Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
If it is too much to wrap your brain around, it’s too much
It’s the tiny things that always kill me-a sitter for two hours here and three hours there. When it’s big and regular like paying the rent and ballet class, I’m on top of it, but when it’s a million little pieces, that is when I start to loose the thread. It’s the same for my clients: Sometimes they start to tell me what is going on and at a certain point I want to cry “Uncle.”Stop! If it’s too much to wrap your brain around, maybe it is too much.
I understand that sometimes life happens: You’re halfway though a full kitchen makeover and your upstairs ceiling collapses, leading to a renovation of the bedrooms; or you are in the middle of helping your son apply to college when you get the opportunity to realize your lifetime dream of spending a year working in Africa. Sometimes things happen.
More often than not, however, the “too much” that happens is stuff we did to ourselves. One reason I always urge clients to put every little thing on a calendar is that I want to make them be honest with themselves about how much they have going on. When you see it laid out before you, it’s hard to deny that you are overscheduled. You might manage to squeeze one more committee onto the calendar, but then the renovation runs behind schedule leading to more meetings, and OMG it’s almost June and you haven’t scheduled the kids’ doctor’s appointments to get their medical forms filled out for camp. And was that mammogram you had last year?
So before you say “yes” to chairing the book fair, look at your calendar and see where it is going to fit. (And if you think I’m talking about you, let me say I can think of three people off the top of my head who read this newsletter and have recently chaired their child’s school book fair.) You don’t do anyone any favors when you spread yourself too thin. You want to be known as the fabulous person who does it all-not the annoying person who says yes and then lets thing fall apart. So just say “no.” You are busy, you have a job and a family and you’re moving and you’ve sworn that this is the year you are going to exercise three times a week. So maybe this is the year you skip the book fair.
Wrap your brain around that.