Why do you want to get organized?
Specifically, what do you want to get out of being organized? It's great to want to have more time, to be able to find things when you need them, to be able to put things away more quickly. But those are abstract desires that can be a little hard to keep in mind everyday when you're faced with the piles on your desk, or whatever it is that isn't as organized as you'd like.

Try some pictures.
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. What if you could encompass everything you want from being organized in one picture instead of a page of goals or to do lists? Pictures, whether they're photographs, line art, paintings or cartoons, are immediately evocative. They start affecting you the moment you look at them, rather than unfolding in time the way written text does. And, in a moment, you may have a range of emotional reactions to that one image.

So take what you know about your organizing goals and find a picture that expresses it. This may be a photograph of a beautiful room from a decorating magazine, a watercolor of a peaceful natural scene or an image of someone effortlessly and joyfully doing something you also do.

A picture is a trigger.
Put this picture where you'll see it regularly. It doesn't matter if you don't think your life will ever be like what's in the picture. Forget about that. Concentrate on the positive feeling that the picture evokes and let it sit in the back of your mind as a beacon guiding you to your organizing goals.

The picture is the big picture.
The day-to-day tasks of getting and staying organized aren't particularly thrilling in themselves; filing, for instance. But most people are pretty thrilled once those jobs are done and their spaces are more livable, more supportive. So let the picture you've chosen be your carrot to induce you to organize. Let it recharacterize your to do's. Instead of having to clear off your desk so you can get to work, think of it as creating space for your dreams to unfold.

It's a work of art.
Michelangelo believed that, rather than creating a statue, he merely liberated the form that already existed inside the stone by paring away the excess. Use your picture as a template. What needs to be removed in order to make your space look like the picture?

Take Care,
Claire