Different organising approaches
Recently I worked on several large and very different projects; a living room, a hallway, and a complex financial project for an organisation. What they all had in common was the approach that had to be taken. We had to look at the big picture and then break it up into smaller portions to make sense of the whole.
Organising approach for a physical space
For the physical spaces, this was quite easy. The living room was a mess this was the big picture, when I broke it down it turned out that it only had three major problems; no space for children’s artwork, no space for books, and a lack of maintenance. When a space was created for books and artwork, the maintenance became easy and the room flipped from chaos to incredibly neat after a few baskets and a bookshelf.
Organising approach for a hallway
The hallway was harder, as several items needed a space; crockery, paperwork, and other worthwhile treasures. Again storage space was created and the different groupings were broken up to see how much space a group would take up, once everything had a home, the hallway was transformed.
Organising approach for a finance project
Lastly, the finance project, was tricky because for an outsider nothing was visibly wrong. However, doing the work exposed a complex and hard-to-follow system. There was however a clear vision as to what would ideally be achieved; a very easy list of Jobs (or projects) and a list of account headings. This was then broken down in numerous sessions working a little bit at the time on one part of the bigger picture. What were the current projects for the job list? What were easy groupings of income and expense claims for the accounts list? We also had to check if there was any duplications or any confusing labels. As this is complex, it will take several weeks before it is completely sorted and that is okay.
When you start big and break a project down in smaller bite-sized pieces - everything can get organised.
