Project Organize: Weeks One & Two

For those of you following my ongoing organizational & productivity  struggles, I did indeed take Maureen up on her offer of a month’s personal coaching as a challenge/experiment.   We started with a phone call last Monday, a number of emails, and followed up with a slightly mixed-up-call this week.   And things seem to be headed in the right direction - sort of!  

Maureen, like me, is a big fan of neuro-science inspired ideas, and we’ve talked a lot about creating, maintaining and anchoring the neurological pathways that form a sense of internal structure.  She’s fun to talk to,  we do laugh quite a bit -  she told me not to tell you how much we laugh, but I countered that humor is good for the brain and good for helping to anchor neurological pathways, too.  

She has, as promised, provided links to various products, methods and services, though I have yet to explore them thoroughly.  The most helpful bit for me has been having someone to email with a few thoughts and schedules.  I sort ideas out best when someone else is listening, no doubt it has something to do with the particular problem solving pathways in my brain.

That said, even though Maureen and I share a lot of core philosophies about goals and what not, we seem almost at cross purposes sometimes - likely because we skipped gleefully over  something she’d mentioned in an early email:  the "first step" of finding a coaching style that works for you. Or me. Or whoever.

She asks a lot of questions to encourage awareness of feelings and emotions as part of anchoring new neural pathways in the brain, while I’ve had far more success with a zen-approach to emotions when it comes to productivity. As a result, every once in a while she asks me a question, my mind responds with a big old Pseudo- Buddhist "Auuuuuuuuuum"  -exactly the sort of nothingness I’ve trained it to produce.    When that happens, I get  sense that Maureen and I both wind up staring at the phone with a great big "what the heck?" which quickly gives way to laughter, and we stumble around a bit until repeat the process - hopefully this next week we’ll find a solution to that oddness.

In spite of our glitches,  I’m getting quite a bit out of our exchange.  She did nudge me into starting a backup routine for most-important files and I even labeled my little thumb flash drive "backups" — (I’ve temporarily misplaced it, of course, but never mind that.  The routine is  started, dang nab it! Don’t expect perfection from me right off the bat)  I’ve also started the process of  rebooting my old abandoned and yet previously  productive routines - and I’m trying to add in some new bits and pieces.    Maybe by next week, I can even show you my shiny new/used system! 

But that’s how its going.  Now I can even check "Write Project Organize Week 1 Post" off of my little task list dealymabob. 

Aren’t you all proud of me? 

By the way, you can reach Maureen through her contact page on Squidoo, where you’ll find some pretty darn interesting ideas she’s put together.  You can also check out her articles on Ezine, and see if her thoughts and style might be a good match for you.

Now excuse me, won’t you….  I have a missing flash drive to go find!