Success from understanding

I’ve now been using my personal organisation system for three months. The result? It’s been okay, though it included several changes. Overall, it’s been working as I expected.

Around ten days after I first talked about the system, I made some adjustments to it. Then, ten days after that, I talked about even more changes—and that’s been it. Since my last round of changes, I’ve simply been using it, something I thought would show me if I needed to change anything more. So far, using it seems to suggest it’s still okay.

However, there have been some unexpected things, too. I’ve found that using the “to do” lists in the “What’s Up” section has also helped me see the things I’ve done so I can see how long its been since I last did a thing. Not always useful information, of course, but it’s also as close as I get to a personal journal. As they say, to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been. Or, at least I can know how long it’s been since I last ran the dishwasher. I have to admit, though, that at first I felt using the “to do” lists was kind of like “busy work”—not all that important, and sometimes even unnecessary. I'm finding them much more useful now. even if for no other reason than the fact that checking things off the list makes me feel like I'm moving forward, and not stalled.

I've also been using the "Somewhere Safe" section to record things I want to be able to find later. That's been easy enough to do, and it has, as I’d hoped it would, helped me keep track of things so I don't lose important tings any more. However, so far I haven’t had to refer to it to find something, and there are important things from before I created the system that I still can’t find because the “somewhere safe” I put those things was unrecorded. Still, at least there are some things I won’t waste time re-finding.

So far, I haven’t used anything else in the system—no list of things I need to do “at some point”, no list of projects, nor records of progress on any projects. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good or useful, as far as I know, it just means that I don’t know because I haven’t used them. I’ve mainly been using the parts that I think are more important, though I’m beginning to think I should at least map out my various projects so I have some hope of completing them. Maybe that’ll be in the second three months I did type up a list of projects just before I started work in the system—and haven't done anything with that list since.

That’s the gist of how the system is working, but the more important thing is why I created the system in the first place: Trying to gain some control over my life by working around my personal obstacles. I do, indeed, feel more in control since I launched the system, and it’s definitely made things like focusing much easier because I no longer have to try (and fail…) to remember everything.

There’s so much more to that aspect of this system, the “why”, and I’ll be talking about it in future posts. This system was actually born from realisations I made during this journey as I worked on “my one true project”: Creating a new me. For now, though, the important thing to note is that this system is working for me, and the real reason for that is all the work I’ve been doing on my one true project, thereby understanding myself better. The truth is, the two are helping both succeed.

Not a bad result for what was originally pretty much a move of near desperation. As always, I take success where I can find it.