4 D’s of Organization
It seems that there are two kinds of people: those who have the gift of organization and those who do not. If you’re not one of those naturally organized people, you’re likely to be disorganized at best and a mess at worst.
People who know me and/or have been in my office know that I am not the king of the organization. Fortunately, my wife Lauren turns out to be particularly talented in this area. She has saved my neck more than a few times.
So, with the admission that I’m still struggling with this as well, here are the four D’s of organization: Do it now, delegate it, delay briefly, scrap it.
Do it now
Clearly the most preferred strategy. When something crosses your path, be sure to touch it once, do it now.
It’s so easy to put it in an ever-growing pile on your desk, on the counter, or in your brain, rationalizing that you’ll actually do it later. One problem with this is that another way to spell rationalize is rational lies. This is very fertile ground to breed that great enemy of doing things and simplifying your life: procrastination.
Adopting a policy of doing it now has several nice benefits:
¨ clears and prevents build-up on your desk and in your brain
¨ is a sure killer against procrastination
¨ It also prevents that fun little hallucination that comes with procrastination, where simple jobs seem to get bigger and bigger and you’re convinced it’ll take hours to finish a 15-minute project.
¨ Best of all, you end up getting things done!
Here in the real world, however, we can’t always do it now. For those situations we have:
delegate it
Contrary to popular belief, we don’t have to do everything ourselves. Somehow, as part of the disorganization picture, we think that we are the only ones who can do what needs to be done. It just isn’t true. Pass it on to a family member, ask friends for help, hire someone, use the resources you have at hand. It’s foolish to do things that are not your area of expertise if you have access to people who are better than you at certain tasks.
delay it
Briefly. And I mean briefly. There are times when I just can’t do it now or delegate it. The danger here is that the task could fall into the wasteland of “I’ll do it later, I’ll do it someday” never to return.
If you find that you need to delay something, set a time limit for when it needs to be completed: at the end of the hour, at the end of the day, at the end of the week, or at the end of the month. Usually at the end of the year it doesn’t work unless it’s December.
Dump it
Some things that come our way can be thrown away immediately. It’s not something that needs to be done, it’s a waste of time, or you just don’t need it in your life. So throw it away.
However, there are other things that need to be discarded. I am constantly amazed at the amount of garbage we are capable of accumulating. Projects we are going to finish, articles or books we are going to read, the box we are going to check, and the list goes on.
Here’s a little trick that seems to work: make an agreement, with someone who will hold you to it, that you will take care of anything by a certain date or be abandoned. If it’s important, you will. If it is not important, it should be discarded.
The four D’s are simply a system for organizing. There are many others. Just remember that a system saves you time, energy and money.
