The Key Habits of Organization
By Leo Babauta
A trusted organization system that you actually use regularly can turn your day from one of chaos to one of focus, effectiveness and calm.
This is something I've learned through repeated failures, actually: when I become lose with my organized habits, my day becomes worse. It gets stressful and crazy, and I can't focus on anything. Everything is on my head all the time, and I'm always worried that I'm missing something, that I should be doing something else.
But when I get my system down, and the habits are on track, things are smooth, I feel good about what I'm doing, and I'm much better able to let everything else go and focus on what's in front of me, confident that everything else is in its place.
I'll show you my system in a minute, but first let's talk about what a good organizational system does and how it works.
Luckily, we can replace the old habits with better ones, with practice. It takes about a week of very conscious effort to do this, and after that it gets more and more automatic.
Here are the habits:
Sign up today to join us, and get a simple plan and some accountability.
Read More @ Source
It's easy to forget that upekkha, or equanimity, is love. The word "equanimity" doesn't sound very loving. It's coldly Latinate, lofty, and remote, and doesn't roll off the tongue easily. Few of us are likely to use the word in everyday conversation. The adjective, equanimous, is even worse! Even the Anglo-Saxon equivalents, "even-minded" and "even-mindedness," don't convey any sense of love, or kindness, either. But upekkha is a form of love.
Perhaps we should render upekkha as something more like "equanimous love" or "even-minded love."
Upatissa, the author of the first century meditation manual I've been sharing with you as we explore the "immeasurable" meditations of loving-kindness, compassion, joyful appreciation, and now even-minded love, describes upekkha like this:
My kids are in full on dispute with each other at the moment. My four-year-old son is going in for a tonsillectomy tomorrow. He's terrified of the prospect, naturally, and this is leading to him acting out in various ways, like having temper tantrums and meltdowns, and this has led to him doing things like hitting his six-year-old sister. This in turn has led her to "punishing" him by trying to exacerbate his anxiety — reminding him of his operation at every available opportunity, and sometimes going into graphic detail about how sore his throat will be afterwards, asking what kind of knife the surgeon will use, etc. And that leads him to get revenge by breaking her stuff. It's a classic tale of spiraling vengeance!
So in the midst of any particular situation of conflict — he's just broken her special bracelet, or she's slyly reminded him of his operation by "helpfully" reminding him that he'll get to have ice cream afterward — there's no possibility of taking sides. I realize that both are suffering, and I want both to be happy. My son hurts his sister and I realize that both are having a hard time. Yes, he needs to be told that he can't act this way, but fundamentally he also needs sympathy and to be helped in dealing with his anxiety. My daughter torments her brother and again she has to be encouraged to act less like a tiny torturer and more like a helpful big sister, but she also needs support because she's suffering from having to cope with his anxiety and the behavior that springs from it.
So I can't take sides. I don't mean that I "shouldn't" take sides. I'm incapable of taking sides. I can't say "this child deserves happiness more than the other." That just makes no sense.
So if you really, deeply, recognize that all beings want to be happy, and that they want to be free from suffering — when you realize that each being's happiness and suffering is as real to them as it is for you and for any other being — there can be no sense of welcoming one person being happy at another's expense. There is sympathy for all.
The thought may have crossed your mind — and it certainly crossed mine — OK, so Bodhipaksa says he can do this with his children, but his children are still his children, and is it even possible to have this kind of even-minded love for strangers, or for people we're not related to, like other people's children? Don't we have an inbuilt bias, because after all we have a great history of affection and of relatedness with those we're close to — friends, family — that we don't share with strangers? It's a good question. But when one of my kids is involved in an altercation with a child from another family — and this happens almost on a daily basis — I don't see my own children's happiness as being any different from, or important than, any other child's. So in sorting out any dispute I try to maintain an awareness that the kids on both sides are suffering and want happiness. Sure, I'm going to put effort into protecting, feeding, and clothing my own children and not with the neighbors' kids — but that's a separate issue. That's to do with the nature of the relationship we have, and the resources available to me. It doesn't mean that I think my children's happiness is more important to them than the neighbors' kids' happiness is to them.
If you like my articles, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s, including The Heart's Wisdom, which includes all four brahmavihara meditations.
This quality of even-minded love is inherent in all the other practices. It's very similar to the final stage of the lovingkindness, compassion, and joyful appreciation practices, where we cease focusing on individual relationships and simply imbue the mind with those loving qualities, so that any being the mind touches, whether it's because we encounter them in our lives or because we meet them in our thoughts, is touched by a loving quality. In the final stage of these practices there is a quality of even-mindedness, where we let go of our likes and dislikes. Happiness is desired by all, and suffering is something that all wish to avoid. Our likes and dislikes, our social connectedness or lack thereof, can obscure this truth, but it's a truth nonetheless. And so the practice of equanimity is to see past these obscurations in order to recognize this truth.
So upekkha is love. It's even-minded love, where we maintain an even mind towards all beings as we wish them well. It's not a cold or distant state. It's simply where we drop our biases and value all beings' happiness and wellbeing.
This is something I've learned through repeated failures, actually: when I become lose with my organized habits, my day becomes worse. It gets stressful and crazy, and I can't focus on anything. Everything is on my head all the time, and I'm always worried that I'm missing something, that I should be doing something else.
But when I get my system down, and the habits are on track, things are smooth, I feel good about what I'm doing, and I'm much better able to let everything else go and focus on what's in front of me, confident that everything else is in its place.
I'll show you my system in a minute, but first let's talk about what a good organizational system does and how it works.
Why Form the Habits of Organization
Several important reasons:- Stress: An excess of stress very negatively affects your health. If you have good habits in place to deal with all the stuff in your life, you stress out about everything less. You feel less worry that things are slipping through the cracks. You feel trust that you are OK working on what's in front of you.
- Effectiveness: If you are able to externalize all the things you're worried about into a trusted system, you can better focus on the task in front of you. You can single-task, and be more effective at each task, because it's getting your full focus.
- Relationships: I've found relationships to be about the most important thing in my life, personal but also business. And the best way to build relationships is to be trustworthy. And the best way to be trustworthy is to keep your commitments. If you're organized, you are more likely to keep your commitments. Organizaton is largely about managing your commitments.
Building a Trusted System
So what does a trusted system look like? Honestly, there are a million tools and combinations of tools you might use, but there are a few things that are important in building a trusted system:- You find a place for everything — todos, passwords, appointments, repeating tasks, incoming info and requests, other info you need to store, documents, receipts.
- You actually use the system and put things where they belong, as soon as you can (see next section, for the habits).
- You recognize when things are sitting in your inbox or open browser tabs or computer desktop, and find a place for them.
- Incoming: Most of my incoming requests, tasks, info, and appointments come in through Gmail. Sometimes through other channels, but 90% of the time through Gmail. When I check Gmail, I try to take each thing out of Gmail and put it where it belongs — in one of the tools below.
- Todos: Lately I've been using Trello. I stole this system from Ryan Carson of Treehouse: Create a tasks board in Trello, with lists for Most Important (my family, writing, reading, fitness, mindfulness), Today (includes appointments and tasks), Incoming (for things I haven't placed yet), This Week (move tasks from here to Today each day), Later (move tasks from here to This Week as needed), Done (move things I finish here), and Waiting On (for things I've requested but haven't received yet). Each morning I review this for 20 minutes, moving things as needed to the right places, so I know everything is in its place.
- Other Work & Personal Info: I've been using Workflowy, which is a cool web app (with an iPhone app too) that allows you to store just about all the info in your life in one place. I used to put everything in Google Docs, but now I just dump it in Workflowy and it's all together and searchable.
- Passwords & secure info: I use 1Password, which not only stores (and generates) passwords, but bank info, credit cards, passport info, airline frequent flier numbers, and pretty much everything else I might need to remember.
- Timed or repeating items: Google Calendar. Whenever I need to do something regularly, I create a recurring appointment in GCal. Reviewing my idea list (stored in Workflowy) twice a month, for example.
- Receipts, financial docs, drafts, tickets: I've set up folders in Dropbox for these things — files which don't fit into the other buckets.
- Things to read later: If I have a tab open to read later, I put it into Instapaper, and open Instapaper when I have time to read.
Building the Organized Habits
Of course, it won't be a trusted system unless you actually use it — there's the rub. We often forget to use our system because we have old habits that don't die easily.Luckily, we can replace the old habits with better ones, with practice. It takes about a week of very conscious effort to do this, and after that it gets more and more automatic.
Here are the habits:
- Create a place for everything. I showed how you might do that above, but find whatever tools work for you. The habit, though, is noticing when something is sitting in your inbox or in an open browser tab or somewhere else, not in its place. And then finding a place for it — sometimes that means consciously designating a new bucket just for that type of thing.
- Don't procrastinate — put it away immediately: The old habit is to put it off (procrastinate) to be put away later. No. That procrastination is what leads to the system falling apart. For one week, make a very conscious effort to not put this off, but instead to take a few seconds to put information, tasks, appointments and other such things right where they belong, right now. It doesn't take long, but you have to be very conscious about it at first.
- Don't live in the inbox: We have a tendency to keep the inbox open, or to open it often. That means you're constantly responding, instead of focusing. Instead, open the inbox, and one by one, put incoming items where they belong, and archive them in your inbox. You might not get to the bottom of the list, but you save yourself from having to contstantly look through the same things in your inbox over and over.
- Review the system every morning: Make it a habit to review your task list and calendar every morning for 20 minutes (set a timer), so you know things are in their place. Move things from the Today list to Done, from This Week to Today, from Later to This Week, from Incoming to the appropriate list, and so on. Put calendar items on the Today list. Know where everything is. Then get out and start doing.
The Sea Change Get Organized Module
If you'd like help forming the habits of organization, in July we'll be doing a new module in my Sea Change Program called Get Organized.Sign up today to join us, and get a simple plan and some accountability.
Read More @ Source
Posted: 27 Jun 2013 10:00 PM PDT
It's easy to forget that upekkha, or equanimity, is love. The word "equanimity" doesn't sound very loving. It's coldly Latinate, lofty, and remote, and doesn't roll off the tongue easily. Few of us are likely to use the word in everyday conversation. The adjective, equanimous, is even worse! Even the Anglo-Saxon equivalents, "even-minded" and "even-mindedness," don't convey any sense of love, or kindness, either. But upekkha is a form of love.Perhaps we should render upekkha as something more like "equanimous love" or "even-minded love."
Upatissa, the author of the first century meditation manual I've been sharing with you as we explore the "immeasurable" meditations of loving-kindness, compassion, joyful appreciation, and now even-minded love, describes upekkha like this:
As parents are neither too attentive nor yet inattentive towards any one of their children, but regard them equally and maintain an even mind towards them, so through equanimity one maintains an even mind towards all beings. Thus should equanimity be known.Any parent who has more than one child is familiar with this scenario! The other day my daughter asked me: "Who do you love more, daddy? Me or my brother." And then she kindly added, "It's OK if it's not me." I think she assumed that her addition would pave the way for me to tell her the "truth" that she wanted to hear (or feared hearing) — although the truth is that of course it's simply not possible for me to quantify and compare the love I have for each of my children.
My kids are in full on dispute with each other at the moment. My four-year-old son is going in for a tonsillectomy tomorrow. He's terrified of the prospect, naturally, and this is leading to him acting out in various ways, like having temper tantrums and meltdowns, and this has led to him doing things like hitting his six-year-old sister. This in turn has led her to "punishing" him by trying to exacerbate his anxiety — reminding him of his operation at every available opportunity, and sometimes going into graphic detail about how sore his throat will be afterwards, asking what kind of knife the surgeon will use, etc. And that leads him to get revenge by breaking her stuff. It's a classic tale of spiraling vengeance!
So in the midst of any particular situation of conflict — he's just broken her special bracelet, or she's slyly reminded him of his operation by "helpfully" reminding him that he'll get to have ice cream afterward — there's no possibility of taking sides. I realize that both are suffering, and I want both to be happy. My son hurts his sister and I realize that both are having a hard time. Yes, he needs to be told that he can't act this way, but fundamentally he also needs sympathy and to be helped in dealing with his anxiety. My daughter torments her brother and again she has to be encouraged to act less like a tiny torturer and more like a helpful big sister, but she also needs support because she's suffering from having to cope with his anxiety and the behavior that springs from it.
So I can't take sides. I don't mean that I "shouldn't" take sides. I'm incapable of taking sides. I can't say "this child deserves happiness more than the other." That just makes no sense.
So if you really, deeply, recognize that all beings want to be happy, and that they want to be free from suffering — when you realize that each being's happiness and suffering is as real to them as it is for you and for any other being — there can be no sense of welcoming one person being happy at another's expense. There is sympathy for all.
The thought may have crossed your mind — and it certainly crossed mine — OK, so Bodhipaksa says he can do this with his children, but his children are still his children, and is it even possible to have this kind of even-minded love for strangers, or for people we're not related to, like other people's children? Don't we have an inbuilt bias, because after all we have a great history of affection and of relatedness with those we're close to — friends, family — that we don't share with strangers? It's a good question. But when one of my kids is involved in an altercation with a child from another family — and this happens almost on a daily basis — I don't see my own children's happiness as being any different from, or important than, any other child's. So in sorting out any dispute I try to maintain an awareness that the kids on both sides are suffering and want happiness. Sure, I'm going to put effort into protecting, feeding, and clothing my own children and not with the neighbors' kids — but that's a separate issue. That's to do with the nature of the relationship we have, and the resources available to me. It doesn't mean that I think my children's happiness is more important to them than the neighbors' kids' happiness is to them.
If you like my articles, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s, including The Heart's Wisdom, which includes all four brahmavihara meditations. This quality of even-minded love is inherent in all the other practices. It's very similar to the final stage of the lovingkindness, compassion, and joyful appreciation practices, where we cease focusing on individual relationships and simply imbue the mind with those loving qualities, so that any being the mind touches, whether it's because we encounter them in our lives or because we meet them in our thoughts, is touched by a loving quality. In the final stage of these practices there is a quality of even-mindedness, where we let go of our likes and dislikes. Happiness is desired by all, and suffering is something that all wish to avoid. Our likes and dislikes, our social connectedness or lack thereof, can obscure this truth, but it's a truth nonetheless. And so the practice of equanimity is to see past these obscurations in order to recognize this truth.
So upekkha is love. It's even-minded love, where we maintain an even mind towards all beings as we wish them well. It's not a cold or distant state. It's simply where we drop our biases and value all beings' happiness and wellbeing.
