– Work spaCe Chaos: susan's story:
Look at this office. What do you think it's like to come in here every morning, turn on the computer and see a cluttered monitor background and an overwhelm-ing inbox, with 100-300 “to-do-mails”? How do you find anything? The bulletin board is meant to be used as a reminder system in your work life. But when it looks like this, chaos has descended. The desk is in the same situ-ation.
So, what happened here? Susan used to be a success-ful kitchen-sales person, doing very well in a time when people stood in line to buy kitchens. A perfectionist, it was hard to find anyone as dedicated to work as she was. She managed to be promoted to manager of the store even while handling the demands of two kids and struggling with a rocky marriage. She admitted to being touchy and sensitive at home because she was so overwhelmed by the weight of everything in her life. And she wasn’t sleeping well. She told me she never found the needed time and focus to be able to finish promised offers, calls, or email. She just couldn’t bring herself to say, “I really wish I could help you, but I'm sorry, it's not possible for the moment.” She did not dare. But she longed to hang a sign on her office door which proclaimed
“Closed due to overwhelming work tasks.”
She hired me to decorate her store, but when I saw her of-fice, I really wanted to help her find a balanced life. Gener-ally, when people are no longer working out of joy and pride but out of fear and stress, it can look rather disorganized.
But, oh my God, this office was way beyond disorder, this was cliffhanging!
I decided on a bold shot: I sat down with her over cof-fee and told her about my years of burn-out. I told her of my divorce, the sickness, and the hell I went through. I predicted she might be on that descending path, and begged her to let me help her. To my surprise she agreed.
Soon after this she took two days of holiday so I could dive in. So, where to start? In TV shows like “Extreme Makeover” I always find myself wondering what they do with the old stuff… with all that old clutter! No one seems to care once the bus has moved on, so I thought I'd do the same. I tried out the “Ostrich-Tool” for the first time – it was fabulous! I came in the morning, occupied her office, took down everything on the board, and packed it in one folder writing “Board” on it. Then I took everything from her desk – yes, writing “Desk” on it. Then each drawer, and each shelf, putting all the contents in moving boxes and stacking them against one wall in a storage room. Voila: one day's work.
Then the next day I cleaned the office, bought new flowers and joy-filled accessories, and hung photos of her beloved family and inspirational quotes about what life is really about: Love, Peace and Harmony. This is a type of
“Feng Shui” and intuitively it has the same origin: clear-ing the space for new energy to pour in. This creates a more peaceful place from which to cope with challenges.
But when Susan came back in to work, she was stunned. Terrified. And she could have killed me on the spot! I had created the horror of her worst nightmares.
Where were all her notes and papers and how was she going to find anything? It was a shock to her, and normally I would prepare a person for this harsh treatment. But this stressed woman couldn't have coped with the option of agreeing or disagreeing with my procedure. I knew she'd refuse, so in order to help her, I just gambled, took charge, and made the decision to abruptly take away what she couldn't let go of, wouldn’t let go of.
This is how a friend of mine dealt with her four-year-old who would not give up her pacifier. The mother hurled it one day into the burning fire of the living room stove, muttering, “She may miss it for a minute, but she’ll get over it.” She had seen other parents trying to manipulate their children for years into giving their pacifier to Santa Claus or in some other fashion being persuaded to part with it.
My friend’s way worked. After a bit of initial shock and loss, the little four-year-old forgot about it, never asked about it again! Call it “tough love” or being “cruel to be kind.” But it works, and sometimes, whether dealing with a grown-up or a child, this is what you have to do.
I sat down with Susan in this newly clean office and explained that this room was now like a cell phone charger; it now gave her energy, instead of sapping her strength. I assured her we were going to sort through all the notes and papers and mail that she was afraid had vanished, and that with a good system, everything would work much more efficiently. And I explained that she needed help to say No to others and Yes to herself, if she wanted to survive her future.
We opened her computer, printed out every single mail in the To Do folder, went to the storage and took the first box, entitled “Desk” and made four paper piles. Then we made an old-fashioned spreadsheet-style To Do list. At the end of the day, we put only this list on the bulletin board.
Like the tool Get the Damn Things Done (see more in the chapter “Boy, Girl, Plus Baby” and the Tool box at the end of the book) we added a column following the task, nam-ing who could help with what and when. There's always a way out of hell if you ask for help! Almost everything in the
overflowing drawers was in the To Read category, such as articles she was interested in.
Many smart women in business are Information Guardians of Things, and many life coach trainees are Self-Help Article Guardians. (I fit in that category; I save art-icles on my computer from Oprah, Martha Beck, etc. and never get around to reading them). Over time, Susan had collected so many wonderful articles that the drawers of the desk were jam-packed. I knew if she hadn't found the time to read them yet (some were over a year old) she just wasn’t going to! They were not urgent, not essential for her quality of life right now. So we kept some, but a great many went in the trash! Was there fear lurking behind this habit of Susan’s? Absolutely. Self-doubt made her keep articles as a creative deposit, so she could copy those ideas if and when she hit a mental blank working with a future client. What a limiting thought! But it haunted her.
Stephen Covey presented a very helpful system of organization in his renowned book, 7 Habits of Highly Ef-fective People. This involves separating items into four cat-egories: urgent and important, not urgent and important, urgent and not important, and not urgent and not import-ant. We dealt with the papers in Susan’s cabinet in much the same way. They were mostly documentation of her successes from the past: emails with congratulations on her promotion, “thank you’s” from her clients, etc. Here was fear again; she never truly believed she'd be good enough to be-come the manager of the store, so she needed proof. Once she understood this, we planted in her mind this mantra: "I deserve this job because I am damn good. I'll continue to be creative, I was born to be creative, I never need to copy or keep proofs of my past successes." Then she could let go of piles of paper with a smile!
And I can still hear her huge sigh of relief... a letting go. Like giving birth and handing the baby to the nurse.
What was left? Books she liked, the potential joy of the best of her To Read articles, and the list of To Do’s on the bulletin board where she could physically cross things off, something you cannot do in a computer document. Delet-ing a line on the computer does not give you a kick, while checking one off with a pen and a flourish brings relief and a brighter outlook!
In turtle steps Susan recovered and has completely forgiven me for kicking her in the gut with my “Let's pre-tend it's a clean office,” ostrich kind of office-coaching for small hoarders. Google images of “organized offices” and see all the inspiration you can get – including the work of Peter Walch!
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Making the place you work into a place you love is easy.
What makes you happy? What makes you creative? What makes you feel energized? Surround yourself with the answers.
Find inspirational quotes, images of mentors, love notes and visible proof of “I was born to do this”! It is guaranteed to make your work better and have a balanced work/private life.
FROM BOCONCEpT'S CATALOGuE
I first met Christine when enquiring among friends and family for a good web designer. My brother had met her and highly recommended her work. He also shared with me that when he visited her home, he thought, "Oh, if only Kirsten could come here and help." So, it seemed a perfect match; we could exchange services as well.
We arranged a time for me to visit her in her little cottage in a small town by the sea. Walking up the front path I was jumped on by Christine’s two dogs: a huge black-haired male Newfoundland and a smaller female sheep dog. They were both beside themselves with excitement, barking continuously. Christine hollered at them to keep quiet, as most of us do, with no real effect! I liked her immediately: her lovely eyes, her kind spirit, and the glow and aura of love I could see around her.
Inside the cottage, though, I was hit by the smell of dogs and cigarettes, and found it a little hard to breathe in that atmosphere. I asked her to show me her home and tell me the areas that bothered her, the areas she felt needed help. She guided me around in a little house-tour, making excuses the whole time. She was trying to explain why the floor, the sofas – well everything, really – was covered in dog hair. She liked her belongings, her beautiful objects of art, paint-ings, and many books. There were heart-shaped items, angels, antique puppet-theater, all dying to be liber-ated from dust, looked at and loved again. Just like Christine.
She confessed she had been fighting financial and work-related problems for some time, and it was neces-sary for her to focus on just surviving. Therefore, she reasoned, she had little energy left over for homemak-ing. I fully understood; I had been there myself. She her-self did not look very healthy; her skin was grey from smoking and her hair was thin and colorless. She con-fessed she had reluctantly let go of her usual pride in her appearance, and this was visible in her home, too. In fact, only the dogs looked great, because they got all the love and attention!
Dust covered everything, and the cigarette smoke had permeated the furniture and even dulled the walls and furnishings. On an old desk lived her MAC computers and right next to them was an ash-tray filled with cigarette butts. Her spare bedroom was a storage facility: heaping towers of cardboard boxes piled up against one wall, and stacks of clothes piled up on a small table, looking like they might topple to the floor at any moment. Framed pictures were stacked against a wall. Because she lived in this environment every day, I knew she really didn’t smell or see the problems. She was desensitized. I have learned that for the mind to survive it just shuts down. Guardians of Things, from the lightest to the most severe cases, rarely see the mess. They believe it is just the way it is, they are doing the best they can, and nothing can change it.
We sat down over a coffee to chat. I could sense she felt safe with me. So I touched her arm gently, and braved a pretty direct question: "Tell me what happened? How did you, with your education, with in-tellectual books, antiques and art pieces, end up here, like this?” Her eyes filled with tears, but she knew I wanted to help her, that I was not sitting in judgment.
She began to relay her story, filled with all of its "dirty pain." So this was her interpretation of the life she had lived, strongly influenced and colored by her own emotional pain. Sometimes we need help to see it from another person’s point of view.
Christine had owned a successful commercial agency and enjoyed the distinction of being one of the first web designers in the country. This success-ful past included a lovely house near Copenhagen and wonderful parents and friends. She looked great and possessed a wealth of style, talent, and self-confidence.
Looking for love, she met and married a charming man who lived on the other side of the country. The thrilling magnet of home and family prompted her to leave the house she loved and the successful life she knew, to leap into this adventure. They moved into a lovely house near the sea and at the start, it was all