I've recently been listening a great deal to personal development guru Brian Tracy and his course "Success Mastery Academy", the first book I purchased when I joined www.audible.co.uk a couple of weeks ago. The quote above is his and he refers to excellence frequently during his long 12 hour course. Despite its length it's absolutely brilliant - almost every minute there's something to learn. I'm going through it once without making notes and then back over it again later to fill in the workbook which comes with it. There is so much information I'm going to need to listen several times before I can extract the full value from it and I can say for definite the advice on selling and negotiation is the best I've ever heard.
While listening I've realised two of my problems are the desire to be instantly brilliant at everything I try and to attempt completing 10 things at once. Hence I'm average at most things, excel at nothing and end up being knocked off course constantly because I'm trying to be perfect straight off the bat. So, I've decided to make some changes to the way I do things and strive for excellence in one area of my life over the next year. That gives me enough time to really crack into it, acquire a good depth of knowledge and transform that knowledge into experience through consistent practice.
Disorganisation - the biggest bane of my life
The house is upside down, my work is upside down, I can never find anything and I forget just about everything. My life is lived by scraps of paper - and most of those scraps disappear along the way. So for the next year, I'm going becoming excellent at organisation. I'm going to read every book I can find on organisation, join every group and forum that could help me, and pick the brains of those who are super organised for tips and tricks. If I fall down I won't give up in despair or rush around trying to catch up and cram the extra work into my schedule. I'll just start again the next day.
So far, I have bought a couple of the best organisation books on the market: Getting it Done by Dave Allen and Organising from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern; as well as joined Flylady.net, which was set up by Marla Cilley. I figure I might as well start by learning from three of the acknowledged masters in their respective fields of organisation.Dave Allen's system is primarily directed to business while Julie's and Marla's is directed towards the home.
I haven't started Julie's book yet, but I have Dave Allen's - it's a little hard going but I'm going to persevere because I can see the long term benefits. He brings up an interesting point that most of us are disorganised and feel out of control because we don't have a trusted place we can store important information so we store it IN OUR HEAD. This is the worst place and part of getting organised is getting it all out in one great FFLLUUMMPP and putting it into one central place to refer to and arrange. I can certainly relate to this. I frequently feel like my head is so stuffed full of information it's leaking out. I catch myself laughing sometimes about the episode of The Simpsons where Homer has to learn something new and an old bit of knowledge has to fall out to make space. The inside of my head is as disorganised as the outside space its body occupies.
The there's Flylady.net, which is as different in style to Dave Allen as you can get. It's is one of the oldest and best sites about personal and home organisation I think I've ever found. If you can get over the cloying sweetness, its central messages are very clear: a) set routines and b) you can do anything in 15 minutes. Flylady's big question for everyone when they first join is "Are you living in CHAOS" (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) and I hadn't realised just how much stress I felt when having to dash round like a lunatic cleaning before people came to visit.
Now I have to confess, I have been 'Flying' for the last week and it's working well so far. I have a routine in the morning and evening that I stick to, and every day I tackle a particular task in one 'zone' of the house. At the end of week one, my kitchen is spotless every evening, my bathroom is spotless every morning, my bed is made, my washing and ironing is up to date and all those little piles of stuf that build up - 'hotspots' - are cleaned off once a day. I actually had people over at the weekend AND DIDN'T HAVE TO CLEAN UP BEFOREHAND!!! Woohoo!!!
There are also the odd mission emails that appears in my inbox that take a few minutes to complete. Silly stuff like take a rubish bag, run round the house and put in 27 things that need to be thrown away. Or do the same thing but find 27 things for the charity shop. Today's mission for example is in the living room - I have to go chair diving and find all the things that slip down in between the sofa cushions. As a result of extensive searching in creases and crevices (and finding an unacceptable level of crumbs which are now under my fingernails) I can confirm I have discovered the answer that age-old question of where odd socks go. The washing machine doesn't eat them. THE SOFA DOES!! I have also found £1.57 - no doubt slipped out of hubbie's trouser pockets - a great haul for about a minutes work and I shall be wandering down to the village shop in the morning to spend my haul on chocolate.
A fitting reward for all of my hard work last week I think!