Organization as a way of life

In my life I can trace my emotional patterns (on average, ignoring spikes due to random things) on a line that shadows my organizational levels.  When I'm more organized, I'm happier.  When I'm unorganized, my emotions drop to the floor.  I'm not a clean freak that MUST CLEAN THAT LAST LITTLE SPOT OF DIRT - that's a whole other ball game.  When I'm organized I feel that everything in life is easy: organization simplifies things.  When you're organized, what's important is easy to find, your whole situation is laid out in front of you without any distractions. 

When my apartment is organized, I know when I need to do laundry, I know where my phone charger is and I know how many water bottles I have left before I have to run back to the store.  This micro-organization takes things off of my mind so I can focus on other things.

When my computer desktop is organized, I am a few seconds more efficient every time I have to switch applications or find something.  That takes a lot of stress off of me.  It reminds me of in "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" when the family has a leaky faucet.  The faucet is constantly on their minds and it affects their mood constantly.  For me, having extra icons on my desktop that always draws my attention, or having shoes in the middle of the room that I have to walk around everyday affects my attention.  These little things built up over a day can really take a toll.

At work I can get the same way, but it has an even larger affect.  When I'm not spending a good amount of time daily (10-20 minutes is good) keeping organized, which means that it slipped my mind, I find that work seems overwhelming.  When I'm organized I feel that I never have enough to do and work is great.  When I'm organized I get creative because everything is laid out so simple and clear that I can see room for creative action.  When things are disorganized I get bogged down in trying to keep my facts straight.  

When learning something new organization is important.  When I was learning to speak Chinese I was VERY organized.  I had a really good system set up to write down new words I saw or thought of everyday, look them up and put them on flashcards when I got home, and put the flashcards in my back pocket to read when I had a spare moment.  I had audio and music being downloaded on auto-pilot.  

Speaking of systems.. that may be my problem.  I still don't put enough weight on systems in my life.  I am good at organizing things, but I don't set up a good organizational system / routine that runs itself when I start doing new things.  I'm learning to breakdance, play poker, and sing in my spare time, but I don't have any system for it.  I'm not organized, so I can't see progress easily and don't have any information systems to gather new learning material - so I've been at it for months and yet there haven't been any solid results. 

I'm going to spend some time to set up some systems for these things and see if in another few months I don't have dramatic improvement.  I'm going to set up 3 separate files to record progress in each.  For breakdancing I'll have a checklist for days practiced, the amount of time I can hold a handstand, and how many pushups I can do.  For singing I'll put a checklist on each day I practice, the highest note I can hit, and how many songs I can sing.  For poker it's pretty simple - I have a goal for playmoney that I want to accumulate before I move on to real money.  

After that I'm going to set up learning systems to constantly retrieve new learning material and reiterate old material that I haven't quite grasped yet.  For breakdancing I'll use videos and guides, for singing I'll use audio and recording, for poker I'll use guides, books, and videos. 

I want to do this for my workout routine at the gym, my eating habits, and my work (huge project) and see how my emotions get affected.  I'll try to do an update after the vacation to see how far along I've come.