5 Things Stopping You from Being Organized in Your Life (PART 1)
Are you dealing with chaos, clutter and a feeling of lack of control?
I asked the women in my Dynamic Women Global Community on Facebook, “What challenging thing are you working through these days?” One of the responses was “I'm not organized in my life.”
I'm hearing that a lot recently from clients and from people in my community. Let me ask you, “Are you dealing with chaos, clutter, and feeling a lack of control?” I get it because you have a lot going on. You’re busy with:
- Kids
- Career/business
- Volunteer work
- Hobbies
- Spouse/partner
- Other important people in your life
But first, what does being organized mean?
When I checked the Cambridge dictionary, it really comes into two areas:
(1) Making arrangements for something to happen. That's a verb. These are some examples that they gave:
- “I will organize a meeting.”
- “I organized a car to meet me at the airport so that I could use it for my trip.”
(2) To do or arrange something according to a particular system.
- “The books were organized on the shelves according to their size.”
- “The Secretary was busy organizing the files.”
You can see how an organization can be organizing a thing/an event, or it can be in how you put things together.
For the woman who shared this in the group, I feel like she’s talking more about arranging her life, the processes in her home, office, etc. and then the processes and systems in her business. So as you read this you can think of those and also organizing areas like health, and personal development.
When we're not organized, things fall through the cracks, right? You forget that you had a meeting, or you can't find a specific paper or item that you needed, and it was really important. A lot of times it comes down to one of two problems:
- There's just not enough time to get it all done.
- Or you don't know how to organize it.
I'm going to leave organizing spaces out of the conversation today. Instead, I’ll focus on areas of your life and over two blogs, I’ll share with you the five things that are stopping you from being organized.
FIRST: Trying to focus on everything
- Do you have a job and a side hustle?
- Do you do a lot of volunteer work plus you're doing another project?
- Or are you doing just one business, BUT you're also doing so many things in your business that it's really hard to stay on top of everything?
When you try to focus on everything, it seems like nothing ever gets done. You might end up being busy, but not productive. That’s a stressful place. Plus, when you bounce between multiple projects, it’s hard to complete tasks and the time from start to finish just takes forever.
It’s also difficult for your mind to be able to get back into it. Imagine, you were working on something, and then you left to work on something else. When you come back to it, you're going to be wasting time trying to figure out where to pick up where you left off. Aspects get missed. Steps in the process get missed. You can feel super disorganized.
SECOND: You're honoring other people's agendas.
A lot of times I hear from women that they're neglecting their health because they're honoring other people's agendas. There are just too many other things to do.
- “I’m just going to help my friend with something.”
- “I'll give a few hours to help a colleague with their project.
”It’s ok to GIVE. But when do YOU, YOUR goals and YOUR agenda get to be at the top?
I see female business leaders who are really struggling because they have so many other people's agendas ahead of their own.
When you honor other people's agendas, you put yourself on the backburner. You end up at the bottom of your priority list. Naturally as a mom, wife, friend, and person who likes to serve, you put everyone ahead of yourself. You can then feel disorganized, even in what's going to be for dinner because you're busy serving others.
Are you honoring other people's agendas? Or is there enough time in your schedule where you're honoring your own agenda, your own goals, your own projects, your own desires, and hobbies and needs?
THIRD: You have TOO many goals or NO clear goals at all.
I see the extreme of both. On one side they have 50 goals they want to accomplish this year.
On the flip side, there are no goals. They maybe don't say, “I have no goals,” but they're working on things without having the goals being clear, without the goals being something they’ve planned out and are actively checking in with.
When you have too many goals, you set yourself up to be completely disorganized because you've got too many things vying for your attention. You’ll be trying to focus on everything!
When you have no clear goals, you end up having to focus on the closest fire or squeaky wheel. That's also not good because that's also a disorganized way to be. With no clear focus of where you're going to put your time, energy, money or your other resources.
In my next blog, I will share the other two things that are stopping you from being organized as well as the solutions that you need so stay tuned!
P.S. If you’re looking for a clear plan with goals you can easily focus on and attain, then the Dynamic Success Accelerator program is for you! Join here.
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