Chandra Manibog's blog

I am quickly learning that it is about the little things in life.  Those small moments that happen everyday, that make us pause for just a second.  In terms of our lives and our spaces, a little thing could be the look of a clean desktop first thing in the morning.  It could be that fantastic basket that you found, and now every time you grab something from it, the look of it makes you smile.

One thing that I learned this week is that even the smallest of decisions can add up to make a big difference. Often the most difficult thing about feeling disorganized is that sense of being overwhelmed by our stuff, our space, our time.

Surroundings, spaces, clutter can affect you in many ways.  Stress can, and often will, take on a physical form.  That space that causes you anxiety whenever you see it, could also affect you in a physical way - muscle aches, back pain, a cold.  The specific physical manifestation can differ for each person.  For me, every time I am stressed about something, I get a rash just behind my shoulder.  I've come to understand this as my body's sign that I need to initiate some self-care and figure out what is causing the stress.

The next step is to assign tasks to a slot of time. For instance, decide that bills will be paid on the Fridays that correspond to payday. Dinner with friends fits best on Saturdays because Sundays are usually spent with family. Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays will be gym days. 

Learning to weed my time commitments has been one of the more difficult, but beneficial things I have done.  It is difficult because deciding what is really important and necessary is easier said than done.

For me, commitments break down into: things I want to do, things I have to do, and things I don't want to and don't have to do.  I try to fit the first two into my schedule and the last group should get weeded out.  But like I said, this is easier said than done.  The difficulty is identifying which category something belongs to.  

One of the first and fundamental lessons at Living Peace is the 6 steps to organizing: Sort, Weed, Assign a Home, Buy/Locate, Setup, and Label.  What I love about these steps is that they can be used to organize anything, including your time.  I learned this at Living Peace and also through books like Julie Morgenstern's "Time Management from the Inside Out." This concept is something I had never considered before - organize your time just like you organize your things! 

 Do you ever wake up bright and early on a Saturday morning (okay, maybe not bright and definitely not early) and think: I am going to get that project done? You know you have nothing else planned, so you have the time.  I did exactly that this weekend. Somehow the hours passed, each one occupied with something that I wanted to do, and the next thing I know, the clock said 9PM.  And those boxes of unassembled furniture were still crowding up my stairwell, certainly not getting assembled tonight.

 Organizing is about making choices and creating habits. I recently talked about aiming for balance, not perfection. As much as I believe in this, there are times when I fall back into my old habits of perfectionism. When and why does this happen? It happens when life sends me a challenge. Ironically, my perfectionism, which is a lack of self-control, seems to reappear whenever I feel a need for greater control.

 REA-SON-ABLE: 1a: being in accordance with reason; b: not extreme or excessive. 2 a: possessing sound judgment

 This week we talked about recognizing when it is “time to invoke help.” I remember thinking: Yes, that is a very important skill to learn and of course, I do it all the time. Sometimes tackling a task on your own just does not make sense. It is often not worth the consequences or your time lost. A perfect example is that I was having “technical” difficulties with something that I had been struggling with all week. I asked Erin for help and within 5 minutes, she had the problem solved! It was such a relief for me.