A good friend of mine told me that again, last week, while I was giving him some advice: “I agree with you, that doing that is important, so I am going to get organized”
People think, that getting organized will solve the problems they have, they think that having those problems solved, will make everything go away, the mess, the missing appointments, the missing dreams, the lack of time; and the feeling of overworking. It will also get rid of the guilt that cause in our hearts, the fact that you are not spending the time you told yourself that you should have doing something else.
He ask me for a recommendation on a tool. I am a tech geek, I live and breath in a computer, I spend more hours connected to my Mac, iPhone or iPad that I am willing to admit, here or anywhere else. I have been known to be attached to a Computer for years, I will say since 1997, when I got my first Palm Pilot.
I laughed, not at him, but at the idea that the tool will solve the problem. After I try to explain to my friend, that he was looking a solution in the wrong place, so I ask him to identify his success story for the next seven days. - What do you mean he asked?
If I see you again in seven days, I want you to tell me how fantastic your week was. I want you to brag about it, to be exited about it. What have you accomplish that last week? His face when blank. I then explain, to him, if you have no clue, what will be a success story in seven days, most likely you will never see that you have a success one. There is always going to be one more thing to do, one more task to accomplish one more little thing that could be done.
Because I have learn, that sometimes, seven days, is more than what people can digest, I ask my friend to tell me what was the success story for tomorrow. If he can only do those things that will make tomorrow look as an incredible story, what he will do tomorrow. His face when blank again, and told me: “I have so much behind that feel like a success will be impossible” he told me.
I know that the story of my friend is not unique, most of the people that it is looking into more productivity, into getting organized, into be more proactive are trying simply to define a new story, are trying simply to feel success once in a while.
I go every morning over my lists, and pick out of those items on my pending list, what will make a success day. If my definition of success is to accomplish everything in my list, guess what, I will feel like a failure at the end of the day. Some days, I pick five things, some days I pick three, some days I pick one. The interesting thing is that some days I can do seven, somedays four, somedays two, somedays none, but with practice, I had been able to increase the number of success days; the number of days that I feel great!
You want to get organized? Do it one day at the time. Begin defining what success mean for you today, every day. Aim low, if you pick one thing and accomplish seven, you will feel great, the other way around will bring more of that you are feeling now.
About the tool, doesn’t matter, the tool will not organize you, the tool is a way to handle stuff, handle it on paper, computer. Create success, one day at the time, and the way to organize yourself will begin to show from behind the mist that is covering your success, a mist that you put when you ask the impossible from yourself.
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