What does the scenery of your room, car, refrigerator, desk, yard, mind, farm, family or friend relationships look like?
Are they clean and orderly? Or blank and void as if a nuc went off? Or maybe it is like a construction site in progress?
The third virtue in the steps to personal development that Ben Franklin mentioned in his 13, was Order.
“ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
-Benjamin Franklin
We all have that area in life and business that is "Out of Order".
The closet we throw things into and the far corner drawer in the kitchen that seems to catch the miscellaneous items. The screws, wrenches, garden seeds, flashlights, and candles. Due to the standard human condition of ignorant and lazy, there is more than likely somewhere that we tend to sweep the dust under the rug.
I'm reminded of the parliamentary procedure motion used when a member is talking off-subject or busts into the conversation when someone else's has the floor. Out of Order.
Your meeting had an agenda. A motion was on the floor. Someone was debating and this arrogant or ignorant person starts talking while we were trying to make progress. They are out of order.
We often get an email, phone call, text, or request to pull us in another direction. We didn't quite have our ducks in a row in a particular department but we leave it, to circle the wagons and regroup to accomplish a new or previously abandoned or poorly executed task. Unfinished business.
How do we get our house, our life, in order?
Order is discipline. Chart the order. Set goals for order. Battle for order.
You won't be able to get everything whipped into shape in one day. It may have taken 30 years to get things in the condition they are in. Set the benchmarks with a simple approach to attain order.
I once set a goal when clearing a section of ground for a silvopasture area...
I decided to cut 10 saplings a day for one week. I started with one, then two. Before I knew it, I had exceeded my target each day. Job done.
I reflect on what Zig Ziglar mentions of Howard Hill, the famous archer.
He was an expert bowman who for over two decades, from the early 1930s into the 1950s, was often introduced as "The World's Greatest Archer". He established the record for winning the most bow-and-arrow field tournaments in succession, a total of 196 competitions. Hill was amazing. He could group arrows in ORDER. It was not a skill he was born with. It was a skill honed with repetition, discipline, and order. He didn't shoot the records by chance.
Franklin knew if he worked with the precision of order, life was better. To apply this principle, track the order and pattern layouts of your life. Energy audit each effort.
What are you meaninglessly repeating due to poor ORDER?
Where can you shave minutes and seconds off just by applying order?
Maybe a nuc to our habits could clear some slates so we can build back in order...
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