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For many people, the greatest challenge of getting organized is not finding home organizing ideas or choosing an organizing system. The greatest difficulty is simply following through on the decision to get organized. While researching this topic to write Tips for Following Through on Organizing Goals, Parts 1 and 2, I came across a concept called “akrasia” which is often discussed in conjunction with following through on goals.

Sometimes also referred to as the “akrasia effect,” it is a Greek word which translates to “lacking command.” Those who are experiencing the akrasia effect are acting against their own best judgment.

Akrasia is a strange thing, because a sane person who understands the best course of action seemingly has no reason not to take it. Indeed, Plato wrote the line “No one goes willingly toward the bad” attributed to Socrates in his dialogue Protagoras.

I see no reason to get too philosophical on this (given that we’re talking about home organizing here), but suffice to say that people have been debating about akrasia and trying to explain it for centuries. Because people do act against their own self interests quite often, even when they seem to know better. Just consider how many times you’ve decided to put off organizing your pantry, even though you know leaving it the way it is just makes it harder to prepare supper.

I did run into one theory which I liked about akrasia, which is that it has to do with a clash between what you want in the present and what you think you can achieve in the future.

In other words, take the situation with the pantry. You like to envision a future where the pantry is clean and organized, because you know you will benefit from it. Dinner will be easier to prepare and you’ll save time and money.

But that doesn’t change the fact that in the present, you only have so many hours in the day. The pantry won’t get organized today, and the only “reward” you can envision for putting in some elbow grease right now is half an hour of fatiguing yourself and then having to rush to cram the rest of the day’s tasks in.

So while you judge it to be wise to organize the pantry in the long run, you still feel like there are better things to do today. Since the present tends to drive our actions more than the future, that overrides your will to organize the pantry.

I think the lesson here is that if you want to beat the akrasia effect and complete your home organizing projects, it is important to reward yourself and do it often. You need to give organizing some short term appeal in order to see the value in doing it in the present. Sometimes our “better judgement” is not enough to rely on. But you can still get your organizing tasks done if you give yourself some motivation in the now.