“Things live by moving, and gain strength as they go.”  - Bruce Lee

How is your New Year’s Resolution coming along?  In many cases when people set a New Year’s resolution, there is the perfectionist side that comes out.   Organizing your life is what many people have in mind as a New Year’s Resolution.  Typically after a month or so, you can tend to lose motivation and go back to your old habits.  We can get paralyzed by our perfectionist self.  For example, in the case of dieting, you have that piece of cake that you weren’t suppose to have, feel guilty about it (because of our perfectionist self) and toss your New Year’s Resolution of dieting out the window.  You are setting yourself up for failure if you allow the perfectionist side to come out and consume your motivation to continue what you want to change in your life.

Weather in dieting, exercising, learning to play an instrument, or even in organizing, I have always felt that if someone wants to get something done, they make the time to do it and keep at it even if you come across some relapses or speed bumps.  Set dates and in small chucks accomplish what you set yourself out to do.  If you miss a day, don’t punish yourself, keep moving.  Like training for a marathon, you can’t just show up on race day and run a marathon, it takes practice and endurance.  Same concept with organizing.  Don’t loose motivation for something you want like an organized desk, because you have failed to get it accomplished on a certain day.  Life is full of failing moments, but just keep moving forward.  Good enough is wonderful.

My suggestion to this sick cycle of setting yourself up for failure and loosing motivation is to not wait to try something or get something going.  Every new day is a fresh start.  New beginnings happen each year, each birthday, each month, each week, each day, each moment. It’s never too late to start organizing anything!