Peace of Mind Organizing

Keeping going

10 June 2008

Yesterday I blogged about overcoming the reluctance to get started on a task, citing Mark Forster’s tip on fooling your reactive mind. Today, I’d like to share some of Forster’s advice about keeping going on tasks once you’ve started.

Forster recommends working in timed bursts. Not dissimilar to the notion of setting a timer for 15 minutes, which I recommend all the time, Forster recommends building a sequence of longer timed bursts as you overcome the initial resistance to the task.

So, for example, if your task were to write a newsletter article, you would set a timer and write for five minutes, take a two-minute break, go back to writing for ten minutes, take another break, go back to the task for 15 minutes, and so on until you’ve reached a period of time that’s optimal for you to work without a break.

Forster says that by focusing on the task for a specific period of time, you get more done. “If you work on something for three bursts of 20 minutes,” he writes in Do It Tomorrow, “you are likely to get more done than if you do an hour’s untimed work on it.”

He makes another important point, which I find really useful. It’s important to stop as soon as your timer goes off, indicating it’s time for a break. Don’t keep going until you reach the end of a paragraph. If you’re writing, stop in mid-sentence.

This is because the mind craves completion. If you stop in mid-sentence, you’ll be itching to get back to the task after your break, whereas if you work to a logical stopping point, you might have to overcome resistance once again. I’ve done this and it works.

Forster also recommends always setting a finishing time for your work day. He says to “stop dead” when that time arrives. If you know you’re ending at a certain time, you’ll get more done, as you work toward that deadline. I have to admit I don’t do this, but I think I’m going to give it a try!

Getting started

9 June 2008

Do you ever have items on your to-do list that just loom there? You know you need to do them, you think about doing them, but you just can’t get going on them?

Sometimes, you just need to get started and once you overcome the resistance and do the task, it turns out that it’s not so bad. This happens to me all the time. I build up tasks in my mind, thinking they’re going to take forever, then they take no time at all.

Certainly, this is true of many organizing tasks. But it’s also true of other things, even housecleaning.

I hate cleaning house, particularly vacuuming. And my least favorite vacuuming project is our front stairs, which have a carpeted runner. I use a small, noisy hand vac on these stairs and never want to do the job. You can imagine how awful these stairs usually look, since the carpeted runner is burgundy and our ever-shedding cat, Joe, is orange.

Anyway, Mark Forster has a great little trick for getting started on tasks you don’t want to do. In his book Do It Tomorrow, he talks about how we have a rational part of our brain and a reactive part of our brain. It’s the reactive brain that stops us from doing stuff we don’t want to do. He says that our reactive brain is unable to detect when the rational brain is lying to it. So we can calm our reactive brain by fooling it—and then we can actually get started on tasks.

Here’s how it works. I’ll use vacuuming my stairs as an example.

I’ll say to myself, “I’m not really going to vacuum the stairs now, I’m just going to get out the vacuum.” That’s enough to calm down the reactive brain. The rational brain knows that the stairs are dirty and really must be vacuumed. It knows that it takes less than 10 minutes to vacuum them and they look really nice once they’re clean. So once the reactive brain has been tricked into submission by the phrase, “I’m not going to vacuum the stairs,” the rational brain takes over and just does it.

I know it sounds a little out there, but I’ve used this trick many times. Give it a try!

This is just one of Forster’s tips for overcoming resistance. Do It Tomorrow is full of this kind of revolutionary information that can really enhance your productivity. I heartily recommend it. You can get a taste of his ideas on his blog, Get Everything Done.

A couple more free services for your cell phone

6 June 2008

I love David Pogue, the technology columnist for the New York Times. Sometimes what he writes is over my head, but often I get great nuggets of information. I share his love of the MacBook, so I feel warm and fuzzy toward him.

When I read his article in Wednesday’s paper, I started to feel a little superior. He was writing about free easy-to-use services for your cell phone. When I saw the first was GOOG-411, I thought to myself, “I blogged about that months ago!” He also mentioned Jott.com, which I’ve written about here several times.

But there were two services that were new to me, so I thought I’d pass them on to you. One is ChaCha, where you can ask a question—any question—and get an answer sent via text message to your phone. You can call in your question by calling 1-800-2CHA-CHA from a cell phone or texting to CHACHA (242242). Your question is sent to an actual human, who researches the answer and sends it to you via text message.

You can ask anything, from trivia (my first question, just because I wanted a verifiable answer, was “Who was the 17th president of the United States? It’s Andrew Johnson, btw) to the weather forecast to television scheduling to definitions. What a great way to settle a bet!

The other service mentioned in Pogue’s article is ReQall. Like Jott, ReQall transcribes your voice message and emails it to you. It’s all about reminders and it calls itself a “memory tool”. I haven’t had a chance to check out its various functions, but it purports to understand simple English, so that you when you, for example, say “Buy milk,” it automatically puts that item on your shopping list. Worth checking out. Once I test it, I’ll report back here if I like it.

The best part of all these services is that they’re free. In my view, they boost the value of my (admittedly underutilized) cell phone. They save me time and perhaps even my sanity. My aging brain does not remember like it used to. Thanks to some of these services, the consequences of my failing memory aren’t so dire.

Weekend update

2 June 2008

On Friday I blogged about how I hoped to focus on decluttering in the coming weekend and that I was experiencing the rare and delightful confluence of having time for this kind of work and feeling motivated to do it.

I have to say, it went well. In Friday’s post, I listed the projects I hoped to accomplish:

• Move my yarn and knitting supplies from an upstairs room to a downstairs room

• Create room in an adjunct closet for overflow clothes

• Move a category of clothes to the adjunct closet

• Move some out-of-season clothes to a spare downstairs closet

• Reorganize my lingerie drawer (perhaps the most exciting project!)

• Sort, weed and reorganize my jewelry

• Clean up the floor of my office

The only one I didn’t fully accomplish was the first, and that was a conscious decision to wait until I’d purchased the new storage solutions for the yarn, which I’m going to wait to do after I paint the downstairs room. (I’m going to buy Elfa drawers.)

It did take me until this morning to finish clearing the floor of my office, but otherwise everything was done this weekend. In addition, I created new action file cart for under my desk. I’d been using the same one for literally 15 years. I bought a shiny new white Elfa file cart like this one:

The one I bought is letter, not legal size.

I bought it at the Container Store on Friday (I’m taking full advantage of the discount they’re now offering NAPO members!) and put it together Saturday. My old one had rather ugly mismatched files. For my new cart I’m using fancy white files from “MO by Smead and some pretty Russell+Hazel Kit interior folders. (I can’t seem to find an image of those online, but they were half price at Office Max!) The new file drawer is much deeper, so my client files and Quickbooks files came out of file boxes under the other part of my desk and are now in my file drawer. It’s wonderful!

The most exciting organizing project was indeed reorganizing my lingerie drawer. It took no more than 10 minutes, but it was an amazing transformation. I’d post pictures, but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to show the blogosphere my underwear drawer. I will say that these are the drawer organizers I bought from the Container Store. Love ‘em!

These silk drawer organizers whipped my underwear drawer into shape!

Overall, I wasn’t quite as focused this weekend as I’d hoped, but I did enjoy the work. I allowed myself to be inefficient and messy as I did it, which was kind of freeing. When I’m working with clients I try hard to be efficient, since they’re paying for my time. In my home this weekend, I took a lot of breaks and really allowed stuff to sprawl for awhile.

I’m by no means finished with the organizing in my home (my bathroom closets are calling to me, among other things), and I’m heartened that I made the progress I did while having fun and not stressing out.

Focus

30 May 2008

If you’ve ever worked with a professional organizer, you know that one of the things we bring to the table is focus. When you make the financial and time commitment to have a professional help you get organized, you tend to stay focused on the job during your session. And if your attention strays, the organizer draws it back to the project at hand.

I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to focus on my own organizing projects. I love organizing. But when it comes to doing my own projects, my attention strays. There are things to do that seem more urgent. Or I’m just plain tired from helping others.

Earlier this month I whined blogged about how disarray seems to be taking over my home and how I was having trouble dealing with it. In that post, I vowed to spend 15 minutes a day working on it. I probably have spent 15 minutes a day, but I’m still just scratching the surface. (My desktop has been clean at the end of every day, though!)

I have a glorious weekend coming up with no outside commitments. Last weekend, I started doing some shifting of closet contents in order to help alleviate some clothes storage problems. Later today and on into this weekend I’m itching to keep going on these projects. At long last, I have not only the time but the desire and energy to create order and do some real organizing in my home. It’s a wonderful confluence of circumstances.

In the interest of accountability, I’ll state right here the projects I’m looking to accomplish:

• Move my yarn and knitting supplies from an upstairs room to a downstairs room

• Create room in an adjunct closet for overflow clothes

• Move a category of clothes to the adjunct closet

• Move some out-of-season clothes to a spare downstairs closet

• Reorganize my lingerie drawer (perhaps the most exciting project!)

• Sort, weed and reorganize my jewelry

• Clean up the floor of my office

If one of my clients were saying she wanted to do all that in a weekend, I’d warn her not to bite off more than she could chew. I’d caution her against getting started and not finishing a project and therefore ending up even more disorder. So I’ll heed my own advice and take on small, discrete task after another.

Here’s hoping for a great report on Monday!

Have a happy holiday weekend!

23 May 2008

Whether you’re staying at home or traveling on this very busy weekend for travel, I hope you have fun and stay safe.

Me, I’ll be working tomorrow, then working around the house and in my home office on Sunday and Monday.

If you’re going to be traveling by car this weekend, gas prices and fuel efficiency might factor into your travel plans. If so, you might check out this website, which I learned about when I tuned into the Today Show for a minute this morning. It’s the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, fueleconomy.gov. There, you can find links to websites that show lowest gas prices in a given location (another site for finding low gas prices is Gas Buddy) and you can also compare the gas mileage on various types of cars. This is great if you’re renting a car and can do a little research up front, so you rent the most fuel efficient car that suits your needs. It also has on FAQ on gasoline prices and how to get the best gas mileage.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday weekend. Don’t forget to be take some time out for yourself!

How are those New Year's resolutions coming?

20 May 2008

Back at the beginning of 2008, I blogged about my constant craving for order as reflected in my January 1 journal entries year after year. In that entry, I wrote,

But the thing I want to work on is establishing the routines and habits that allow me to effortlessly pair “A place for everything” with “Everything in its place.” I need to put stuff away! That’s the key to living mess- and clutter-free.

The truth of the matter is that I’m still not living mess-free. I’ve been traveling a great deal this spring and things have started to deteriorate. But I’m working on rejiggering my space a certain amount and am confident that my storage will improve.

But I can report, with great happiness and pride, that my goal of clearing my desk each night has been achieved. I’ve been keeping track via Don’t Break the Chain and I can report that since January 5, when I resolved to clear my desk daily, there have been only two days, February 9 and May 9, where remained messy when I went to bed.

Here’s how the last four months of my “Clean Desk” chain on my Don’t Break the Chain account:

The last four months of desk clearing as chronicled on Don't Break the Chain.com

Being greeted every morning by a clean desk has made a huge difference in my productivity. And it makes me smile. I am absolutely delighted that I have developed this habit. And if I can create a new habit this way, so can you.

How about you? Have you made any progress on the goals you set at the beginning of the year?