Fear Factor: Papers You Don’t Think You Can Handle
In the spirit of Halloween we continue the discussion of how to banish the fears that keep us from starting organizing projects.
Fear #2: Papers You Don’t Think You Can Handle
Imagine this scenario: you get a thick envelope in the mail from your attorney…aaack! You don’t want to deal with it. You throw it in a pile, in a remote drawer, or just leave it in your “in-box”.
If you’re lucky, days (or months) later, you get a call from your attorney’s office. “Did you get the papers we sent to you to fill out? They are time sensitive. “ If you’re not lucky, you’ll never hear from them again.
This is the kind of stuff that populates that scary file drawer or mail pile. It’s overwhelming, you don’t understand it all, and you know you’re going to have to THINK to figure out what to do next. Everyone seems to have an area like this: the “I can’t deal with this pile.”
Fear banishing strategies:
Grab someone’s hand and tackle the pile together
Pour a shot or two of whiskey and dive in
Call your attorney and ask them to walk you through it
Set a timer and commit to spending 10 minutes looking through the drawer
Sign up for a “get it done” session with a coach, an organizer, a friend
Break down the project into bite-sized chunks.
Write down in advance –before you even look in the drawer or deconstruct the pile – what you “think” you have to do …providing a framework with which to sort the pieces of information
The project may be more than you can handle. But unless you dip your toe in, you may never know. Asking for help, even to break open the drawer or pry apart the envelope is a valid strategy!
Next up…tackling those things that conjure up ghosts from the past…
