It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys: The Seven Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized - Hardcover

Paul, Marilyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670031941 ISBN 13: 9780670031948

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2002

Synopsis

A management consultant and meditation practitioner combines her theory on systems change and her spiritual beliefs to explain the role of understanding oneself in implementing personal change, outlining a seven-step process by which readers can bring order into life while staying true to personal values. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Marilyn Byfield Paul has a Ph.D. in organization and management from Yale University and an MBA from Cornell University. She is a management consultant with clients that include Harvard University, The New York Times Company, and Motorola.

From the Inside Flap

Overbooking, running late, canceling appointments at the last minute, missing deadlines, feeling overwhelmed, losing important documents, or just plain losing your keys - it can happen to anyone once in awhile. But, when these circumstances become a way of life, they can be hard to change.

In It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys, management consultant Dr. Marilyn Paul will guide you on a path to personal change that can bring true relief from the pain and stress of chronic disorganization. Drawing from her own past experience as a chronically disorganized person, Paul adds warmth, insight, humor, and hope, to this primer for change and self-discovery.

Unlike other books on getting organized, in It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys, Dr. Marilyn Paul offers a clear, practical seven-step path to personal growth that is holistic and comprehensive in nature. Drawing from all four levels of human experience: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, Paul creates the necessary traction for consistent and lasting change. And while most organizing books simply offer good tips for changing the symptoms of disorganization, Paul helps you identify and transform the root causes by teaching you how to recognize habits of thought and action that contribute to disorder, and motivating you to make changes direct you towards a more rewarding way of living.

By combining practical "How-to's" (such as how to empty out your in-box) with the deep wisdom of decades of meditation practice, she shows how to develop a greater sense of inner calm and presence by constructively dealing with outer disorder.

With It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys, Dr. Marilyn Paul has created a roadmap that moves you from chaos and little efficacy onto the path of changing your behavior, emerging from your disorganization, and finally being able to do what you want, when you want with growing presence of mind.

Reviews

Paul, an organizational development consultant, offers scattered readers a way out of the "swamp of disorder" in this smart look at the underlying causes of chronic disorganization. Though she offers concrete advice (create a to-do list system, keep transition time between appointments, get rid of things you haven't used in a year), her book goes beyond a step-by-step program to getting organized; her approach targets many of the sources of disorganization (among them: insecurity, emotional attachment, inexperience and fear) while offering meaningful paths to tackling everything from dirty dishes and filing problems to time management and inner spirituality. Hokey phrases like "the whole purpose of getting organized is to reconnect us with our soul's journey" and suggestions such as "bring your loving awareness to washing the lettuce leaves" are a little too common, but Paul artfully weaves the existential with the practical, as she shows how presence of mind can lead to a sense "of a greater Presence." Her advice is simple but important, and her reassuring tone will soothe even the most harried reader.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670031941
• ISBN 13: 9780670031948
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320