Archive for January, 2009
11) Organize your File Folders
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Organizing you physical files became much easier for me after I read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” book about a year ago. Since then I’ve helped businesses, practices and professionals implement the same system. I will detail below how I handle organizing my files on an ongoing basis.
Setting up the System was detailed in a past post.
This post is more about how I deal with these files on an ongoing basis.
First of all I have a File Map that has it’s own page in my Backpack account. I have kept the File Map in an excel or numbers file to this point, but my new method involves keeping it online. I will periodically, probably quarterly, print this out and put a hard copy in a cabinet with the files. For instance I’m leaving the hard copy I currently have in the filing cabinet (at the front of course in it’s own folder for easy access).
Secondly, when I do a weekly review; I scan the File Map to get an idea of next actions or projects associated with my personal reference files A-Z. I also look through the business/customers A-Z list and scan the financial files. This will quickly help me to get any ideas, projects or next actions out of my head and into a physical inbox or digital inbox for assignment- which would also take place during the weekly review. This is also a great time to purge a file that no longer has a use or can be easily eliminated.
The third part of this process involves creating new files (I avoid this like the plague because I find it’s easy to justify creating new files ). As I go through, say my physical inbox, I may find things that need to be filed that do not have a File Folder yet, for example a new customer. I have a label maker at hand before I begin this exercise and I quickly kick out a new label. Then I promptly file it away. All done Right? Nope, here is the last crucial step that most forget.
The last thing you must do is update the File Map so that it maintains it’s accuracy. This is so important because the very files you’ll probably need first- the newest ones, won’t show up on your map. So I quickly reference my digital list or spreadsheet if you go that route, and I delete the purged files and create a new entry for the new files.
Now we have a system.
10) Organize your ezine
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Some people have wondered and a few have asked how I send out a weekly email with the following categories of content each week without spending a decade doing it.
Each week I include in Simplified Solutions, LLC Weekly Email Newsletter these topics:
- Event of the Week- this is often a holiday or something like National Writers Week or Get Organized Month.
- Inspirational Movie of the Week- I’ve picked my favorite motivational movies and selected appropriate times for each movie- .i.e. It’s a Wonderful Life in December and Rudy at the start of Football season.
- Fun for the Week- these are often bowling, have a picnic in the park or visit a museum kind of activities.
- Quote of the Week- the quotes are many of my favorites and are hopefully timely- Martin Luther King, Jr was who I quoted this week.
- Book of the Week- this was a list of my favorite books I had already read or reviewed.
- Humor for the Week- often a quote from Pat Williams or Will Rogers- maybe Yogi Berra or Mark Twain.
- Bible Verse of the Week- again this list had many of my favorites.
The neat thing about all the above information is that it took about two days back in January of 2008 to compile this list in a spreadsheet. Across the top the columns were labeled with the weeks 1 through 52. In the rows from top to bottom were the categories above. In the spreadsheet cells was the content. Pretty straightforward. I did my research to match quotes, movies, events and humor with the time of the year.
At this point I thought all was done. I created a template in my express email (I’m considering jumping to Constant Contact as we speak). I would now simply log in each week edit the template and click send. This would have worked but it was a bit too boring to keep me excited about sending the ezine each week. Yes it might engage readers (we have about 40% readership weekly) but would it engage me to consistently send it each week (I only send one per week, no questions asked). Knowing myself and my struggle with focus, I left the door open for creativity each week to go along with the prepackaged content.
I decided that I would include a link and description of a very cool website I had stumbled across that would add value to my readers. Many are small business owners or non profits. Second, I would include a link to a cool product. At first I always tried to share products via my affiliate links but that quickly became old and not much fun. It was probably a little too selfish as well. Third, I featured a small business or non profit each week. I used businesses I knew, customers of mine and I took some submissions. I also included my recent blog posts which turned out to be my most popular links each week.
This whole process takes me 30-45 minutes or an hour max if I’m not feeling very inspired. The information in the spreadsheet is easy. I type it, read it, edit it, done. The last few entries require a few clicks, a couple control c’s, hyperlinks, target blank- open in new window, a couple control v’s and a perusing of my latest delicious bookmarks.
I hope you found this helpful. If you want to register for my weekly email click here. I hate spam so I’ve chosen the slow method of growing my list. Speaking could help when I get the time. The readership of 40% is good (so I’ve been told) and sometimes I think it may be better. Many times (just this morning actually), I bump into someone whose address never shows an open, but who says I love getting and reading your emails. Go figure. Needless to say the newsletter is not idea virus worthy yet, given that people are not sharing it and it’s not spreading the way I would like. I guess I’ll take all the positive feedback and the loyal readers and be content with that for now.
9) Organize Children’s Toys
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This should be a fun topic right after your children have opened a bunch of Christmas presents. Try taking them away now.
We have established some simple rules on the front end to cut down on the number of toys our children get.
1st) We ask everyone to only buy one gift per child. We have a big family so this still doesn’t cut it, but it helps.
2nd) We get rid of (give away or sell) one item for each new item that enters our home. This applies to toys just like everything else. It helps us curb the madness of materialism and consumerism that has run wild in this country. I’m not preaching as I have been guilty of this attitude in the past. No more though. We’ve decided for the simple life.
After applying these two rules, we can at least have a fighting chance to tame the clutter that is toys.
Will you occasionally sit down to a Dora doll in the middle of your back on the couch? Sure.
Will you step on a firetruck in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom? Sure.
Will you reach for a newspaper or magazine and get clippings from a coloring book? Sure.
However, it will be much less often if you follow this checklist.
- Use the kindergarten model for setting up your home. This means each area of your home has a purpose and activity associated with it. I actually think this is easier with one floor than with two or three and I’ll explain why shortly. For example, our three children do crafts and play with play dough in the basement in my wife’s craft area.
- Rough housing toys like balls and big cars and the small trampoline are in the basement. Our children spend time here in the winter mornings when they can’t go outside and play with similar toys.
- Toys like puzzles, books, games and movies are upstairs in their bedroom/playroom. Our goal here is to get the kiddos bathed, let them unwind and then allow them to do something calm before bed.
- On the first floor in our home, they have toys like doll houses and castles and a jungle man play set for our son. While my wife prepares meals or feeds our 9 month old, these types of toys really engage the kids and don’t require someones assistance. Often they use their little imaginations and play for an hour before they even notice they don’t have mommy or daddies full attention.
Now this is just the way we arrange toys. The key is the Kindergarten model. When we leave one area, for example the craft area, we must clean up all the crafts and put them back in their home. When we leave the basement play area, we must pick up all the balls and cars and blocks. This way the children associate specific activities with each area and they learn the habit of putting things back which will serve them later.
To clarify, why could it be easier to do this on one floor? Well most classrooms are one room and may have 25 children. They manage. Less is more in this case. The more room you have the more you will fill. The less you have, the more creative you can be and the less clutter you can accumulate. Imagine one room where each corner had a specific task. No steps to climb with three children. No taking toys to different floors. Simple is much better. I have been on mission trips to the Dominican Republic several times and they have very little room and little to play with, but they are some of the most joyful children I’ve ever encountered.
Here is the rub. Your children would rather play with cardboard boxes, cooking utensils, bins, balloons and just about everything but the toys they have anyway.
8) Organize your Delicious Bookmarks
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I love Delicious.
I use it everyday. I open it prior to opening any other tab in Mozilla. I start with delicious and move on from there. I have a tag for startup. This is where most of my bookmarks are for the many tools, sites and blogs I use on a daily basis. The term startup helps trigger my mind to say- oh yeah all the things I need to get started.The two major reasons why you should be using delicious in combination with Mozilla Firefox web browser are:
- You can access your bookmarks from any computer with an Internet connection. They are in the “cloud”.
- You can share bookmarks with others in your network, company or field etc.
- You shouldn’t need any more reasons besides one and two.
I also love to tag things with toread or toblog or toreview.
- toread is a blog post I’ve found online that didn’t come through RSS in my Google Reader. If it’s in Google Reader I star it or share it. That’s another day and another post.
- toblog is a topic or post or tool or site that I want to share with my readers on one of my personal or business blogs.
- toreview is typically a site that had great content but I didn’t have or want to invest time going down the rabbit hole to investigate it just yet.
Other than those three main tags, I get pretty liberal (I have trouble using the word liberal even in that connotation) with tags. I have some main ones like digitaltools, organization, socialmedia and shopping that help me lump a lot of similar bookmarks together.
Notice all my tags have no spaces. If you use spaces with your Delicious tags it will make the two words each their own tag. Make sure you pick up on this early if you’re new to delicious. They are just adding a bulk edit feature so going back to retag bookmarks can be a pain until that is rolled out.
7) Organize your fridge
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Does your fridge resemble this when you open it up?
I can’t stand opening up the door and staring into a jam packed fridge. It doesn’t get much worse for me than this. I realize this is dramatic, but it’s the thoughts racing in my mind.
What’s in here? A bunch of spoiled out of date food- maybe this stems from my week long bout with food poisoning as a teenager.
Where is the salad dressing or ketchup or pickles? Hidden from sight without moving twelve things, spilling two drinks and dropping a Tupperware container of leftovers on the floor.
What do we need from the store? I have no idea. Just buy everything you think we might need and we’ll cram it in there with all the outdated, expired stuff we already have.
Here are 7 quick rules to keep your fridge tidy.
- Buy less stuff at the store. Only stockpile things that can be frozen like meats, veggies or items that get stored in a pantry. Don’t go any farther out than a month or two. Don’t buy six months worth of crackers or coffee.
- Only cook what you’ll eat, or eat the leftovers in the following day or two. After that throw them out. If this offends your stewardship then buy a dog and make the dog happy.
- Give items in your fridge a home. How about: condiments on top shelf- milk, eggs, yogurt, cheeses and butter together in drawers and on their own shelf- leftovers and ingredients for today’s meal on there own shelf, fruits in one drawer, veggies in another, meats in another- frozen stuff sorted with like items in the freezer.
- Take things out and put them back where they go. Don’t just look for the open space.
- Clean your fridge out whenever you take out your garbage. Not every time. Whenever you take it for pickup. We only have to do this weekly but usually cook what we need or eat the leftovers quickly.
- When you store things always consolidate- take a huge casserole dish with one serving left and put it into a small container. When you come home from the store- take things out of their boxes, bins, and containers to save room with storage in the fridge.
- Be honest. With all things in organization, eliminate what you do not use regularly. By the time you use the 5th different type of cream or dip, odds are it will be green with mold. Save yourself the disgust of opening it and toss it now.
