When life gets crazy, with ideas, problems and challenges popping up all over the place, I like to slow down and make a “to do list.” No matter how frenetic life gets, making a list always settles me down and helps me to begin to unwind all the various challenges on the agenda.
People, and indeed organizations, all need order to reach success and fulfillment. Over time I’ve come to define order as “a sense of control over the external elements of our life”. Putting things in order, creating systems and methods that categorized and list processes and seasons, is not often considered part of the success equation because it is either assumed or dismissed.
The more complex life and work gets the more control of the elements becomes an impossibility, yet we can function effectively not by controlling, but by bringing order to the chaos.
Here are a few simple ideas individuals and organizations can consider to work toward success:
Keep things clean: Individuals understand this instinctively, but somehow organizations tend to forget how important a clean workspace is. Keep your business, non-profit or church clean – it’s a building block to success.
Schedule your time: Many teams seem to wait for their days to fill up, and individuals as well, but fulfilled people schedule what is important. Don’t wait for your life to happen by accident, be forward thinking in how you, and your organization, will spend the next weeks and months ahead.
Write down what you’ve accomplished in your day: It’s important to celebrate what has been accomplished. Write it down, promote it, and make note that you are making progress, no matter how small.
Don’t allow clutter to take hold of your spaces: Clutter is an enemy of success. Clutter makes it harder to find what you need and it adds to the sense that you and your organization are out of control.
What are other ways order and structure benefit individuals and teams? Let me know what you think.
David Curry