Best Results Organizing

A client recently asked me if I’m always productive. 

Of course, the answer is no. Professional organizers may have superpowers when it comes to pattern recognition or creative use of space, but we aren’t magical beings or robots. Most of us have developed systems to make it easier to get tasks done on time and prevent things from falling through the cracks.

For example, I’m not a morning person. You’ll find a lot of people praising the 5 o’clock miracle of early rising to get a jump on the day. That’s not me. I’m more likely to say, “Wait, there’s a five o’clock in the morning, too?!”

I can accomplish a wide variety of tasks while the world sleeps, from midnight until the wee hours, but from 5 a.m. until much closer to lunchtime, the world better not make any serious demands of my critical thinking.

I want to sleep until the very last possible moment before I get out of bed on days when I have client sessions or Zoom meetings, which means that I limit everything I have to do in the morning before an appointment to the bare minimum: grooming and eating. 

That means that the day before, I’ve made sure that there’s enough gas in my tank, and that there’s an umbrella by the door if it looks like rain (and another in the car, in case it didn’t look like rain before I left the house). My clothes are laundered and my email replies already await others when they arrive in their offices. The next day’s locations are already entered into my maps app for easy navigation the minute I get in the car.

This kind of lifestyle also means that the night before, I have selected (and laid out) my outfit for the next day, right down to the shoes. I have packed my work bag and literally the only thing I need to do (once I am fed, groomed, and dressed) is to put my phone in my purse, pick up my bag, purse, and keys (which are neatly awaiting me), and walk out the door.

LOST TIME AND SHOWER THOUGHTS

But this doesn’t mean I never get tripped up.

My biggest stumbling block is “lost time.” No, not in the sense that I’ve been abducted by aliens, though that would be a better explanation. And unlike my clients with ADHD, I’m not sucked into hyperfocusing and forgetting to make transitions from one tasks to another; nor do I let myself get distracted by unexpected things. (When the phone rings in the morning, if caller ID doesn’t show that it’s the client to whom I’m heading, I let it go to voicemail.)

In general, I’m pretty systematic such that I’m always doing what I have to do by when I have to do it. But “empty,” unplanned time? Time not scheduled for writing, client sessions, research, or personal tasks? That’s when things may go off the rails for a few minutes. And yes, it’s only a few minutes, but when you hate mornings and schedule your time so that every moment has an assignment, even a few misspent moments can be a problem.

The truth is that I daydream. Some people call them shower thoughts. Other people, night thoughts.

(Once you get to the bit about the bear, it gets a little scatalogical, so you might want to stop there.)  

Sometimes, these are random, as Kumail Nanjiani describes in the video. On occasion, they can be what’s called L’esprit de l’escalier, the French term meaning “staircase wit,” when you realize too late the perfect comeback you should have made in some recent conversation. Often, I’m rewriting scenes from a TV show in my head so that storylines end up the way I wish they had.

And more often than I have ever previously admitted in public, I’m having imaginary conversations with the Founding Fathers, gently explaining where they went wrong, lacking either anticipatory imagination or clarity of expression — or explaining to Jane Austen why Elinor Dashwood deserved so much better than Edward Ferrars (with apologies to both Hugh Grant and Dan Stevens, who did much to elevate that emo rich boy with no aspirations or direction).

I like to think of these little mental forays as a testament to my own creativity, but given my tightly timed mornings, I do need to explore ways to stick to my schedule without hiccups.

SPINBRUSH SMART CLEAN™

Sometimes, I start rewriting a Grey’s Anatomy scene in my head while brushing my teeth, but if I get lost in thought, it wouldn’t be very healthy for me to brush my teeth for ten minutes straight. This isn’t a particularly worrying occurrence, but while tumbling through some daytime night thoughts (as it were) about this blog, a product in my local Ollie’s Bargain Outlet caught my eye.

Intrigued, I picked up a Spinbrush Smart Clean™, a battery-operated toothbrush that keeps time at the forefront of one’s mind.

This isn’t a commercial. I’m not a dentist, and even if I represented four out of five Paper Dolls, I’d have no way to evaluate the claims made, which are that it:

• Removes more plaque in hard-to-reach areas than a manual brush
• Reduces surface stains by 50% after one week when used with regular toothpaste
• The soft, triple-sided bristles clean deeper between teeth; split-head design moderates the amount of pressure applied, so it’s gentle on teeth and gums.

What I can corroborate is that the Spinbrush Smart Clean™ has what they call a 30-second pacer that gently pulses after each of four blocks of time, ostensibly to assure that you adequately brush each quadrant of your mouth rather than brushing your front teeth and then falling into a daydream.

Then, it turns off automatically after two minutes, which is just (gently) jarring enough to shake you out of a reverie and reminded you to move on to the next essential ablutions.

(If you’d like to try it out, the Spinbrush Smart Clean™ is $12.90 at Amazon or about $2.99 if you manage to find it at Ollie’s.)

If this toothbrush seems vaguely reminiscent of something else, it may be because I wrote Organize Your Health: Parental Wisdom, Innovation, and the New Time Timer® Wash in which I evaluated how helpful (particularly during the pandemic) the Time Timer® Wash, a touchless, water-resistant visual timer, might be for children and adults to visualize the passage of time and spend enough of it washing their hands.

And lookie there, the perfect opportunity for a transition!

TIME TIMER ELEMENT

Time Timer is always innovating, and recently shared the pre-launch of their newest product.

The Time Timer Element is a compact, water-resistant visual timer that’s designed — like many of the Time Timer products — to assist children and adults build time awareness and improve their self-management skills.

It other words, it’s ideal for anyone who has a tendency to daydream or have so many shower thoughts that they get distracted and forget to stop dawdling, get out of the shower, and continue on with their day.

The Time Timer Element seeks to help users stay on track with their daily routines in a place where there’s unlikely to be other stimuli (clocks, TVs with commercial breaks, other human activity) to call attention to the passage of time. And, in particular, it’s made to work in the shower or near the sink!

As a personal note, once I’m putting on my makeup or doing my hair, I’m pretty attentive. But some of you ladies know what I mean — there’s a very narrow window from the time you take your hair down from the towel for you to use product and apply heat, and if you miss that window, well, you may not look like a clown for the rest of the day, but you definitely won’t look like you.

Dawdling can be an image-killer, so a timer for making sure your grooming activities stay on-task is a win-win for productivity and your personal brand.

The Time Timer Element has a variety of features to that make it an interesting option.

The Time Timer Element Is IPX6 Water-Resistant

Are you wondering what the heck IPX6 water resistance is? Well, so was I.

“IP” refers to “Ingress Protection” — It turns out that the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has developed ingress protection (IP) ratings to grade the resistance of an enclosure (like a plastic or metal case) “against the intrusion of dust or liquids.” 

IP6 means means a device (like this timer) is “protected against powerful, high-pressure water jets from any direction for at least 3 minutes.” Picture heavy rain, spray from a hose, or — you guessed it — water coming from a shower nozzle. IP6 indicates a high water resistance, but not so high that you could submerge it in water. (That would be an IPX7 or IPX8 rating.)

The “X” just means it is not tested for dust. So if your bathroom is dusty, well, you’re on your own.

The point is that the Time Time Element is specifically designed to work in wet environments like showers and bathrooms in general. Don’t turn it into a float for your rubber ducky, but otherwise, it should be fine.

The Time Timer Element Has Customizable Presets

The Time Timer Element comes with three customizable pre-set timer buttons on the top of the timer for increments of:

• 2 minutes
• 8 minutes
• 25 minutes

Additionally, you can program a countdown on the Element for any duration up to 99:59. (If you need more than an hour and forty minutes for grooming, I don’t know what to tell you.) 

So, if you’re deep conditioning your hair with a hot oil treatment, the two- or eight-minute timers might be just perfect. If you want to take a bath but are fearful of drifting off and missing your transition to making dinner or watching your favorite show, the 25-minute timer might be apt.

And, for those who are familiar with the now-viral Gen Z references to an “everything shower” — where you accomplish it all from exfoliation to hair masks to lymphatic drainage — setting timers for both the activities and the transition time might make the whole process seem less daunting. 

The Time Timer Element Has a Flexible Design for Varying Display Styles

As with all of the digital Time Timer products, like the Wash and the Twist, on the “face” there’s a digital countdown in the center (for those who can easily envision time numerically/digitally) and a visual, colored disk that decreases as the time time remaining decreases for those who need to better “feel” the passage of time.

Below the timer face, there are buttons for increasing, decreasing, or pausing/playing the timer. As previously shown, on the “head” of the Element, there are the three pre-set buttons.

As you examine the whole timer, you may find that the Element looks a bit like a cute little dude.

It includes:

• adjustable arms (bending upward, to hold the removable cord in place, if you’re hanging it, or bending downward, as if it were monkey-walking on its hands)
• a removable cord
• suction cups to display the Element at various angles on the wall of a shower or other vertical surface

Thus, the Element can hang from the shower head, sit on the corner of the bathroom counter, or climb the wall.

Other Uses for the Time Timer Element

Additionally, the bathroom is not the only place the Element can be of use for helping you keep track of the time. Time Timer notes that “you can use the Element indoors or outdoors, wherever water is part of the routine” and suggests its other applicability in:

• In the kitchen when cooking — Although there are a variety of Time Timer products that can be used in the kitchen, particularly the Time Timer Twist, the water resistance of the Element makes it particularly apt for when you’re doing “splashy” activities near the sink.
• Throughout the house while you’re cleaning — Some household cleaning tasks require waiting a certain amount of time (like while the Scrubbing Bubbles are hard at work); do you really want to use your expensive cell phone near a bucket or sink full of soapy water?
• Outdoors, while playing or gardening — Do you want to teach your kids that they can stay in the pool for just 20 more minutes? Or keep yourself from straining your knees or back too long while you’re tending to your flowers or veggies? Whether it’s splashing from the pool or the hose, the water-resistant Element can keep everyone on-task.
• At school or work in a lab — Splashes don’t just occur at home. Whether you’re in Home Ec (though they probably call that something else these days?) or a chemistry lab, keeping yourself on-task with a water-resistant timer can be a boon to safety as well as productivity.

The Time Timer Element is selling for $38.95 at the Time Timer shop. not yet for sale, so there is no pricing information. Sign up for pre-sale notifications at the website and they’ll let you know when it’s ready for Prime Time.

For more on timers and other ways to prompt yourself to stay on task, revisit other Paper Doll posts, including:

• How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 1
• How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 2: Picking a Good Timer 
• How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 3: Tangible Timers — This post does a SUPER-deep dive into Time Timer products, in particular!
• How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 4: Digital Timers
• How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity — Part 5: Hybrid Timers and Bonus Material
• Do (Not) Be Alarmed: Paper Doll’s Wake-Up Advice for Productivity

CAPTURE THOSE VITAL SHOWER THOUGHTS

Sometimes, people can’t make it out of the shower for fear they’ll lose a great idea and stand there, dripping, reciting the idea to themselves. If that’s your issue, you might enjoy a delightful product that’s been around for a long time but seems to operate under the radar.

Aqua Notes is a waterproof notepad that affixes to the shower wall with suction cups. Each 5.25″ x 3.5″ pad with 40 sheets of waterproof paper and an Aqua Pencil with its own suction cup pencil holder.

Purchase them directly from the Aqua Notes web site for $15 or from Amazon for $11.95. (A 5-pack of refill notebooks is $50; they also have Twistable colored pencils with suction cups for kids, shower artists, or anyone who needs to be able to write color-coded shower notes.)

Good luck getting out of the shower and getting on with a productive day! But if your brain is still still full of thoughts that are holding you back or slowing you down, know that you are not alone. Case in point, Lorelei Gilmore.

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I may get a small remuneration (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking through to the resulting pages. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Seriously, who else would claim them?)