The Secret to Success: Maintenance Matters
Maintenance. The secret sauce for success in organizing - and really, in life - is Maintenance.
I know. That doesn’t sound noteworthy or newsworthy or sexy in any way. But, if you want your organization efforts or productivity updates to stick, Maintenance is truly the answer.
I gave my “Get a Grip On Your Papers” presentation three times in 7 days. I was at Green Hills Public Library then Governors State University for their Knowledge Exchange Program, and then at Moraine Valley Community College. If you’re new to this community from one of those events - welcome!
Typically in that presentation, after walking through the paper (and information) organizing and management process, I get to the 5th and final step in the process which is Maintenance, and I always say - “it is so important, we should likely start with maintenance!”
Thankfully, I weave the conversation about maintenance into every step of the organizing process. Because, to be honest, there are so few tasks in organizing and in life that are truly once-and-done.
There are many definitions of maintenance, let me narrow it down for today.
“Maintenance is the process of maintaining or preserving someone or something; continuation. Opposite: breakdown”
In working on this article idea, I spent half an hour down a “Define Maintenance” rabbithole on Wikipedia, involving the industrial revolution, utilization of resources in the armed forces and other fascinating sidequests. I also liked this definition: Maintenance is “The routine recurring work required to keep a facility (plant, building, structure, ground facility, utility system, or other real property) in such condition that it may be continuously used, at its original or designed capacity and efficiency for its intended purpose. (wikipedia)”
Then there are words like “routine”, “scheduled” and “predictive” planned maintenance to keep systems and equipment in efficient and effective working condition. Then there is the unplanned maintenance which happens for emergencies and also because the routine, scheduled or predictive planned maintenance wasn’t completed and the system or equipment experienced a failure.
Yes, this!
But, we are not going all that deep though, friends. Let’s talk about maintenance in life and work, but mostly just life.
Part of the inspiration for this article came from my husband and I putting away our patio furniture on a recent Sunday afternoon. It was still 80+ degrees that first week of October, but we also knew we have to put away our patio furniture eventually and it’s easier to do that when the weather is nice and when we’re both available for putting things up in the garage rafters.
It is a bittersweet unofficial sign of the end of Summer but it was great to do it on our own terms that afternoon. We cleaned out the little storage space under the deck, purged a broken planter, put the lounge chairs in there and covered them for winter. We left space for the rain barrels we will put away in November when we’re done watering the plants for the season, and closed the door for now.
We put away the sun umbrella, patio tables and chairs in the garage rafters, threw out a few more things, collected some e-waste that we recycled later that week, put away items that had migrated out of the cabinets over the summer, and swept the garage. It looks and feels so much better out there now.
Why. Why do we do these things? Because we like the system we have, and we want to maintain the systems. We work together on home tasks because that maintains the family system. We put away our deck furniture because we like the furniture, we want to use it again next summer, and we don’t want to cause an unnecessary expense by having to replace it if we don’t take care of it, or an unnecessary emergency by waiting until it is cold outside to do the work, or not doing it all and then struggling with shoveling snow around it, etc.
I maintained other systems that day, as well. Groceries were delivered midday, and batch cooking commenced in my kitchen, for that week’s dinners and also to re-stock our freezer for dinners over the next month. Why. A little time and effort, on our own terms, keeps the systems running smoothly. We have healthy meals for the week with less stress and cost. Win, win, win.
Routine, scheduled, predictive. Maintenance must happen, to keep our systems operational, so let’s get good at it.
I did some NEXT LEVEL maintenance back in August. I was sitting in a hotel lobby early on a Sunday morning in Leominster, Massachusetts, after spending a fabulous Saturday On The Mountain in Ashburnham, MA at The Ramble, a day-long concert we’ve attended for 4 years now. It's a day of love, fun, amazing music, fantastic people, service and collaboration. The next morning, as I drank my coffee and reflected before we left for our day-trip adventure to Vermont, I was inspired to write some content.
I also looked at my older voice memos, which represent unpublished blog articles or podcast episode ideas, on my phone, and in a moment of clarity and bravery, I deleted almost all of them. I realized that to maintain my writing process at peak capacity, I needed to remove deadweight and focus on new topics and new ideas. I don’t want ideas from three years ago. You and I both deserve new. I deleted old to make room for new. And I have been much better since that Sunday morning in August at acting on article and episode ideas, and also more quickly deleting recordings that have become published articles. The process is much easier to maintain now!
A part of my own maintenance process is goal setting, especially quarterly goals.
To review, we should take on “routine, scheduled and predictive planned maintenance to keep systems and equipment in efficient and effective working condition. To avoid unplanned maintenance when the system or equipment experiences a failure.”
October 1 began the last quarter of 2025. Whoa. I know. Yes, I just said it. I’m doing some planning this week, and I invite you to do the same. I will tell you now that my birthday was last week and very often this time of year, I do some strategic planning. Not just because it's Q4, but because I want to be intentional about my next trip around the sun.
A friend mentioned that she was doing some Q4 planning and listed a couple of things that she wanted to accomplish and said, you know what? Maybe that's enough. And, hey, maybe that IS enough. The list she shared was lofty enough, doable with just a few stretches. That sounds good to me!
And then again, maybe there is a bit more that you want to achieve, or you want to live with more intention, or maybe your goal is to do less! Maybe your goal for the rest of 2025 is to rest and that's okay too.
So, what's it going to be? You don't have to tell me, but it could be time for you to tell yourself. Bringing us back to where I started today’s article: even though it was still 85 degrees when I recorded this article as a podcast episode the first week of October, that will change. The weather will change, October and November and December will all come and go. What systems do you want to maintain and maintain well? What do you want January's You to be proud of? What do you want to be able to point at and go, “I did that!” or “I stopped doing that!”?
For example, A few of my goals for Q4 are to
Clean up my cybersecurity and set up a password manager for myself and my company;
Purchase a new phone (because mine is old), and perhaps a new Ipad for digitizing my sheet music;
Get my membership circle tested (that is coming) and ready to launch;
Complete the rest of my annual health appointments for the year (talk about maintenance, right?!)
Perhaps you pick one thing that you would like to accomplish in the next two and a half months in each of your focus areas.
I’ve talked a lot lately about motivation and prioritization. I’ve asked you what is important, and I always talk about our focus areas. Maintain systems by setting goals for the next few months. Set goals to create routines or schedules for maintaining your systems in good working order, and then complete them!
