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Earlier today, I wrote on my other blog that this week I set my focus on planning.

Which is as good of an excuse as any to explain why I didn’t accomplish as much this week as I should have.

But, the truth is that preparation is important.  So is organization.  Part of my preparations involved organizing things to make them easier in the long wrong.

It’s pretty easy to discount organization as a worthwhile way to spend your time.  After all, at the end of an hour or two of organizing, you still have everything you started out with.  It’s just that it’s (hopefully) better organized.

While that is valuable, it’s hard to wrap your head around that value because you haven’t actually produced anything.

Unless you count reducing several hand-written notes to a single hand-written page.

I am sure that must count for something.

And, it does, even if it’s hard to see a monetary value in it.  That is, if you produce an item for sale, you can identify its value.  Maybe you’ll sell it for $25.  So, the hour you spent making it was worth $25.

Okay, so then how to evaluate organization?  It’s not as easy.  You can’t sell it (except as a service, but that’s a different story), so it’s difficult to appraise it.

You can perhaps estimate the time it saves you on a daily basis, but can be so abstract that you cannot fully appreciate it.

Then again, you can waste the time you’ve saved by writing about it.  Good show!

Seriously, though, don’t underestimate the value of organization.  Do it as part of your planning and preparation stages for your projects.  It’s value may not be immediately apparent, but you’ll appreciate it on those occasions where you find yourself disorganized in other areas of your life and realize how much time your organization elsewhere does save you.

Those of you who remember my short-lived (in terms of postings, not too short in terms of leaving it abandoned) dcrWrites blog.  (The dcrWrites.com domain now redirects to my regular blog.)

Well, when I set up my new (yes another one) blog, I couldn’t get “dcr” or “dcrblogs” so I had to resort to using “dcrwrites”.  And, you know what that means, it means I have to write about writing.  No?

Well, I think it does.  Probably.  So, you can pop over and visit me on my new writing blog if you want to stay up to date on my writing projects.

Probably.

Well, not really.

Instead of working on the procrastination eBook I mentioned yesterday, I did a short post on New Year’s Resolutions.  I’m early, I know!

Anyway, I wrote the article around the theme of how to lose weight, but it’s applicable to a wide range of New Year’s Resolutions, so you should check it out.

Now is actually a good time to get to work on your New Year’s Resolutions.  By that I don’t mean writing them, I mean actually doing them!  As I wrote in the article, it takes time to replace bad habits with good ones.  So, the earlier you start, the better off you will be.

Granted, a lot of people make excuses around the holidays, but that’s exactly what they are: excuses!  When January or maybe February comes around, you’ll find more excuses.  Weight loss is just the more prominent because of its popularity as a resolution.

It’ll start in December.  People will want to put off making changes to their lifestyle until after the New Year.  After all, there are cakes and cookies and other tempting goodies this time of year.  Who wants to miss out on that?

Well, guess what, there will be other things you don’t want to miss out on come next year.  When Valentine’s Day rolls around, who wants to miss out on that box of assorted chocolates?  Then, you’ve got St. Patrick’s Day, Mardi Gras, Easter…  Who wants to miss out on all the assorted treats for those days?

And so the resolutions get dropped.  People continually create excuses to avoid making lifestyle changes that are hard.  The thing is those bad habits didn’t form overnight, so you’re not likely to break them overnight either.  Did you ever, one day, sit down several years ago and say to yourself, “I want to gain thirty pounds”?  Probably not.

It likely took time to gain that weight.  It took time to foster the habits that helped you gain that weight.

Likewise, it will take time to do the reverse.

Unfortunately, people don’t like to take that time.  People try to just quit things instead of forming better habits.  The key is to take little steps, which I mentioned in my blog post, “How to Lose Weight.”

So, if you are serious about making changes in your life, whether it is losing weight or something else, why wait until New Year’s?

Start today!

I’m working on a new eBook on how to stop procrastination.

But I keep putting it off…

I should have something substantive for my first post here…

Let me see…

Well, I have been talking about focus a lot today.  But I am all focused out now.  I suppose that makes me blurry?

So much for having something useful for my first post.  Oh, well, I suppose it is better than just putting “Hello World!”  Oh, how many times I have done just that?

Doesn’t matter.  Having run out of ideas for the day, I am going to call it a day!

All is well that ends well!