Your Organizing Coach

How Planning Ahead Can Make You Happier

I talked with someone recently about planning and why he avoided it. He thought it was rigid and unimaginative. On the contrary, I replied, taking up the challenge. I’ll show you how it's flexible and creative. 

Here’s the situation: it’s a warm fall afternoon. Me: Let’s go to the beach! Him: Great, I’m ready. Me: Wait, there’s some stuff I want to take. Him: Let’s just go! 

Planning in advance does all these wonderful things: 

• It creates focus, which then inspires action. Once the beach idea came up, there were a lot of things I knew to do because I could visualize the possibilities
  
  
• Visualizing foresees problems. (It could be cold)
  
  
• Planning crystallizes desire. (I had the desire not to be cold, so I brought a jacket)
  
  
• Keeping track of time makes positive outcomes more likely (we'll get to the place before it closes)
  
  
• Planning closes the gap between wanting something and getting it (the clearer you are about what you want, the faster you can get it)
  
  
• It honors my preferences. They are important to me because I know from experience that they directly affect the pleasure I get from an activity. I can’t control everything (it could rain) but I can control many things, and quite easily (I want a knife for the mayonnaise, not a twig we found on the ground). 

Planning likes this requires imagination because you visualize what could happen. Not just that it might get cold, but that it might be fun to bring a book to read together. Planning is flexible because you can bring a change of clothes in case you decide to go out for dinner on the way home, for example.

You’re not planning a strict schedule that must be adhered to; you're accounting for some other wonderful possibilities you haven’t even thought of. 

Picnic shelters from Ed Siasoco's photostream.

What I Learned at Burning Man about Time

I was at Burning Man for about three months. Okay, not really, but it felt that way. I'd talk with my camp mates about something that had happened a few days before and we'd joke that it was six weeks ago.

And it was a good thing! How did it happen? Because I was in the present. Pretty much the whole time.

I did get pretty overstimulated initially by the weather, the constant music, all the new people and not being able to sleep enough. At that point, I really wanted time to speed up, for it to be over.

But I adjusted, with the help of some fantastic camp mates. And then I got into the flow. Time went away. There was day and night still, but nothing had to happen at a particular time. Only a few things had to happen at all: eating, drinking water, putting on sunblock, sleeping (not optional for me ;)).

Everything else was extra, a wonderful bonus. Time never ran out. It didn't feel slow, it just was always plentiful. Conversations flowed. Great ideas for excursions bubbled up. Everywhere we went was just the right place, until we went somewhere else. It was a magical feeling.

Wouldn't it be great to feel that way now, at home (in the "default world")? Here are some ways you can:

• Keep your to do list short and do-able. Yes, you have too much to do, but putting it all on today's list isn't going to get it done. It will just make you crazy.
• Do things well enough. Forget about making hospital corners on your bed in the morning when just pulling up the duvet will suffice. Overdoing it is usually not about making it better anyway. It's about being afraid of doing it wrong. Well enough is not wrong.
• Let things be. Most of the time, you don't have any control over how things play out. You've done your part well (see above). Now stop.

Welcome to the present. Pull up a chair and stay awhile.

Hammock swinging from Meagan's photostream.

Fighting a Hidden Distraction at Work

Many a blog post has been written about turning off your phone and closing your email program and browser so you can get some work done. Tips about deflecting office visitors and avoiding meetings can combat those in-person distractions. But there's another subtle way that you get off track, and that's by doing other people's work.

The thing is, it's usually easier to solve someone else's problems than your own. When you give advice to a friend, you have no difficulty thinking up ideas to get her out of her predicament. And we all appreciate the more objective point of view of our friends in addressing our own challenges. 

If you do this at work, though, you're usually short changing your own projects. Every time you get sucked into an office crisis or even just volunteer to look up information to respond to a casual request, you're doing a task that someone else should be doing.

I'm not saying you should become a hermit and never offer to help. Just be mindful about whether you are also honoring your own commitments. Here are a few ways to do this:

• Schedule work appointments with yourself and keep them. Putting them on a shared calendar is helpful to let others know you're busy
• Create an email auto-responder that you can easily activate for the times that you need to be distraction-free. Let correspondents know when you'll be back on line
• Have office hours. Put a sign on your door that says you're open from 1-4 pm
• Don't respond to casual requests that are sent to a group. Let someone else respond
• If necessary, set an hourly timer so you can check in with yourself and make sure you're on track

Cream puff assembly line from misocrazy's photostream

Why You Shouldn't Read This Blog

We know it's important to limit our time online when it involves pointless web surfing. But a lot of what we read and discover online is really interesting, helpful stuff (like this blog!). You could easily spend all day finding treasures on the Internet.

This goes for interviews and videos you download too. Those are more insidious because once they're downloaded, out of sight, out of mind. You think you learned something valuable today because you have the thing, but you haven't actually listened/watched yet.

The problem with doing that is that you don't spend any time incorporating that reading into your life by practicing the new skill, trying out the new idea or using that important thought in your thinking. That's the grunt work of change.

I am guilty of this as much as anyone and it takes willpower for me not to read something that could be interesting. I need to remind myself (out loud, if necessary) that I don't have time to take in this new information because I'm busy with the projects on my whiteboard. I've got time to read it, but not to do anything useful with it.

That's not to say that all reading must be purely practical. There's value to reading for pleasure or intellectual curiosity. It's a good idea to be conscious of your purpose though, so you know how you're spending your time.

If you're reading to develop a new habit or learn a new marketing strategy, you'll need to act on that reading, or else it's a pointless as the aforementioned surfing. Be aware of why you're reading and decide on one thing you'll do to take action.

My aim with this blog is to express one simple idea with each post and suggest a way to put it into action. So here it is. The next time you find yourself knee deep in some fascinating article on the web, ask yourself "what action will I take to make this part of my life?"

Action figure from Fuyoh!'s photostream.

Announcing the "Make Time Now" Contest!

Could you use a little more time in your life? Do you find yourself wondering where the day went? If so, read on. You could be a lucky winner!

What you'll win:

An hour long, one-on-one Make Time Now session with me, Claire Tompkins, the Clutter Coach. In this session, I'll determine your three biggest time wasters and provide personalized strategies for you to stop losing precious time and start getting things done.

How to Win:

Write one paragraph about your biggest time management challenge and post it on your blog or Facebook page with a link back to this post. Then email MakeTimeNow@cluttercoach.net with your entry. Or just email your entry to MakeTimeNow@cluttercoach.net if you don't have a blog. Enter today; don't miss the deadline!

Contest rules:

Three lucky winners will be chosen at random from entries submitted by March 29, 2010. You'll be contacted by me to schedule your session right away!

Get a Deadline

At a presentation I did the other day, one of the participants came up with a great way to manage her time better: get a deadline. Someone had asked her for information and she wasn't willing to take time from her own work to give it right away. However, she didn't want to leave the person hanging either. If she knew when the info was needed by, she could work it into her schedule and not let it interrupt her.

Be proactive and give deadlines yourself. Make it easier for others to help you by letting them know exactly what you need and when you need it.

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!

To Do List Hints on Video

I'm having fun with video! Here's my latest one about to do lists. I talk about three important elements: make it short, write it nice and give it an end. It features a lovely to do list I posted about back in June.

What topic shall I use for the next video?

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.

Racing Against Time

"Try as you will, you get behind in the race, in spite of yourself. It's an incessant strain to keep pace… And still you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment… Everything is high pressure. Human nature can't endure much more."

A quotation from last week's newspaper? No. This ran in the Atlantic Journal on June 16, 1833.

The moral of the story is that the speed of life constantly accelerates. Always has. There were no "good old days." Whatever systems and coping mechanisms you have in place now may not work in five years, or even next year.

Expect change. Embrace it. You can't predict what the change will be, but you can certainly predict that change will occur. Keep your systems simple and flexible. Check in to make sure they're still sufficient and don't be afraid to revamp them. That's how you stay ahead in the race.

Antique newspaper from pareerica's photostream.