Being powerful means more than just getting things done; it means making things happen. It means having  influence and control, even if it’s only in your own family and community, or even just with yourself. Organizing your time, information, and belongings can clear a path for you to have more personal power. If you would like to feel more powerful, here are five questions to ask, based on my encounters with the powerful women in my life:
- Am I clear about my goals? Clarity is one of the most valuable yet elusive jewels in life, and having clarity means you know what actions you need to take to get where you want to go. If you are clear on the outcome you seek, your time management becomes more simplified and obvious as your priorities become more apparent. Some tools for gaining clarity are counseling, coaching, meditation, list-making, and journaling.
- Does my personal environment support my goals, or hinder them? Getting organized means that you have aligned your environment to support you in achieving your life’s goals, whether that is being a great parent or being a presidential cabinet member. If you are waking up each day to chaos, you are limiting yourself.
- Am I taking advantage of my strengths? The most powerful women I know practice the time management skill of doing what they do best and delegating the rest. The idea is to free up your time to spend it on what only you can do. Should you really be washing your car or running errands? Is there a teenager down the street who would love to do that for you instead?
- Am I repeating the same mistakes? Look for patterns in your life, whether in time management or with the “trouble spots” in your home. What are you consistently having trouble managing? Organizing a space means more than just stashing away things that are left out. Make sure you invest time to create a true system to prevent the problem from returning. If it’s paper, for example, create systems for yourself like having one designated spot to put the unsorted mail, and having one place to put bills to be paid. Thinking about systems helps you get to the root of the issue and solve it for good. If you need help, get someone involved who has more objectivity on the situation—that fresh set of eyes and unbiased opinion can be a miracle for your problem, whether a friend or a paid consultant like a professional organizer.
- Am I connected? The most powerful women I know have reach and influence because of the network to which they reach out, both to give and receive help. Taking advantage of your personal network can be difficult if you don’t know how to reach them! We have encountered so many people in our consulting work with contact information in multiple places, such as cell phones, Outlook, Yahoo, slips of paper, and old address books. Can you find someone’s phone number or e-mail address when you need it most? Take some time to create a comprehensive system that will centralize your information in one place, ideally making it accessible elsewhere by synchronization with a phone or web application. And the data entry involved in this job is a great thing to delegate!
Roman philosopher Seneca said it best: “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.” We so often find in people’s organization efforts that their biggest obstacle is themselves.
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Lorie Marrero, CPO® is a Professional Organizer and the creator of The ClutterDiet®, an affordable membership program that helps busy people get organized online with the help of a team of organizing experts. |
