Since I’m in the middle of this process right now, I figured it was a good time for this post.

Aside from the bureaucracy that your event or cause or benefit or organization must go through, here are the steps I use to duplicate Golf Scrambles over and over.

Step #1 You can’t do it all yourself. Find a small team maybe two or three others who can help. It would be best if everyone brought different personalities or skills to the table. For instance in the scramble I assist with every year, we have one person who knows a lot about food/catering and likes to hustle for door prizes and hole sponsors. We have another person who can get a lot of teams together. He has a large Rolodex and a good relationship with a lot of that Rolodex. I act as the organizer, planner, and also do my share of hustling for teams, prizes and sponsors. I also MC the event the day of.

Step #2 Pick the right course and the best date. If you pick a course and pro that is easy to work with, your scramble will go much smoother. Make sure you spot check your date with big events and other large scrambles. You’ll never steer clear of everything, but the last thing you want is to schedule it the same day as another large organization or on a major holiday weekend. If you’re looking at a weekday versus a weekend, just remember that during the week you’ll draw more business teams and serious golfers. On the weekend you’ll capture more of the family and friends crowd.

Step #3 Focus on 3 main things- Teams, Door Prizes, Hole Sponsors. I have a cookie cutter system now after 5 years. I have flyers for prospecting and each year I can just change the info. We use our website to link up the forms and to collect online registrations. We used to just get a paper form turned in. Either way will do. We have forms to track teams, hole sponsors and lots of forms for instructions on the day of the scramble.

With Teams here are my tips.

• Don’t allow individuals to register as this creates a communication and logistics nightmare.
• Sell 4 somes and collect the money up front, this way the team captain becomes responsible for securing his players and not you. This is especially important because players will drop and things will come up. If you don’t get the money up front; rain, a bad hair day, lack of coffee or a good show on TV could cause a team to not show up.
• You can handicap of flight the event or just have each team for themselves (this is what I prefer but not every organization is the same and some will want to make it fair-life’s not fair though)

With Door Prizes here are my tips.

• Make sure everyone gets one.
• We like to give out gift certificates in $10 increments and restaurants are willing to give them, although golf balls, shirts and other like items work well.
• Make sure they are equitable, don’t have one guy get a foursome to a nice club worth $160 and the next guy gets a mesh hat or umbrella. Since this is not based on performance I think it makes sense to make this equitable.
• Offer a nice sign in exchange for a $50 to $100 donation (this depends on the price tag of your scramble- it’s just math so adjust the numbers based on your ticket price)
• Door prizes are the result of walking into restaurants or businesses giving them information, following up and following up some more. It won’t just happen- trust me.

With Hole Sponsors here are some tips.

• Try and engage businesses in your area. For our scramble we prospect in Middletown.
• Don’t try and pit all kinds of businesses against one another. Use that as a selling point. The first widget company we get will be the last widget company we approach.
• Offer signage (don’t skimp), a link on your website for a period of time and the ability to include sales literature in packets for each golfer. Be creative or encourage them to be.
• Patronize your sponsors- we really believe in and live this one out. That’s probably why we get little resistance from our sponsors each year.

As a side note to these tips, I recommend developing relationships with vendors and using them each year. Sure you can always find someone cheaper, but cheaper doesn’t mean better and it doesn’t mean smoother. I don’t shop our vendors unless they give us a reason too.

Step #4 Rehearse the flow of the event in your mind and in your notes. Visualize people showing up and registering. Visualize people playing and having fun and this will help you to remember the small details that sometimes slip through the cracks.

Hit a home run, and have fun with it by all means.

Recently, I was presented with the opportunity to conduct a workshop on organization (one of my passions obviously) at Lowe Chiropractic and Wellness. I had a few weeks to prepare for the topic “Organizing for Less Stress”. The topic made me rethink why I promote organization and productivity.

Why get organized? I came up with 4 big reasons.

1. Free Your Mind for Creativity
2. Free Your Calendar for Opportunities
3. Free Your Life for the Important
4. Free Your Home for the Essential

Second Question- How to get organized?

I broke it down into 3 areas which you can start working on today.

This is a simplistic cliff notes version, but it may be just enough to get you to act and not enough to overwhelm you into inaction.

Your Physical Space

Physical clutter leads to Mental clutter so use the Sort, Purge, Assign, Containerize, Assess system to rid your home, office, business and life of clutter.

Once you have removed the debris and cloudiness from your life, put things back in their home when you’re finished using them. If you fail here, you’ll be back at the previous step far too often. These two steps will renew your focus like you would not believe.

The label maker is your friend. Don’t rely on your memory. Label things to make them easier to locate.

When creating habits centered around your new found organization, do not lie to yourself and break commitments with yourself continually. When you break your word to yourself you’re putting yet another obstacle between you and a changed habit.

Getting Things Done

Learn how to master ubiquitous capture made famous by David Allen’s GTD book and training. Instead of letting thoughts, ideas, tasks, notes and projects fester in your mind, or even worse losing some of them; capture these thoughts in a system- preferably the GTD system. Get those open loops out of your head. They are holding you in bondage anyway.

Implement the someday/maybe tickler system. For example:

• Someday/Maybe books to read
• Someday/Maybe trips to take
• Someday/Maybe advertising options
• Someday/Maybe events to attend

Don’t let these someday/maybes hog the space that belongs to your next most important actions or your key project lists and plans. Keep them in their own little system and review then as part of your weekly review.Use physical file folder, use Backpack or use a simple text file; the tool doesn’t matter as much as the system itself.

Use the inbox zero philospophy taught here.

Do the aforementioned weekly review. Take 2-4 hours each week and scan every placeholder or collection bucket in your system. Follow David Allen’s flowchart in his book. You’ll have to buy it or visit his website to see if it’s referenced there.

Productivity Techniques

Pareto Principle- apply the 80/20 rule liberally to your life, home and business. It’s a great liberator.

Batching-let those routine tasks with high startup times accumulate and do them at a set time.

Parkinson’s Law-a task or project will contract or expand based on the amount of time you allow for it. Put this to work for you by planning time and projects tightly.

Elimination- say no and get rid of more stuff.

Outsourcing- find ways to delegate some of what you do to others for less per hour. Virtual assistants and outsourcing services come to mind.

Routine-makes somethings part of a daily, weekly or monthly routine. Similar to batching yet different. The credits here go to the 4 hour workweek.

Morning

• Wake up at 5 AM- I formed this habit by focusing on it for 30 days in January. Ask me how!

• Usually I post to Twitter- just a trigger for my early wake up ( I try not to check email, but it’s tough).

• 5:15 AM- I break open God’s word- usually I focus on reading assignments from my discipleship class.

• 5:45 AM- I read another book (currently I’m finishing Tony Dungy’s 1st book and a church history book).

• 6:00 AM- I take a shower and get dressed (two days a week I shave my big bald head).

• 6:30 AM- I have a quick meeting with a man about a mule and have my calls held. I also stretch for 20 min.

• I usually turn off the radio and enjoy some quiet prayer time and listening time on the way to Java Brewing Co.

• 7:15 AM- I have old fashioned oatmeal with raisins, water, vibe-and I start into the dark roast no/c-no/s.

• I typically read another quick devotional or pamphlet or a snip of the paper while I eat.

• 7:30 AM- I start through my daily GTD review session. This is a scaled down version of the weekly review.

• 8:30 AM- People start rolling into the coffee shop and I usually begin to write or do marketing for an hour.

• 9:30 AM- I pack it up and head home or to clients or to another favorite cafe. Tasks vary widely at this point.

Afternoon

• I eat a light lunch- either left overs from our dinner the night before, hummus and pita bread or soup/salad.

• Sometimes after lunch my wife and I debrief about the kids, scheduling, company tasks or her resale business.

Evening

• 6:00 PM- Dinner with the family nearly every night- it’s rare that I miss this.

• 6:30 PM- The whole family hangs out and then cleans up after dinner. Daddy is the pickup organizing guy.

• 7:30 PM- Bath time for kiddos and then story, family prayer time and bedtime at 8:15 PM.

• 8:15 – 11:00 PM- Ashley and I spend time together, or we work. Usually I write, develop word press sites, manage online marketing efforts for customers or do creative projects like videos. On the weekends we watch movies, play games or do hobbies.  I only plan on doing this nightly work routine until I don’t have to any longer.

I would love to know what works for you. If you would like, you can fill out this Google form. If your daily routine is interesting or amazingly productive or unique; I’ll publish it. Of course I reserve the right not to. I would love to see what other people do for a daily routine. You never know how a little tip or idea here or there can benefit someone else.

• What is the point of organization?
• Who cares if my stuff is neat and my stars are aligned?
• What does it matter if I use a system to accomplish my work?
• Who cares?

It is no secret that I have a passion for organization, but lately I’ve become aware of my true passion for creativity and productivity. I battle an obsessive compulsive spirit and have a tendency to get distracted easily and lose focus. I’ve never been diagnosed with anything and don’t plan on walking around with a meaningless label or excuse. Instead, I work my butt off trying to control my environment, my habits and my focus.

So that still brings us back to why- doesn’t it? Everyone likes to talk about productivity and organization, but many fail to say why. Just do it won’t convince people. Just do it won’t encourage people. Just do it won’t empower people. I want to explain in this post why I’m passionate about productivity and organization.

What’s keeping you from writing a book, painting a picture, taking amazing photos, learning a foreign language, playing a musical instrument, becoming a better golfer, studying history, volunteering at a local nursing home, being a grassroots political activist, taking a mission trip, starting a blog, producing a podcast, writing a screenplay, making someone laugh, organizing a fundraiser, having a family over for dinner, hosting a community group, being there for the kids games, being there for your spouse in a time of need, taking your spouse on a date, teaching and investing in your children, visiting shut ins, taking care of widows and orphans, reading a novel and solving big problems.

Time and your lack of efficient/effective productivity would be the answer. You see nothing on the list above has to do with money. A homeless man could do most of the things above without much if any money.

• How about another question?

What’s keeping you from supporting a ministry, missionary or non profit, from taking a nice family vacation, from cutting checks to those in need during tough times, from taking time away from work to minister to those in need, to invest in your family’s future, for Christians- to fund the gospel, to capitalize great new business ideas, to invest in your continued education, to travel and enjoy the world, to travel and do mission work, to have more children or adopt children without a home?

Money and your lack of it. Trust me this is a big struggle for the Raley Family just like it might be for your family. Most of my business life has been spent looking for and developing a muse for making money efficiently. After all what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul. I don’t want to do it while sacrificing family either.

So you ask why get organized? I want more time to spend on the first list above.

So you ask why get more productive? I want to be the steward of more money and resources for the second list above. Thus I focus on organization for time and productivity for money. There you have it.

The road to wealth lies in augmenting our means or diminishing our wants, either will do but the quickest is to do both- Ben Franklin

• You shoes- do you really need 10 or 20 or 80 pair of shoes
• Your books – see my previous blog post
• Your DVD’s or CD’s (guilty here) major sign of procrastination
• Your stamp collection unless you’re Hercule Poirot
• Anything that doesn’t lead to an increase in productivity or a simplification of life

In all seriousness it’s OK to organize some of these things but you must stop and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is this really procrastination?
2. How will this lead to me saving time or adding measurable productivity to my life or work.
3. Even if this needs to be organized is it a priority to do it right now?

If you’re stuck, then sometimes action of any kind will help you get moving and achieve little successes. In that case pull out the books and clean out the pantry. Take the dog for a walk or mow the grass. Lift some boxes and sweat a little, then quickly get back to the things that matter today.

I am terrible at this and that’s exactly why I’m writing it.

This is something a little different. It’s basically me talking (and rocking unfortunately) while I discuss four ways I simplify my life. The surprise ending has one thing I don’t do which simplifies my life. For those who read this blog but don’t know me, this will give you a little glimpse on the goofy side of me. You can also learn more here.

The question is why simplify life? For me it means more time to focus on the meaningful things. It means more time to pursue creativity and passions. For me it means more time with family, more volunteering and more time with my Lord, Jesus Christ. It means more time to change the world of politics, or health or business. It means more time to build the BOC and KOG. It doesn’t mean more time to sit around and focus on me or to watch TV or to play video games. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”-hat tip Seinfeld.

Simplify Your Life from Bryce Raley on Vimeo.

After reading a post from Russell Quinn at Spoiled Milk I was inspired to rethink the way I use GTD in combination with Backpack. I have borrowed some from Russell’s system, kept some of my own system and incorporated some other ideas as well. This has all become possible with the great news that you can reorder your sidebar in Backpack.

If you read Russell Quinn’s explanation you will quickly see that I have borrowed the Dropbox/Inbox home page tip. Which I think was the most powerful for me. Before my homepage was a hodgepodge of next action lists, ideas, my @task lists, and even some projects made there way onto the homepage. Next I borrowed the ^ Tasks, ^ Projects, ^ Waiting For, ^ Tickler, ^ To Buy, ^ Someday/Maybe although I was already using a few of these in a similar manner.

The next series of pages are prefixed with *. These pages are strictly reference pages which I might need certain days of the week, times of the month and during meetings.

The next series of pages are prefixed with @. All these pages are projects with more than five actions. Those I keep at the top of the page in the ^ Projects Page. Some of these projects are recurring like my Squidoo lenses, my weekly ezine and some annual events I organize.

Another prefix I use is $ and this marks all the pages for my blogs. These are blogs I run and ones I contribute to with others. It’s easy for me to take ideas in my inbox/dropbox daily and move them into the appropriate @ blog page.

Last is a list with no prefix. These are pages I share with small business and non profit customers. We collaborate on work for their wordpress blogs or social media campaigns. I also use these pages to share video tutorials and screencasts for training and digital coaching purposes.

Backpack is so great and there are so many uses. I recommend it to everyone. Whether you are a small business, a solo professional or a freelancer, sign up for a free account or trial.

This isn’t a perfect solution and I’m sure that you could find something just a little better at the end of the Internet- if you can make it all the way through. I know a few who’ve done it and lived to speak. For now, this simple little formula might help the 12 readers who frequent this site. The outlet that fills my passion for organization, simple living and GTD.

Take out last years calendar. It’s not too late, it’s still January. Besides you probably just dug out from under the Christmas and New Years work that accumulated while you were out.

If you use Google Calendar, a paper calendar, a day planner, a PDA or whatever else; simply go month by month and jot down the important events you attended each month in 2008. Make a tickler list- I use Backpack and create a folder like this ^Tickler- which lets me know it’s purely a reference folder. If you prefer paper make 12 folders with 12 months and have at it. I’ve done it this way, but I’m getting to where I can’t stand paper invites and clippings. Sorry old schoolers! I do still like to read the occasional physical newspaper like Business First.

Now I’m betting you have at least 4 -5 entries for each month of the year. Next think hard about all the things you do each year (we are creatures of habit). What things do you love to follow like sports, shows or conventions? Does your business or industry have specific meetings or conferences every year? Does your family consistently take vacations each year? Do you play in golf tournaments or scrambles each year? Jot them all down on your list or put them in a monthly folder. Now take a couple hours and go get the dates and times for the events. Use your list to check off the events that go onto the calendar and keep the ones that don’t have a date yet as a tickler/reminder that you still need to schedule it. Most organizations will finalize calendars by late January or early February from my experience.

Do this for a couple years like I have and you’ll know yourself much better and you won’t catch yourself planning a family reunion the weekend of the Masters or scheduling a vacation the same week as your industry conference. Oh yeah keep the list or folder system going each year. Don’t quit things that work, unless you find a better way.

Hope this helps. Give the ship that is your calendar a rudder to guide it. Things will pop up, but instead of being a headache they can become a cool diversion.

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.

This is a two part answer and the answer is never the same for two totally different people. I spent many years thinking of perfect solutions, when there are no perfect solutions. Even though I believe in principles which can work for everyone, the means or method may not. Want to watch a cool video that explains this in unique way.

I used to be a big time list maker, note taker, write on a calendar and planner kind of guy. About a year ago, I completely went digital with all my lists and to do’s and everything else. Before that I read David Allen’s GTD book, and I decided to try it with paper and folders. The system worked, but so many of my projects didn’t work that way. I was using Basecamp to work on my biggest current project, and I had found Backpack to be so useful in managing just about everything else. Well I love 37 signals aforementioned products and use them more than any other applications except Google. I don’t plan on stopping my use of them, but actually probably increasing it. What I did realize a few months back was notebooks and small pocket notepads are still the best way for me to capture a quick list, idea or thought. It is still the best way for me to draw out a mindmap or brainstorm a project to determine next actions. I was inspired yet again by a very digital guy, who still says the pen and pad trump typing in a web based application. If it takes me 5 minutes to locate my laptop, open it, wait a second to refresh my wireless connection, open up backpack, find the appropriate page and then type out my thought, it will always lose to grabbing my moleskin notepad out of my back pocket or my notebook and getting the thought out of my head. Earl Nightingale was famous for saying that ideas are like wet slippery fish. I have found that to be true. The only substitute for the Moleskin back pocket notepad for me, has been using the digital recorder on my cell phone. The only problem I encountered was that when I did a weekly review, which was about as often as I would check my little digital notes to self, I would have to replay the message and type it out into backpack. I didn’t like the extra step. It wasn’t my typing skills either. I type over 45 WPM, which isn’t ground breaking but it’s not slow either.

I have decided to use Backpack more for reference, personal projects, sharing pages with customers (works great to develop a word press site- although I’m experimenting with Basecamp for that right now) and someday maybe categories. I use my large moleskin notebook to record video ideas, blog architecture, mindmaps of my marketing plan and many other things. I use my small notepad to list my next actions for the day and to make quick notes throughout the day. I take both of these and review them as collection buckets during my weekly review session (for GTD’ers). I am trying to use Tim Ferris note taking system linked above, but I haven’t mastered the techniques or organization just yet. I use a new page for each day in my small notebook.

GTD suggests that you limit your amount of collection buckets. This is hard to do in a digital world but right now I’m trying to work within these parameters.

• Gmail-  Incoming messages, outgoing messages, waiting for, read/reviews, and next actions
• Google Reader- I read my feeds with this tool and use share and star as my filtering mechanism
• Delicious- it helps to have some broad tags like toreview, toread, toblog more on this in a future post
• Backpack- helps me stay on top of personal projects, customer projects and someday maybes
• Physical inbox- I still get mail, papers, business cards and other non-digital items that must be reviewed
• Large Moleskin- project notes, ideas, creative development, mind maps
• Small Moleskin- daily notes, reference, passwords to be indexed, phone numbers to be indexed
• Whiteboard- I have one behind my desk to record ideas when I’m working at my computer

A case could be made for Stumble Upon, if you really want the community to work as it should. I’m not there yet.

Also I like to review my reference folders using a File Map. If any name on the list prompts me with an open loop, I’ll take it through the GTD process.

Hope this helps. Maybe it’s not for you, but maybe it is for you.