Archive for Organization
Family Meal Plan
Posted by: | CommentsA few months ago I decided that I would post a little info about how our family handles meal planning. I never got around to it and I’m glad I didn’t. Although the system we use is very much the same, the method and delivery have become so much simpler by using Google Calendar. We basically pick our favorite 30 meals. We plot them out throughout the month. We love these 0 meals. We could probably eat most of them once per week. Instead we limit ourselves to once per month. We hardly ever get tired of our favorite meals yet we don’t waster time saying what sounds good to you- I don’t care what sounds good to you. No more wasted air. We keep things flexible. Tuesday nights are date night and we typically pick our favorite restaurants and rotate them. On the weekends we leave some room for creativity. If we decide to try a new recipe over the weekend, we can still have some fun and spontaneity but no more last minute decisions. The other two things that make our meal planning simple is number one- we have slow cooked and prepped oven type dishes on the weekends. If we’re not feeling creative the last thing either of us wants to do on the weekend is cook. We have 3 kids under 3 and our time must be micromanaged. The second thing that keeps our meal planning simple is the coordination of ingredients. We plan our meals to use the same ingredients throughout a week. Buy some sour cream on Monday at the grocery, there is no need to despair since sour cream is featured two or three times throughout the week. Oh yeah, we only go to the grocery once per week. This is a rule in our home and we stick to it. We plan our meals, purchase our food and carry out our plan. It works well for us. We have more time to spend doing the things that really matter in life and less time doing the trivial things that don’t make much difference.
Check out our Google Meal Calendar.
Organization is futile without developing the proper habits
Posted by: | CommentsOrganization is futile without developing the proper habits and mindset. Call it a new philosophy about stuff, or a call it whatever you like. The fact remains- if you organize your home, your email, your systems, your finances, your garage, your files, your office, your iphone, your computer, your calendar or your life; they will probably become disorganized very quickly if you don’t work hard to develop new habits and a new mindset.
Here are the most important tips I can summarize to get you moving with small daily improvements in your organization quotient.
- Eliminate- the more you eliminate off your calendar, next actions list, projects list- the more you eliminate from your office, home, finances, and life in general the simpler you will make it to keep organized.
- Seek simplicity- if there is a complicated way to o something and a simple way, choose the simple way. Go for the big picture. Sometimes simple may cost a little more on the surface but after you look at the hidden costs ( opportunity cost, cost of time, cost of gas, cost of diffusion, cost of distraction) you’ll come out ahead by choosing a simpler more focused option.
- Organize your stuff. After step 1 and 2 you shouldn’t have that much stuff left to organize. The proper process to organize just about anything (hat tip to all professional organizers like myself, NAPO and where I first learned this system- Julie Morgenstern) is as follows. Sort by putting like items together by association, then Purge by tossing, selling, giving away or recycling, then Assign the remaining items a home, then Containerize the items in their home, then continually Assess your system.
- Put your stuff back in it’s home right now. Form the habit of picking up your stuff and putting it back after you use it. We teach our kids this right? Put you toys up before we go to bed. Put your books in your locker before you leave school. Put the dishes in the sink. Put those toys up before you get more out. So, my theory is that if we teach it to our kids you better do it yourself or you’re a hypocrite and kids are the best hypocrite detectors. Not to mention the fact that your life will be less stressful when you know where things are.
- Implement David Allen’s GTD system to handle the rest of your productivity concerns. This system will help you organize your thoughts and close the open loops in your mind. It will teach you to collect your information with various tools, to process this information and then how to act on it. You’ll create next actions lists, tickler file systems, project plans and lots of other helpful systems for increased personal productivity.
A lesson in delegation from Agatha Christie’s famous Hercule Poirot
Posted by: | CommentsI have blogged about one of my favorite characters in TV/literature on my personal blog at bryceraley.com. Over the next few weeks I’m pointing out some of the effective habits of the famous sleuth Hercule Poirot. If you have never seen Poirot or read anything from Agatha Christie you may want to read my past post here.
As I was watching an episode this week (I have the entire A&E series on DVD), I noticed how Hercule Poirot was a masterful delegator. Whether he is dictating a letter to Mrs. Lemon (his secretary) or sending Captain Hastings on a fact finding mission, Poirot exhibits the following traits.
- First he is precise. He gets on topic fast.
- Second he is direct. He doesn’t add extraneous details.
- Third he is decisive. He makes his mind up and then communicates with confidence.
- Fourth he clarifies. He makes sure the task is understood. He listens to input but is the ultimate decider.
- He does all this politely. He says thanks and earns the respect of his assistants.
I haven’t mastered delegation yet. I haven’t even delegated much to this point, but I know that I have to start learning this artform.
Hopefully, the famous Belgian detectives M.O. can help you delegate your work more effectively. We all need to spend time as efficiently and effectively as possible in this time-strapped day and age.
Weekly How To Video Starting Jan 1
Posted by: Bryce A Raley | Comments (0)This is something we’ve been planning for a long time now but we’re ready to launch it. We are going to start posting a weekly video or screen-cast where we show our readers how to organize things in their business, office, home, finances and much much more. We will also open up our comments to allow suggestions from our readers.
I now have a Macbook to go along with my PC so recording some of these videos will much easier.