One of my highly creative clients (I’ll call her Kate) used to think she could never be organized. She had always believed getting organized meant that she’d have to give up her creativity, self-expression and spontaneity and become a rigid and compulsive person. She had decided long ago that she would rather stay disorganized than to use systems and stick to boring routines that she believed would squelch her creativity.
Kate’s work required high creativity – something she had developed quite a reputation for. Her employer counted on her to deliver quality work, and she did…but usually at a great personal cost. She typically had to work late into evening and on weekends in order to meet deadlines without compromising quality of her work. These late-night working sessions frequently consisted of spending several minutes to several hours each day frantically searching for important information that contained critical specifications required to complete her work. But in end, Kate always met her deadlines and delivered a quality product.
All was well with world…until eventually Kate had taken on more responsibility than she could handle. She began running late, missing appointments and deadlines, and not returning clients’ phone calls. And things were no better at home. The stress was doing her in, and she knew that something had to change. In essence, weeds were choking off nutrients to fruit-bearing plants she had been cultivating in her garden, and she was no longer able to produce same quality or volume of fruit.
As much as Kate wanted to preserve her freedom of self-expression by NOT getting organized, she realized that she could be much more productive at work and at home if she didn’t waste so much time looking for things. Kate was ready to make some changes, so she read some organizing books and tried to implement ideas on her own. That didn’t prove to have lasting results, so she hired a professional organizer to help her gain control of her work area. But by end of following week, her desk had reverted back to its original state, and her email and phone messages were out of control, too. The weeds were starting to sprout again and choke off fruit-bearing plants! Kate felt very discouraged and defeated.
By time Kate contacted me, she was ready to do whatever it took to turn things around. Once she quit viewing “getting organized” as an enemy to creativity, she began to discover that creating some systems and routines actually freed up her time and thoughts so she could exercise more self-expression and creativity. This time she started pulling weeds from roots so they wouldn’t grow back…and nutrients began flowing again to fruit-bearing plants. By organizing from inside out, Kate was able to begin making lasting changes in habits that had been costing her a lot of time and energy.
How did Kate and I get started? We used 7-step process below. We went to root of problem instead of just pulling up tops of weeds.
7 Steps to Lasting Change
To demonstrate these steps, I’ll use examples related to getting organized, although you can use this process in other areas of your life, as well.
1. Identify your motivation. Answers to these questions might help you identify motivations for getting organized: