We all like to think that the stress and anxiety in our lives is due to outside influences. Sometimes the whole world appears to conspire against us. The causes can be money, or the lack of it, our jobs, our partners, our children … the weather, the train, the traffic … our declining health, our computers, our phones … you get the idea. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Stress is other people!’
However true this may appear to be, we don’t exactly help ourselves. We hop from task to task. We say yes when we mean to say no. We can’t find things when we need them. We forget appointments. We use our email inbox as our to-do list. We use our email inbox as our filing system. We can’t stop checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Medium, Tumblr, Google+ … OK, maybe not all of them. We get buzzes and beeps from our phones, our computers, our ovens and our dishwashers. Life itself seems to be out of control. Although the truth is that you are the one out of control.
One of the most powerful motivators for me was the clarity and peace of mind that comes from being better organised. Our minds are not designed to hold the amount of information that we expect them to cope with. Neuroscientists refer to our ability to hold stuff in our working memory as ‘cognitive load’. When we overdo it we get ‘information overload’ — we can’t think clearly, make poor decisions, feel stressed and the quality of our breathing drops.
‘But creative people thrive on chaos!’ I hear you say. ‘Organisation is for boring people.’ ‘I haven’t got time to get organised.’ ‘One day I will earn enough so I can pay someone else to do all this stuff.’
I know where you’re coming from. I too held these beliefs until one day I got so fed up with living in a state of stress, anxiety and not getting stuff done, I decided to learn how.
No one teaches us the art of doing. We are thrown in the deep end at school, somehow avoid drowning in university or college, and end up splashing wildly through our working lives. The emphasis is on results, not on how you get there. The solutions to our chaos are sold to us in the form of books, apps, filing systems and beautifully designed stationery and bespoke pens and pencils. And we consume them avidly. Alas, they offer only temporary respite. Because the only solution to us being disorganised is getting organised!
So if you are reluctantly accepting that it’s you who might need to change, you are on the right track. And it’s not only about doing more — by learning the art of doing you will also discover the art of being too. The following is a simplified approach that I have implemented personally and coached many others in. It is not a complete guide, but will give you enough to be getting on with.