Distress and Disorganization
It’s that anxious feeling you have when you are running late for an appointment and you can’t find your keys. It’s that sinking feeling of depression while looking around your home, knowing you are overwhelmed by the disorder in different rooms. It’s that stomach ache you have when you know you have to do your taxes, but you can’t find your forms or papers to fill in the amounts. It’s even that “discussion” you had with your husband about dinner or laundry and who is responsible for what at your home. We live in a world of high expectations, where guilt and shame underly our lack of organization. When we want to connect, disorganization is a barrier to having company in our home. Being disorganized causes all kinds of stress, whether it is physical, emotional or psychological.
The first step in de-stressing is to take care of yourself. It is usually the last thing we do! Taking care of yourself is assessing whether we had a good night’s sleep, ate a healthy breakfast and gave ourselves enough time to do a task to start with. Take stock of all these aspects, putting your “own oxygen mask on first.” This is the first area to attend to if we are to make a change and de-stress.
Make a plan and work your plan. Take stock of what you do well and what you don’t. Work from your strengths and make a plan of what you can get accomplished. List your goals and priorities and see if you are aligning your daily commitments. If not, it’s time to un-calendar some tasks. If you “should” accomplish a task and find it is not a strength, create a team and delegate tasks. Tasks may not be done the way you do it, but it will be done! Write out your plan so you can see it daily, including weekly routines with set days and times for certain tasks and open, untethered days to rejuvenate.
Use tools that work for you. In our world of technology, using your smart phone for your calendar and task list can make all the difference. Instead of keeping all the details in your head, get them out onto your calendar and task list so you are working high speed on what you need to accomplish.
Disorganization and stress can be remedied with baby steps to change. What ways are you working toward making a change?
It always amazes me how much stress can be relieved by writing things down or entering them on an electronic calendar. I recently learned about a great place to record my “someday” tasks – ideas I’ve been carrying around in my head but that don’t yet belong on my to-do list. It’s called Workflowy.com and it’s so simple it’s amazing! I may not get to some of those tasks for many months, but by getting them out of my head and somewhere where I can look at them and pick which one to work on next, I’ve unloaded a lot of stress!
Thanks for sharing this great site! Getting tasks out of our heads really makes a difference!