Can disorganization help achieve goals?

[alkarion]

Hello!

I was wondering what the communities thoughts were in regards to 'being organized' or the lack there of. Can being disorganized help achieve goals?

Quick backstory:

• I've spent the last three and a half years of my life trying to organize myself and focus on my goals and aspirations; after a rough start to life I found myself in dire straits. I've since overcome a lot of issues with the support of some key people and a self-desire to improve. Organization (personal time-management) and goal setting has really helped in this regard.
• However, now that I am a young adult entering the workforce, I am finding myself challenged every day. I've attempted and (currently) implementing two strategies: GTD (Getting Things Done) and Agile Results.
• It seems that even as I try to stay focused every day it always falls back into the same cycle of lossless self-distraction. (i.e. procrastination.)
• To an extent, I've identified with this kind of chaos and find it kind of therapeutic sometimes. (But it seems more harm than good.) However, as I focus, I stress out and feel like I haven't achieved anything.

So, is it possible that being disorganized can actually help? It seems like focusing too much on the process and rigidness leads to lack of meaning, or something, if that makes any sense.

 

[green acid]

Being disorganized won't help you get anywhere except by luck alone. It's better to stay focused and keep muddling forward. I know people with law degrees who took years to get a job. I try to stay organized,because if I vacation (have fun) too much, I'm always in the same place, and don't have enough money to do things. A lot of people tell me to network, but it's hard to find someone who knows what they're doing. My ex-boss filed for bankruptcy, and he used to tell me he'd retire by age thirty!

 

[rbpinheiro]

Could never really get GTD to work, might try again another time.
What helps me when I find myself procrastinating too much is the pomodoro technique. I don´t use it always, only when I can´t get my focus to work.

 

[Analyzer]

sounds like evolution

 

[Frankie]

Caveat: I know nothing about the corporate work environment.

I would suggest that you try to go with the flow. From what you have described, trying to stay organised takes lots of mental load for you (and it should because you're not really used to it). My suggestion would be that you shouldn't try too hard and just focus your mental effort on what needs to be done at the moment.

A book I'm reading (Thinking, fast and slow b Daniel Khaneman) says that focusing so much on how well one is doing on a particular task depletes mental effort and thus impairs the performance of the task.

A little chaos is the salt that gives some taste to life.

 

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, achieving goals is about being driven towards something, which is all about mindset, chemicals in the brain. Organization is all just maintenance, it is only applicable after becoming oriented towards a goal.

 

[QuickTwist]

From what I understand (and a shallow perspective), being organized almost necessitates full focus on one thing at a time rather than having your hands in several different pies at once. I don't know what kind of advice I can give but just to say do what works.

When I was doing martial arts, specifically BJJ, one of the things one of the sensei taught me was if that one particular move, or in this case, strategy to get things accomplished isn't working, its best to move to another move. In other words, if it is so hard for you to naturally stay "organized" you may want to think about finding a way that works for you. Perhaps what you learn in the process of trying to get a more custom-to-you method of getting things done will allow you to go back later to doing things in a more organized fashion.

 

[bvanevery]

You have to find balance, it's that simple. There's a saying in theater: "your crisis is not my crisis." If you let other people organize you into produce, produce, produce, stress, stress, stress, you will lose yourself. You have to learn and set your own limits. This can mean ditching jobs that ask too much of you, or too much for too little pay. Or too much of you. Life is not all about maximizing a bank account, it's about how you live it.

 

[alkarion]

Thank you everyone for your answers! They helped me to gain a perspective of this topic that I didn't have before and I apologize for not acknowledging that sooner!

Best of luck with your endeavors and goals! ^_^

 

[Grayman]

Organization shouldn't be the focus. Just prioritize and proper organization will follow.

Edit.. Didn't read it. Now I look stupid. I'm off. Later. Got sh t t do.

 

[deathvirtuoso]

This may be a stupid answer, but I still think it depends on your goals. Certain (rare) goals do not really require much organization TBH. For example (this may be subjective), writing a book. Many writers claimed that they wrote a certain number of words each day at the same time blah blah followed certain schedules. But for me, all these never worked. My better works (IMO) were created when I only wrote when I felt like it. Because when I feel like writing, I have the "flow" and everything just seemed more natural than forcing myself to write. Works written when I didn't feel like it almost always lacked a distinctive writing style. I am disorganized when writing as well. I'll write whatever I feel like writing, and they'll end up like mismatched pieces of jigsaw puzzles. I can write a paragraph of the last chapter and suddenly write the opening sentence then I move on to the third chapter etc. Afterwards, I'll just rearrange them but this is just me. So yeah I write better when I'm disorganized, but in the end I still have to organize my chapters. Back to your question again, "can being disorganized help achieve goals?" It did help achieve mine. If I had taken an organized approach, I feel that I wouldn't have written as well. However, that's just me, and I personally think that being disorganized can only help certain goals and it depends on yourself as well.