Each story is a true client story with names and some details changed. Each client made an important and surprising but useful discovery during our work.
Donna’s story: You’ve done it before; let’s do it again — Party planning.
The advice from this story, or the message I’d like you to take away is to Capitalize on what you know about yourself and your past organizing efforts.
Notice what currently feels organized in your life.
How did it get to that point?
What skills can you use with this organizing challenge you face now? What skills, ideas, habits, products worked for you? Transfer skills and ideas to your new challenge.
Donna had a large lower level space in her home which she needed to reorganize for new purposes – storage, entertaining, grandchildren’s space. Reorganizing seemed overwhelming. too much space. Too many functions for the space. And how to maintain the organization once the initial “makeover” was done?
She wanted to work together at her home for a meeting, then do more work on her own, then have another meeting to begin the next room.
Amidst various family events and other issues, she was naturally having trouble finding time to work in between our meetings. But in a large space this was important and it was important so she’d know that once we finished, she could maintain the spaces on her own. Systems that worked. Belief she could continue on her own.
As we worked together, we talked about other aspects of her life which she felt were well-organized. Why couldn’t she get this space under control? As it turns out she is a party and planner and everyone looks to her for this skill or advice for their own events. Everything is done not only on time, but with great style and caring thought.
Through coaching and her thinking in between our meetings, we discovered that for parties, she had a way of breaking up the event into small steps of things to do. And she had an innate ability to know which step had to occur before others could. By breaking up the event into small doable pieces, she could fit the tasks into her busy schedule much more easily — chipping away at the planning one small step at a time.
So that’s how we broke up this large space: into smaller steps which could be done more easily in a busy life. She had the skill but hadn’t thought of using it on an organizing project like this. Once that insight occurred, there was no stopping her!
Did you miss Ali’s story? Click to read.
Did you miss Julie’s story? Click to read.
