Wednesday, January 8th, 2020
Welcome to the leADDership brief
A weekly newsletter for creative and innovative people, like you, with ADHD who want timely, helpful, and interesting resources
for leading and living well with ADHD.
Organizing Your Workspace Part Three:
Your Organizational Style and
Personal Design Aesthetic
The atmosphere and environment that surrounds you on a daily basis can greatly determine how successful you are in achieving the kind of life you want to live and to reaching your goals.
One of the best secrets of motivation is that by changing your environment you can influence your own levels of enthusiasm, drive, and desire towards the life you want to live and the goals you have set.
By embracing your organizational style and making alterations in your physical environment that reflect you and your aesthetic preferences you create powerful subconscious motivators that make working towards your goals far easier and much more pleasant.
Surroundings that don’t paint the picture of who you are and need to be to reach your goal will make shifting to that person far more difficult. Changing your environment doesn’t so much facilitate your goals as it changes and influences, empowering you to facilitate your life and your goals.
When your environment reflects you and your aesthetic staying on course and doing the hard work that comes with achieving your goals and the life you want to live is easier and more inspiring.
You can create the environment and aesthetic you want no matter were your work space is, how big your primary work space is, and your budget.
Today’s edition of the leadership brief is the third in a five-part series this week on how to tame your desk and work space creating an environment and esthetic that works for you.
Today you will learn two things about yourself:
Your organizational style
Your design aesthetic
Let's get started!
YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL STYLE
If you've labored under the belief that because of your neuro-a-typical ADHD brain you aren't organized, can't organize, or don't have an organizational bone in your body I am here to dispel that myth! I am here for you.
The truth is, we all have a preference and an approach to organization that is either currently working for you or could be working better for you. As a coach I've learned so much from my clients about the various ways they organize their spaces and they tend to fall in four distinct categories or preferences:
Visual Minimalist Organizers: Your mantra is a "place for everything and everything in it's place," and you like your surfaces free of all but the basics. Your closets and drawers are organized with labeled and/or clear storage containers. You know where everything is and it can cause some anxiety when things aren't put back where they belong. Minimal and clean surfaces are pleasing to your eye and generally provide inspiration and a focused work environment. You're the most rigid of the organizer types.
Visual Artistic Organizers: You're mantra is "see it, need it, use it," you're organized but you need to see your stuff and your projects. Your counters may appear cluttered, but you use and need everything sitting out. You may prefer colorful, pretty, or artistic micro-organizing systems for your stuff. You may have clutter while in the middle of a project or task but once you are done it all goes away. You are organized but not in a strict and rigid way.
Visual Maximalist Organizers: You're mantra could be "out of sight, forgot I had it, gone forever, never had it, have to buy a new one." You need to have all of your stuff out and in plain sight or you don't remember it exists. Your clothes may never live in a drawer or closet. You have piles but you know what's in them, what they are for, and why any one particular pile exists. Those little micro-organizing systems that make the minimalist's heart glad create anxiety and overwhelm for you, you need macro-organizing systems that aren't fussy or tedious.
Visual Historian Organizers: You're mantra is "everything is important, I may need it some day, it all stays and finds a place." You prefer your open spaces to be organized and relatively clear but your drawers, closets, storage area, and spare bedroom are full of things. You're likely a mix of extremely organized to not at all depending on the space.
As with everything, these are broad categories and we all fall somewhere on the spectrum of organizational preferences. These four are not the last word on organization and please, don't get hung up on the name of the category itself, this is simply a way to give us some language and a place to start.
What organizational style do you most identify with? Remember, there are no wrong answers, or answers that are better than others. All are great.
YOUR DESIGN AESTHETIC
The second house my husband and I purchased in 1991 was a 100 year old brick Queen Anne. It needed a lot of vision and a lot of love. The front porch that spanned the front of the house was unsafe and falling off, the roof needed replacing, the windows leaked, the kitchen was barely usable, and the yard was a mess just to name a few outstanding issues. I could see all the possibilities the minute we walked in and couldn't wait to start making her beautiful again.
The first interior project we tackled was the kitchen and I learned the hard way that when my husband said he didn't care about a particular design detail or aesthetic, he really did, but didn't know it until something permanent like the kitchen cabinets or light fixtures being installed that he really did not like. It was a painful and sometimes expensive lesson.
We've built two houses from the ground up since then and I've learned a thing or two, namely to bring visual options and language for color, material, and "look" choices to our design discussions.
Because he has a preference and a design aesthetic.
So do you my friends.
Designing and creating living and working spaces that are pleasing to you makes your living and working spaces more pleasant and enjoyable. And you more productive, inspired, energized, focused, and refreshed.
Aesthetics are extremely significant to both morale and productivity within your workplace. You likely have a long list of things you need to accomplish each day and people you need to interact with, and having to deal with a space that isn't aesthetically pleasing much less doesn’t function in a way that works for you, simply drains your energy and inspiration and ups anxiety.
For instance, colors are one aspect that can impact your mood and focus. Red tends to make you feel l more passionate about your work while yellow is a sunny and happy color improving your mood at work.
Below are a few questions that will help you identify, in broad strokes, what your design aesthetic is.
Do you prefer black and white, lots of color, or pleasantly neutral?
Do you prefer city/urban, country/rural, or beachy/breezy?
Do you prefer warm and cozy or cool and sleek?
Do you prefer earthy and casual or sophisticated and formal
Do you prefer eclectic or curated?
Do you prefer symmetry or asymmetry?
Do you prefer photos or portraits?
Do you prefer pattern or no pattern? Texture or bling?
Do you prefer minimalism or maximalism?
Do you prefer spicy, floral, woodsy, or citrus?
In future editions of the newsletter we will discuss how to take what you're learning about your organizational style and design aesthetic and use it to your advantage.
If this has been helpful and you’d like some one-on-one help with your work space contact me today for your complimentary, no strings attached, breakthrough coach call.
Click on the link below to schedule your 60-minute coach call today!
What Else Do You Need To Know?
Coach Pam