In many articles that I have written this year, I have mentioned the transformative experience that I had while in Myanmar/Burma, which includes the volumes of essays that I posted to my website. My drive to write and address issues related to social movements has many benefits. One of which is that I really enjoy writing about these social issues, which hopefully will help the people of Myanmar.

However, I have also written about the downside of being driven...disorganization. Organization has never been my forté. In addition, when my lack of organization got in the way of my writing and having my work posted to my webpage, I realized that I had to do something...quickly. I did organize that part of my life so that I could better function. I have used this chart since March of this year.

Since then I have attempted to reorganize my entire life. Now, this effort was not the first time that I have attempted to do so. Nonetheless, I am really into it. It is interesting that the old adage "no pain, no gain" is true. The pain of my disorganization pushed me to do get organized. Therefore, address the pain in your life; you will benefit.

Here are several suggestions. Make a list daily of task into three categories: Urgent, Near Urgent, and Forget To Do. Then use a schedule with hourly slots, in which you set times to do the Urgent and Near Urgent tasks. In addition to the critical tasks, make sure that an hour of cardiovascular exercise is included every day for 45-minutes. There is no sense in planning your work schedule if you will not be around because of poor health.

Be proactive. You are the captain of your ship.... Being reactive to others merely allows others to captain your ship. Do not allow others to clutter your daily tasks and schedule. You decide what is necessary for you.

Procrastination is a two-fold problem. You will wind up putting things off. That is a costly mistake, but when you finally get back into gear, what you find is twice the workload that you had before...so you procrastinate again. It becomes a self-defeating and negative procedure.

Finally, you need to realize that you will not live forever. You know that you have a finite amount of time in this world. Nevertheless, unless you have danced with death that knowledge is in your head and not in your gut. Dance with death and you realize that time is limited. Therefore, plan and execute those things that you deem as important.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan illustrated during a Cosmos program the need to act now. Sagan tells a story of an old French aristocrat who just built a new chalet. The old man was telling his landscaper that he want a particular tree planted all over his land. The landscaper told him nicely that he would advise against that type of tree, because that particular type of tree matures very slowly. That was a nice way of saying that the aristocrat would die long before the trees came close to maturity. The old aristocrat's response was then to plant the trees now.

An Old Man and His Grandson

Visit The Mentors and Me page to read more about this topic.

Dancing with Death

Visit the Dancing with Death page to read more about this topic.

07/31/14