So I want to up-level your pile-putting away in real time because I have a pile of papers, and I want to show you how to do it so much better than just saying, ” Okay, I need all of this stuff to be gone. I’m going to just sit down and put it all away either in hyper-focus or through pressure.”
So, like every item you’re picking up, I would ask myself: Why is this here, and what could I use to support myself so that it doesn’t end up here again?
For example, the first thing papers that I have are some song lyrics because I write songs. This is the one that I’m currently working on and pretty much I’m almost done with it. So the questions that come up for me with this being on my desk is, why is it here? Where do I put the songs that I’m currently working on? I don’t have a spot for them. That is a problem that I can solve. That’s a problem that I can work on later. I’m not going to do it right now, but I’m writing it down so that I can work on it later.
The next thing that comes up for me as I’m thinking about that is that even if it were done, I don’t love the file storage that I have for my song lyrics. So that could be a problem that I solve also, so I feel better about putting it away. Also, I’m not doing any of that right now. I’m just writing down the problems and I’m putting this back on my desk and picking up a new piece of paper.
The next thing I have here is notes from my meeting with my virtual assistant. So I write the notes on paper, and then this paper sits here and probably gets lost. So I don’t have a place to put, technically I have a place, I could put them in my planner on the work to do list. So I actually do have a place, but I don’t have a time set aside when I will transfer them from this loose paper into my planner, which would be a much better place to put it. So I’m gonna write that down. Problem solved for when am I transferring notes.
Again, I don’t want to solve this problem now. I don’t want to start thinking, “Well, I could do it right after the meeting, I could do it at the end of the day, I could set alarms for that.” I don’t want to do any of that right now. I just want to write down the problems that I need to solve and give myself time for them later.
Next up is more to do’s. So same problem. Great. This just goes on the pile now. And more to do’s. These are personal ones that made it onto my desk. It appears I have a problem. The last two are really good. They are like data that I’ve collected about my group members in my group coaching program. And what I notice is the big problem here is I don’t know what I even want to do with this data, like where I want to put it, if I want to use it again, and how I come to find it again.
I think the problem here is making a decision. I need to make a decision about what to do with this data, and I can actually schedule that.
I recommend scheduling decisions instead of feeling and believing the lie that the minute they enter your mind, you need to make them now or think about them for an extended period of time while you’re doing other things. No, schedule them.
Now that my desk is neat and I have a neat little pile, it’s all still here, but it’s organized because I know the problems that I need to solve to make this pile go away.
I’m going to schedule a time to solve these to let my brain get creative about what I want to do, to set up the systems the way that I want them to be, and then as I go through this pile again, whenever I do that, probably in a couple of days when I work all these problems out, then there’s a place to put them, and I know exactly where to put them. And adjusting this will be so much easier after I’ve solved these problems now and for the foreseeable future, right?
These could all change, but for now, these will be my best theories on this. That’s how you uplevel any space. You play the long game, write down the problems you need to solve, and schedule time to solve them.
Try this and tell me the NEXT problem you have. We’ll solve that too!
Xoxo,
Jessica
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