366 – Organizational Math

Today, I want to encourage you to embrace organizational math. With organization, you can move your life from reactive to proactive, but doing so takes focus and determination. First, we change your mental model, and then you layer on the practical and physical skills. I was a middle school math teacher, and I share how I apply the same benefits of basic math skills to your transformational journey into organization. For any of you who are math-phobic, I promise we will only talk about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Addition When you decide to get organized, the first thing you will want to do is to add a new habit to your life routine. Practices require focused efforts to ensure their successful adoption. When we want to improve our lives, we often try to add many new patterns all at once. However, being able to cement a new habit into your routine usually requires about 120 days, but if you tackle fewer goals more effectively you will ensure achieving a lasting change. Spoiler alert: The first habit to add when working towards organization is the Sunday Basket®. Subtraction When you think about applying subtraction to organization, it is the first step we take in The Productive Home Solution – decluttering. Decluttering naturally starts with removing excess physical objects from your home – things you no longer need, want, use, or have space for. After that, you can gain further space by subtracting obligations, negative people, negative thoughts, and inefficiencies from your life. Multiplication This is where organizational math begins to gain significant power. The organization always gives you more time. When you start by gaining extra time planning your week and task stacking by using your Sunday Basket® each week, you will gain time to work through The Productive Home Solution. Then, as you gain control of your home and paper, you can tackle your paper binders, kids’ rooms, and photos. Moving through decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity helps you to make space for what you are uniquely created to do. Division This is the most powerful part of organizational math. With your increased ability to focus as a result of your organizing, you can now divide time into fewer but more powerful roles in your life. When you get to this stage of your transformational journey – you will divide your time into three major baskets: your Friday Workbox for the work you are uniquely created to do, your Sunday Basket® to manage all of your household obligations and to-dos, and your passion projects (hobbies and personal satisfaction). This is when Planning Day and time blocking your calendar powers up your life and your capacity. As you move along Maslow’s Hierarchy, keep working on learning your organizational math skills and adding on new ones as you continue along your transformational journey!