{"id":399,"date":"2011-03-30T19:08:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T00:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/?p=399"},"modified":"2011-03-30T17:49:27","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T22:49:27","slug":"evaluating-system-breakdowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/evaluating-system-breakdowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Evaluating System Breakdowns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life is always changing \u2013 it\u2019s not a static environment.\u00a0 I addressed this not long ago in the We Must Always Change<\/a>.\u00a0 This is one of the reasons that our organizing is never actually finished.\u00a0 You can create good systems and maintain the organization for any number of years, yet it\u2019s likely that there will be pieces that can be improved after some time.\u00a0 Our situations and approach change as we move through life.\u00a0 This can be daunting to many people \u2013 \u201cyou mean I\u2019m never really done?\u201d\u00a0 Truthfully, no.<\/p>\n

This can actually be an uplifting thing.\u00a0 Really and truly.\u00a0 It opens up possibilities and can create space before your eyes.\u00a0 Unfortunately we often need to look at things with \u201cnew\u201d eyes, ready to see opportunities we\u2019ve previously missed.\u00a0 We also need to make sure if doesn\u2019t mutate into a reason for self-flagellation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the first to admit that I\u2019ve created systems for myself that end up falling flat on their faces.\u00a0 It\u2019s usually not obvious right away.\u00a0 Only after a number of weeks or months does it hit me that that new way of doing something is just not working.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about how my husband uses the items.\u00a0 Other times, I\u2019m dealing with something new to me \u2013 like when I started scrapbooking, I had all these various things, and there are just so many ways of organizing them. I struggled to find a complete system that worked \u2013 and had to fight chastising myself for the lack of total success.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too easy \u2013 and I see this too frequently \u2013 for us to recognize only the negative.\u00a0 We are glaringly aware of our failures and gloss over the pieces that do work.\u00a0 When you\u2019re looking at systems that have broken down, you need to search out the ways it does work for you.\u00a0 Those scrapbooking supplies may not have completely worked, but there were always ways that it did work.\u00a0 There are ways your systems are working \u2013 you need to figure those out.<\/p>\n

However small those pieces might be, the successes are clues for you about what does work for you.\u00a0 You can examine those and see if any of those principles can apply to the rest of the system.\u00a0 Do the successful pieces work because they\u2019re easy to access \u2013 like putting away new scrapbooking things?\u00a0 Do they work because they\u2019re close at hand when you\u2019re doing it \u2013 like sorting mail by the trash?\u00a0 Leaving behind the idea of \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d \u2013 we\u2019re more likely to succeed at things when it\u2019s relatively easy.\u00a0 Are there ways to make pieces easier for you?<\/p>\n

This is when you need to not rush blindly ahead, you need to take time to think about and evaluate what you need.\u00a0 Take time to plan, figure out what goals you need to meet.\u00a0 It can feel like planning is a waste of time, yet according to Dr. Donald E. Wetmore, “1 hour planning will save 10 hours doing.” Each time I re-did the craft supplies, I waited to give myself time to think about what wasn’t working and come up with what I needed to modify.\u00a0 Only after I figured that out did I dig and starry changing things.<\/p>\n

It can be daunting that our best intentions didn’t end up working out the way we thought they would, yet it can be an opportunity to make things exponentially better.\u00a0 It also reinforces how change is not only just a part of life, but also part of the journey and growth integral to living.\u00a0 When we apply that to our organizational systems, it means that we can improve our efficiency and productivity too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life is always changing, and part of that means that our organizational systems will need to change. The most obvious time is when parts of it have stopped working – they’ve broken down, and when this happens, there are steps you can take to establish a new system that does work for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,18,5,9,25,17],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing","tag-behavior","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-motivation","tag-postaweek2011","tag-spaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-6r","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}