Quote of the Day

The urgent things in life are very seldom important, and the important things in life are rarely urgent. – Charles Hummel

I’m in a slump of disorganization, and it occurred to me last night that it’s been weighing on me for over a week: piles of unanswered email, handwritten notes scattered all over my office, stacks of unread magazines and newspaper articles, a to-do list a mile long with no priorities, way behind on my audio essays, further behind on promo activities like a new edition of Fresh Joe, etc. etc. For being a so-called knowledge worker, I currently suck at organization and this week it’s become discouraging, an unusual state for me, though this problem rears its ugly head with fair regularity.

I don’t have immediate solutions but it occurred to me last night to ‘go public’ with it, along with a vague statement of intent to work on it: “I intend to work on it.” There. I started to make a list of reasons about why I’m falling behind on everything, but it was just a bunch of whining, topped off with bragging about how busy I am so I deleted it all.

So today, I’m just going to do two things: I’m going to clean off one desk surface, the one with all the notes; and I’m going to spend one hour whittling down my email inbox. These aren’t long-term solutions, I know, but I’ll feel better having tackled two piles which are visually nagging me. Towards a longer term solution, I’m going to get ahold of the writings of David Allen, recommended to me by Inner Circle’s Norm Stoehr, and take a crack at some “five minute” suggestions offered by Jim Earley, a performance coach who’s in my Inner Circle group.