Many advocates of getting organized suggest starting small. Pick one room, change one thing, start (or eliminate) one habit.

That’s crap.

I don’t write this blog to coddle you. Baby steps is nothing more than procrastination in disguise.

Now, before you leave in a huff, let me qualify.

Deciding to overhaul your entire life for the better — starting now — doesn’t mean executing this commitment flawlessly everyday. You’ll fail. You’ll have setbacks.

And that’s okay.

It is far superior to cheat on your diet two days a week than to never change your eating plan at all, which is — let’s be honest — really failing seven days a week.

Failure doesn’t last forever. If you succeed five days out of seven, soon you’ll find those small successes snowballing into a success streak, and you may “cheat” only once a month, or not at all.

The only true failure is never trying at all.

So break out the pen and paper and start listing your goals. All of them. Now post that list everywhere — your computer desktop, the front door, the bathroom mirror, the back of your hand. Commit to seeing them all through — starting now.

If you put the same amount of the same ingredients in a pan and cook them for the same length of time at the same temperature each and every time, you will end up with the same cake, each and every time.

After eating it day in and day out, even the most moist and delicious of cakes will rapidly lose its flavor. If the outcome of your recipe isn’t a moist and delicious cake, but rather broiled brussels sprouts, life will start to get pretty bleak, pretty quickly.

What’s a person to do?

Buy new ingredients.

Your life is, after all, a compilation of what you put into it, and if you’re running on auto-pilot, you may as well be eating those brussels sprouts.

Today, I encourage you to change up your ingredients.

Start small:

The next time you want coffee, ask the barista to surprise you with her favorite drink.

Stop by the bookstore and pick up a book you’ve never heard of from a section you rarely frequent.

Drive home without taking the highway, and listen to a radio station you’ve never played before.

Eat cereal out of a coffee mug. With chopsticks.

Or, if that stuff sounds old hat, be more adventurous:

Call in sick — right now — and drive until your fuel light comes on. Stop and photograph five things that start with the letter H.

Open the dictionary to a random word. Determine which numbers on a telephone keypad correspond to the first five letters. Make plans to visit that zip code.

Drive until you get tired. Move there. (This is actually how I first found myself in Portland.)

The point is, change something. Change your hair, change the layout of your living room, change the order you go down the aisles at the grocery store. You never know what a little change might turn into.

The main complaint I hear about getting organized, maintaining lists, etc. is that it’s so constricting. People feel like slaves to their To Do lists, chained to their project notebooks and their Crackberries.

I would argue that these people are not truly organized at all, for the goal of organization is the greatest goal there is: freedom.

What does freedom look like?

It’s tomorrow morning, and you’ve just woken up. You’re really craving a croissant from a sidewalk cafe — in Paris. Sixty minutes later, you’re in your car, on the way to the airport.

Your initial reaction this was probably: “Impossible! Only a rich person who didn’t work could do that.” But you’d be wrong. If they’re not organized, even a billionaire couldn’t make it out the door that fast. However, if they are truly organized, someone with just a small amount of money in the bank can be out the door within the hour, and more importantly, they’ll be able to enjoy an entirely stress-free trip.

Consider the aforementioned scenario through the eye of organization:

6:00AM - Your computer starts playing your favorite motivational song while displaying a random inspirational quotation on the screen. This encourages you to jump right out of bed and conquer the day. Of course, since you got to bed at a reasonable time last night, and since you’ve been exercising regularly and eating very healthy, you were wide-awake, anyway.

6:02AM - As you sip the coffee that your timed coffee pot just finished brewing, you decide you want a real Parisian croissant.

6:04AM - You pop open Google Calendar and check your obligations for the week. You see that Aunt Bertha is coming to town Friday night at 6pm.

6:05AM - You pop open del.icio.us and click your “travel +compare” tag, which pulls up the three best travel comparison sites. You search for roundtrip tickets to Paris, along with a rental car and a hotel. Each travel site already has your preferences, frequent flyer numbers, and credit card number saved. While those pages load, you click your “travel + coupons” tag and find the coupon for $100 off an international fight you received in an email last Wednesday. You also click your “paris” tag and remember that you’ve been meaning to visit the Rodin Museum ever since you saw Frank Wildhorn’s “Camille Claudel” musical.

6:08AM - You find and book a round-trip flight that leaves in three hours, and returns Friday morning, leaving you ample time to unpack and pick up Aunt Bertha at the airport. You check the weather in Paris and see it’s going to be chilly enough for a light jacket.

6:10AM - You hop in the shower and run through your AM scaffold. As you complete each step in your hygiene routine (brush teeth, moisturize, etc.), you put the necessary items in your travel bag, which sits at the ready under the sink. It already contains travel-sized samples of most necessities, like shampoo, toothpaste, and shaving cream, along with a small comb and a spare manual toothbrush (so you can leave your Sonicare at home).

6:40AM - You’ll be gone for three days and three nights, so you grab three of each type of clothing. Since your color-coded wardrobe only contains clean, in-season clothes that fit you well, and since your regular exercise habit means you don’t have to try anything on to make sure it fits, packing is effortless.

6:43AM - You check your tickler files for the next few days. It’s your cousin John’s birthday on Saturday, so you’d planned to drop his card in the mail on Thursday. You decide you’d rather it arrive early rather than late, so you put it on your suitcase to remember to drop it in the mail on the way out to your car. (It was already filled out, addressed, and stamped.) Your electric bill is due on Wednesday, but that’s on auto bill-pay — no problem.

6:45AM - You activate your “travel” Gmail filter that forwards email from your main two clients to your Blackberry world phone, and set an autoresponder on your personal account notifying your friends that you’re in Paris and will respond to email when you get back. You update your Facebook status for good measure.

6:47AM - You check your trusty “Travel Checklist.” It reminds you to make sure you have no liquids in your carry-on (a quick rummage through your bag reveals a bottle of sunscreen, which you leave out); to bring a snack (you grab a few pre-measured bags of oat bran from the pantry); and to get your passport (which you quickly grab from your fireproof box). You text your best friend, who has your spare apartment key, and let him know you’ll be gone, and change your personal voicemail message to let callers know you’re out of the country.

6:53AM - You leave a voicemail for your boss, faking a stuffy nose.

6:55AM - You grab a stack of magazines from your “Read/Review” pile, so you can throw them out as you read them and won’t have to lug already-consumed material back home, and your iPod.

6:56AM - You leave for the airport — early.

Let’s not forget the things you didn’t even have to think about:

- Your will and power of attorney paperwork is in order, in case you eat a bad croissant;
- Your wallet has everything you need in it, and nothing more;
- Your car has a full tank, so you don’t need to stop on the way to the airport;
- Your iPod is synced with the latest music, movies, podcasts, and audiobooks, so you can learn on-the-go;
- Your Moleskine is already in your bag, along with a handful of pens;
- Your finances are in good enough shape that you have the financial ability to afford this trip.

How “restrictive” do you think a strong organizational system is now?

Take a moment to consider those people you consider admirable — whether they be close friends or long-dead war heroes. Which of their traits do you most admire? Their tenacity? Courage in the face of adversity? Self-discipline?

Do you think anyone else admires you for those very same traits? Wouldn’t you like to be known for them, too?

Why aren’t you?

The fact of the matter is, you can become anyone you want to become and develop in yourself any trait you admire in another person, if you put your mind to it. It is one of my most fervently held beliefs that the key to making the world a better place is to start inside each individual — because if we are each embodying our beliefs, living what we believe, and pursuing our dreams, it would generate such passion as to be an unstoppably positive force.