|
Creating goals is one way of making empowered changes in
your life. But how do you create an effective organizing
goal? Here are a few simple steps to help you.
1. Write it down.
Writing down your organizing goal makes it more real to you.
We tend to stick to our written commitments better than our
verbal commitments. Saying you are going to do something is
one thing. It creates more resonance with you and a better
likelihood that you will stick to your goal if you write it
down. Even better, write it down every day from now until
you have actually accomplished it.
2. Make it a goal that will make you feel better about
yourself.
Think for a moment about the number one thing in your life
right now that if you got it organized, would make you feel
10 times better about your life. You know what it is, that
one thing that would change how you feel if you got it
organized today. Maybe it is an area of your home or of your
office. Maybe it is getting your schedule organized or
getting your morning routine to go more smoothly.
The reason why it needs to be something that will make you
feel better about yourself is because you will be a whole
lot more likely to take action on that goal if it is
something that will make you feel better about you. It is
one thing to be happy that your living room is organized. It
is a whole other ballgame to feel better about who you are
as a person because you finally got your schedule organized
and you are no longer showing up late everywhere.
3. Make it specific.
Writing down a goal like “I want to get my life organized”
is not going to help you. Get specific with your goal. The
more specific you can make it, the better off you will be.
Something along the lines of “I am going to organize my
kitchen” is much better and gives you a clear idea of what
you are going have actually accomplished once you meet your
goal. What exactly does an organized life look like anyway?
The one caution I have here is that you not make your
organizing goal too specific. So having a goal of getting
the kitchen utensil drawer organized would not be a good
one. Setting organizing goals like this means you would be
setting a new one every day! Your target here is to have an
organizing goal that is general enough so that it is going
to take you at least one month to reach it but specific
enough so that you have a definite end in sight.
4. Make it measurable.
This goes hand-in-hand with getting specific about your
organizing goal. The best way to make your organizing goal
measurable is to give it a specific timeframe. So if your
goal is to get your kitchen organized, then give yourself a
date for when you will have that organizing goal
accomplished. Then circle that date on the calendar, put
stars on it, whatever you need to do to make that date stand
out for you.
My caution on this one: make it a realistic date. Don’t
overestimate what you can do. You are better off
overestimating the time it will take you to get it finished
than underestimating it. Yes, there is psychology at work
here. If you get your organizing project done in less time
than you estimated that it would take you, you will feel
better about yourself and about the organizing project. It
will also help keep you motivated so that you do more!
5. Believe you can do it and get excited about it!
If you don’t believe that you can accomplish your
home organizing
goal, guess what, you won’t be able to do it. And if you
know with certain knowledge that you can do it, that’s even
better. When you know, and I mean really KNOW you can do
something, you get the power to do it. If this is an
organizing goal that you have set for yourself repeatedly
but that you have yet to follow through on, ask yourself
why. If it is a goal that isn’t really all that important to
you, if you can’t get excited about accomplishing it, then
don’t bother because you’re not going to get it done anyway.
The way that you stay motivated towards achieving any goal
in your life is by getting excited about it, by getting
excited about how your life is going to look and feel
different once that goal is accomplished. If you can’t work
up some sort of passion for this organizing goal, pick a new
goal.
|
