"By combining Hand Analysis with her other tools, Helene has an incredible ability to help you discover your deepest self in order for you to move forward in your life. Her many years of business experience add a perfect complement to mentoring her clients to success"
Getting a handle on your desk clutter: treat yourself like a guest
I recently had a guest stay for a few days and she slept in my office which occasionally doubles as a guest room.
She marveled at how clutter-free my desk was and asked that I write a blog post on how I kept it that way.
Well…I don’t. I cleaned it up in order to give her a nicer experience.
In the process of doing so, I went through the piles of papers on my desk and looked at them enough to know whether to toss or file them. And it was amazing what I found: full outlines of proposed workshops, a phone number that I thought I’d lost, underlined reports, etc.
Now I’m happier sitting at my desk; I feel freer from time pressures and enjoy writing more.
The $64,000 question is; why don’t I keep my desk cleaner since I know how good it makes me feel? Even more so since I’m an energy person and know that clutter tends to block our progress; I even wrote a blog post about it a while ago!
Two answers:
- I have a creative mind
- I need to work with my nature rather than against it
My creative mind jumps between projects like a frog from one lily-pad to another at times. Knowing this, I do write down notes about what I’ve just done to allow me to pick up where I left off. Unfortunately, those notes can get buried. Sort of like writing a shopping list and forgetting it at home.
Having fully acknowledged the pleasure of an organized desk before, I thought that I’d learned my lesson; that I would file things away as I wrote them or at least at the end of each day.
Not!
So what works for me? Cleaning up in anticipation of a guest does. So here’s what I should do: I should pretend every week that a guest is about to sleep in my office and prepare for it. After all, having a creative mind means that my imagination is a powerful part of my day so I may as well use it to motivate me.
This is similar to what I do when I design a business structure; match it to a person’s preferences and natural patterns. It works!
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
How clever! Pretend a guest is coming to use the room. Also, another way to get a lot “out of the way” is to pretend you’re leaving on vacation and need to finish up projects so you can leave.
I love it; that’s a good one Kathryn!
Hey, we go through our lives pretending a lot of things that don’t serve us (the psychologists call it catastrophizing, or fearing the worst), so we may as well pretend stuff that helps us.
You beautifully sum up the way we creative entrepreneurs work.
A specific deadline of a guest or client coming over gets the office straightened. Likewise, deadlines are great motivators
in growing the business.
Thank you, Helene! I’m a clutter rat myself and I totally relate to your story, because I am just like that, too. Years ago, when I was still in Corporate America, we were given a psychological test. I scored very high in the area of creativity and entrepreneurship. One attribute of such people, according to the test, was that such people have lots of clutter.
So here’s to your creative and entrepreneurial nature!
Helene, I enjoyed your post about clutter. It is honest and self-reflective and I could see myself in the same cycle. Thanks for the reminder to clear the clutter!!!