The Value of Early Organization
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.
