Containing Myself

I lost my Container Store virginity last week. I’d heard the hype so I walked around an outdoor shopping mall in north Dallas for forty minutes waiting for it to open on July 4th. Sure, I was also avoiding my family, but that’s another story. Inside the store I had to pry myself away from magnetic doohickies that stick to your locker door – holding lipgloss, concealer sticks, and other essentials for surviving high school. Despite the fact that I’m not in high school and have no locker of any kind, I actually had to tell myself-repeatedly-that I had no use for such things. This is how intoxicating the Container Store and any other place of its ilk is for me. I’m mesmerized in certain sections of Staples, dumbfounded in the closet area of Lowes, and stupefied among the office supplies at Target.

I am a consumer of home organization porn. I want to believe–I do believe–that life is better when its contents are properly stowed and labeled, preferably in a clear typeface. Getting organized causes me to simplify, to cull all those unnecessary objects from my life, or at least contain them in space-efficient decorative bins. The process works for ideas too. Just check my hard drive, my internet spaces, the 3-ring binders that grace my not-very-orgnized shelves, the post-its on the white board I’m using to plot my novel.

A friend of mine has a pantry that has to be at least 100 square feet. Her custom built home is not some ridiculous mansion and she has no servants to fetch the Sunday linens; the woman simply values organization. There is a place for every can of mushroom soup and tiered platter in that miracle of modern kitchenry. To be that organized, equipped…. well one could probably survive the apocalypse in a place like that – if one had enough adjustable shelving and plastic boxes.

Sometimes I think it’s a joke, all this planning and organizing – just one more way to procrastinate. But then the loan officer calls about my refinance. I reach into the drawer next to my computer and pull out the file labeled “refi” and pull out the document she’s requesting before she finishes her sentence. Sickening, isn’t it?

3 Steps to Creating Balance

It’s a new year. This will finally be the one we get it all together. Sound familiar? While 2009 may not bring everything into perfect alignment, it could be the year you achieve a new level of balance.

What’s Balance?
Balance isn’t about getting everything done, or doing everything right, but examining your values and goals, and accepting your limits. It has been said that your true values are exhibited in the way you spend your time. Make 2009 the year you pay attention to all the things that demand your attention.

Step 1: Review Steven Covey’s rocks and sand analogy. Are you spending time on the big rocks first? Write out a list of your rocks and post it somewhere you will see everyday. Or take advantage of a digital service like gtdagenda‘s vision reminders to keep important goals in front of you.

Step 2: Take time to plan. Most things don’t happen on their own. They don’t happen until you decide to make them happen. Set aside some time at the beginning of your week to identify and schedule the most important things you must accomplish that week.

Step 3: Honor your emotions. When you feel happy, scared, nervous, uneasy, or excited – stop. Take just a moment to acknowledge what you’re feeling. Paying attention to emotions is important because it’s nearly impossible to create balance if you’re just charging ahead all the time.

More posts you might enjoy:

2009: The Year of the Vision
How to Build a Home Organization Notebook
GTD For Moms and Other Homies: The Lists
Empty Your Email Inbox
Improve Your Life With Long Range Planning

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by BOCA.

2009: The Year of the Vision

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t really, but the start of a new year is a very good time to work on new habits. I participated in a workshop yesterday where we talked a lot about planning – long range planning. A lot of us realized that we haven’t taken the time to dream up a ten or twenty year plan. We haven’t thought much about our livelong goals.

Do You Have a Vision For Your Life?

Think about how fast ten years goes by. And it goes by whether you’re doing what you want or just plodding along. So that’s my big New Year’s habit – to spend more time creating and reviewing long term goals and dreams.

In another part of the workshop we identified some of our strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths is organization and planning. I’m SO good at setting goals, making lists, and getting things done. Speaking of GTD, part of an good organization philosophy is to make sure you’re getting the right things done. That is, working toward the big goals you’ve actually chosen for your life. We also talked a lot about organizational values yesterday and the need to clearly articulate what they mean to you.

What Do You Really Value?

For example, you may value say you value honesty, but how does that play out in your life? You may also value relationships. Sometimes those two values are going to collide. As when a friend does something you don’t necessarily agree with, but is nevertheless not really any of your business. Are you honest about it? Depends. Turns out you need to rank your values for just such occasions. If you rank honest above relationships, you bust out with the raw truth. However, if you rank relationships over honesty you keep your mouth shut.

The focus of the day was on professional situations, but the workshop facilitators encouraged us all to think about our overall personal values too. I kept looking at the wall where the center we were in had their mission and vision statements, right there next to their list of values.

So as part of my New Year’s habit to take more time for BIG planning, I’ve decided to create a personal mission and vision statement, and get to work on those values too.

Tools You Can Use

• David Allen’s brilliant book, Getting Things Done
• My new fave, Zen Habits
• I use gtdagenda.com to manage my tasks and as I work on the bigger picture components using that system I’ll report my results back to you. I use the premium version of this site, but there’s a free version that is essentially the same. You just can’t track as many goals and projects.
• Check out Parent Bloggers this weekend. Together with the Big Tent group organization site, they want to know how you’ll get your act together in 2009.
• PBN and Big Tent have teamed with and Compass Life and Business Designs to offer group leaders who start a group on or move to BigTent by December 31 a free one month membership ($19 value) to Compass Coaching Network. Plus group leaders will be entered in a grand prize drawing for a “Life Makeover” private coaching series ($1500 value). Groups must be of at least ten members.

Go, dream, get organized!

Get Organized!

Summer will end. It will. Then you get another fresh start for an organized school year. Here’s some help. Happy sorting!

How to Build a Home Organization Notebook
How to Create a Babysitter Checklist and Keep Your Sanity When You’re Away From Home▼
Home Organization Notebook: The Sections
How to Cut Kids’ Clutter
How to Teach Your Child to Use a Planner

Create More Habits

They say it takes 30 days for a behavior to stick, to become a habit you do without thinking. I can attest that some habits – like grabbing a handful of Doritos every time you pass the pantry – take considerably less time. However, the healthy and productive ones tend to take longer. Here are my top ‘created’ habits that get me through the monotonous motions of the day:

1. Get dressed in workout clothes.
I am at least 75% likely to exercise if I’m actually wearing the clothes. Otherwise I end up like today – it’s noon, I haven’t broken a sweat, and I’m embarrassed to check the mail because I’m still in PJs.

2. Empty the dishwasher and the dryer.
This is so cornbally/housewifey that I hate to admit it. The first thing I do in the morning (in my workout attire) is empty the dishwasher. That way the dirty stuff doesn’t land in the sink all day. I check the dryer. (The habit I haven’t yet mastered is to check the washer before bed to make sure I don’t leave stuff in there overnight to cultivate the mildew farm that is my laundry room.)

3. Clear to the granite.
I used to have a pile of permission slips, receipts, lip gloss, library books, and confiscated Nintendo DS’s on my kitchen counter at all times. It hid the pretty granite that accounts for at least $50 of the monthly mortgage payment. My habit? Clear off the landing pile every night as part of cleaning the kitchen. I so rock the housewife gig.

What keeps your life on track?

Get More Things Done By Receiving Less Email

We may think there’s not much we can do about the amount of email we receive, but we’d be wrong. The truth is there are a few simple things we can do that could drastically cut down on the number of messages in our inboxes. Here are two of my favorite:

1) Stop responding so quickly
Of course I’m not advocating you get rude with people, but lay off the trigger. If you let messages sit for a bit, especially if you are simply CC’d on them, you may find that issues solve themselves without your input.

2) Let people know you don’t need a reply
This one is so simple I love it. You know the wasted effort that goes back and forth – can you send me her phone number ? – thanks for the number – sure thing, how’s the dog – fine thanks and yours…. For crying out loud, go meet for coffee! To beat this, add a line at the end: No need to reply.

What do you do to tame the beast?

Get It Out of Your Head

How many times have you heard the advice to empty your bladder frequently? It’s not a holding tank. Sound familiar? It cannot do it’s job when it’s too full and plus, it’s darn uncomfortable.

Turns out, the same goes for your brain. As our lives get more and more complicated simply by the society we live in, our brains are being taxed unnecessarily by the sheer amount of information we need to store. Just think about the numbers alone that are rattling away in your head. Phone numbers, addresses, social security, alarm codes, passwords, logins, etc. Add to that your appointments and commitments, daily tasks, birthdays, car maintenance, optimal heart rate, that book you really want to read, the idea for that new business and BANG! You’re going to explode. Mark my words.

One of the underlying principles of GTD is to get things out of your head and into a system where you can actually make some progress. Not only that, when we clear our minds of all the clattering details, the brain gets to work on it’s real job: creating and imagining.

Don’t waste your brain remembering things. Write them down. Buy the book, buy it now!

Keep Sacred Thy Calendar

GTD For Moms and Other Homies: The Lists

If you’ve been following the tips for getting your life organized you’ve already cleaned out your email inbox, started organizing using the dump it, do it, delegate it, or defer it rule, and created both reference and tickler files. Have you done all that? Any of it? If you have questions or need help, I’m so here for you. This may be hard to beleive, but I actually LOVE to organize stuff. But I want these articles to be useful for YOU. I want you to get organized so you’ll feel better and have more time to do really fun stuff. Because as crazy as I am for organization, I’d still rather drink beer and eat nachos.

Also, if you think these posts are lame and you have no use for them, tell me that too. I’ll stop, really I will! But barring a revolt, I shall persist! Here’s the biggest revelation of all: the lists. This ain’t your ordinary To Do list!

GTD For Moms and Other Homies Tip #4: The Lists

First off, I hope I’ve made it clear that all this GTD stuff is not mine, but the brilliant ideas of one Mr. David Allen, whose book Getting Things Done I sucked down in one weekend.

List Love
I’ve always been a big list keeper. I love the satisfaction of marking things off my list as I go. And I know I’m not alone in the habit of occasionally writing something I’ve already completed on my list just for the sheer joy of drawing a line through it. That’s a bit sad to admit.

The problem with To Do lists is that you can get a little ambitious. That’s not a bad thing, except that you don’t always have enough time or energy to complete everything on the list. Then you end up either holding onto an evergrowing and sloppy looking lsit, or transfering everything onto a new list each day. As Mr. Allen points out, both scenarios are highly demoralizing because in both instances you’re basically telling yourself you’re a failure. You didn’t finish your list, you big loser.

A New Kind of List
So what’s so different about GTD lists? They are organized differently. Instead of having one big list of all the things you have to do, you keep several context specific lists. For example, you have calls to make, errands to run, etc. My work involves creative writing time, so I have a list of drafts to create. One very important list if you work with other people is the Waiting For list. I go into some detail about this over on Busness Pundit. Basically, it’s a running inventory of things you’re expecting from others. It’s invaluable in making sure things don’t slip through the cracks.

One of David Allen’s site bloggers has created a nifty Excel version. I use the second option, with separate tabs for all your contexts. In addition, I wrote a macro to sort by date, because I’m always changing due dates around to accommodate new priorities. And because I’m a geek.

The beauty of these lists is that you can tackle action items based on where you are, what you have access to, and what your energy level is. I may not have a lot of mental muscle in the evening, but I can knock off things like ‘look up current refinance rates’ or ‘remind Angie about fundraiser Friday’. That way all my little annoying tasks don’t build up. The whole idea is to empty your mind of nagging thoughts of all the stuff you have to do, confident that it’s all on the lists.

Someday…
One of the more fun lists is the Someday/Maybe list. Every time you think of something you’d like to do someday, maybe – add it to your list. So far mine has ‘orgnize recipes’, ‘learn to write white papers’, and ‘publish an anthology of stories about outsiders encountering the Bible Belt’.


Let me know if you try the lists and how they work for you. Next week I’ll talk about the difference between actions and projects, and how you can improve your odds of actually starting and maybe even finishing some of those Someday/Maybe dreams!