I was thinking about this the other day: how busy must a life be before it can be organised? Clearly, we need a marker to define what 'organised' and 'busy' mean. At the moment, my life is pretty hectic (I know, you might not believe me as I'm still only a university student! But I promise you, I feel like I have no spare time) and to organise it, I have to balance lab reports, netball, social things - like going to the Union, lunch with friends who I don't see as often as I did last year as well as revising lecture notes and preparing for tutorials and the like. I feel quite organised though as I've managed to organise all these in my Filofax. Just looking at my Filofax makes me happy as it looks like someone who has a busy schedule but also plans it well! (Of course I would say that as I organise my own time).
But, say someone had literally nothing to do - well, maybe aside from, let's say, some work life related events. I don't want to offend anyone here, so I'll be general! Let's say that the only thing they have preoccupying their time is something that doesn't involve any 'take home' work. Would you say that their life is organised? It's not busy, that's for sure.
I recognise that the above paragraph may have confused some of you. What I'm trying to say is: must one's life be busy before it can be organised? Or can one's life be organised although there is little to do on a day to day basis? I, myself, have no answer to this. I think it can work both ways; after all, there is always something to do - be it chores, general household admin and whatnot.
On a completely unrelated note, I am totally and utterly in love with these babies:
There is no way on earth I can justify buying a pair of them though, unfortunately. (As they are a whopping 375GBP!). However, I promised myself that if I graduated with a decent grade (well, 2.1 or above - and let me tell you, a 2.1 at Imperial College London is not as easy as it sounds), I'll buy myself a pair for the graduation ceremony. And with graduation for me being next year (2012), think I'd better start saving now.
(Though, I do keep telling myself that they are classics, that they will never go out of style, etc, etc, but at the end of the day, I do realise that I'm only kidding myself!).
If you're also lusting after something right now which comes at an extortionate price, what will you do to save up? Give up going out until you save up enough? Scrimp and save on food? Not buy any other items of clothing? Not buy anymore Filofaxes (hard, I know)? I'm trying to get ideas on how I could save up 375GBP in a year and a half, and considering I'm living in Central London (in one of the poshest areas as well, mind you), I'll need all the ideas I can get!
Hello! It's always nice to find a post from you in the reader.
ReplyDeleteI understand exactly what you're talking about in the first half of your post; however, having observed many people at work and at play, I can say for certain that people can have a relatively lax schedule and still be terribly disorganized--so one does not need to reach a particular threshold of busy to be organized.
As for saving, here are some things that have worked for me:
- make it concrete: calculate how much you need to save every month or week: 375GBP over 18 months is a reasonable 21GBP per month, or 375GBP over 78 weeks is less than 5GBP per week;
- set up a separate savings account dedicated to this goal;
- sweep a pre-determined amt into savings (whether that's a bank account or a piggy bank) at the start of every month or quarter or whatever works for you (some people set up an auto-deposit when they receive their paychecks, school loans, &c.);
- vow to set aside every cash gift (or a minimum amt per cash gift) you receive btwn now and graduation (lunar new year is just around the corner!);
- track your savings with a graph, it helps keep you motivated; this one is really cute, but you might prefer to draw up your own Filofax-compatible graph:
http://papernstitchblog.com/2011/01/13/track-this-free-goal-tracking-worksheet-now-available/
Good luck!
Wow, thanks for these ideas! I will definitely make note of them and see which one suits me most. Who knows if I'll actually end up buying these shoes or not in the end; after all, the price is pretty steep!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I know what you mean about some people who can be disorganised and lazy. So in essence, organisation has nothing to do with how packed a schedule is! But to get a definition of organised, we need a definition of disorganised ;) I can't win with this post ha!