The Secret Most Organized People Are Keeping
I have a secret for you. It really shouldn’t be a secret… Most organized people are not 100% organized. After all, we all know that nobody’s perfect. And no house is perfect either. The pictures you see online are usually just a highlight reel. So the seemingly-put-together people may not necessarily be better at organizing than you, they might just be better at prioritization.
The term “prioritize” has often gotten twisted to imply a greater focus on important things. While that’s true, that’s not everything. You can’t simply create more time, energy, or money. So in order to increase focus on what’s important, you must decrease focus in another area. It’s not just a matter of conjuring more will-power. It’s a matter of being more strategic about the things you don’t do.
How Organized People Prioritize
The Monica Closet
Do you guys remember this episode of Friends where Chandler and Joey are trying to open this closet that has never been opened through the whole series? And Chandler finally gets it open only to find an absolute mess of stuff of clutter. It turns out that Monica, who is known for being organized and clean, actually has this secret closet with a secret mess in it.
This is a wonderfully realistic example of what it looks like to be clean and organized. Maybe there are some of you who have every corner of the house put-together, but most of us have a closet or a basement or an attic that looks something like this. (Yes—even the organized people!) Because the truth of the matter is that it’s not realistic to have everything perfect at the same time, especially in a house that’s being lived in.
It’s More About What Isn’t Than What Is
So, the people who look like they have it all together are actually just good at choosing what NOT to organize. They spend most of their organization time & energy on the most used and important spaces of the house. And what do they do with everything else that’s leftover? They create a “catch-all” space. Oftentimes this is somewhere out of the way, or in storage. It can also exist on a small scale, such as the junk drawer in your kitchen—that’s just the catch-all space of the kitchen.
The reason this is important to share is because, with the rise of social media comes the rise of comparison. But social media is not the whole picture of a person’s home—it’s the highlight reel. Even if you go in person to someone’s house, you’re only seeing a fraction of it. You’re not up in their attic or investigating their guest room closet.
So, it’s important to remember that a catch-all space is NORMAL. And not only is it normal; it’s also smart. Embracing the undone will free up your capacity to focus even more on the most important things. So, I’d like to propose that you stop beating yourself up over it, and instead start thinking about it as “strategic prioritization”.
The other day I came across this quote from Steve Jobs that I can’t stop thinking about:
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
Steve Jobs
What house project are you saying no to? And are you proud of it?
