Referral Friday is an ongoing series inspired by John Jantsch's Make-a-Referral Week. For more about that, and loads more referrals for everything from cobblers to coaches to gee-tar teachers, start here. Pass it on, baby!
Getting organized is hard. So is hewing to the right stuff and letting go of stuff-stuff. I know; I'm doing it, for the eleventy-billionth time.
And while I've read a lot of helpful books and blogs and even plain, old-fashioned articles on Actual Paper, the most effective kickstart I've had (outside of the crumbling of some relationship, which is always so delightfully galvanizing for me) has been the good, old-fashioned purging I did at a good, old-fashioned Work Party.
Jen Hoffman has a little business called the Inspired Home Office, where she helps people create and maintain the spaces they need to get done what they need to. Charlie Gilkey is a self-described "systems guy" who helps people wrap their brains around what's getting in the way (literally and from a process standpoint) of them getting their Real Work done. You can see how this might work, but really, you have to experience it. Because honestly, I had my suspicions going into it that two and a half hours on a conference call was going to be weird at best and ungodly annoying at worst.
What happened in that two and a half (!!!) hours was a gentle moving towards clear, if that makes sense. We did a little talking, explaining where we were stuck and what we hoped to get out of the experience. They did a lot of listening, and a little reframing*. And then we played little games with our stuff. Right there and then, we did brief exercises that actually helped excavate our desks and floors and what-have-you from the piles of crapola that they'd been buried in, poor dears.
Because it was gentle and slow and fun, it was not scary and hateful and resistance-provoking. It's just a game, so you play! Only at the end of the game, you haven't just had fun, you've cleared your shit out and are all fired up about commencin' to work on their Real Purpose.
And in case you forget, that Real Purpose thing? That's why we're here at The Big Party, period...
xxx
c
Details for Jen & Charlie's Work Party:
- Date: Monday, October 26, 2009
- Time: ET: 2pm-4:30pm / CT: 1pm-3:30pm / MT: 12pm-2:30pm / PT: 11pm-1:30pm
- Available space: Limited to 12 people
- Last day to sign up: Wednesday, October 21, 2009
- The price: $57
Photo by Mat Honan via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. Pretty inspirational note on that photo at the Flickr page, worth a look!
*That's what most good coaches and consultants are, by the way, good reframers, who get you to see things differently and in a way that helps you move yourself toward action. Freebie, on the house. I love you, too.