"If it is important to you, you will find a way to do it. If not, you will find an excuse."
Truer words were never spoken. So how do you “find a way”? For me, any task I need to tackle gets written down. My brain can only hold so many thoughts. If I don’t nail down my responsibilities in writing, they float on the wind like the feather in Forest Gump.
I have a daily list and then I have some things on the calendar. The calendar frees me to do my daily tasks and not daily worry about upcoming jobs. I can see that they are scheduled to be done on a certain day.
For example, we recently opened our home to about 30 students for a meal. There were a lot of tasks that needed to be done to pull this off and there was a matter of timing to a great deal of those tasks. We needed to not only get the house ready, but the yard as well. (We don’t have room to hold 30 people for a sit-down meal! Who does???)
I could have written down every last thing that needed to get done, but that would not have prioritized it well. There were things that we couldn’t do until the day before and other things that needed to get done weeks in advance.
Working backward from the date of the open house, we planned our work and worked our plan. Two days before we shopped for food. The day before, we mowed the lawn and cleaned the house. The day of we set out picnic tables and lawn games and picked up the sandwiches from a local shop. Every day had its scheduled work. This is just an example, but it can work for everyday tasks, too.
What keeps hanging over your head that you need to do? Do you hate to process your mail and it’s piling up? Put it on the calendar. That way, when you look at the pile, you won’t stress. You know that you have set aside Monday and Thursday evenings to do that task. What else is coming up for which you need to block time? Cleaning the gutters? Raking leaves? Putting up the Christmas lights? Maybe it’s a smaller task: Vacuuming? Bill paying? Putting the laundry away? Whatever is gnawing at you, put it on the calendar and block that time out.
I love this quote I saw on a wall in a shopping center,
“Replace the word ‘try’ with ‘will’ and watch the magic happen.”
I’d love to hear how you keep track of the Forest Gump feather of tasks in your life. Let’s brainstorm together and together we will not just try, but we will do!
Laura ~ your organizing girlfriend
