Designing a Life: Organization in the Age of Webspiration

A few years ago, I made a list of what I wanted my life to look like – just a brainstorming activity to define a few traits and goals to develop.

One thing that kept coming up as I listed was that I needed to become organized. I valued the idea that an organized life is never more difficult than it needs to be. No clutter, no frustration, no searching for things. Organization leaves more brain space for clarity and creativity, and more time in the day for making cool stuff.

So I’ve cleaned, and I’ve purged. I’ve filed and re-filed. I’ve taken CAR LOADS of stuff to Goodwill.

With my new business venture looming, it eventually became clear I needed help getting digitally organized too, so I took an online Alt Summit class to learn new organization systems for my digital life. In 60-minutes, this class CHANGED MY LIFE.

Victoria Hudgins of A Subtle Revelry succinctly explained 6 processes she uses to keep her online life and business on track as a busy mom, blogger and entrepreneur. She offered magically actionable steps to follow to implement systems for email, web reader, desktop, calendar, inspiration collecting, and social media. The class ended with a 10-day challenge to get organized.

Admittedly, it has taken far longer than 10 days for me to reach the end of her challenge, but already I can hardly believe how much easier it is to get work done. I went from 6,500 messages in my inbox to achieving the mythical email “Inbox Zero” for the first time in my adult life. That is frankly just bananas.

Clarity for me came in the realization I was collecting a huge volume of ideas and inspiration (paper, digital media, photos, drafts and lists of ideas) but because I wasn’t organized, my systems were breaking down before processing all the input into creative output. Despite finding and creating great stuff, I wasn’t creating a productive volume of work. Now I’m moving towards an action-focused system, and it’s making a huge difference in how I work.

Organization is a constant process, and my three new guidelines are:
1. Everything that comes in has a place to go, and goes IMMEDIATELY in its place.
2. Everything that gets filed has a purpose to move my life, business, or household forward.
3. Every day I do a little work towards one creative goal using my backlog of ideas and inspiration.

If you want to learn some great tricks, check out Victoria’s next class. I’m excited to try another Alt Channel class in July, courtesy of Bing, (#thanksBing!) so stay tuned!