I drove by a rubber tree plantation last week, and I couldn’t help taking a photo of the orderly placement of the trees.
That picture made me think that we most often take better care organizing our business, our house and our projects (most of the time), while we fail to organize our minds and thoughts. There are many rules and theories about uncluttering physical objects (desks, house) and little about uncluttering our minds from complicated thinking, sloppy communication, and poisonous thoughts that bring anxiety, frustration and anger; these negative emotions in turn drive us to make bad decisions, and take costly actions that we regret.
When we talk about getting organized, we unconsciously think about putting an order to our physical environment, and once that happens we say, “I am now happy”, or “I now have peace of mind”; if we reversed the priorities, we wouldn’t be slaves to responding to our environment, because after all the environment is unpredictable. Create inner organization, before outer organization and you can be in total control of your happiness and inner peace.
Should we be focusing on organizing our thoughts first? There are technologies that can help with that, and I use them in my coaching of project executives and project team members. Organize your thoughts and magically, your projects will start improving!
Michael Sypsomos