While this phrase is well-meaning, to me it more often means, “I feel like I have so much to do I don’t know where to start.”
I learned a long time ago how subjective, “organization” can mean. When I was younger, I was working at a martial arts studio and the owner decided to hire a, Professional Organizer. “Great,” I thought, “wonder what they’ll do or where they’ll start.”
The first thing she did was to go over the student files with me. She did watch me engage with students, “Did I pay for the month?” “When does my membership end?” “I have a new phone number, I need to update my record.” Then at the end of a couple of hours, the professonal organizer took each students’ folder with their files, and the stapled all files to their folders. I wasn’t sure about the benefit of this, understanding that she is an expert in organization, I wanted to learn more.
She explained, “The papers in the folders are lose, but important. We don’t want to lose any of them, so we’ll staple them to their folders.” The school was a good size, but I was still able to stay in touch with every student. “I am not aware of missing any files on behalf of anyone. Though, stapling the files does make it challenging to update certain information and what about new files and new contracts?”
We went on for about 10 minutes, and that’s when I realised that her idea of organized and my idea of organized did not align. From then, I followed her instruction while I was there, as clunky as the operation had become. Until the owner had to remove several staples to update info himself. While we didn’t undo everything that she did, we gradually did remove staples. It did serve as a nice point to know which files were of students who haven’t been to class in awhile and the stapled files became a designation of a physical archive.
Now back to, “I need to get organized,” or “I don’t know where to start.”
If you’re overwhelmed, take some small steps and start with a list. List everything that you need to take care of that comes to mind. Identify big items and small items. Maybe some items are sub-tasks to a bigger task. For example, let’s say Mary just got a new 3D printer and wants to run some test prints and make sure the printer is in working order that does not need to be exchanged.
- Confirm new 3D Printer
- Set-Up Printer
- Callibrate Printer
- Load filament
- Run a test print
- If test print is not ideal
- Troubleshoot
- RePrint
- Contact Vendor
In this example, Confirm new 3D printer looks like a larger task item. Next, sort the task items based on whether or not there’s a deadline to the task, and highlight if it needs to be done today, or within a week. I have an earlier post on, Prioritizing a to-do List, that might be helpful for a review.
Chances are, you have been following some sort of organization method before you got to this point. I used to crunch through task items to the point that I would hit a roadblock with not being able to properly address last-minute items. And sometimes, you want to address last minute items, whether it’s as urgent as a broken pipe, or an opportunity to take now. I had to learn to keep my goals to, getting 2-3 large tasks completed in a day, and 3-5 smaller tasks in a day. Not only did this let me handle events that would suddenly pop up, but allow me to double-check any current effort on the day’s tasks.
The bigger item for me to manage was the number of projects I have running concurrently. For this, I created a board by my desk.
The cards are projects, color-coded with a legend at the top right. The goal is to move as many cards to the far right. But to keep the number of cards in the second column (In-Progress) to 3-5.
Everyone has their own workflow, and from that, organization will vary based on workflow, approach, and one’s own experience. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything that you need to get done, try a basic list, separate out the big and small items, pull out the urgent items, and don’t forget to get some smaller tasks done in a day. If it turns out that you couldn’t get a bigger tasks done in a day, maybe it’s supposed to be done over multiple days, but the completed smaller tasks could offer some encouragement for a sense of accomplishment for the day. Feel less overwhelmed. And manage the path to feeling burned out.