Organizing for Less Stress
By · CommentsRecently, 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.
- Free Your Mind for Creativity
- Free Your Calendar for Opportunities
- Free Your Life for the Important
- 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.
My Current Daily Routine
By · CommentsMorning
- 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.
Organization-What’s the point?
By · Comments- 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
21) Organize your online presence
By · CommentsIf I had it do to all over again this past year, here is what I would do.
As a caveat, everything I post will be antiquated simultaneously when I hit the publish button.
Things change so fast right now on the web. You have to balance picking a point to stake out your ground and keeping an eye open for the really good stuff that comes out. The stuff you just can’t afford to ignore.
So, here is what I would have done this past year. I would have purchased a domain with my company name for a brochure type website. Maybe something done by someone with some good CSS skills and graphic design experience. I wasted weeks on this.
I would have purchased a catchier, snarky, simpler, unique domain to host a WordPress blog connected to the main website. I would never update the brochure site. I would update the WordPress site daily with great content.
I would have started every other blog on WordPress using ithemes theme club.
I would have used Tumblr to set up my personal blog.
I would use to Squidoo to organize and create any other information like sales pages, info pages, free reports, how to pages and basically everything else. I would have purchased less domain names and devoted more time to developing the ones I had.
I would have used Twitter more often and sooner. I would have used Twitter more often and sooner. I would have used Twitter more often and sooner.
I would have come up with a turnkey way to take pictures, shoot videos, edit them, upload them and share them. In other words I would have purchased a MAC book much sooner that I did.
I would make sure I had every website and blog and Squidoo lens linked back and forth to the others.
I would balance these endeavors the best I could while staying productive and getting things done.
