Now that I’ve finished business school, I have my weekends back. After spending every weekend for two years doing homework, I spent the first few weekends just relaxing, watching sports on TV, and generally being lazy. I’ve been talking about cleaning out my garage for the last few years and I finally got around to it.
My workbench is the heart of my garage, and the heart of the workbench is the pegboard above the bench where all of my tools are displayed. Collected from every nook and cranny throughout the house, I now have all of my tools collected and organized. Isn’t pegboard awesome?
Organizing your tools on a pegboard is a lot like starting a business or any other project. Sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know. The farther along I got in my organization, the more tools began appearing. Heck man, I found tools I didn’t even know that I had! And why does anyone need three hammers? In any case, the takeaway is that sometimes you don’t have all the information, but you need to take action anyway.
Once I got all of my tools on the pegboard, the last adjective that would have come to your mind would have been ‘organized’. Sure, all the tools were on the pegboard, but similar tools were located in different areas. More commonly used tools were the farthest to reach, while tools I haven’t used in years were right in front of me.
Much to my dismay, I realized that I needed to delay my strong sense of accomplishment and make some changes. Its often that we rethink plans and make changes. Not to venture into ‘scope creep’, its entirely acceptable to evaluate a project and think “I can do better”. Don’t be afraid to start all over again. You learned something from the first time, the next time will be way better.
Pegboard is cool, but it doesn’t snap the tools automatically back into place. If you use a tool, you have to put it back. In the same way, as you work, be organized. Nothing infuriates me more than feeling like I am not prepared or getting into a situation where I have to ‘wing it’. Organization take discipline and discipline takes practice.
I never thought I would be looking for business lessons while organizing my garage, but I discovered some gems along the way. I could have cleaned the garage and not noticed those things though. Just like that you need to remain open-minded and ready to try new solutions, even when you’re not looking to reengineer.
After two grueling years, Saturdays are really good again.