Alright, let’s talk about finding your own groove. I remember when I first started trying to get organized, like really get things done. Everyone had advice, right? You read all these methods, these super clean desk setups, these fancy planners.
I went out and bought stuff. Got the planner. Tried the apps. Followed the step-by-step guides people swore by. You know, time blocking, prioritizing matrices, all that jazz. Seemed logical. Sounded like it should work.
But man, it felt stiff. Like wearing shoes that were too tight. I spent more time managing the system than actually doing anything useful. My brain just didn’t click with it. I’d make these perfect lists, schedule everything down to the minute, and then… life happened. Or I’d just stare at the perfectly organized plan and feel totally overwhelmed, ending up doing nothing.
The Breaking Point and the Mess
It got frustrating. Felt like a failure because the “proven” methods weren’t working for me. My workspace? Became a graveyard of half-used notebooks and abandoned systems. It was just… messy. Mentally and physically.
Then one day, I kinda gave up on trying so hard to follow the rules. I just needed to get one specific thing off my plate. It was bugging me. So, I grabbed the nearest scrap of paper – I think it was the back of an old envelope – and just wrote that one thing down in big, messy letters. Didn’t pretty it up. Just the task.
Stuck it right on my monitor. Couldn’t ignore it.
And I did it. Just focused on that single, ugly note until the task was finished. Then, and this felt weirdly good, I crumpled it up and tossed it in the bin. A real physical ‘done’.
Embracing My Own Weird Way
Started doing that more. Not for everything, but for the big, annoying things I kept putting off. It wasn’t a system. It was just… tackling stuff.
- Grab whatever paper is nearby.
- Write one main thing I need to do.
- Make it visible, impossible to ignore.
- Do it.
- Destroy the evidence (the note, I mean).
It looks primitive. Anyone else looking at my desk sometimes might think I’m just surrounded by random scribbles. No color-coding, no fancy app syncing. Sometimes it’s a sticky note, sometimes a napkin. It’s inconsistent. It’s probably inefficient by textbook standards.
But here’s the thing: it works for me. It cuts through the noise. That physical act of writing it down big and then throwing it away seems to signal something to my brain. Task started, task finished. It bypasses all the complex planning stages that used to paralyze me.
So yeah, that was the genesis. Not some grand plan, just me getting fed up and finding a clumsy, personal workaround. It’s my ‘special way’, born out of frustration and a messy desk. And it’s okay if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
