How to break the vicious circle of messiness and lateness (part 2)
Last time, I looked at a grass roots method of stopping the vicious circle of messiness and lateness taking over your house. Hopefully, you will be well on your way to understanding how to create small pockets of calm and tidiness in your day, which can become larger and larger.
This time I want to start to look at the lateness problem from the top down. Having efficient workstations of the type I outlined in my last blog may not in itself break the deadlock. Perhaps you already do, but find that emergencies, deadlines and constant ‘firefighting’ mean that you never have time to organise things more efficiently, and that mess is constantly being created.
There are two possible sources for your lack of time. One might be that you simply have too much to do every day, and the other might be that you habitually leave things until the last minute. I’ve suffered from both of these myself, and although a short blog cannot offer definitive answers to these major issues, I’d like to offer some suggestions, and starting points.
If you have too much to do everyday, then it’s time to take a look at the bigger picture. Start by keeping a time diary for at least a week. Take a little notebook with you everywhere and note down how you actually spent your time. If you skived for an hour over that tea and chocolate biscuit, when you thought you’d only be ten minutes, note that down. We aren’t here to judge, just to make things better and that will be easier with an accurate picture of how you spend your time. Then steal another half an hour in the way that I suggested in part 1, on the weekend, to do some assessing. Start by listing what is important to you and what fulfils you both at work (if you work) and at home. Then take a look at your time diary and ask yourself if the way you spent your time actually reflects this?
Too often we rush virtuously to the top of the ladder only to find that’s it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It takes courage to stop rushing, make a ‘big picture’ assessment, and quit or change the path you’re on (especially if this might make you look foolish in another’s eyes). But if you aren’t on the right path, you will subconsciously know it and feel constantly dissatisfied with what you’re achieving and constantly driving yourself to achieve more. It may take several such assessments to enable you to find out what you truly need to change, but doing so and having the courage to make the adjustment will be really worth it.
One such decision might be, having to acknowledge that there’s too much responsibility in your life in the next year for you to be able to grow and learn and develop as much as you’d like to. Sometimes you need to accept that you have responsibilities to young children or your aging and frail parents just now, and shouldn’t be putting additional pressure on yourself to make big career changes or gain further qualifications, until you are freer. This isn’t letting yourself off the hook. It’s a way of making sure that you don’t overload yourself insanely, and that you won’t look back with regret.
Women in particular are not good at keeping some ‘buffer time’ sacrosanct in their day. They fill it all, not allowing for the inevitable delays or emergencies that come up. I know this comes out of a very laudable sense of duty, but it isn’t actually very helpful. If you’re a woman and you really want to be ‘beautiful’ then one of the cheapest beauty boosts you can give yourself is a little ‘grace’ time for every task. No one looks pretty when they’re harried and rushing. Resign yourself to cutting out a couple of things when you find yourself pushed for time, and watch as the whole day runs more smoothly. Or to habitually doing less, and enjoying things more. You deserve that, you know…
If you aren’t rushing in the wrong direction, it’s also possible that you’re trying to achieve five or six major goals all at once. The crucial thing to know in this case is that trying to achieve six goals at once is going to take much longer than if you concentrated on a single one at a time until you got to the end of your list. That is because, when you are focussed on one thing, your subconscious mind can obligingly help you by giving you good ideas. Working on six goals at once, confuses and paralyses it. It is best to concentrate on no more than two unrelated goals or three related ones at any one time. Then you can get onto the next ones on your list faster.
Next time, I’ll look at the syndrome of feeling that you have to work all hours, just to stay afloat, and that you don’t have time to get things in order as a result.
