Day 16 - Let's Talk About Organization and Systems a Bit
Is today Day 16? Apparently, I don’t know what day it is. I thought today was October 1st and it’s only September 30th. If that doesn’t tell you about my current state of mind, I don’t know what will. Of course, coming home from vacation is always disorienting. I’m also back in school and it turns out I’m terrible at math. No shock. I was the kid who looked out the school window and dreamt about going for long walks. I dreamt of escape.
I’m currently in school part time. I’m taking two classes in the real world and one online. Between the commute and lunch, I don’t get to start my “Melanie day” until after 2pm. By that time, I’m tired and ready for a nap. You feel me?
I’m attempting to be super organized in both life and work. It’s laborious, but once you get a system down, it’s smooth sailing - I hope. Part of that includes having a regular digital cleaning schedule. This is prompted by the hoarder-esque status of my desktop Mac. I can’t find anything and I have hundreds of thousands of photos. You may recall, I mentioned I was a wedding photographer in a former life. Not to mention thousands of photos from tens years of iPhones. Needless to say, it’s a combination of chuckle-chin selfies and glorious wedding photos. It’s a mess. It’s been one of those “someday” jobs for a long time - but I want to take small bites out it. My Mac has also started to slow down and I suspect it’s because I have too many files, too many applications.
Years ago, my husband discovered the Kaizen method.
Kaizen is an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap major improvements. Typically, it is based on cooperation and commitment and stands in contrast to approaches that use radical changes or top-down edicts to achieve transformation.
At the time, I thought it was hokum. But now I feel like some jobs require Kaizen - like thousands of photos on your external drives. If I can consistently go through them once a month (during my monthly digital clean up) in twenty years I’ll have a totally organized photo library.
As for the digital clean up, I’ve been very methodical this month and written down all my steps - which I will be sharing in the next day or so.
On the Lessons in Love front, today was really about doing the digital clean up. The only book-related thing I did today was set up my GoodReads account. I’ve submitted an application for my author page and added LESSONS IN LOVE. Once it’s approved, I’ll post more information and you can friend me and vice versa. To learn how to set up your author account, read this. Setting up GoodReads should be part of the social media foundation and done early on.
If you read yesterday’s post, you know I’m feeling overwhelmed. Only two weeks in? To self-publish your book, you must be hyper-organized. I’m a combination of hyper-organized and super-disorganized. I’m so organized, it’s hard to wade through all my notes and calendars and systems. It’s not just the self-publishing part; that’s fun. It’s the life/work combo. If I had nothing else to do but get my novella online, I’d be right as rain. But I have, school, homework and family, and a cat. Post your favorite self-care activities in the comments. I’m definitely not doing enough.
This project is forcing me to take a hard look at how I do things and really nail down a system. And that’s what you need: a system. The best book I ever read about systems is The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. It really gets it into your head why you need systems and why they work. It’s an older book, but don’t let that fool you. It’s helped me in more ways I can count. In fact, I think I’d like to read it again.