Tips for Taming Distractions at Work

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Claire

Originally posted 2007-10-02 20:10:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

I often hear from people that they come in to the office early in the morning or on weekends just to get some work done in peace. They don’t particularly like doing it, but they do like the quiet and the lack of interruptions from phone, email and coworkers.

Lifehacker yesterday ran a post about “guerilla tactics” people use to get some distraction-free time at work. This was a favorite:

“A couple colleagues of mine and I schedule fake meetings so we can sit
and get an hours work done. If it’s just the three of us, it’s quiet
and easy because we know why we’re there.”

Over at 43Folders, there were several good ideas for managing emails and meetings, such as “filter any email that contains the string “to unsubscribe.”
Although many of these certainly will be valuable (sign-ups, Google
lists), that string means there’s a good chance they’re also bulk messages
that are being generated automatically. And some folks want to only see
those sorts of emails, again, once or twice a day — and only when they
have extra time”

Email in this category is being referred to these days as bacn. It’s not as bad as spam but it significantly clogs inboxes.

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Pay Your Bills

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Claire

Next week is National Pay Your Bills Week. Isn’t that exciting? Okay, so it’s not. It’s important though. Like filing, death, taxes and going to the dentist, bill paying is a must.

How could it be easier?

Use online banking. I believe this is a very safe way to pay, despite recent alarms. You have to do your part to make it safe, however.

Remember:

  • Don’t click on links from bank emails! Just don’t ever do it. Many intelligent people have been scammed this way. Go to your bank website, log in and check for messages.
  • Check that the website address starts with https instead of just http. The “s” means the site uses encryption. Windows users will see a closed padlock indicating encryption at the bottom right of their screens.
  • Create passwords using letters and numbers, not common words. Here’s a post I wrote about how to make good passwords. Keep them safe! I record mine using hints only as described in the post.
  • Change your passwords regularly, at least twice a year.

Even if you don’t want to bank online, you can save trees and reduce clutter by getting your bills electronically. And don’t print them out! I do recommend downloading the PDF version if you want to keep a record. Sometimes your bills are only on the website for a few years and you may have to pay a fee to recover old ones.

Schedule days every month to pay bills and put them in your datebook. I use email reminders in iCal to pay my bills twice a month. Choose dates that allow for online processing or mail delivery so your payments aren’t late.

What’s to be gained by doing this?

  • Freedom from worrying about what is due when, and paying bills multiple times per month.
  • No more late fees!
  • Spending less time on a task you don’t really like anyway ;)
Posted in Email, Mail, Paper, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Packing List for Holiday Travel

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Claire

Originally posted 2007-11-09 18:42:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Holiday travel season is coming up! If you’re going somewhere, use a packing list. It will ease your travel considerably.

I use checklists a lot, all kinds of them. They’re very helpful for making sure nothing falls through the cracks, and I get the satisfaction of checking off items as I do them. I put everything on my checklists because I find that the most common things I forget are the ones that seem most obvious (my toothbrush, for example). When my checklist is as complete as I can make it, I can stop worrying about forgetting things and focus on worrying about missing the plane (!)

There are many generic packing lists on the Internet, such as this one on a travel website. It includes tasks to take care of before leaving home; a great addition. I recommend cobbling together several lists and then editing them to suit your own travel style and to comply with current security regulations.

Again, it’s important to add in everything you can thing of and be specific. For example, the entry for arranging for pet care might also include: make sure this person has a key to get into your home! On the other hand, a checklist is great because it helps you avoid packing unnecessary items; you’ve already decided what you need to take. As this site points out, a packing list

"…defends against last-minute attacks of "I might need this." The worst possible time to be considering what to take on a trip is while you are packing for the trip!"

Hindsight, of course, is 20-20. You can refine your list by making notes while you’re on your trip. Was there something important you forgot? Did you bring some clothes you never wore? Did you have the right shoes? Would it be great next time to have a book light so you can read in bed (I’m always amazed at how poor hotel room lighting can be)? If you’re traveling domestically, what about bringing stamps with you so you can actually mail those postcards from your destination?

Happy trails!

Posted in Tools | 3 Comments

How to Weed Out Your Clothes Closet

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Claire

Originally posted 2008-06-06 09:38:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

It can be hard to know where to start when you want to pare down your clothes. If you're going to spend some time and go through everything, take it all out and pile it on the bed. That way you have to make a commitment to keeping something by putting it back in the closet. When you flip through the garments on their hangers, it's too easy just to keep everything.

 If you want to do a quicker purge, try my friend Ellen's technique, "Always, Sometimes, Never." Start at one end of the hanging rack and ask your self whether you wear each garment always, sometimes or never.

  1. "Always" is for clothing you wear all the time. It also makes you look and feel good. (If you're wearing
    something a lot that doesn't make you look and feel good, we have to talk…)Dress up
  2. "Sometimes" is for garments you don't wear that often, but they have a specific function, such as a
    velvet top you would wear to a fancy dinner or a pantsuit for special business meetings.
  3. "Never" is for anything that you never wear because:
  • Even though you paid a lot for it, you don't like it
  • It doesn't fit
  • It doesn't make you look great
  • Even though it was a gift, you just don't like it
  • It doesn't make you feel great
  • It's damaged and not worth fixing
  • It seemed like a good idea at the time, but, honestly, you don't like it

Keep the Always and Sometimes items (the Sometimes items might be better off at the back of the closet where they're out of the way). Get rid of the Never items. If it's just that you don't like them, they may have resale value. If not, cut to the chase and donate them to the thrift store.

The quicker you get them out of your life, the better. Why? Because now you have room, physically and psychically, to get some new clothes that you love and make you look and feel fantastic!

Have you purged your closet recently? How did it go?

Posted in Clutter, Technique | Leave a comment

Storage Units: Good or Evil?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Claire

My general rule about storage units is this: avoid them at all costs! People rent them and forget ‘em and they often turn out to be filled with junk.

Let’s look at why you really might need a storage unit.

There’s a short list of reasons that are acceptable.

  • You are temporarily living in a place that’s too small for your possessions
  • Your temporary living situation will be so short that it doesn’t make sense to move all your stuff in
  • You’ve inherited a large quantity of stuff that will take time to sort through
  • Your home needs repairs due to flood or fire

Notice that all these reasons are valid only because the storage is temporary. There’s no good reason to keep things permanently in storage.

Just as you shouldn’t live beyond your means financially, you shouldn’t live beyond your space means either.

I read this quotation from a storage industry executive: “People turn basements into home theaters or turn garages into family rooms and they need space for storage.” I call that living beyond your space means.

Of course, it’s much more common to fill up the garage with stuff so there’s no room for the car and to fill up the basement too so there’s no room for a workshop or pool table. People also fill up their spare rooms so they aren’t so spare anymore.

Okay, on to bad reasons to have a storage unit:

  • You moved in a hurry and just boxed stuff up and ditched it there
  • You’ve moved a number of times and keep adding to the mystery box collection
  • You inherited stuff 20 years ago and never got around to deciding whether you even like it
  • The stuff that’s in there is not worth a fraction of what it costs to rent the unit
  • You’re storing things for your children to have when they grow up and your kids are babies now
  • Keeping stuff you’re going to sell on eBay someday
  • Saving clothes you’ll fit into someday
  • Hanging on to an exercise machine you’ll use someday

All these reasons involve unmade decisions or hanging onto stuff for future situations that may never come to pass.

They also involve spending money; a lot of it if you keep paying rent year after year.

The year is still young! Make 2012 the year you make those decisions and start living in the present.

Posted in Clutter, Decision Making, Storage, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Circa Notebook, you gorgeous thing!

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Claire

Originally posted 2008-08-22 09:51:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Now that I've got a bee in my bonnet about returning to a paper-based organizing system, I'm finding wonderful paper goods all over the place. Most of them I've never even heard of before (I did already know about the Moleskine cult, though). One stylish and eye-catching number is the Circa notebook from Levenger. 

The appeal to this system is that it's customizable, rearrangeable on the fly, very flexible and pretty nice eye candy too. I've ouched my fingers in three ring binders too often to put up with them anymore, and I never get good results trying to jam a torn-out sheet of spiral binder paper back into the binder.Notebook

The way the paper stays in is very clever and cool looking and tricky to describe. It was hard to see on the company website, but a post on Lifehacker has lots of close up pictures that really show how it works. Their high paper quality, among other things, makes them quite popular elsewhere on the Internet and many users have multiple books for different tasks.

I love the ease of reordering sheets in this binder. And adding complete new sections wherever you want! I wish I could see one in person but they seem to be available only through Levenger, which has no brick and mortar stores in my area. Still, paper is beckoning me…

Well loved notebook from waffler's photostream.

Posted in Paper | 4 Comments

Idea > Decision > Action

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Claire

For many people, it’s easier and more fun to think up new ideas than to take action on the ones they already thought of. Buckling down and focusing on one idea and making it happen can make them antsy.

Sometimes the project you take on is very large and there are so many things to address that you’re tempted to start them all at once. When it comes to organizing, this can get you into trouble.

The process is this: have an idea, make a decision, take the action.

For example, the idea could be “organize the bottom shelf,” the decision is “only have notebooks, pads and file folders there,” and the action is getting those items into the spot and finding other homes for anything that doesn’t fit those categories.

Here’s what happens when you leave off the action part.

My client, Annie,* is a big picture kind of gal. She’s very good with coming up with ideas and making decisions. The action part, not so much. She’d rather move on to the top shelf, or the counter above the shelves, or the table on the other side of the room.

She had numerous shopping bags with things sorted into them. Some of them were marked, some not. There were also piles and collections of items on which decisions had been made. This is definitely progress, but it’s not enough.

We needed to spend some time moving the physical stuff around.

For Annie, this was the tedious, low priority part. But not doing it was impeding our progress. It was like having puzzle pieces all over the floor and knowing exactly where each one went, but not assembling them into a completed picture.

Is this a sticking point for you? Look around and see if you’ve collected some piles of decisions that need a nudge to get to the next step. If taking the action seems dreary and monotonous, approach it like washing the dishes. It’s a chore that needs doing and you don’t really need to like it.

The good news is that you’ll stir up some good energy by moving things along. You’ll also see some inspiring progress when you see the results of all that decision making!

* Not her real name. In fact, whenever I write about my clients, I’m usually combining events and compositing people.

Posted in Clutter, Decision Making, Motivation, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mail-Free Tuesdays?

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Claire

Originally posted 2009-01-29 12:16:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Old post office
We all get too much mail. We all complain about too much mail. And soon, there may be a day every week where no mail comes at all.

The US Postal Service is considering dropping mail delivery either on Tuesday or Saturday, historically the lightest volume days. USPS officials say, "The Postal Service may be running out of cash by year’s end."

USA Today wrote: ""We hope these changes go unnoticed by the customer," spokesman Gerald McKiernan said at the time." Perhaps they will. Between email and other delivery services such as UPS, we may only be missing our daily allotment of junk mail. What do you think? Will you even notice?

Old Post Office photo courtesty of yeowatzup's photostream. 

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A Million Ways to Organize Your Stuff

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Claire

Originally posted 2011-03-02 11:08:40. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Feed the babiesEverybody loves top ten lists. Or any kind of numbered list. Five Ways to Pamper Your Siamese Cat. Top 50 Favorite Bagel Toppings. 100 Best Tips for Losing Weight by Eating Pineapples.

Ideas galore!

Throw them out. You don’t need them. I’m not saying they aren’t good ideas. I’m just saying you don’t need them. And I’m saying that you already know this. What you need is to do something with the good ideas you already have.

I’m guilty of this myself. I look for inspiration, for motivation, for something new, dammit. What I notice, though, is that I look more obsessively for a new idea when I’m stuck on an old one.

I was on a conference call this morning and got two good ideas. I am committed to working on one of them today. I know that if I don’t, its luster will fade a bit. It won’t seem as exciting or promising. My infatuation for it will be over and I may callously discard it.

The second idea I will keep safe and at hand, because I can only work on one at a time. I’m already mentally preparing myself for not loving it quite so much when I’m ready to act on it. I’m making notes about why I think it’s a good idea, in case I look at it later and scratch my head.

Maybe it’s not the best idea in the world. But I have it now. I spent time finding it. I don’t want to waste that time by not using it. If I decide not to use it, I want to be sure it’s not because I feel intimidated or worried or discouraged about whether I can use it effectively.

It’s that, not just the distraction of the new, that gets me out searching again.

What if it doesn’t work?

What if I waste a lot of time?

What if people don’t like it?

What if I’m horribly embarrassed by it?

It’s not easy to get through that swamp of worries, but I need to.

If I don’t, I’m caught in an endless quest for the perfect idea. And I never find out what would happen if I actually did something.

Does this happen to you? How do you handle it?

Birdies by novemberwolf
Posted in Concepts, Effectiveness, Less is More, Procrastination | 2 Comments

Clutter is Tiring

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Claire

It’s exhausting, actually.

It’s hard on the eyes.

It hems you in.

Sometimes it feels like it’s just in the background, just there in case you need it. But then you remember how relieved and calm you felt last time you cleared out that clutter, as if a weight had been lifted.

Clutter niggles at you, subtly draining your energy.

Old magazines whisper “read me!” Piles of clothes coax “come sort me!” Your crafts bag says “come play with me!” This creates a low level of background chatter in your brain that’s more distracting than you realize.

One of my clients has a lot of clothing. More than will fit in her closets. The last time I saw her, the ironing board in the bedroom and the chair next to it were piled high with clothes. We’ve made progress, but it’s a big project.

It seemed to me that she was feeling worn down by constantly seeing the piles and waking up to them every morning. So, we moved them to her office. Now, that’s not a solution, it’s just an interim step in this long project.

Her mood lightened up right away.

She took a big breath and stretched her arms out. The room suddenly felt bigger and more restful to the eyes. I predict she’s sleeping better at night too.

If you have a lot of sorting to do, try to keep it contained or covered in between sessions. You’re not hiding the truth, you’re letting yourself focus on other parts of your life instead of being nagged all the time by this undone project.

Here are a couple of sorting techniques to try: triage and quick declutter.

Posted in Clutter, Concepts, Technique | Leave a comment