This is the fifth of five blog posts about organization and how I got some, against all expectations. They started life as an attempt to get my thoughts in order for a session on efficiency in bookselling that I’m presenting next week and got out of hand. I assure you nobody is more surprised than I am that I’m hosting a session about organization, but these posts explain how that happened. I think. (Though the session is specifically about efficiency and bookselling, these posts address efficiency and organization more broadly. I’ll post notes from the session later in the month.) The first post is here and the second post is here and the third post is here and the fourth post is here.

Although the trigger for trying to get my life in order was feeling on the verge of another bout of serious depression, I am still surprised to find that becoming more organized and efficient has been so good for me mentally. This all has turned out to be the most effective therapy I’ve ever gone through, and I’ve had a couple of really great therapists in my life, so that’s not meant to be an insult to them. 

In the main, being more organized has allowed me to start overcoming many of my natural anxiety triggers. Like so many bookish people, I have a bunch of triggers that come my way every day by nature of my job, including: talking to strangers, asking people for things, being wrong, and making phone calls. I was a clinically shy child (hence the vicious reading habit) and though I have since learned to talk to people, my brain is still shy. This has long destroyed my to-do lists and projects, because if there was a phone call on my list, I would find every possible way not to make the call until it was too late to make it any more. Or if I had to ask a favor of someone in order to complete a task, that task was not getting done. Of course, for the most part, I was not adding these things to lists at all, and conveniently forgetting them whenever possible.

I captured these loathsome tasks anyway, because I had to, but I did not really have high hopes for completing them. In the beginning I did not always complete them on time. But with this new system, I had to do them. It drove me crazy to see them on the list in the morning. And then, when I forced myself to do them, heavy with anxiety and nausea, everything was okay, because, I don’t know if you know this, but it turns out phone calls are really easy to make. Not exactly fun, but easy.

The more times I did these scary things and nothing happened, the easier it got, the lighter the anxiety, and the better I felt about myself, because every time I did a scary thing and didn’t die, I felt like I’d won at something. And as my anxiety about basic job duties lightened, alongside finally feeling that I was getting control of my life, I felt that dark pit slipping further and further away.

I was really not expecting to deal with my ongoing anxiety issues as a result of becoming more organized, nor was I expecting it to help with the daily experience of being a person who battles with depression. (I’ve also, not to get too personal, almost entirely stopped binge-eating, and have way fewer jolted-right-out-of-the-REM-cycle nightmares.) It was a nice surprise. I would love to know if this happens for a lot of people, but there’s not a lot written about the mental hygiene side effects of organization.

Is this all related to being more organized? Probably not entirely. I’ve also become a more regular runner this year, and gone to acupuncture weekly. But those are things I’ve been able to maintain, in part, because I’ve been more organized. This certainly wasn’t the first time in my life I tried to keep a regular running schedule, but it was the first time that my running wasn’t constantly derailed by last-minute errands and other things I’d leave off until it was already too late to do them.

In the end, it feels like trying to be more organized has changed my brain chemistry, and it needed to be changed, badly. So it was worth overcoming the initial roadblocks that the very same brain chemistry kept throwing in my path.

I’m not trying to act like I have it all figured out or like I never forget things, because I don’t, and I still do. I still decide to watch an entire season of Teen Mom 2 when I should be cleaning, or stay out too late drinking, and all the other things that people do.  As I write this, I have not vacuumed my couch in four days. I’ve still got the seeds of messyperson. I’ve just gotten better at keeping them from sprouting. I am quite sure I will never be totally organized, but that doesn’t bother me anymore; if the alternative is chaos and brain slurry, I’m content to settle for striving in the general direction of efficiency.

I get things done. I sleep pretty well and I have more time to read and I have more room to think. In the end, maybe that’s all organization is, clearing out and tucking away the nonsense wherever possible so that the more interesting stuff has room to breathe and flourish. I hope that’s what I’ll find out next.