Get Your Act Together
7-Day Get-Organized Program for the Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed, aBy Young, PamPerennial
Copyright © 2004 Pam Young
All right reserved.ISBN: 0060969911 What Is a Person Like You Doingin a Mess Like This? We know what kind of a mess you are in right now. We could tell you, in detail, what your kitchen, living room, closets, cupboards, drawers, car, purse, refrigerator, and even your bedroom look like. No, we're not psychic, and no, we haven't been sneaking around your house, peeking in your windows at night. We know because we used to be in the same messy dilemma. We escaped and have helped thousands of other people get free from the vicious grip of disorganization. We can help you do it, too.
You know you are overworked, overbooked, and overwhelmed, but did you know that maybe one of the main reasons you got that way is because you were born that way? We believe that if you have struggled to be organized but still lead a messy and disorganized life, you can blame it on heredity. It's our guess that your mess is genetic, and if we're right about that, we can tell a lot more about you.
Instead of reading this book, you're probably supposed to be doing something else. Maybe you're in a bookstore at the mall when you should be picking up vacuum cleaner bags at Sears. Or maybe you're propped up on your bed reading and you should be starting dinner. One woman in a small midwestern town wrote and said that she "accidentally" ran into one of our books. She had locked herself out of her house in bare feet and no coat. It was the dead of winter and her first thought was the "warm" library that was just a block from her home. Once inside, she called her husband to bring her a key and made a decision to get organized. The librarian, able to size up the reader, led the trembling, shoeless woman to our book.
We bet you've tried to get organized in the past. In fact, you've probably gone off on organizational binges with great energy and enthusiasm, only to end up with one more discarded clutterbuster to add to your stash of gadgets and papers. We suspect that you have a lot of organizational tools around the house: filing cabinets, shoe trees, stacking bins, pen caddies, and mail organizers. But instead of satisfying your organizational needs, these tools just loom like lighthouses in a sea of clutter and chaos, beaming rays of accusation that you didn't follow through.
Maybe you also have a diary, photo albums, weekly planners, and calendars that are blank or only partially filled out. Perhaps you bought a rowing machine, stationary bicycle, NordicTrack, Thigh Master, or Gut Buster, but you're not rowing, biking, tracking, squeezing, or busting. In fact, your exercise has probably been limited to hauling all that equipment from the attic to the driveway for a garage sale every couple of years.
Speaking of exercise, do you belong to a health club that you don't go to? Speaking of health, did you invest in the Richard Simmons Deal-a-Meal cards, but the last time you dealt them, you left them in your bathrobe and they went through the wash? Is your Meet You at the Top motivational tape at the bottom of the bill basket? Did you buy Pull Your Own Strings but still find yourself at the end of your rope?
Have you ever been a victim of PREMATURE EVALUATION? Any time you've tried to get organized but had to look for a pen, unload a chair, and clear a spot on the kitchen table for a piece of scratch paper, you've jumped the organizational gun. In the end, you have suffered the letdown and disappointment of premature evaluation. Embarrassed at ending up in more of a mess than you had when you started, you're left with battered self-esteem and public failure (usually logged by family and friends.)
The reason we know so much about you is that we are deficiency experts. We really do think that being disorganized is genetic. As you will read in Chapter 2, we inherited our messy genes from our dad. For more than fifteen years, we have made it our mission to help people who were born with the congenital tendency to be locked out, left behind, and overdrawn.
We think people who are prompt and efficient are born that way, too. They're those few naturally organized people who have it together. They have five- and ten-year plans; they floss, make lists, and actually do the stuff on the lists. They don't run anywhere, look for anything, arrive late, or forget birthdays. They have low cholesterol, IRAs, cash in their wallets, milk in the refrigerator, and high-fiber cereal in the cupboard ... and they were all born on their due dates! They're people like Ordell Daily, our make-believe Goddess of Order, who has a standing hair appointment on Saturday, sleeps on her face Saturday night, and comes to church Sunday morning, resprayed with Follicle Freeze and looking brittle yet lifelike.
Ordell Daily was an organized soul.
No one could match her skill.
The crack of dawn was her rising time,
Her day was a routine drill.
Showered and dressed in less than ten,
Breakfast in just under three.
Dishes cleared, the dusting done,
She knew she wouldn't be free
'til the table was set for dinner
And the bathrooms were sanitized,
And the plants in her terrarium
Were properly fertilized,
And the pile of ironing nagging her,
Just a blouse and her husband's shirt,
Were pressed to their perfection
And put away so they wouldn't hurt
The streamlined look in her laundry room,
A sight not seen by most;
With its white and shiny counters
And appliances she could boast
Were cleaned on the inside,
Polished on the out
Twice a day with the right amount
Of elbow grease and Lemon Pledge.
She'd even polish the window ledge,
Then back upstairs to make the bed,
Brush her teeth while her prayers were said.
Vacuum carpets, check the clock,
Exactly time to wake the flock.
"Get up, kids, it's time to rise."
Back downstairs to bake some pies.
At eight when the kids got on the bus,
Her day had just begun.
She didn't waste a moment,
But worked straight through to one.
At one she ate an apple
While she wrote a menu plan,
Answered several letters
Then off to the store she ran.
She never had to look for things
They were always in their place.
Her hair was always perfect,
She had makeup on her face.
She never missed appointments,
And she'd always get there early.
Tardy wasn't ever part
Of her vocabulary.
That's why it's so ironic
That when her name was in the news,
A synonym for tardy
Was the word the writer used.
The column in the paper said,
"Ordell was thirty-four."
She left behind a tidy home
From the ceiling to the floor.
Ordell never played in life,
She worked to her demise.
The writer named the funeral home
Where the "LATE" Ordell Daily lies.
Do you know somebody like Ordell? If you do, you've probably envied her ability to get so much accomplished, and you've wondered how she does it. God made one Ordell to every ten people like you. That's because Ordell does the work of ten people, and she needs people like you to create work for her. You see, it all goes back to genetics. Ordell doesn't have a creative organ in her body. Her gift is an operative left brain.
Undoubtedly you have heard or read about studies of the right and left brain. If you look at a diagram of the human brain, you'll see that it is divided in half. One half takes care of creative information such as music, color, imagination, and intuition. That's the right side, and people who are predominantly right-brained are artists, musicians, actors, writers, etc. The other half of the brain keeps track of numbers, time, direction, logic, and practical information. That's the left side; people who are predominantly left-brained are scientists, mathematicians, computer wizards, bookkeepers, and people like Ordell. You were born with a left brain that isn't hooked up and a right brain that is overactive and renders you organizationally impaired.
Here's what happens. You start out on a project, and with the help of your well-developed right brain you dive in with great imagination and enthusiasm. It doesn't matter what the project is; it can be something as simple as changing the oil in the car or washing the breakfast dishes, or as complex as making a dress or building a carport. The important thing to note is that, at some point, you'll hit the boring part of the project. (Every project has one.) When you come to that cheerless place, your right brain will always kick in with an alternative list of activities. It works like the remote control to the television in the hands of a husband. You just get interested in a project and, BANG, a new program. Depending on how much energy you have, you can start so many things that you could end up talking to the fruit in your wallpaper.
If you were to try to be like Ordell, you would not be happy. You would overgoal yourself into a frenzy and end up mean and cranky. We think books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, were written for people like Ordell, who are already highly effective. We made up our own seven habits, which are more realistic for people like us.Continues...
Excerpted from Get Your Act Togetherby Young, Pam Copyright © 2004 by Pam Young. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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