Organization

I’ve been inspired by my new friend Eric over at Deepest Health to start taking an honest look at the lack of organization in my life and to consider it as a very real root of many problems for me. What’s interesting is that Eric is now the second person in my life within the last couple weeks to really effectively hammer home the necessity of organization.

More on that in a moment.

Of late I’ve found myself in a couple of familiar predicaments, which are being completely broke and getting surprised on tests by questions I didn’t expect and therefore wasn’t prepared for. Now historically, I have approximately zero study skills. When i was a kid I never really learned how to study because, well, I didn’t need to. I knew everything they were going to teach before they taught it somehow. At least until classes started getting into things like Math that I didn’t use every day (like Algebra). Then I was in big trouble. I had no idea how to learn. To this point I had just learned almost osmotically. If you asked me a question I knew the right answer and wasn’t sure how. I just DID. It’s still ike that now. On a lot of topics in school I’ve studied ahead on my own because they’ve often been topics of interest to me or I needed to know the answers in order to fix something on myself. However when it comes to some of the less easily connected subjects-like say, Pathology or herbs that I haven’t personally used yet-I’m kind of at a loss because I can’t tell what exactly I’m supposed to learn and frequently get blindsided on tests because of it. I learn the wrong things.

The second issue is money control. I am now kicking myself because I had told myself “OK, this semester when financial aid comes in I’m going to really manage it well, I’m going to be smart about things, and I’m going to organize it so that once all the necessities are taken care of I’ll have a remaining budget of $100 per week to work with for things like gas and herbs which will take me up to next semester.” Well, it didn’t happen. 6 or so weeks into the semester and my account is empty. Adding insult to injury, I am now unable to get the two things I wanted most this semester which is continued education from my music mentor and my medicine mentor. Big opportunities lost in both places. Now this is absolutely nothing new for me. I’ve never been able to handle money in my life. On the one hand I’m very generous, but the other I’m a little TOO free with it. I am now convinced that this boils down to lack of proper organization.

It occurred to me today that the primary thing organization gives you is something like a support structure when you otherwise have none. I’m in the position of having to be “the tree on the side of the mountain” in Yi Jing speak in a lot of areas in my life and it’s absolutely terrifying because there is no support structure for me at present. No assistants to carry out menial tasks, no accountant to crunch numbers, no supervisor to provide guidance nothing. Just me. However, it seems to me that orderly processes that produce dependable results in a predictable way can take the place of all these things and give you just the thing to depend on. Returning to the story I started earlier, rigor  and process have been absolutely blasted at me for the last year and I think it’s time I started listening. My medical mentor has been preaching the importance of a rigorous approach to all of the treatment process from diagnosis to point protocol to needle technique to herbal formulation since the day I met him. My music coach has practically hitting me upside the head with the necessity of following process to the letter the same way every time when working with digital music in any format, as well as the necessity for perfect and easily accessible organization of files within both the OS and the DAW as every second taken away from the creative process serves to increase the odds against you successfully finishing the project. His emphasis on what at first looked to me like the tiniest and most insignificant details of those processes now looks like necessity to me.

After reading Eric’s article the other day on why organization makes him an honors student, I’m now reconsidering the horror and revulsion I initially felt at doing things like making an inbox and an outbox for schoolwork. Maybe that’s the level of detail needed to be the absolute best you can be, or in some subjects just to survive and pass. How much do you want to bet that with proper bookkeeping my money lasts longer and goes to the right places? I’ve typically held these flaws to be some sort of moral or personality defect in myself and thus have been shamed and intimidated out of doing something about them, but maybe its time to reconsider that perspective. The super organized people tend to be the ones I respect the most and also are the most successful and productive. In order to succeed at the multiple career paths I’ve chosen for myself I think I’m going to need that mechanical support structure to lean on when I don’t have someone there to hold my hand. Otherwise I have no idea how anyone stands on their own at anything.

So, gentle reader, I hereby declare that I am going to get my ass in gear and start the organization of everything that I depend on in my life. I’ve already started the organization of music stuff (things like plugins, sample libraries, useful tracks for DJing, etc.) and I think that before long it will start paying dividends. Now I have to find ways to do the same for my schoolwork, my work area at home, and other parts of my life. I have very little idea of how I’m going to go about this, so all supportive advice is appreciated.

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