Organized Chaos

My desk is cluttered.

My room is even a bigger clutter of things.

But I'd like to believe it's organized chaos.

I can just imagine my Mom rolling her eyes at me whenever I try to justify the mess that was my room. I never changed. If you look at our room you'd know instantly which side is Jay's and which side is mine. Mind you I do know where most of my things are. As I said, organized chaos.

I'd like to believe though that I am a much better organizer when it comes to immaterial things like organizing events, working on projects and well being a program manager. Honestly I used to be very forgetful and I got scolded a lot for leaving my school ID at home. In our school the guard won't let you in if you don't have your ID. I usually realize that I don't have my ID in the schoolbus so I normally get off the bus, go to the bakery to call home and they'd bring my ID to the bakery. My Mom stressed a lot of times that I should always be prepared. As the girl scout motto goes, "Laging handa!"

The scolding worked on me. I also saw how my Mom always prepared for church projects. I was always hanging around the elders when they were planning to build the church in our neighborhood. It was a big audacious project. They had to raise funds to build the big church and I was always in tow during meetings (I was the "pet" and I still am until today haha).

That's why I've made the 5Ps my mantra -- "Proper planning prevents poor performance!" I read this from a tweet so I don't really know who coined it, but I've been following this both for work and life in general. I know it drives my family crazy, but I have to manage my stress levels (bad for the heart!).

One of the things I'm trying to teach bagets is project management. He's more like his Lolo so it's been a huge challenge. Here's what I usually tell him.

1. Define your goal/target.
2. Meet your deadlines by creating a step-by-step list how to get there.
3. Define the completion timeline.
4. Give yourself a treat everytime you complete something. (I spoil myself LOL, but I have not been able to buy myself red shoes because another team is holding up my timelines!).
5. When something goes wrong, iterate fast and repeat from #1.

And my mantra for organizing materials things? Organize stuff by theme and please don't mess it up by re-organizing because I won't be able to find anything.

Remember. 5Ps.