It’s easy to think that being an organized person will stunt your creativity.  Whether it’s in your work, relationships, business, career or whatever.  There is a fear that systems and structure will confine us into a box where creativity and good ideas go to die.

This site is about rejecting the negative claims about organization.  Instead, this site praises organization and makes a bold claim:

An Organized Life, Is An Extraordinary Life

At the very least, the organized person is in a much better position to do extraordinary things than those that are not.  Organization is the structure, the glue, the concrete that gives your life the focus and clarity needed to do extraordinary things.  Without a certain level of personal organization, our lives flounder, our work grows stale and we lack the direction needed to continually be moving towards great things.

Signs That You Won’t Do Extraordinary Work

Here are a few symptoms of the perpetually disorganized.

• You are paralyzed by the never-ending to-do list that you keep in your head.
• Sticky notes are all over your desk.
• You read “Getting Things Done” but are too overwhelmed to get any value out of it.
• You never have a chance to relax.
• You are running from one thing to another.
• Your desk is full with random papers.
• Deadlines are tight and sometimes missed.
• You get yelled at for forgetting important details or tasks.
• Life is plain stressful.

How to Be Extraordinary

Here’s another way of looking at my philosophy, for the visually inclined:

Thoughts, ideas, action and projects organized in a system → ↑Productivity → ↑Efficiency → ↑Focus/Clarity → ↑Effectiveness → ↑Peace of mind → ↓Stress = Conditions for an Extraordinary Life and Work

My view is that we can’t really control our initial drive or motivation to do something great.  The only cure for procrastination is to be deeply interested in your cause, whatever that may be.  That’s my best guess at least. But, what we can control is the conditions.  If the conditions are right to produce extraordinary results – high productivity, clarity, focus, low stress, high effectiveness and high efficiency – we are much more likely to be able to do the necessary actions.  This is why organization is so crucial for doing great work and living an interesting life without stress.  Organization creates the conditions for doing great work.

Why Personal Organization is The Key

Personal organization helped change my life.  Growing up I was constantly stressed, anxious and thinking about all the things I was responsible for completing.  It was physically and mentally exhausting, which made life in college extremely stressful.  I constantly felt like I should be doing the first the that came into my head before I forget to do it.  Needless to say I had little peace of mind.

I always knew I needed to “get organized” but didn’t know how.  I think I picked up David Allen’s book Getting Things Done at one point, but was so confused as to how to implement the system that I just gave up.  Besides the tasks I kept in my head and a few random to-do lists, I had no organization system for ideas, projects, actions, and anything else that needed to be tracked or stored.  I didn’t even have a calendar!  I managed to do well in school despite this lack of organization but as soon as I graduated I started examining organization, time management and productivity best practices.  With a background in economics I know the importance of efficiency.  Economics to a large extent is about optimizing resources.  Organization is the same: optimizing resources in the form of time, energy, knowledge, etc.  With this mindset and knowledge of how important efficiency is in economics, I took on the work of studying personal organization and productivity.

After reading a few really good books (including Getting Things Done), researching organization tools and examining what system I need in place to do great work, I can finally say that I am organized.  And it feels amazing.  I don’t keep anything in my head, I know when to do what actions, and I know where everything is when I need it.  The clarity, focus and peace of mind (not to mention productivity) that I am experiencing now that I’m truly organized is what puts me in the position to do extraordinary things in life.  I am still a student of organization and productivity, I always will be.  The difference is now I am at a prerequisite level of organization to feel in control of my life and work.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Heard this phrase before?  I bet you have.  It’s really easy to say, “you work too hard, you need to just work smart!”  This is horrible advice because if it were that easy to work smart we wouldn’t work on the weekends, do overtime, or work from 7 a.m to 9 p.m.  We (society) doesn’t work smart because we don’t know how to.  We don’t have the tools, techniques, methods or skills to work smart.  We don’t have the prerequisite level of personal organization that leads to the productivity gains that make working weekends or a 16 hour day necessary.

The reason personal organization is so crucial to doing extraordinary things is because it gives you a level of clarity necessary to move away from the day-to-day emergencies and operational to-dos.  Organization allows you to step back and put things into a perspective.  This then leads to opportunities to do high level work that is vitally important to moving forward towards extraordinary goals and results.

It is my mission with my blog and the consulting services I offer to get society to that level of personal organization so we can work smart, have peace of mind and do extraordinary things.

I Made This, It’s Pretty Cool