Can You Live a Good Enough Life?

I am fascinated by how the concept of ‘good enough’ relates to being organized and our many attempts to be what we perceive as ‘well organized’.  What does being organized mean to you?  Most likely not the same as it does to your spouse, your best friend or your children.

What if, instead of constantly striving to be more organized, better organized or even, heaven forbid, perfectly organized we strove for ‘good enough’.  According to Sarah Hampson the author of an article entitled, The Secret to happiness? Live a ‘good enough’ life,  “. . . when you don’t expect much, when you manage the ideas of what you think your life should be, you can be pleasantly surprised – and grateful – for the good fortune that comes your way.”

Somehow this sounds like lowering expectations, reducing the standards of what is acceptable and seems to me like settling for mediocrity.  Not acceptable to someone like me who is a recovering perfectionist and still battling with doing my ‘best’ instead of striving for ‘perfect’.  So, the concept of good enough doesn’t sit well with me but I know for many of you it might be just what you need.

If your kitchen drawers are organized so that you can find what you need but you don’t have those fancy dividers that you saw in a friends kitchen that might just be good enough?  If your clothes are all hanging up but not on matching hangers is that good enough?  If your papers are all off the floor and in tidy piles on your desk where you can put your fingers on what you need that might just be good enough.  If your email inbox is down to 50 messages, instead of 500, maybe that is good enough?

I like the idea of good enough as opposed to perfectly organized as it does allow us to lower our expectations of what organized means and move towards a level of organization that is achievable.  I think this concept is especially important for those who don’t like to spend their time organizing or find it difficult to know when to stop organizing. 

What we see in magazines and on television is often not realistic and perhaps that is where some of our expectations of perfectly organized come from?  Have you ever noticed the desk in the corner of the living room on a makeover show with a computer on it but not a single cord in sight nor a stitch of paper – no matter how organized we are our space will never look like that so perhaps lowering our expectations is exactly what the doctor ordered!

Everything in life seems to come back to deciding what matters most.  As long as your home and office are organized ‘enough’ so that you can function effectively and enjoy your space, forget about what others may think and go with what works for you.  I think the summer is the perfect time to try some ‘good enough’ thinking – at least for you my dear readers even if not for me!

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Procrastination – Perfectionism or Impulsiveness?

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Moncton to deliver a workshop on Overcoming Procrastination at the IAAP Atlantic Conference for a group of over 80 very enthusiastic women.  Wow, it was good fun and we had some interesting discussion about procrastination and why we do it.

We brought up the topic of laziness – is procrastination laziness?  Some people thought that sometimes it was laziness but most of the time not so much.  It seems to go much deeper than that in a lot of instances.

Is procrastination due to perfectionism?  In many cases it may very well be.  We often wait for the perfect conditions, saying to ourselves, “I’ll do this when …” or “I can’t do this until …”.  However, as the quote says, “Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for the perfect conditions.” (Gary Ryan Blair). 

I have this article that I cut from The Globe and Mail several months ago which I pulled out in preparing for the workshop.  It’s all about perfectionism and procrastination and how they may or may not be linked.  According to the article perhaps it is not about perfectionism even though studies show that it is.  Apparently perfectionists who procrastinate are more likely to seek help from therapists so they turn up in research numbers more often.  Gee whiz, I needed therapy for that, who knew!  If you are a perfectionist you feel worse about putting things off and therefore seek help to overcome it. 

Hmmm . . . being a recovering perfectionist myself I still think that I wait for the perfect conditions to start or finish certain things and somehow they always get done before the deadline, always.  Perhaps that’s my perfectionist standards or just the nature of the expectations of others that Professional Organizers always do everything ahead of schedule – how’s that for a little added pressure!

The article goes on to postulate that procrastination is, in fact, a result of impulsiveness.  Say what?  Impulsive people (you can tell I’m not one) live impatiently in the present moment and want everything right now.   Showing self-control or delaying gratification is difficult for impulsive people.  So, anxiety over a deadline leads directly to procrastination.  And impulsiveness, they say, causes disorganized procrastinators who are mighty distractible.  Impulsive people find it difficult to plan work ahead of time which leads to a lot of late nights just before the project deadline. 

Wow, pretty complicated stuff, don’t you think?

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Time to Look for Something but No Time to Put It Away?

Here are some wise words from my good friend Georgina Forrest from Smartworks Organizing in Calgary, Alberta from one of her recent newsletters. 

Doing Small Things Can Make A Big Difference.  Have you ever taken something out to use it …

• a file from the file cabinet
• the hole punch out of the supply cupboard
• a book off of a shelf
• something – anything – out of a drawer

. . . used it but didn’t put it back? You know, because you just didn’t have time to put it away.

Then you needed to find something – perhaps a file or a hole punch or a book or something – only to SPEND time digging through the piles of stuff that had accumulated because you didn’t have time to put it away in the first place.

It’s a funny paradox of life:

Why is it we always have time to look for something yet we don’t always have time to put it away?

Don’t just put stuff down when you’re done with it, put it away. It really only takes a few additional seconds to do this, but can save you oodles of time wasted looking for it again in the future.

Every little thing you can do to keep order, results in huge benefits for you down the not-too-distant road.

So put that file or hole punch or book or whatever away – right now.

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Organizing Systems for Small Business

Last week I facilitated a workshop for a group of new small business owners.  It never ceases to amaze me how many organizing systems you need to have when you run your own business.

Here are a few we came up with.  I’m pretty sure there are still some things we have forgotten?

• Customer Contacts
• Action Items
• Calendar System – electronic or paper (or both-yikes)?
• Financial Records including filing for HST
• Propects/Sales Cycle
• Managing Electronic Documents
• Inventory
• Time Tracking
• Online Passwords
• Managing Email
• Vehicle Mileage and related expenses

And then, on top of all that, you have to figure out how to manage your time effectively.  In a workshop a few years ago I learned a formula for managing time in the busy world of an entrepreneur.  I have since adjusted it to fit my needs and the reality of how the lives of most of my small business clients actually should work.  My overall discovery is that we have to try to minimize the time we spend on administration, while still taking care of all the details, and maximize the time we spend on activities that either allow us to earn money or have the potential to help increase our revenues.

And then there’s planning time, one thing many of us do not spend enough time on.  As small business owners we should be spending the equivalent of 1/2 a day per week just planning.  This is really as simple as ensuring we are ready for the upcoming week with our clients and ensuring that we are moving along any business projects such as updating our website.  If we don’t plan for those business projects they just never seem to get done.  All of our time can be eaten up looking for clients, talking to clients and following up with clients.  And, if you’re like me, procrastinating by checking email and browsing the internet.

Alright already, I’m going to do my planning for the week right now before I start searching the internet for some pretty organizing products for a client!

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Your Brain at Work – Emotional Regulation

During our second webinar on The Brain at Work, David Rock focused on our emotions and how our brain regulates emotion and how we might be able to have some control over that.

The first piece of the discussion that I found interesting was the concept of how our limbic system works.  The limbic system helps us decide if something is good or bad for us.  Our brain wants to minimize danger and maximize reward.  Therefore, we run away from danger faster than we run towards reward.  

In addition, a threat causes more adrenalin and alertness.  Uncertainty is a threat – so does that mean that in a sense we crave uncertainty?  I think about the work I am doing now with overcoming procrastination and discussions I have had with clients about the rush they get from doing things at the last minute.  Perhaps it is related to the way our limbic system functions – fascinating, no?

Here is the part where this discussion related to our ability to be organized and manage our time.  When we experience a threat response here is what takes place:

• Reduced working memory – we hold less information
• Increased motor funcitons – fidgeting, etc.
• Reduced field of view – you see less information
• Generalizing of threats – you make accidental connections with negative things
• Erring on the side of pessimism

Are those not all productivity killers – holy cow batman!

Therefore, if we want to learn to perform at our best we have to learn to regulate our emotions.  When you are threatened and feel an emotion, you can do 1 of 3 things:

1. express your emotion – we are taught not to express emotion, but to suppress it
2. suppress your emotion – when you suppress emotion it either stays the same or gets worse.
3. cognitive change – this involves invoking the brains’ braking system

Cognitive change happens most successfully through reappraisal.  This involves changing the interpretation of the situation that causes the emotion.  Since I am certainly no expert on this topic, I suggest you visit David’s website or pick up his book ‘Your Brain at Work’ to study these techniques further.

What I did find interesting for me personally on the subject of reappraisal is that apparently realistic, logical people (that’s me) have trouble with reappraisal and tend to suppress their emotions instead.  I’m doomed, people!

One technique that many of us apply is setting expectations, which is  like regulating our emotions in advance.  If we meet our expectations then the dopamine in our brain goes up and this gives us a small reward.  If we exceed our expectations we get even more of a reward.  However, if we do not meet our expectations our dopamine drops and that poses a threat.

OK, so we run away from threat faster than we run toward reward so, therefore, do we set lower expectations for ourselves so that we always feel good?  Now I’m confused again.  This stuff is not easy, is it?

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Eat That Frog!

I’ve always been a fan of Brian Tracy and just picked up a copy of his book Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.  

You see in preparing for my Overcoming Procrastination workshop last Friday I came across the ‘Eat that Frog’ term and wanted to know more.  The concept really seems to have resonated with the workshop participants and everyone is busy eating frogs including me!  Most of my frogs seem to be on the personal front.  Like many of the women in the workshop, I take pretty good care of my business and do things in a timely manner and even manage to tackle a few big projects on occasion.

However, on the personal front, frogs abound!  There’s the income tax frog, the winter coat frog, the garden needs weeding frog, the clean out the shed frog, the paint the deck chairs frog, the repair the deck frog.  Whew, enough already.   Here’s a great quote that really resonates for me when I think about all my frogs. “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” (William James).

So here are Brian’s rules for Frog eating:

1. If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.
2. If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.

Here is a question from Eat That Frog! I think we should ask ourselves on a daily basis.  Stop once every day and say to yourself, “Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive consequences in my work or personal life?”

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Overcoming Procrastination

Procrastination – we are all guilty of it at some time or another.  That one big job that has taken on monster proportions which grow daily as you put it off yet again.

When procrastination becomes a habit and you regularly postphone important things you need to do, then you know you may have a problem. Procrastination is defined as, “The intentional and habitual postponement of some important task that should be done now.”

Whenever I have a unpleasant task to perform I find myself madly checking email or organizing files – anything to make me feel immediate gratification and put that job off just a little longer.  So, I feel better for a short time and then there’s that darn big job again weighing me down with guilt.  Do you find that the more you procrastinate, the more energy you waste and the more exhausted you become?

The key steps seem to be:

1. Break the task down into manageable chunks

2. Schedule the chunks in your calendar/planner

3. Tell someone else that you will complete these chunks and give them a deadline

If you would like to learn more about overcoming procrastination, sign up for my workshop on May 14th from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm at the Alderney Gate Library in Dartmouth.  Only $99 per person. Click here for more information.

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