Years before I heard of professional organizers, I noticed that time management and organizing were easier for me than they were for some of the other people I knew, and wondered if I could teach these skills to others. After completing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®,(MBTI®), I learned that I was born with personality type preferences (ISTJ) that naturally tend towards systems and order.
Do your organizing systems work well for some clients, but not others? Organizing strategies are more likely to be effective when they take your client’s personality type into account. You can therefore do your clients a great service by familiarizing yourself with the various personality types, the challenges they face in terms of organizing, and the solutions most likely to be helpful.
One of my readers asked me the following: “I just wanted to find out from you if you were organized from the beginning? Do you believe that some people are just born organized?” In response to the first question, I’ll start with an excerpt from a speech my sister Kathy made at a party in my honour.
Do you get frustrated when a client struggles with an organizing system that works perfectly well for other clients? As a professional organizer, one of the most important things you can learn is that there’s no such thing as “one size fits all” when it comes to organizing! Every person views the world through different eyes, and you need to understand your clients’ uniqueness before you can create solutions that will help them to get and stay organized.
If you’ve become a professional organizer because organizing comes to you naturally, you may find yourself frustrated when some of your clients just don’t seem to “get it.” It’s so important to recognize that right-brained creative types see the world very differently than those who are left-brained, and equally important to your success as a professional organizer that you learn to adapt your strategies when you’re working with creative individuals.
