We moved back into our condo 2 weeks ago (following 4 months of flood repairs and living in a hotel). Everything has been unpacked, sorted/dealt with and placed or stored, except for my office. There I have been stalled.
For many reasons, I am seriously struggling with facing/dealing with unpacking and organizing my office. It is a loaded situation for me and fraught with much angst. My professional past and future is represented by that 200 square foot space.
This is not just a simple matter of unpacking boxes and putting everything back where it was and resuming business-as-usual. Due to the economy, my business is not what it was 14 months ago, never mind 4-5 years ago. I feel that what I do with, and in, that space will create the next professional stage of my life. And I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know what I want it to look like.
As far as the past goes, there’s stuff in my office that I want and need to say goodbye to (or even “kiss off”), but then fear immediately bubbles up of needing that stuff, whatever it is, sometime in the future. Too many times I’ve divested myself of something only to need it just days or weeks later. I’m nervous about tossing files, research, materials and information that I have painstakingly accumulated because I felt it had value.
I know I could document, catalogue and file/store much of this stuff if I really believe I will need it, and want to be able to easily put my hands on it down the road. But I just can’t see myself going to that amount of effort when I suspect I probably won’t need 90% of it. So why not winnow it now?
If it went into storage, no matter how well documented on a detailed file list, I would probably not access it anyway. I am an “out of sight out of mind” person when it comes to a lot of my work materials and research. My natural inclination would be to start over and start fresh with a new assignment, rather than dig through and find old stuff I had previously come across. Much of what I created from that information and materials now exists on my computer hard drive, so I do have all the “products” that resulted.
My increasingly unreliable memory also indicates I should toss stuff. Even if I kept certain stuff, if I don’t remember what it is or that I have it somewhere, what is the point?
In order to create my professional future, I want to let go of stuff from the past 9 years of my coaching and consulting business that no longer serves me or reflects my business reality. I know letting go of this stuff will create space and roominess…but for what, exactly? What am I making room for? What do I want to attract (and what do I need to be prepared to attract)?
I realize the feeling I need to be “prepared” is directly linked to the stuff I am faced with getting rid of. When I was a brand new “solo-preneur”, I felt I needed and accumulated all that stuff (information, mainly) because I lacked vast amounts of actual coaching and consulting experience. Nine years and many hundreds of happy clients later, I do now have vast actual experience, and the confidence that comes with that. So the question is - am I confident enough in what I know to let the excess go, and trust that I will figure out and find whatever I need in the future?
I am a big believer in the power of visualization. Last fall I had created a huge, new “vision board” for myself. This large, framed cork bulletin board had place-of-pride on my office wall, and I had completely filled it with symbols of past business success such as thank-you cards from clients, tokens of appreciation, various meaningful souvenirs, and lots of visual images and written phrases that inspire me.
Yesterday, I opened the box containing all these vision board items…and threw most of them away. I still truly appreciate and find every single one of those things deeply meaningful. But I decided to hang on to just the meaning and let the physical clutter go. Time to see if I can do that with the rest of those damn boxes stacked in my office!
My vision board is currently empty except for a couple of inspirational things – like the card that says “Whatever you are, be a good one” and the motto of the Outward Bound organization which is “To serve others, to strive with heart, and not to yield to self doubt.” It’s a pretty great motto for someone who is, yet again, trying to figure out what she’s going to be when she grows up.
Todo bien. (It’s all good.)
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thank you so much Lisa, that helps a lot. I know he tried to blame me for so much stuff, but like I told all of his family and mine none of that added up to a divorce. I do realize it's his needs, it just hurts so bad to think how many years he's
How funny....i only very recently (within last week) read the coconut oil articles on the web. (100 uses, 80 uses etc.) so i bouht some and ordered some from amazon. (Im a stockpiler.)
Have started trying some of the uses. I tried using it a
“trying to figure out what she’s going to be when she grows up”…I can SO relate to that!!!
(Hi Namaste. Piggy-backing off you again, since I can’t use the orange Respond button.)
YO Lisa. What would you tell a client to do if it were them? That’s a serious question – I’m curious to know what your answer would be. I personally found it very telling that you seem to realize you have most of your research on your computer (backed up on flash-drives, I’d assume), so you need the paper version because….?
So yes, at least make piles – and then refine the piles that are left – and then refine them again. Do this as many times as it takes, and I bet you’ll be surprised at how much easier it might be to just let go of “stuff” from each pile every time.
But then I’m very much not a pack-rat type of person. Jim is, and we’ve occasionally argued about it. I throw stuff out, and if I realize later I shouldn’t have have…. Oh well, nobody has yet ever died because of me throwing away something I wish later I had.
With Jim, my rule is “Fine – you do whatever you need to do, but keep all of it out of my sight or *I’LL* throw it out.” This means we have a very cluttered attic and furnace room, so if our house ever burns down, we’ll know exactly who caused it, now won’t we? (grin)
P.S. Congrats on getting moved back in after all these months! Have they finished fixing all the things yet that still weren’t working and/or looking right?
Hi Duffy,
I have all the key products from my raw research materials on my computer(s) and backed up on external drives, just in case of any catastrophic failures. But I don’t have the raw, hard copy materials backed up anyway or anywhere. That’s what I am having a hard time letting go of. It took me a long time to accumulate this raw material, and I still find most of it interesting and potentially useful…so, hard to know if I will need it or not.
I am doing the “refining piles” approach and it’s working quite well. And I am purging most of the stuff. It’s just faster and easier to toss it.
If I were coaching a client, I’d ask her questions to illuminate root causes of the issues, and to try and define her preferred organizing style. There is a great book called “Organizing for Your Brain Type” – what works for one person may not fit another. So, in coaching, I would not tell her what to do, because it might not be a fit. My job would be to help her explore and articulate what would work for her, that she maybe hadn’t thought of or tried before.
My blog on this topic yesterday served as a “self coaching” exploration of what was at play for me. My “ah-ha” that came to light was realizing I now embody and own a lot of this knowledge and information, so I really don’t need to keep the outward scraps of paper around. It’s trusting that I can toss stuff and not fall apart should it turn out later that I maybe could have used it.
I also think I am trying to avoid “reinventing the wheel” when I hold onto stuff. I researched and found something, and I don’t want to have to search for it again. But, realtistically, things change and grow so fast (especially in the burgeoning coaching industry) that I would probably always look into the latest research and writings anway, and never just rely on what’s in my messy files!
I’m not a pack rat – everything else in my life is limited and under control (e.g., clothes, shoes, accessories, books, make-up and jewellry, and even housestuffs are under control at the city condo since we moved back in 2 weeks ago and organized and purged as we unpacked).
Seems my office/business is my final frontier of an organizational challenge.
AHA!!! Other than in your office, you sound way more organized than me, so get your butt over here immediately, please, and clean out all my closets and drawers!
(Very good, well-explained and easy to follow answer to my questions, by the way. Thanks. I’m glad you had an “ah-ha” moment and that doing the refining piles is working for you.)
Hi Lisa, if you read your entry again, you will realize that you’re talking yourself into getting rid of a lot of the “stuff” because a good part of it is on your computer, the rest you won’t be so inclined to access AND there is always more “new stuff” that is more current coming onto the market. I just went through a recent purge and my home, by all other people’s accounts is very clutter free! For me, though, I wanted to keep only things that were useful to me and that I loved. I’m a very sentimental person, but I realize that sentimentality has no place when trying to get rid of clutter. I retired from a 28 career as a classroom elementary teacher and I also got rid of all the things I thought were so important to keep ~ letters, cards, old pictures of numerous field days, etc… It is time to move on. The memories of my past career will always be with me, I don’t need the clutter as a reminder. I also got rid of so much in my closet and my kitchen and it feels so much better. What helped me was to do it in stages. In my closet I keep a shopping bag where I put every article of clothing that I try on and doesn’t make me feel good even though I may love it. Once that shopping bag is full it gets donated and I have forgotten what is in there. You could do the same thing with your office. Get some boxes, store the ‘maybe’ pile in the boxes and put them in your basement or garage. Get them out of your office for now where they’re serving no purpose. That will leave room for you to grow and decide what comes next. If you don’t need to access your stored boxes for a certain period of time (one month, six months, one year?) you can safely toss them without a thought. Good luck with deciding what to be when you grow up. I just completed my 200 hr. Yoga Teacher Certification and I am now a yoga teacher teaching a couple of classes a week at a local studio. I just turned a young 60 last week and I can finally do a headstand! Woo Hoo!!!