How To Easily Tackle Continued Disorganization When You’re Going Through A Life Transition

What do these have in common? Butter churn, ice cream churn, and churning of the sea. All of these images indicate something spinning for a long period of time. With a butter or ice cream churn, there is a goal in mind – make a certain type of food. In the sea, churning is often a precursor to rough weather.

In the organizing and productivity world, churning plays a regular role in continued disorganization. Do any of the scenarios below sound familiar?

CHURNING OF STUFF

… happens when you decide to organize and you mainly move items from one location to another.

In your office, while going through a stack of papers, a few papers might get recycled or filed, yet most of them end up in another pile: requiring an action that isn’t going to occur now or the “I don’t know what to do with it pile.” In the home, this might happen when you decide to organize your clothes. As you go through the clothes scattered in piles around the bedroom, you designate some for donation or laundry, but the majority will “be folded and put away (just not right now)” or “will fit when I lose some weight” or “will be fixed sometime.” In each case, the stuff you’re organizing may have been reduced a little but for the most part, it’s just sorted into different categories.

Stuff churning produces feelings of discouragement (“It doesn’t look like I got anything done!“) and overwhelm (“I’ll never get organized!“). Meanwhile, within a couple of days, the piles may be larger with additional items brought into the space. Or your piles may have merged.

CHURNING OF TO-DO’s

… surfaces when you continually push tasks to “later,” “tomorrow,” or “someday.”

There are some non-urgent repairs needed in your home. Because of more pressing needs (water heater failure), you’ll make the call about the less critical work (replacing a few pieces of rotten siding on the house) “soon“. And before you know it a year has passed and you now need more than half of your siding replaced.

You’re scheduled to give a presentation for work in four months. Every week you consider starting it, but you decide to work on other tasks because “the speech is still months away“. Until the day you realize that it’s slated for the end of the week.

There are several causes of task-churn: newer or more urgent tasks, lack of energy or motivation, not having enough information or the right tools.

Continuous churning of to-do’s creates feeling of concern (“I’m going to miss the deadline!“) and overwhelm (“I’ll never get everything done!“). Meanwhile, more tasks are added than subtracted.

CHURNING OF THOUGHTS (mental or brain churning)

… occurs when your brain keeps “spinning” the same thoughts over and over.

Because mental-churning is often tied to decision-making (or the lack thereof) and perfectionism with catastrophizing thrown in, it often leads to stuff and task-churn.

Here’s how it might look in two of the instances described above:

Papers: You choose the first paper from the stack and think, “I could file it in x or y or z (physical) folder. Or it might be better to keep it electronically. If I scan it, how should I name the document and where should I file it? How will I remember where I put it?” This train of thought may end in postponing the decision to another time when similar thought-churning happens.

House Repair: Each time you see the front of your house you say, “It would be good to get the siding repaired before it gets any worse. I don’t know who to call. Maybe I should check with <neighbor or website>. Then I’ll need to check their customer satisfaction. I’ll have to take a few hours off work when they come to give an estimate. And they probably won’t be on time. I can’t take that much time off work. I’ll schedule the repairs when I have more time.” The problem is that “more time” never seems to arrive.

HOW TO STOP CHURNING

Here are four strategies that help stop the churn. Start with the one that feels most doable to you.

Identify. What factors create the churn?

It might be trouble with decision-making, prioritizing, categorizing, delegating, or other related skills. Churn may be related to not having enough information.

Identifying the reason for the churning helps you develop strategies to stop it.

Check out 3 Strategies to Shift From Thinking to Doing for some additional ideas about stopping task-churn.

Ask yourself these powerful questions.

• What is one step I can take right now to move forward?
• What decision needs to be made here?
• How can I get this done?

The answer followed by action, moves you another step forward toward your organization or productivity goals.

Enlist the support of another person. This could be a friend, relative, counselor, coach, therapist, or organizing professional. Roles others may fill include strategist, body double, accountability partner, objective listener, educator, etc. Bottom-line is that another person helps you get unstuck!

Create a disruption. You may be stuck in a non-functioning habit. It’s time to develop meaningful habits. Item habits might include processing papers upon receipt or folding and putting away clothes immediately. A new task habit could be conquering your most difficult tasks during your highest energy time.

Stop thought-churn by replacing a negative thought with a positive one. One way to do this is working on shifting your mindset through affirmations, a gratitude practice, or a method of your choice. Anchoring can also be useful in managing brain chatter. Centering practices include mindfulness, prayer, meditation, etc.

Bottom-line: continued churn equals disorganization and lack of productivity. I’m pretty sure you don’t want that!

Which “churn area” is most problematic for you: stuff, task, or thoughts?

Let me know below along with one tiny step you can take to stop it. I’d love to cheer you on!