Your Organizing Coach

Seven Steps to Successful Organizing has arrived!

Today I'm officially launching my free ecourse! I originally wrote it for people who attended a talk I gave last fall and then I realized I could expand it and offer it to everyone.

I love helping people succeed with their organizing projects. If I can do it by laying out a seven step program that they can run with, that's great news. Not everyone needs me there in person or on the phone to make a plan, get motivated and stay focused.

So, check it out at this link. See how it works for you. I'd love to hear about your results!

Tricks to Motivate You

I answered a question on Linked In today about whether it's possible to become more disciplined. My answer wasn't really about discipline though, because that word turns me off. It makes me think of following rules, being punished if I don't, rigidity and fear. Ick.

So my answer was about motivation instead. And tricks. Fun ways to get yourself to do stuff. 

If the end result of your work is something you really, really want, it's not hard to get motivated. If you don't want the result, why bother? Whatever project you're putting off, trace it back and find out what the original motivation was and whether it's still valid. 

If it's valid and you still don't want to do it, pay someone else to do it! Or, try some of these tricks.

• Work on your project for just two minutes. Use a timer. If you get inspired, keep going. If not, you got two minutes worth done, more than you had before.
• Imagine the day is over and you're looking back over what you got done. What will make you feel like you got something really worthwhile accomplished? Then, do that thing.
• Make a "Not To Do" list. Put anything that you're not getting around to and that can go undone without the planet exploding. Keep the list somewhere safe. This tells your brain that it can forget about those things and relieves you of that mental clutter.

  What tricks do you use to get yourself going and stay on task? 

Rabbit out of a Hat from laneesque's photostream.

Autofocus with the Master List

The master list is one of my favorite tools. I love making lists and I usually make them by hand in a notebook because they're simpler to work with.

Time management coach Mark Forster is a man after my own heart. He's written several books about personal effectiveness and he's now sharing his Autofocus system on his website for free.

The Autofocus system is simply what I described above, one very long list in a notebook that you keep adding to and crossing off of. The cool thing about this system is that it doesn't involve prioritizing. Forster asserts that as you scan the list, you'll be able to select the important items naturally, using the "balance between the rational and intuitive parts of your mind."

This is really important bedcuase so much of procrastination results from just not really wanting to do things. People do what they do. If They don't want to do a particular thing, they just won't, no matter how "important" they've decided it is. This system forces you to be honest with yourself and either favorably recast (meaning figure out a way to achieve the same goal in a way that you prefer) or delete the to do's that aren't getting done.

List from Carissa GoodNCrazy's photostream.

Organize with Photographs

A quick way to get some objectivity about your space is to take some pictures. Our brains are constantly filtering extraneous information out of the visual field. We see what we need to see (sometimes what we want to see). Otherwise, we'd be overwhelmed.

A photograph includes all the information without editing anything out. I mentioned this technique in a previous post about a client who literally did not recognize her living room from a photograph. Your reaction may not be so strong, but you will be able to see things that escape your notice in real life. 

How to do it:
Say you want to organize your home office. Get your camera and take a series of photos, starting from the left and crossing the room. Print them and lay them out in a panorama. Does the room in the photos look more cluttered than you thought? Are the piles bigger? Are there more of them, now that you can see the whole room at once? Is there a box under the desk that you've been conveniently ignoring?

Remember, this is just information gathering. It's not an opportunity to make yourself feel bad about the state of your office. You can use these photos to help you identify what to do next. Right now, choose one thing you can do today. Make sure this is a do-able task, not a project.

Tips on task selection:

• Choose something that's been there for awhile; that box under the desk, or a hunk of paper off the bottom of a pile. Usually it's easier to make decisions about older items because they're not relevant anymore.
• If you were able to quickly identify something that you know what to do with, do that. Maybe it's a stack of folders for a completed project that need to be filed away. Maybe it's some magazines you've been meaning to give away but they haven't made it out the door yet. It's not cheating to start with the easy stuff.
• Choose a task that will improve the aesthetics of the room and make it a more pleasant place to be. That could be decluttering the windowsill so your view is clear. It could be taking all the Post-It's off your monitor and copying the notes onto your to do list, address book or wherever they make sense.

If that worked for you, post the photos on a bulletin board so you can refer to them again and select another task. Bonus task: when you get your office looking the way you want, take another series of photos and post them. You can use them as a guide/reminder of how things are supposed to look so you can maintain it.

Camera from BigTallGuy's photostream

Build Your Own Organizing System

I don't follow a particular organizing method or recommend a specific system. My clients all have their own unique needs, ways of thinking and taste. The challenge is to come up with something that works with the least amount of fuss and bother.

My friend and fellow entrepreneur, Erin Saul, has developed her system by trial and error. The visual aspect is important to her, as is being able to see a whole month at a glance. It's not, as she says, "elegant," but it does the job and she likes it. I asked her to share it with my blog readers, so here's her description:

When I quit the day job to run two businesses from home, it took me a while to get organized in a new way. I finally came up with a weekly schedule that would apply some kind of — if not routine, then maybe STRUCTURE to my week. But with the way my mind works, it was difficult to find some existing method of keeping me on track. I tried a couple versions of some productivity software, but they didn't really work. I had to make it myself.

It's rudimentary, but it made sense to me. And then I found that it didn't work... but it sure was a good idea at the time!

Instead, now...  I'll admit it: I keep three calendars:

1)  The TO-GO PLANNER, which is a dual week-at-a-glance/month-at-a-glance color-coded piece of brilliance I found at The Container Store, and which I take EVERYWHERE with me. The MONTHLY part is what I use when booking events with clients and hang-time with friends. The WEEKLY pages have a timeline/appointment section and also a color-coded section which corresponds nicely to my 'Business 1', 'Business 2', and 'Personal'. I can make more granular notes of what to do when, and see how my day is weighted. This weekly part informs my DAILY to-do list...

2)  I make a separate DAILY to-do list on a 3x5 index card, which fits in my pocket, and which I can access easily and frequently throughout the day to check on my progress, and add more things that need doing, as I think of them. Part of that to-do list is the MAKING of it, which is when I consult the WEEKLY color-coded part of the TO-GO PLANNER I carry around with me. That's when I try to make sure everything matches.

3)  The BIG WALL CALENDAR is mostly for fun, but keeps my head in the game when I'm in my home office, planning my days and weeks and months. I'm a visual learner/rememberer... so the color-coded stickies are for visual reference: Do I have enough pink ones to achieve my goals? Do I have everything done far enough in advance of the yellow events? Did I send birthday cards? And, maybe most importantly, this is where I can see days that have NO events, where I can spend the day on those pesky tasks it takes all day to do (like taxes!).

I realize that this all seems like the OPPOSITE of a simple, elegant system... but it works for me. Digital calendars and PDA solutions don't help me because I can't get a good VIEW of a day, week, or month the way my mind needs to see it. When my head starts swimming with random, disorganized things-to-do... that's when they slip through the cracks, and when I start getting cranky. I've learned these things about myself... and also that I'm one of those bizarro organize-y people who just love calendars. This way, I get to use three! The key is to find something that works for you and to be diligent about it. I also found that I love routine. When I get to start my morning making my daily to-do list with some hot tea, that grounds me. Then I'm off and running toward a productive day!

Erin's company, Namaste Mofo™, designs and sells T-shirts with "irreverently reverent yoga slogans" on them. The company motto is that all human beings are complex and can honestly embrace holistic ideals and still be totally punk rock. She rocks!

Use Email to Stay Organized

I asked my friend David over dinner one night how he manages to keep on top of all his projects at work. I don't always talk about organizing with friends, but I often discover new ways to do things from them, and that's always fun. He said that he uses his email program.

How does that work? For each project he opens a new email and starts typing in bullet points for all the tasks that need to be done that day. The emails are automatically saved as drafts and he can quickly cycle through them to see at a glance what's happening. He continues to add to them during the day, including notes from conversations and other emails. So he ends up with an outline of all project activity for the day.

He sends the emails to himself using the date and project in the subject line and then keeps them in the appropriate project folder. Sometimes they're also mailed to other people working on the project, saving him the step of copying information from other sources. And he has a chronological, easily accessible log of project activity.

I like this idea because it's simple and fast, it uses a program he already knows (no learning curve) and the information is easily transferred elsewhere, including to other people.

Juggler from jayniebell's photostream

Organizing by the Numbers

Organizing and decluttering can be overwhelming. Where do you start? The answer is, you just pick a starting place and begin moving forward. Well, how do you do that?

Pick an Number
You can pick a number of items, an hour of the day, or minutes to spend. Try the 27-Fling Boogie from the Fly Lady (she recommends crooning "Please Release Me, Let Me Go" as you toss). Or pick any other number of items that must go into the trash in the next few minutes.

 If you've got a backlog of boxes, tell yourself you'll sort whatever's in there until 10 a.m., or 2 p.m. Then you get to stop. You can do more later but in order to preserve your motivation, be true to your own word (i.e., be nice to yourself).

Try choosing a number of minutes to spend. Depending on what you're doing, even 5 minutes here and there will move you toward your goal. Have fun with it; pick a number out of a hat, roll the dice, use today's date or the amount of money that's in your wallet. 

Tricks are good! Another fun way to get your tasks done is to write them on index cards and then pick random cards when you're ready to work.

Do you have any fun ways to get yourself to organize when you don't really want to?

Number 1254 from 416style's photostream

Procrastination Strategies

"Talk of the Nation" did a show about procrastination recently featuring psychology professor Timothy Pychyl and philosophy professor John Perry. I read Perry's funny article about structured procrastination several years ago and I still laugh every time I read it. Not only that, it's a good strategy!

A very interesting point that Pychyl brought up is that there's no evidence of the "arousal procrastinator," that is, people who work best under pressure and let things wait until the last minute. Arousal types are characterized by extroversion, sensation-seeking and reducing/augmenting behavior (of desired emotional states).

Lots of people believe that they do their best working right up to the deadline but apparently, that's just an illusion. It can also be learned behavior, if that's the only way a person has ever approached deadlines.

Another fascinating finding has to do with procrastination and self-forgiveness. A study to discover whether people would procrastinate less the next time if they forgave themselves for the current instance found that, yes, it did work that way.

The unexpected result was that this was much more true for the women in the study. One theory is that "procrastination is related to self-worth or self-esteem for females but not males." Who knew?

A third interesting point Pychyl made is that all delay is not procrastination. It's only procrastination when you set an intention to do something by a particular time. So, there's your loophole...

[photo by ShereenM]

Should I Save or Should It Go?

People who are collectors love to tell me that things they've held onto for years and years have actually come in handy, so it was worthwhile to keep it. There's often a note of triumph in their voices when they come to the story's punchline, "and I had one!" They assume that I'm against keeping things and they want to head off any suggestions I might have for downsizing.

Sometimes, the story is that they decided to get rid of a bunch of stuff that hadn't been used in decades and "the very next day" they needed one of those things. They reluctantly decide it's a big mistake to get rid of anything at all, although they would like to have less clutter. What to do?

I heard a story like the latter one recently and it occurred to me that the storyteller was asking the wrong questions to determine what to keep and what not to keep. He asked himself if he'd used the item in question in the past few years and the answer was no. So, out it went.

But if he had asked, "what will I do if I need this next week and I don't have it?" he would've gotten more helpful answers. Could he borrow one, rent one or buy a new one? Could he farm out the item on long term loan to a friend with the proviso that he could borrow it back as needed? Could he make do somehow with items he did keep? And how would those options feel? If none were acceptable, keeping the item would be the best answer.

The idea is to look into the future ("what will I do?") and not the past ("I haven't used this in years") to make your decision. The future is where you're going to use it (or not).

[White elephant courtesy of Lenny Montana's photostream]

How to Organize Your Wallet

It may be small, but your wallet can be chock full of clutter. You don't want to be one of those people who holds up the line trying to find her preferred shopper card, do you? Or the guy with the unsightly rectangular growth on his backside (because we know it's not all money)? Of course not. 

So, empty your wallet and let's see what's in there.

• Coupons:  Are they still good?  Are they worthwhile?  If you're not in the habit of using coupons, they can be more trouble than they're worth.
• Frequent buyer cards:  These can be like coupons.  Only use ones from stores you patronize regularly AND where the clerk asks you for it (otherwise you may forget to present it).
• Membership cards:  Most establishments will allow you to give your phone number instead of presenting your card.  Much less wallet clutter.
• Receipts:  Why are you keeping them?  To balance checkbook?  Tax purpose?  Possible return?  Assign a pocket in your wallet for receipts and regularly take them out.
• Credit cards:  You really only need one, or two if you have a business.  You have to be very organized to take advantage of perks like frequent flyer miles on credit cards.  Make sure using these perks doesn't cause you to buy things you don't need.  And make sure you have time to manage and track your benefits.
• Scraps of paper:  Dedicate some space in your date book for little notes and ideas.  Reminders should go on a dated page.  Phone numbers into the address book, even if they're only temporary. 
• Currency:  Keep your bills in denomination order.  Not only is it easier to find the amount you need, but you will have a better idea of how much cash you have at any given time. 
• Stamps:  Can be handy, but only if you remember they're there.  Otherwise, you'll find them by accident and discover they're 41 centers

See if you can pare down to what you really need and use. The short list:
Driver's license or CA ID card
Health insurance card
Car insurance card
Credit card
Bank or ATM card
BART or other transit ticket
Money!

The Costanza Wallet (George, from Seinfeld) wallet courtesy of shareski's Flickr stream