You've had a pretty significant event or change in your life … or two or three in a row.
Empty Nest • Divorce • Widowed • Aging Parents
Parents/Kids/Grandchildren Moving In
Career Change • Self Employment
Downsizing • Death in your Family
AD/HD or other Significant Health Issues
Life’s big changes – We all get overwhelmed sometimes.
Moving onto a next chapter is about new perspectives: letting go, creating a new chapter, reorganizing our surroundings, and choosing new ways to spend time.
You're thinking differently about your “stuff,” your surroundings, and how you use your time.
You feel as if your home or home office-- well, they just don't reflect who you are anymore. Neither does how you spend your time. Too much, too little or not fulfilling.
You're ready to Organize for a Fresh Start and begin your next chapter.
"West has written on a topic dear to my heart, getting organized to cope with and embrace change and transitions. Organize for a Fresh Start is a great roadmap."
Judith Kolberg, Author
Conquering Chronic Disorganization
Judith Kolberg, Author
Conquering Chronic Disorganization
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August 25th, 2011Square One: What Do You Want from Your Time?
May 21st, 2012…Let go off this notion that life is solely about paying the bills, having responsibilities & essentially going through the motions… approaching every action and decision from this point of view limits your personal growth & overall life experience to a minimum.
This is a mindset that is keeping people locked in one spot, functioning, but not living. Once you start seeing life as an adventure, everything changes. You will believe in yourself and in your skills and you will put them to use for something meaningful & fun.*
My theme this month has been life balance. This quote is a beautiful reminder.
How often do people tell me that they barely have time to handle regular work and household and family responsibilities – never mind the “higher values” of life, the things they would do on their adventure, as Anne-Sophie says it.
Often!
I’ve seen a shift over the past few years in my client base. More and more people are focusing on how they’re using their time. Are they getting done what they want around their house, to make it a home they’re proud of? What are they getting out of their time? How much is about their priorities versus others’ ideas of what their priorities should be? Is it all they want out of life?
More people seem to feel they have their “things” under control, except when a big life change occurs sometimes. And now they’re more focused on their time.
There are so many techniques and tricks and strategies to organize your life and to get things done.
But the first question is: what do you want from your time?
**Quoted from a guest blog by Anne – Sophie Reinhardt over at The Change Blog, a personal favorite.
Not sure where to start? Try time management coaching with me (by phone or in person, locally). First 1/2 hour is a no charge session to experiment, meet each other, and see whether there’s a fit. After that, one session at a time, as we together figure out how you’ll measure progress and success. Click here for info, email Sue@OrganizeNH.com or call 603.554.1948.
the blue giraffe! And a book giveaway.
May 16th, 2012
This week, my blog post has gone visiting – over at the blue giraffe. The blog starts this way just so you’ll know what it’s about. Then click the giraffe or the beautiful hammock picture below to read the rest.
“External clutter is often a symptom of internal clutter. The mail that’s piled up is because your child was just diagnosed with a learning disability and you’ve got a lot on your plate now.
Or your mom now needs caregiving and you’re trying to figure out how to make her a priority, and still give your all to your family and your business.
Or a room no longer has a purpose. Or it has too many purposes going on at once.
Major changes and life transitions often bring on distraction, intense emotions and some overwhelming feelings.
And when that happens, whether the change has been of your choice or foisted on you, our stuff and our time can get a bit out of control.
The good news is that reorganizing is cathartic, not just for your physical stuff, but also for your internal, emotional or psychological ‘stuff.’ “
You can also click on this relaxing picture Wendy chose to accompany my article.
Wendy blogs about Interior Design, Redesign, Home Staging and Lifestyle and we first connected through mutual colleagues – and over the topic of life transitions more recently, when she wrote a beautiful article on the topic.
Email Interruptions: 6 Solutions
May 11th, 2012Reader question: “You’ve decided to work on a project exclusively for two hours. You have to retrieve files and information clients have sent you over email. In the process, your current email downloads and you see that there are issues with other clients and family situations that need “immediate” attention. You want to seem responsive, so you spent 20-30 minutes on those emails before you get searching for the project info. Now you’ve lost a half an hour of your work time. Thoughts?”
What a great question. The answer is a mixture of psychology and technology, as are many organizing or productivity issues.
First, good for you, for blocking time for a project – an appointment with yourself and your work. Great way to make progress on the big projects as well as the day-to-day work.
Technology suggestions
- Save the “files and information clients have sent over email” to your hard drive, instead of dragging into an email folder. I often use the “print to PDF” option, which provides a permanent record. This eliminates going into your email program, which I agree, is quite distracting! You could do all of this gathering of info the day before you plan on working on this; that would ensure you have everything you need, and would mean you could dedicate a bit less time the next day. Smaller bits of tasks are easier to wedge into a busy schedule.
- “Your current email downloads.” During your two hours of project time, stop the “Send and receive email” option (Outlook option).
Psychology/habit suggestions
“Client and family situations that need ‘immediate’ attention.” Immediate is in quotes, which either means the other person thinks the need is immediate, or you consider the needs immediate.
- Break up the request. What does the person really need immediately? For example, it could be acknowledgement that you have the message and that you’d get back to him/her later today. You may want to explain that you are at work on a tight deadline.
- How long does “immediate” mean here? We’re talking about the person waiting two hours to hear from you. If it were that much of a crisis, needing attention in less than two hours, wouldn’t the person have called you instead? What would happen if you hadn’t seen the message until later in the day? These are questions to answer to help you think through whether this is truly immediate and therefore needs to break up your two hours.
- If this sort of thing happens often enough that it’s bugging you, start noticing who these interruptions are from. Is it the same person, with personal requests? A discussion about work schedules would be useful. Is it the same client? If so, a 5-10 minute check-in which you initiate would be helpful; the frequency would depend on how important the client is to your business (profit-wise, for the time they take up).
- Learn to triage: If the other messages are all from clients, filter through them. Which need to be answered or acknowledged before you begin your two hour work session? Which need to be acknowledged after the two hours? And then block time to get back to all of them at once, or add client communications to your “next actions” list. The key here is to unclutter your mind but keep track of what you need to do.
Stop, pause, breathe. Realize the choice you are making; that’s the key.
Also key as time passes is to notice patterns, of what interrupts your work. Who interrupts your work. How much comes from you and how much comes from others. What is the true urgency and what or who is the source. When you observe these patterns, you can change them. As a teacher used to say, though, ” The devil’s in the details.” That’s one reason the patterns are so important to observe.
Seven Starter Strategies to Understand Where Your Time Goes
May 4th, 2012“I need to get my life in order.” “I get so pulled into Facebook, the internet, reading a book … that the world dissolves around me.” “I really thought only 10 minutes had passed, but it was an hour.”
Or maybe you picked up your child or grandchild late, because the conversation you were involved in was so fascinating. Or you wanted to do “just one more thing” at work.
Starter Strategies – Designed to get you started figuring out your own solutions
- Talk to yourself. “Am I doing what I want to be doing right now?”
- Have a clear picture of what’s waiting on you next, or who is. Example: “If I don’t get to playing the piano with my daughter, because I’m still doing this, is that okay?”
- “If it’s out, I’ll remember to do it.” If you say that sometimes, try writing out a note, ideally in a bright color you’ll easily notice. On the note, write your top three things to be done today or your daughter’s name if you’re picking her up somewhere. Or if at work, put her picture right in front of you, as a reminder to pick her up at school.
- If you often say “Oh, I hear what you’re saying,” consider keeping a timer with you wherever you are, a timer with a sound you know you’ll pay attention to. I tried using the sound of ocean waves on my Outlook reminder and I just ignored it. I use the dainty and quiet beeper on my Time Timer and that works like a charm.
- Race yourself: If a little pressure helps you stay focused, use the Stopwatch feature on your phone. Knowing that clock is ticking away so quickly can help. Or race to finish your task, while something else is going on that is timed, i.e., in the two minutes it takes for your cup of tea to warm up, finish up the task you were working on.
- Sometimes self-talk doesn’t work. You don’t or can’t stop to notice when you’re stuck. Try using triggers which are “external,” meaning outside your brain/body: a friend calls you at the time you need to start moving for your next appointment; your Time Timer; blocking access to Facebook after ‘x’ minutes have passed. These will also train your brain so eventually, you’ll do this on your own.
- Time map tracking: For two days, write down what you do about every 1/2 hour. Don’t change your actions; record what’s happening now. The goal: to figure out where the issue is for you.
Some of these are solutions. Some are suggestions to help you become more AWARE of what the issue is. Awareness is where it all has to start, isn’t it.
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The most popular topic in coaching lately? Time management. If these ideas were useful, learn more here. I always have a 1/2 hour, no charge consultation, where you get real value for the time you spend with me:
“Insightful. You hit it right on the nose.” “I hadn’t even thought about that; what a great question. Let me think…”
Book Recommendation: Launching Your Child from High School to College
May 3rd, 2012
I’m working with several clients on time management during their child’s last year of high school as the parent begins to think of their own next chapter.
This book has come up several times as recommended by clients so I thought I’d share it with you.
