communicate | Organize to Simplify

“I need to change everything.”

This is the answer I get most often from my clients when asked what they’d like to focus on first in our coaching or organizing partnership. But, change takes focus and we can’t focus on everything at the same time, right?

One of the most effective things I can do for my clients is to help them identify changes they can make that will provide the most benefit across all areas of their lives: home, work, friends, etc. For visualization purposes, I refer to these areas as “buckets.”

Bucket identification helps my clients recognize the broad categories within their lives and spaces, then drill down to concerns within each.

For example:

Bucket: Marriage

Concerns: communication, division of responsibility, utilization of strengths, scheduling, understanding of vulnerabilities

Bucket: Job

Concerns: time management, conflict resolution, communication, overcommitment, difficulty staying within areas of responsibility

Bucket: Self-care

Concern: sleep hygiene, routines, negative self-talk, stress management, nourishment, making time for exercise

Bucket: Home

Concerns: household chore list, incomplete projects, division of responsibility, household organization

Bucket: Family

Concerns: creating boundaries, communicating boundaries, making time for family, managing conflict

Bucket: Friends

Concerns: finding time for friends, communication is one-sided, lack of follow-through on commitments

Looking through this list, you will see some common threads: communication and time management. Rather than work on one distinct bucket, it is more effective to work on improving communication and time management, which will positively impact multiple life buckets.

What are your life buckets and the concerns within them? What one or two things could be improved that would provide relief across all buckets?

Cindy Jobs, COC, ACC

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