How to break the vicious circle of messiness and lateness (part 3)
In part 2 of this particular blog, I started to look at the issue of a chronic lack of time for organising your space so that your life runs smoothly, from the point of view of ‘the big picture’. I’d like to continue with that today by examining the other possible ‘big picture’ issue, which is feeling that you have to ‘work all the hours God sends, in order to make a basic living’.
Combining working all hours, with caring for your children and your basic domestic needs, plus your needs for rest and relaxation can be impossible. There is a trade off in this situation, between time and money. Basically, you have no time, because you can’t afford to delegate elements of your work, whether your livelihood or your domestic work, such as cleaning or shopping. I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of this situation, especially in these credit crunch times. As a self employed person, I’ve been there myself and regularly worked upwards of 80 hours a week. I try not to do that anymore.
There’s only one way out of this situation, and that is to break the cycle by making it one of your main priorities to look at what your basic rate of pay per hour/week/month is, and whether that’s really enough to allow you some relaxation time (and funds) and some time to re-invest in yourself, as well as time to fulfil your personal obligations. Chances are, it isn’t, and you will have to recalculate an ideal figure, either for the hour, week, month or year whichever you prefer. Whilst you are there, take the opportunity to phase out or cut out all the activities which are not paying you, per hour or paying a pittance. We all take things like this on out of goodwill, and regular assessment and pruning is required if you’re chronically time strapped and overworked.
Once you have this figure, memorise it, and look for ways or opportunities to raise your earnings to match it (allowing for inflation) in the long term. Be willing to retrain for another role, or restructure your business if necessary. It may take you years to work out what that change should be, but knowing what you are aiming for and giving it regular thought will mean that you don’t drift along, wearing yourself out and resigning yourself to earning far too little because it’s what you’re accustomed to earning. That is the main thing. Understanding that your current earning capacity per hour isn’t viable in the long term is crucial if you don’t want to find yourself falling behind, getting into debt, getting depressed, getting ill, or not being able to cope if life throws you an additional crisis to deal with, which stops you working properly for a while. A small buffer zone of time and money in your life isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity if you want to stay happy and healthy, and to be able to adapt easily to the inevitable changes in your circumstances which will come along as time goes on.
On the more everyday level, creating more time in your life is going to ensure that you’re not constantly shovelling mess out of the way as you rush to get the next thing finished, or get out of the house on time, and then return to chaos. You will have time to take that extra 3 seconds to put whatever item you have in your hand back in the correct place as you go, and you’d be amazed how quickly doing that consistently, affects the way your house looks and feels to live in.
Next time, in the final part of the ‘messiness and time’ theme, I’ll look at the issue of messiness when it’s caused by always leaving things to the last minute.
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