Organization for the Disorganized!

I must confess that I have never been one of those people with a perfectly organized desk and a perfectly organized life. In most cases, I do know where something is, but it's a pretty good bet that what an outside observer would see in my home office of clutter and chaos.

I suppose it's the product of having a lot of projects going simultaneously; it always feel like neatly putting some 'thing" away completely before embarking on another would just take far too much time.

Sometimes, I can't help but think that many of those meticulously organized folks out there have simpler starting points than I do.

Some rather random prickly pears... Joshua Tree, Ca

The Black Hole Clock...

Back when I had my former business while I lived in Texas, we had something called "The Black Hold Clock."

It wasn't a real thing, it was a figure of speech used to describe something that would sometimes happen. We'd discover we'd need some file or piece of paper from some weeks/months ago... and we'd have to find it. We'd joke that the Black Hole Clock would start at the moment we realized we needed that piece of paper... and would keep running till we finally unearthed what we were looking for; sometimes a few minutes sometimes hours.

Whereas the Black Hole Clock doesn't actually run so often around here, I'm well aware that I could be a lot better organized. Specifically when it comes to business records and keeping track of all the numbers we need to eventually be able to file a somewhat accurate tax return.

So I am trying my hand at putting every transaction we have into an online bookkeeping system, in hopes that tax time won't be the usual protracted nightmare of adding thousands of numbers and receipts together when tax time rolls around.

Our local lighthouse, with Mt. Baker in the background...

The Time Factor

I guess one of my least favorite things about self-employent has always been the idea that in order to keep "accurate records," it always feels like I have to give up dozens of hours to recordkeeping that I otherwise could be spending actually working.

I always thought it was a bit of a joke to read some of the instructions on IRS forms where there's a little note somewhere with the words "estimated time needed to complete this form" and some number for "record keeping" that might be true if your life only involves three $10,000 transactions rather than 10,000 $3 transactions. Lies and propaganda!

Granted, there's some truth to an observation a friend of mine once had about my self-employment efforts: "you take on the projects that other people abandon becuse they are worthy, but just too complicated to be worth the effort."

I see the truth there, because when you don't feel competitive — in the head-on, direct sort of way — one way to carve out a niche is to take on the fringe-y stuff others won't touch. But there's a cost: time consumption.

Then again, sometimes we simply avoid keeping records because it's somehow better to not know that we're not actually doing very well at whatever it is we are doing. "Not knowing" seems somehow preferable to black-and-white-proof that we pretty much suck at our work.

Peach fuzz is definitely a real thing...

This is "One of Those" Posts

If you're feeling a little puzzled by what I am writing here, don't worry... it's not you!

This is "one of those" posts written — as much as anything — as a journal entry or record of a particular feeling I am having at the moment... and which I felt inclined to put down in writing.

A reminder, perhaps, that not all posts are written for public consumption. Sometimes we write things simply to work through thoughts in our heads, so we can get them out of there and get on to something a little more productive...

So thanks for putting up with these rather random musings about the time it seems to take to keep track of certain aspects of self-employment!

And it gives me a chance to also record that so far I am really happy with the Wave Accounting online system.

Hope everyone had a great day!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Are you a good record keeper? Or a reluctant one? Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190327 23:30 PST
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