Developing organizational skills

The cycle of disorganization followed by organization

Yesterday morning, I had a (often recurring) thought to improve my organization skills. I’m aware that this repeating desire comes in cycles, periods of deep disorganization, followed by frustration — frustration from being unable to find something I saved, frustration from dropping the ball on some project — ending with a crescendo of hyper-focus organization. This pattern, that I’m becoming more and more aware of, motivates me to approach this (not novel at all) situation in a more mindful way, especially after reading this hacker news quote from this pursuing the forums this morning:

“[The Artist Way] is great for identifying underlying creative blockers and helping you discover if the current rut is the same rut repeated or something new“

Sometimes, our problems tend to repeat themselves. And while nothing is wrong, per say, with a problem repeating itself, I do want to minimize the time I spend recycling the sames solution over and over. And instead of berating myself, and in spirit of a growth mindset, I ask myself: how can I learn more about organization and how can I develop more skill around organizing?

Why get organized to begin with?

There’s this baseline assumption I hold: that organization skills improve the quality one’s life. But is this rooted belief of organization helpful? Is it accurate? Is it true that acquiring additional skill may help me realize certain (personally, professional) projects?

Breaking down organization into concrete buckets, into discrete skills

Before jumping the gun (as I’ve done many times in the past, leaping to problem solving prematurely), I think it would be helpful in my situation to zoom out and break down organization into several skills. Upon creating these categories, it might be useful for me to then perform a self-assessment because by approaching this with honesty and compassion, I can then give myself what I need

Different ways to bucket the skills

Organizing Creativity

Thoughts that pop up while writing this article

• What role does knowledge of Reiss Motivation Profile (RMP) play as it relates to a fixed vs. growth mindset. How does my low desire for order impact my motivation to develop organizational skills
• What are some resources (e.g. books, courses) have I tried in the past? What worked? What didn’t work? Where am I at now, in my journey?
• What are the trade offs of developing organizational skills, of becoming more organized? Can I really have the “best of breed” approach, leveraging the (assume) creativity sparked from lack of organization?
• Can I develop organizational skills that have less to do with how it looks — especially from the outside — and more of a growth internally? Similar to DBT, the behavior might look the same but the internal feeling is different