Planning
I don’t plan. I don’t plan anything. Not a thing. I’m pathologically incapable of planning, making plans, designing, sketching, outlining or drawing things before I try to do them.
I am now so bound up in things racing around my head instead of being written down that I’m spending all of my available energy on the context switching involved in trying to maintain everything with neither the energy nor the time to move forward.
This happens to me all the time and, quite frankly, is responsible for my life being the way it is (and…the less said about that the better; though with nearly 11 years of blogging history right here for your perusal, it shouldn’t be TOO hard to figure out.)
It gets so bad that I lose sight of it as a problem in my busyness.
But the real tell, the gimme, the red flag of it is when I do have ‘unbound time’ (like a weekend with no plans) I can’t manage it. Sure, while I’m looking for work I’m at the desk 9-5 (usually more) slogging through job boards and talking with recruiters (oh utter rapture :-/ ). Even then, my attention is far too susceptible to just drifting off to something I see on twitter.
I’ve read just about every Covey/Robbins/Winget/Allen book there is and yep, they’re pretty much all right. But I simply don’t stick with any organizational system for very long.
This is primarily because I don’t trust myself to it well enough. It’s always kicking around in my head that I’m going to lose it or end up giving it up some day anyway so why bother.
But every year I start, round about November, thinking I should get a planner, a notebook system thingamabob (totally aside from the notebooks I carry around with me at all times, which are for totally different purposes.
Sometimes I do it. I head to Office Max or Staples and get a set of 2 page per day Franklin Covey Monticello pages for $35 and a binder for twice that. At this point they last a matter of a month or more.
Still yet, I somehow manage to believe that this time is going to be different. It’s relatively harmless while I’m working. But now I sit here, looking at my little pad of normal paper, wishing it had enough structure that I could plan things out a bit in time. Half cleverly I craft my dissatisfaction to mold around the negative space of the thing I want to buy.
Hell, I even put my keys and wallet in my pockets and started for the door before snapping out of it. After all, the exhibition of power that is To Buy is especially alluring when you feel you have no control over your life whatsoever.
But the Planner does not the organization make.
So my 8.5×11 it is. At least for now.
<strong>UPDATE:</strong> The closest thing to consistent I get is something like this: <a href=”http://mpwilson.com/2009/04/17/markforsters-autofocus-system/”>Mark Forster’s Autofocus System</a>
Tags: Organization, SIP
January 9th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Just read this and I can tell you that I have EXACTLY the same problem. I have, however, figured out that I need to have many projects going at the same time and I have found that if I move from one to the other to the other, eventually, they all come together. I cannot, under any circumstances, stick to any one thing long enough to complete it unless I’m working with someone else and have no choice. I also cannot plan the project. I just do it till I have to move on. I have also found that, on occasion, if I force myself to go a little further than planned, it gives me the incentive to continue for longer. It drives anyone that I’m with, NUTS but that’s me and - I think - you too. It’s a good thing because I will bet that if you’re under pressure, I mean REAL pressure, it gets done. Am I wrong?