I have a Passion/Any Planner meeting with friends on Sunday, and I offered to help some people ahead of time who I thought could use it.
One person walked me through her 3-month Gamechanger, which involved cleaning her house and getting it ready for a big move. She calmly proceeded to review all the piles she had: beads and jewelry making supplies she'll never use again, art to hang on the walls of their new house that can't be hung at their current place, bags and boxes to donate (that have been there for months), etc.
She was calm and I started having a mild panic attack. Now, I am well aware that when you help people with their mental or physical clutter, you take some of their stress onto yourself. Yet she had no stress in her voice; I did.
I took a moment to review the image of her Goal mapping that she had sent, and then it clicked:
She had fallen into the typical trap of treating her Goal Map like a To Do List.
Here's what I said to her:
Your Goal Map to clean/clear your house doesn't end at "Donate old clothes to Goodwill." You have to add the time it takes to fully get rid of every single bag, such as:
- Load the bags into car - 15 minutes
- Drive to Goodwill then to work - 1 hour
- Calendar the time into a specific day (this is perhaps the last step to every Goal Map) -10 minutes
Then we got to her beads and jewelry supplies. These are more than just things; these are lost hopes of an etsy store, fun times with her best friend, a creative outlet through bad times - I think we all have this sort of collection somewhere.
She is donating them to her friend in Texas who makes jewelry to benefit a dog shelter:
- Send to Texas
- Pick up boxes from _____ - 30 minutes
- Package and box all supplies - 2 hours (I always overestimate how long this will take because emotions tend to slow down the process).
- Load car with boxes - 20 minutes
- Drive to post office and send - 30 minutes
- Calendar this time into a specific day - 15 minutes
Until you go into this much detail and calendar it into your planner, the goals are still just wishes. A map doesn't just say you go from Home to Work; it tells you every turn and how long it will take.
That's how detailed you have to get, how deep you have to go.
Then calendar it.