Creative Changes Blog

In an earlier post, I promised a time management tool to help you with reducing your To-Do list to a manageable size - 3 important items a day.

As a way to keep track of all the other things you want to get to, I have devised a worksheet to organize those tasks. This device helps to clear your head of unnecessary clutter, keep track of your accomplishments, ( as a way to measure progress towards goals) and serves as a tool to organize these jobs into the appropriate time frame.

Time%20Management%20Worksheet.xls

Print out this worksheet and keep it on a clipboard, or in your action file to look at daily. You could use this for your more long-term goals, or perhaps as a weekly goal sheet.

In the NOTES column you might want to write the time frame for the completion of a goal, or you may wish to assign a priority code to a list of tasks. Also, you could note when a task is completed.

Make a list of what you want to get done and as you work on this list, think of how long it would take to do each of the tasks. Cleaning out your closet is definitely a several hour job, but making a dental appointment only takes a few minutes.

This little tool is a work in progress, so I look forward to feed-back from you. Please let me know how you have used the tool, and any suggestions to make it work even better.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Sandra

Labels: time management, to-do lists

"Wabi Sabi" is a new term to me, but as soon as I began to read about it, the concept resonated with me and the way I live. I particularly like the part about embracing the march of time, as it pertains to the changes in our physical body. To look at those changes as a thing of beauty is certainly an outlandish idea in our culture, but I am working hard on seeing the beauty in my imperfections and liver spots!

I have included here a condensed description of Wabi Sabi taken from a Google search. The link to more information is:

http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm


Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.

Daisetz T. Suzuki, who was one of Japan's foremost English-speaking authorities on Zen Buddhism and one of the first scholars to interpret Japanese culture for Westerners, described wabi-sabi as "an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty." He was referring to poverty not as we in the West interpret (and fear) it but in the more romantic sense of removing the huge weight of material concerns from our lives. "Wabi is to be satisfied with a little hut, a room of two or three tatami mats, like the log cabin of Thoreau," he wrote, "and with a dish of vegetables picked in the neighboring fields, and perhaps to be listening to the pattering of a gentle spring rainfall."

In Japan, there is a marked difference between a Thoreau-like wabibito (wabi person), who is free in his heart, and a makoto no hinjin, a more Dickensian character whose poor circumstances make him desperate and pitiful. The ability to make do with less is revered; I heard someone refer to a wabibito as a person who could make something complete out of eight parts when most of us would use ten. For us in the West, this might mean choosing a smaller house or a smaller car, or-just as a means of getting started-refusing to supersize our fries.

Wabi stems from the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquillity, and balance. Generally speaking, wabi had the original meaning of sad, desolate, and lonely, but poetically it has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice, and in tune with nature. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is "the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe." A wabi person epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; free from greed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.

Sabi by itself means "the bloom of time." It connotes natural progression-tarnish, hoariness, rust-the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It's the understanding that beauty is fleeting. The word's meaning has changed over time, from its ancient definition, "to be desolate," to the more neutral "to grow old." By the thirteenth century, sabi's meaning had evolved into taking pleasure in things that were old and faded. A proverb emerged: "Time is kind to things, but unkind to man."

Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough. An old car left in a field to rust, as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered America's contribution to the evolution of sabi. An abandoned barn, as it collapses in on itself, holds this mystique.

There's an aching poetry in things that carry this patina, and it transcends the Japanese. We Americans are ineffably drawn to old European towns with their crooked cobblestone streets and chipping plaster, to places battle scarred with history much deeper than our own. We seek sabi in antiques and even try to manufacture it in distressed furnishings. True sabi cannot be acquired, however. It is a gift of time.

Wabi-sabi is not a decorating "style" but rather a mind-set. There's no list of rules; we can't hang crystals or move our beds and wait for peace to befall us. Creating a wabi-sabi home is the direct result of developing our wabigokoro, or wabi mind and heart: living modestly, learning to be satisfied with life as it can be once we strip away the unnecessary, living in the moment. You see? Simple as that.

This is tough in any culture, of course, but darned near impossible in our own. In America we're plied daily with sales pitches that will help us improve ourselves, our circumstances, our homes. We can have the whitest teeth, the cleanest carpets, and the biggest SUV money can buy. All of this flies in the face of wabigokoro, as described in Rikyu's sacred tea text, Nanporoku. "A luxurious house and the taste of delicacies are only pleasures of the mundane world," he wrote. "It is enough if the house does not leak and the food keeps hunger away. This is the teaching of the Buddha-the true meaning of chado."

This is un-American. Or is it? I believe there exists in all of us a longing for something deeper than the whitest teeth, sparkling floors, and eight cylinders. What if we could learn to be content with our lives, exactly as they are today? It's a lofty thought...but one that's certainly worth entertaining.

Contentment is a lofty goal.

Until next time,

Sandra

Labels: lifestyles, simple living

Again, I am inspired by the weekly column in my local newspaper by Sarah Welch and Alicia Rockmore of getbuttonedup.com

Their website is all about providing the tools for an organized life, without being rigid or up-tight about it. I totally agree. If an organizing system is too complicated, or too time consuming, it will fall by the wayside, despite your best intentions.

This week's article is all about NOT being perfect, and understanding what you DON'T need to do. If we live with the notion that only perfect is good enough, we can become frozen by our inability to achieve perfection - and do nothing.

I am also in the camp that believes that in your quest to stay organized, the biggest battle is not how much you do, but what you choose NOT to do. You simply cannot do it all, so if you eliminate what you really do not need to do from your list, it will be easier to focus on what is truly important.

Letting go of the idea that it all has to be perfect will give you the freedom to achieve quality, instead of quantity. Just as we must "pick our battles" when dealing with relationship and child rearing issues, we must decide on a manageable To Do List that will not leave us feeling defeated at the end of the day if it is not completed.

In my next post I will give you a great little worksheet that you can use for all those not so important items that you are not going put on your everyday To Do List. With this worksheet you will be able to keep track of all those nagging little tasks that you want to get done, and you will be able to clear your head of that clutter.

Stay tuned for a nifty little organizing tool - in my next post!

Sandra

Labels: organizing, time management