Organization for the Unorganized

I am extremely bad at organization. There are a number of items in my life that eternally need addressing, such as filling out forms, taking care of responsibilities, and even cleaning my room. You know, important stuff like that.

I am attempting to come up with a “trusted system” that works for me. I am a relatively unmotivated person. I listen to the 43 Folders podcast and sometimes I also read some of the blog entries on the site. I find Merlin Mann to spark my interest in organization. Perhaps this is for the reason that he has the ability to accurately capture my personal struggles with organization, motivation, and procrastination.

The best reflection I have had of myself from Merlin is in his podcast episode The Perfect Apostrophe. Basically when I have a task to do, I spend so much time preparing to prepare to begin the project that I burn out early with a parting statement of “I’m screwed”. Then, if the project is self-assigned, it immediately gets put on a back burner for a few months.

If it is something for school, I will procrastinate till the last possible minute, and then fly things into gear, staying up until 4am the night before. The problem with this is, I am not motivated to change, because I usually get fairly high letter grades on assignments completed in this manner.

Anyway, I will make posts about aspects of this “trusted system” that I am devising, and perhaps some other theories of organization for the unorganized.