Quitting is the Only Failure

Can you count how many times you have started decluttering your office? And then quit before actually finishing the job?  

Like most of us, you probably have a myriad of reasons why you might abandon an organizing project before you've gotten to your goal. You don't know where to start, you experience decision fatigue, your idea of how much (or little) time it should take is way too ambitious. You feel overwhelmed.

Eventually, the project feels unmanageable - after all, total clean-outs can get really messy during the sorting and deciding phases. It doesn't take much to find an excuse to stop the project altogether and shove everything right back into piles, drawers, and cabinets. Just one more failed attempt at getting yourself organized and one more reason to beat yourself up.

Old Habits

Indeed, the only way to get and stay organized is by making permanent, sustainable changes to the way you treat your time and workspace. When you change your productivity habits forever, the work is done, and you never have to tackle those large, unruly schedules and projects again.

Habits such as planning your day the night before, finding a home for everything in your office, and consistently processing your emails are part of the secret sauce to being a more productive person.  

Sadly, most of us have been functioning from urgency and overwhelm for so long, it can be challenging to break the old habits that don't serve us. Among others, one of those harmful habits is that when things get busy, or a problematic situation arises, you might want to quit trying to be organized altogether.

Bumps in the Road

You expect that if you can just get your desk and files organized once, they will stay that way with no upkeep needed – easy-peasy, right?? Wrong.  

Indeed, quitting in the middle of a massive organizing project will cause you to fail at creating a tidy space and schedule. And similarly, when you stop following the habits and systems needed to maintain those things, you're tempted to revert back to old ways and soon find yourself living amid clutter and disorganization once again.

Any little disruption to a daily routine can lead you back to old habits and the thought that you're "too busy" to keep up your newly organized practices. It could be a sick child, an unexpected work emergency, or even a planned vacation.

We all have this idea that when it comes to changing habits that have been years in the making, it should happen quickly and easily. But the truth is, that when things get difficult, your human brain (whose job it is to make things easy for us) tells you to just quit. That's why it's essential to always plan for the inevitable bumps along the way.

For example, let's say you've committed to following your newly created work-day shut-down ritual. You know it will be super useful in maintaining the systems you have recently created with the help of a professional organizer. The routine includes: clearing out your email inbox, filing all papers that have been put in your "to file" box during the day, and tidying up your desktop.

After the first couple of days, you notice how great it feels to leave your workspace clean and tidy. And starting work the next day is a joy - you can find everything you need off the bat, and you don't start your day with email clutter. Yay! Obviously, being conscientious about following these new habits works. You're feeling good, and the routine becomes easier and easier as time goes on.

Then a change in your schedule occurs. Your husband has to go on a business trip for a week – leaving you with full responsibility for the house, kids, meals, calendars, etc. And of course, your son even comes down with a nasty virus and has to stay home from school for three days!

At this point, you feel like you're winging it – your work, your schedule, your systems – and you're functioning in non-stop urgency mode as you try to meet the needs of your business, clients, and children.

And guess what habit you fall out of? Your work-day shut-down ritual. You just don't have the time to spend on clearing and filing when your daughter has to be picked up from piano lessons and you have to get to the store for dinner. 

Believe me, you couldn't be more grateful to see your husband walk through the door Friday night after your busy week!  

Monday morning comes and life is back to normal, but you walk into your office and dang it, it's a MESS! How could everything have gotten so disorganized in just one week? You think, "I was so good for so long, how could I have let this happen?" and "I'm obviously not an organized person, I don't know why I even bother." 

At that moment, you decide you want to quit.

Of course, you don't consider that the extra clutter and piles were simply the result of not tidying up for a few days and that you have all the skills you need to get back on track. Your only thoughts revolve around how keeping organized is hard, and that it's useless to clean your office again because obviously, you can't maintain it. 

But the problem with this thinking is that it will lead you to stop trying to be an organized person. 

And quitting will always lead to failure. Every single time.

Keep Going Anyways

In the above scenario, if you were to quit trying to maintain your organized systems, the only certain thing is that you would fail at achieving your goal of being productive. After all, aren't those the results you've gotten over and over again when you've tried to be organized in the past and gone back to your old ways?

In truth, there is only one option that will not end in failure. And that is for you to plow ahead and continue the new habits that you know were making you more productive. Staying the course, even when you mess up, or your schedule doesn't seem to cooperate, or you just don't feel like it, means living with integrity. It means keeping the promises you made to yourself and holding yourself accountable. It means not failing.

Like Winston Churchill stated, "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." In the same way, when trying to get to be a more organized person, you have to persevere without losing your enthusiasm.

So, give yourself the gift of not quitting. Accept the bumps, learn from them, pick yourself up, and keep going. That is truly the only way not to fail.