Posts Tagged ‘time management’
Heading Home
Posted on: May 25, 2008
It’s kind of scary how much I’ve enjoyed this trip. My brother was critically ill, so this was far from a relaxing vacation. And as I mentioned in my post the other day, I’m staying in a very modest hotel, but it has seemed like heaven.
And I haven’t had any real responsibilities. Someone else is cleaning my room – every day! my husband and daughter are fending for themselves at home; other than blogging, I haven’t been working (that’s the best part) and I haven’t cooked or washed a dish since Wednesday. And the hours I’ve had alone at the hotel – pure bliss!
I guess the lesson is that I need to find a way to create more space for solitude, creativity and renewal in my daily life. I’m alone a lot during the day, but I’m either housecleaning or working – or feeling guilty that I should be doing one or the other. And being alone is not the same as solitude.
I’m going to try two ways to find the time and the space I need. One is something I just read about the other day called time striping, which I think might suit me better than the other systems I’ve tried for managing my time and my work. The other is the unschedule from Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit, which encourages you to calendar the things you want to do before scheduling the things you “have” to do.
My organizing and decluttering project is still important to me, and essential for my serenity and peace of mind, but I really need to get this time management thing figured out and make more room for joy in my life.
Summer is coming and it feels like the perfect time for a fresh start. I hope One Bag Nation will help me stay on track with these resolutions; I’ll definitely be posting about my pursuit of joy – along with order, serenity and peace of mind.
I decided to start this blog because the physical clutter in my home and the mental clutter in my head make me feel anxious, overwhelmed and generally unhappy – and I know I’m not alone.
Organizing “experts” are everywhere these days – there are books, blogs and websites galore – many with wonderful, useful ideas. But I suspect that unless you’ve personally struggled with impossible piles of paper, jumbled closets and cupboards, or a basement that looks like a small landfill, you can’t really understand the pain of the disorganized person.
My “expertise” comes from my own daily struggle to deal with my endless To Do list; the piles of paper on my desk; the stacks of reading material by my bed; the emails in my inbox; my overcrowded kitchen cupboards, my messy car; the junk littering my basement, etc. etc. Sound familiar?
I hope One Bag Nation will be a place where those of us who are often paralyzed by our stuff and our lists can support and inspire one another as we pursue physical order, serenity and peace of mind.
Stay tuned for more posts, some photos of my messy spaces, and – drum roll – photos of spaces I have managed to conquer!
