Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

The Magic Triumvirate

The other night, my husband and I were watching our new favorite show, the Swedish drama, Restaurant. In the episode, one brother comes back to work at the family restaurant after a stint in the sanatorium to recover from alcoholism, and his mother says, “The doctor says he needs structure, work and fresh air.” Genius! I’m not a doctor, but I think there isn’t much that structure, work and fresh air doesn’t cure.

But even though I believe in the power of structure and fresh air, I’m a little burned out when it comes to self-motivation. It was easy to run every day when I was in my 20s and I had a crush on a runner. I would run so that if I saw him I could say (with an alluring toss of my long, dark hair), “Yeah, I went running today, did you?” For years and years, I got up at 5:30 every weekday morning, because that was the only way to get the kids where they needed to be and to get me to work on time. But all those external drivers seem to have faded. These days, it’s truly an inside job. And all that energy I had in the beginning of the pandemic has ebbed away as the situation has dragged on.

My twins turned 15 recently. They’ve just begun their Sophomore year in high school. In any other year, they would be ramping up, joining clubs, making new friends, making me nervous. But everything is different this year. Thus far, my daughter is fully remote, while my son is home some days and at school (albeit very different school) other days. It would be hard to schedule things with everything so variable, but there isn’t much to schedule. I was hoping that fall and the beginning of school would bring some much-needed structure to my kids’ lives, but so far, it’s just more confusing and disjointed, and I’m pretty sure we are not alone.

To top it all off, the weather is turning cooler and some of the outdoor activities that have been keeping us all sane are becoming less appealing.

So what to do? Where to find the motivation? Fake it until we make it. If there are no offices to be at, boys to impress, make your own external drivers: Give yourself a schedule and do some work—any kind of work. Fix something in your apartment, pitch a new client, volunteer, or sign up for an on-line class. Throw on a jacket and take a walk with a friend to get your fresh-air-fix.  Make a chart. Color code. Check the box or give yourself a star for sticking to your schedule.

We may not be in a sanatorium (yet!), but there’s still value in remembering the doctor’s magic triumvirate of structure, work and fresh air. It’s simple, free and guaranteed to cure just about everything.