The process of getting organized takes many of my clients out of their comfort zone. They might not be organized by nature, but doing it reveals what they are capable of learning. Whenever my granddaughters tell my son-in-law they can’t do something, he adds the word “yet.”
Tell yourself, “I’m not organized—YET.”
WAITING FOR MOTIVATION
You might be naturally motivated to sew, or tinker with things in the garage, but you never wake up thinking—I can’t wait to get out there and purge and organize my tools. Don’t wait until you’re in the middle of a project, frustrated because you can’t find your supplies.
Schedule a time to work on the area that matters most to you.
PRODUCTIVE PROCRASTINATION
The term, coined by researcher and psychologist Piers Steel, is the act of doing something productive while avoiding something else. For me that might look like organizing my travel supplies when I should be packing for a trip.
I often come across organizing books and bins adding to the clutter in clients’ homes, accumulated through productive procrastination. We avoid the most pressing, difficult, and often most important tasks, and unintentionally block success.
Ask yourself—is what I’m doing what I want now, or what I need most?
PERFECTIONISM
It stops you from starting or keeps you from finishing. Either way you’re left with an imperfect project that reminds you constantly of something waiting to be done. Looking for the perfect system or organizing product is an endless task. The solution? Boundaries.
Decide ahead of time—I will make my choices from X number of websites or minutes/hours/days of searching. Schedule dates for research, action, and completion. Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be done? Yes.
Done is better than perfect.
NO MAINTENANCE PLAN
Key to your success is what you do the day after you complete your organizing project.
Daily life is messy, but daily habits like a ten-minute reset at the end of the day keeps the mess from becoming a project.
Wise Words
The best way to get something done is to begin. —Unknown