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Paper Doll’s Thanksgiving Week Organizing and Productivity Buffet

Posted on: November 20th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 10 Comments

Whether you’re getting ready to go over the river and through the woods, hosting a Thanksgiving celebration of your own, or stuck (in an airport or at home) with too little to do, today’s post is for you. 

I’ve created a Thanksgiving buffet from which you can take some tastes and figure out what you like. Decide for yourself whether to categorize any of these as appetizers, entrées, sides, or desserts. There’s nothing serious to require your deep attention, so just nibble as though you were sneaking through the kitchen on your way to watch the parade.

GRATITUDE AND A FOLLOW-UP ON THE CAR THEFT

If you read my August post, Organize to Prevent (or Recover From) a Car Theft, you know that I was a victim of the Kia Boys, young miscreants across the United States who steal KIAs and Hyundais, not for financial gain but for “street cred” or thrills. It’s my philosophy that almost anything bad from which you recover makes a good anecdote (or blog post), but the lesson of preventing car thefts and recovering from them is one I’d have preferred to research online rather than personally experience.

The indignities of being a victim of theft did not stop with the recovery of my little red PaperDollmobile. Due to a turf war between towing companies, miscommunication at the body shop, an utter failure of professionalism on the part of someone we’ll call the Jerky Insurance Dude, and a series of back-ordered parts (mostly due to the mass of Kia and Hyundai thefts nationwide), it took two months for my car to be repaired and returned. 

Just a few weeks ago, the federal judge who initially refused to approve the $200 million class action settlement against Kia and Hyundai because it wasn’t supportive enough of victims has acknowledged the revisions to the settlement and approved it. It will likely be years before we victims see those compensatory funds (almost certainly be reduced by attorney and court costs), but the resolution is something else for which I can be thankful.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t read the original post, or if you’d like to hear more of the updates, or if you just prefer a good chatty tale, friend-of-the-blog Dr. Frank Buck recently had me on his podcast in an episode entitled From Chaos to Clarity: A Professional Organizer’s Car Theft Journey.

Frank and I discussed many of the concepts in my blog post, but also expanded upon teh experience. We talked about handling the unexpected, and how to deal with shock of a situation but still capture the essential information in order to survive and get to the other side. Professionally and personally, Frank and I can attest to the essential role of good note taking during any emergency or catastrophe.

If you watch the podcast on video, above, and please leave a comment or “like” on Frank’s YouTube page. Or, if you’re driving somewhere this week and need to drown out the “Are we there yet?” whines punctuated by kicks to the back of your seat, you can listen to my episode of Frank’s podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Castbox, and pretty much wherever you get your pumpkin-spiced podcasty goodness.

HOW TO SHOW GRATITUDE FOR OUR BOUNTY

“There is no product or service more ecological, sustainable and recyclable as the one we do not use.”

— Philippe Bihouix, engineer and author of The Age of Low Tech: Towards a Technologically Sustainable Civilization

This quote, included in Sunday’s Cool Tools Lab’s Recommendo newsletter, was certainly well-timed.

What a perfect way to show gratitude for the bounty in your life by using the week ahead to identify what you’re not using or wearing and earmark those items for donation.

Thanksgiving is an ideal time to discuss with your children the concept that not everyone has as much, and help them consider the toys and games they’re no longer enjoying. It’s a great way to be responsible to the planet, their fellow humans, and their own home.

And what better way to teach your children than by example?

Last Friday, I gave one of my signature speeches detailing all the reasons why it’s difficult to let go of possessions. I talk about how we sit on our “Buts” (one T) as in, “I’d let go of it…but it was expensive.” Or, “I’d let go of it, but it was a gift.” In part of that presentation, I noted that one of the big “buts” in letting go of excess is “But I want to find the perfect home before letting go.” 

People Working at Donation Center Photo by Gustavo Fring via Pexels

We hate spending the time, money, and effort to keep what we don’t want or need, but we hate the idea of “wasting” perfectly good items more, as if languishing in OUR basement is a better fate for something than ending up with (an unknown) someone whose worth we can’t know or judge.
 
So, we decide that as soon as we find the perfect place for an unused table to go, we’ll send it on its way, but either we don’t know about available resources (like a furniture bank or Habitat for Humanity’s Restore) or we never go all the way from making the decision to actually getting it out of our homes. Take comfort that whether you recycle, donate, or sell, letting go of what you never use has three benefits. It means a good home for the item, joy for the new owner, and more space for you.

Take comfort that whether you recycle, donate, or sell, letting go of what you never use has three benefits. It means a good home for the item, joy for the new owner, and more space for you. Click To Tweet

As we say in professional organizing, done is better than perfect! 

GET CRAFTY ABOUT REDUCING YOUR CRAFT STASH

Speaking of getting rid of excess for purposes of sustainability, my fabulous friend and colleague Janice Simon of The Clutter Princess brought my attention to a nifty option for all of you crafty (and aspiringly crafty) folks.

Destashify is your resource for letting go of the excess cloth- and needlework-adjacent craft supplies you have on hand. It’s a bit of crafting thrift shop. In their words: Destashify is dedicated to keeping sewing, quilting, knitting, crochet, and other wearable art supplies out of landfills. 

Destashify will sell, recycle, or donate your excess crafting supplies to individuals or organizations who will make use of you letting them instead of letting them pile up in the corner.

Obviously, if you actively work on your crafts, nobody would encourage you to stop. But if you have piles of these kinds of supplies, either in your own space or the space of someone you have responsibility for maintaining, Destashify offers a few nifty options.

Destashify, Filtered for Purple Yarn

Sort through your materials and collect any unwanted fabric, patterns, yarn, trim, and notions. If you have books, magazines, or DVDs on sewing, quilting, or related crafts, as well as patterns or even machinery (like sewing machines, accessories, and software), add them to your outgoing stack. Now, you have two options.

Sell Your Craft Supplies via Destashify

If you sew, quilt, knit, or are otherwise a “fiber artist,” you can destash (that is, declutter your stash), start a side hustle to fund your hobbies or life, or expand any craft-related existing business with a new outlet. 

Destashify charges no up-front costs to sellers. If you sell supplies via Destashify, they keep $1 + 15% of the remaining product subtotal. Beyond that, they charge no extra listing fees or payment transaction fees. If any of your items fail to sell, they won’t charge you anything for the listing (or re-listing). Buyers pay one flat fee for shipping, and sellers retain 100% of the shipping fee, but are responsible for the actual shipping costs.

Donate Your Craft Supplies to Destashify

If you donate your craft supplies, Destashify will pay for the shipping! (Note: Destashify is not a 501(c)(3), so you can’t deduct the value of your donation on your taxes.)

Destashify may donate your donations to organizations, like schools, or sell to fund operations. As when you donate anything, make sure your supplies are in good, clean condition. They can be related to: sewing, quilting, knitting, crochet, weaving, embroidery, tatting, upholstery, and home décor. Gather them up in a box (or boxes) and then:

  • Click on the “contact us” link at the bottom of every page of the Destashify page and tell them that you want to donate. 
  • Once you provide your shipping address and phone number, Destashify will send you prepaid shipping labels (with the information you provide as the label’s return address).
  • Include the height, width, and depth dimensions, as well as the weight of each package you want to send. (Limit your shipping box dimensions to under 19 inches.) 

They require a minimum of one yard of apparel fabrics or 1/4 yard for quilting fabrics. Leather, suede, and fur are accepted, as is yarn. Notions include doohickeys like thread, elastic, and grommets, while fastenings are, as you might guess, things that let you fasten clothing, like snaps, buttons, or zippers. Destashify will also accept small tools, like rulers, scissors, and awls.

However, they are unable to accept donations that are heavy or oversized, requiring excess storage space or egregious shipping costs. So, please don’t donate big storage or furniture items like cabinets or sewing tables, nor heavy machines like sewing machines or sergers. (You can list them for sale through Destashify, though!)

Watch two of the Destashify-ers talk about craft donation hauls here.

Destashify is a young venture, so they currently only support U.S.-based sellers; they are able to ship to buyers in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Finally, if your craft area is nicely pared down and organized, and you’re interested in buying from Destashify, just click on any menu and use the left-side panel to filter for things like color families, fabric types, fibers, patterns, garments and garment types, weights, and more. 

PUT THE KIBOSH ON COAT CLOSET KERFUFFLES

Longtime readers of the blog know that I’m not one for recommending unnecessary products, and I don’t usually mention products that are too far afield from organizing your paper, information, and productivity. And I definitely avoid recommending products before they’re entirely on the market. However, when things come across my TikTok feed that make me sit up and take notice, I want to share them with you.

Swedish inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz has developed Coat Hingers, and no, that’s not a typo. Giertz’s Kickstarter was seeking $50,000 to manufacture foldable hangers to allow for clutter-free storage in shallow closets and narrow spaces. In the first two days, she not only hit her goal, but exceeded it! Now, with 26 days remaining in her Kickstarter month, she’s already garnered $255,984 in pledges from 1940 backers aspiring to own the product.

Unlike the kind of foldable hangers designed to be used in luggage, Giertz found no solutions for folding hangers meant to actually be hung in closets, particularly shallow ones. So, she created her own, developing prototypes of hinged hangers.

You just put your article of clothing on the hanger, fold at the hinge, and now you’ve got the ability to store the shirt (or whatever) in half the depth.

Whereas traditional hangers measure about 17 1/2 inches, horizontally, Coat Hingers fold to take up just 9.3 horizontal inches. The hingers are made of stainless steel hangers with injection molded acetal hinges for durability. 

Supporting Giertz at this point is a pricey, but if you’re in a small space and are likely to be there a while, it’s worth considering. One Coat Hinger is $20, and a dozen are $75. 

Because Coat Hingers need to be a certain distance from the wall, they recommend that in lieu of off-the-shelf (no pun intended) closet rods, you make the rods in their kits, which come in four different color schemes (charcoal, white, red, and green). The shelf kit is $270, while the small bracket kit is $135 and the large is $200. The shelf kit and large bracket kit come with two dozen Code Hingers; the small bracket kit comes with one dozen.

All Coat Hingers come with a set of silicone stoppers that slide along the diagonal arms of the hanger to keep items with low necklines or thin straps from sliding off of the hanger.

Unfortunately, Kickstarter videos aren’t shareable. (Why?! Social sharing would bring in so many more backers?) However, Giertz’s YouTube channel has a great video on how her product came to be that will give you a good sense of what she’s creating.

(Did you notice that it’s pronounced coat hinge-er, accenting the hinge, rather than coat hing-er to sound like hanger?)

When I was in graduate school, I lived with six other students in my program in a scary green Addams Family-esque house with squirrels in the attic. Due to the luck of the draw, I got one of the larger bedrooms, but the closet was minuscule, slightly smaller than a telephone booth, with the sole rod positioned on the diagonal. Hanging clothes in that shallow a space was almost an impossibility, as was keeping any kind of order. I would have loved Coat Hingers back in 1990!

DE-STRESS THE HOLIDAY SEASON FROM THE START

Thanksgiving is the official start of the holiday season, which means it can also be the start of the stressed-out, exhausted season as well. I’ve got two resources for you for keeping your season on an even keel. 

First, the theme of Janet Barclay’s November Productivity and Organizing Carnival is Stress-Free Holidays. It includes 15 posts from my fabulous colleagues for helping you deal calmly with planning and organizing your season and getting the self-care you need.

Then, you might want to pick up a copy of my classic season-smoother, Simplify the Season and Save Your Sanity so that you can thrive, and not merely survive during the upcoming holiday season.

Are you so frazzled by mid-December that your nerves start to feel like tangled Christmas lights?

Have visions of sugarplums been replaced by nightmares of long lines and traffic jams?

Does that Thanksgiving turkey remind you of a time bomb, ticking down to the big day in December?

If so, Simplify the Season and Save Your Sanity may be exactly what you need.

PLAN FOR A SANE RE-ENTRY NEXT WEEK

Heading back to work after a long Thanksgiving weekend can be overwhelming, and it can be tempting to try to barrel your way through the work. However, back in October, we talked about the importance of taking time away from your desk to refresh, whether short-term or long-term. 

Take a Break — How Breaks Improve Health and Productivity

Take a Break for Productivity — The International Perspective

After you revisit these posts, you may want to read this piece from The Muse, Take Five: 51 Things to Do When You Need a Break at Work.

I’d explored a variety of break options, but some readers mentioned that they often feel guilty taking breaks that “looked” lazy, as if doing healthy things for your body, brain, and spirit somehow lacked worth. (Remember Paper Doll telling you this: you are not your job or your role. Your worth does not come from what you do. It’s innate to who you are!)

The genius of this Muse post is that it offers some fun suggestions, links, and resources for digging deeply into categories of breaks that still accomplish something, in case you’re still working on accepting yourself even when you’re not entirely in worker-bee mode. The categories are:

  • Energizing
  • Brain-Boosting
  • Social
  • Productive (It won’t surprise you that this is my favorite category of tips!)
  • Career-building
  • Relaxing
  • Downright Distracting

My favorite, given that we’ll have just come out of Thanksgiving, is #18:

Send a thank you note to someone who’s helped you out recently—your assistant who’s gone above and beyond or a co-worker who proofread a report for you. It doesn’t even have to be something big—in fact, bonus points if it’s not.

And with that, kind readers, I thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing. May you and your families and friends have safe travels and a happy, healthy Thanksgiving.

Paper Doll on How to Celebrate Organizing and Productivity with Friends

Posted on: May 22nd, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 17 Comments

DO IT TODAY

Back in March, I told you all about my fabulous friend-of-the-blog (and of the blogger — me!), Kara Cutruzzula in Paper Doll Interviews Motivational Wordsmith Kara Cutruzzula. Writer/editor/playwright/lyricist/librettist & all-around-cool-kitten Kara and I have been collaborating for years and sharing one another’s achievements, and today is a chance to share something fun we’ve created together.

If you didn’t get the chance to read that post back, I recommend you jump over to do that. (There are some cool comedic and musical interludes!) We covered Kara’s talents at writing dialogue, especially spitfire-fast banter for whip-smart female characters like those in The Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and her skills at writing musicals. That post dug deep into Kara’s background and the resources she creates, including her uplifting Brass Ring Daily newsletter, and her books:

Do It For Yourself: A Motivational Journal,

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Do It Today: An Encouragement Journal,

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and her forthcoming Do It Or Don’t: A Boundary-Creating Journal.

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In that prior blog post, I also told you that Kara and I had recorded an episode of her Do It Now podcast to air in the podcast’s second season — and that episode is out now!

Today with Julie Bestry: Letting Go of the Stress of Getting Things Done

And it’s not just out, but it’s hot! The episode premiered last Monday, while I was off celebrating a long Mother’s Day weekend with Paper Mommy. Meanwhile, Kara promoted our lively conversation in her Brass Ring Daily newsletter, and listeners really took to it. Kara even forwarded one fabulous email message she received:

“I just wanted to share that on average, I listen to zero podcast episodes a year (it’s not a format that works for my brain usually) — and I could have listened to another two hours of you two talking. I enjoyed that so much this morning. Thank you for making this and sharing it, and to Julie of course.  Inspiring as always, and so expansive. Wow. ❤️ thank you.” 

Given that Paper Doll readers know how extensively I like to cover a topic, and how delightful and wise Kara is, I’m pretty sure we could have spoken for another two hours — maybe even another two days!

Kara’s podcast usually involves interviews with people I’d consider a much bigger deal than I am — Broadway bigwigs (performers, producers, and stage managers), screenwriters, musicians, journalists, and others who do their work on a big stage (no pun intended). But what we all have in common is the need to get things done each day, and that’s exactly what Kara asks guests about as a jumping off point —  what we’re doing that day, and what goes into making sure we get it done.

I’d been fascinated by, and had taken gems away from, every episode of the podcast’s first season, and I was a little uncertain as to what new I could bring to the table. It’s not like I could break into song or share any behind-the-scene secrets from Hamilton or Six. (Oh, if only I could!) But it took all of two seconds for Kara to put me at ease, Oprah-style, and we were off and running. We covered a lot of ground, including:

Having so much fun talking to Kara and riffing on these kinds of topics *almost* makes me wish she and I had a regular podcast where got to talk all the time!

You can catch Kara’s and my conversation on the podcast episode page, or at pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts, like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, Castro, Castbox, Podcast Addict, Player FM, and Deezer. (And no, I hadn’t heard of most of those services, either.) You can also subscribe to the podcast by RSS. 

WORLD ORGANIZING DAY

This past Saturday, May 20, 2023, was World Organizing Day. To quote from NAPO‘s web site: 

World Organizing Day is a global initiative founded by the International Federation of Professional Organizing Associations (IFPOA) to celebrate the work of organizing and productivity professionals.

This designated day aims to increase public awareness of the benefits of getting organized. It highlights the work of organizing and productivity professionals who enrich the personal and professional lives of their clients.

It also recognizes the accomplishments of individuals and organizations in their efforts to become more organized and productive. 

With regard to benefits, it’s obvious that being more organized allows us to save time and money, and to be more productive. When we have organized systems and skills to get (and stay) organized, we can more effectively and efficiently use our space and find what we need when we need it.

However, the psychological benefits of organizing are manifold, as well. When we declutter our living and working spaces, we also reduce the psychological friction that stands between us and getting things done. We reduce frustration and overwhelm, giving ourselves a sense of confidence about our abilities and our surroundings, and increase our sense of ease around having others in our environment with us.

In honor of World Organizing Day, the Institute of Challenging Disorganization (ICD) is making four 90-minute sessions from their 2021 virtual conference available for free to professional organizers as well as to members of the public. Start by watching this video:

Next, go to the ICD website page for World Organizing Day. If you’re already a subscriber or otherwise have an account, you can just log in and go straight there; otherwise, you can quickly create an account.

Then you’ll be taken to the Request for Access to World Organizing Day online form. Once you fill in a few details, you’ll immediately be sent an email granting you access to watch any or all of the four available courses in the World Organizing Day 2023 Package, covering a wide variety of issues related to chronic and challenging disorganization:

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  • A Fabulous Way to Build Resilience to Mitigate the Impact of Compassion Fatigue, taught by Barbara Rubel MA, BCETS, DAAETS, author of a variety of books on loss, grief,  bereavement, and renewal.
  • Neuroarchitecture Contributions To Challenge Disorganization, taught by Andréa de Paiva, MA, professor, founder of NeuroAU, and an architect seeking to bridge research, education and design.
  • Turning Pain into Purpose: My OCD Journey, taught by Ethan S. Smith

Please note that while all four sessions are free of charge, they are only available through June 3, 2023.

OLD HOME WEEK & PRODUCTIVITY PEEPS

Meanwhile, as my colleagues across the planet were celebrating World Organizing Day, I went on a little road trip and got to enjoy camaraderie and talk about productivity with two people whose names might be familiar to Paper Doll readers.

Each March for the past several years, I’ve participated in the Task Management and Time Blocking Summit run by Francis Wade. As I’ve mentioned, not only do I know Francis from the productivity community, but we actually lived in the same dorm, the International Living Center, at Cornell University!

Although we’ve popped up on the same podcasts, webinars, and virtual meet-ups, Francis and I hadn’t seen each other in person in about 37 years! A few months ago, I found out Francis was flying in from Jamaica to Atlanta to present at an International Association for Strategy Professionals (IASP), and would be taking a quick jaunt to Alabama to see family and meet up with our fellow productivity colleague (and my fellow Evernote Certified Expert), Dr. Frank Buck. We knew we’d have to find a way to meet up!

You readers know Frank from when he interviewed me for his own podcast. And all three of us have crossed paths in a variety podcasts and summits recapped in Paper Doll posts, including those mentioned above and Paper Doll Picks: Organizing and Productivity Podcasts.

I wonder if anyone frets over (I mean, “embraces the challenges of”) logistical concerns more than organizing and productivity people. Over several weeks, we squared away the details of triangulating the travel details of our little circle. (See what I did here?) Francis was arriving from Jamaica and driving west to an outer suburb of Birmingham, Alabama to spend the weekend with family before heading back to Atlanta for his conference. 

(Ignore the total time and mileage; I couldn’t figure out how to make Google show two separate routes simultaneously, so it added two routes together.)

Added to the complications of planning were my continuing reliance on COVID precautions (not dining indoors) and the fact that I don’t eat meat, but Frank took on the role of cruise director with aplomb and dove into research mode!

Once we knew Francis had arrived safely, I’d be driving southwest from Chattanooga, and Frank would drive a far shorter (but not insignificant) route westward. Through the magic of Google, we identified the unfortunately-named but absolutely delightful community of Trussville, Alabama for our meet-up. There were a few kerfuffles due to weather and communication (take note: always agree on which method of communication — email or texting or whatever — before arranging any muti-location adventure), but we still managed to arrive at our destination within moments of one another.

For anyone ever hoping to meet up with friends in the general vicinity of central Alabama (and I’m not sure how many of Paper Doll readers might find that likely), and not having a reason or inclination to go all the way to Birmingham, I can’t recommend Trussville more highly. This walkable community, filled with restaurants, shops, and a central “entertainment district“ with a communal dining pavilion, outdoor theater, and hanging-out lawn was perfect for getting together for a late lunch/early dinner.

Interrupted only a few times by bursts of rain that moved along in minutes, Francis, Frank, and I enjoyed an afternoon and evening of hearty discussion of productivity methods, Evernote, Artificial Intelligence, video editing, our respective families’ genealogical histories, the current politics of education in America, international perspectives on long-term strategic planning (as a nod to Francis’ conference topic), and the meaning of an all-gender bathroom pictogram (which apparently is not a common sight in Jamaica — we assured Francis that it’s just like any one-person bathroom available to all, like in one’s home or on an airplane, ).

At Pinchgut Pies, the fellas partook of a specialty “Gaitor Bait” pizza with alligator sausage, while I ordered a pesto-and-fresh-mozzarella pie; later, after hearty discussion of all of the above topics, plus early 20th-century treatments of polio and our experiences of 9/11 (Frank was a school principle; I was working in television), we sampled the wares of Cookie Dough Magic, which sells both ice cream and edible cookie dough.

After three years of COVID and not traveling to any professional gatherings in person, it was a delight to gather outside and talk to colleagues/friends (about productivity as well as personal topics), and getting to finally meet Frank in person, and seeing Francis for the first time in 37 years, seemed like something worth sharing with all of you readers.

Being organized and productive is wonderful, but we must remember that we do it in service of a greater good, to have the opportunity to accomplish not only our labors, but achieve our joys.

As Memorial Day weekend approaches and we head into a (hopefully) more sociable summer, may you be organized and productive, but I hope you also get to enjoy good company, good food, and good times.

Highlights from the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit

Posted on: March 13th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 12 Comments

As you know from my post Surprising Productivity Advice & the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit a few weeks ago, I was set to spend three days at the beginning of this month attending, and being a panelist and presenting at the summit. This is the fourth year I’ve been involved, and it was definitely the best yet.

The theme of this year’s summit, One-Size-Doesn’t-Fit-All. Now what?, is dear to my heart. In February, the summit’s creator, Francis Wade, and Productivityist Mike Vardy delivered a pre-summit session to set the stage. Generally, Francis posited, when people are struggling with productivity (and this is true of tangible organizing struggles, too), they seek out experts, “gurus” who identify their so-called secret formulas. “Do this and all will be well!” And that may be true, but only for a while.

No one system for anything — career paths, life balance, making cookies, or having an organized and productive life — works for every person in every situation. At some point, it’s essential to take the guru’s advice and customize it for yourself so you can live an authentic life.

Even Marie Kondo, whom I chided for insisting her way was the one-true way (in my post The Truth About Celebrity Organizers, Magic Wands, and the Reality of Professional Organizing) has had to face the fact that her way doesn’t exactly work for the kid-filled life she now embodies. (See all the various recent articles with titles like “Professional tidier Marie Kondo says she’s ‘kind of given up’ after having three kids.”)

Early on, especially pre-internet, there were no centralized places to access productivity advice. Then, so many people got into David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD to those in the know) that it was evangelized everywhere. But with the expansion of the web, “productivity porn” proliferated, and people had (and have) access to so many options.

The problem? Whatever popular productivity methods are out there, people aren’t all the same. They are unique. As I presented in “Paper Shame” — Embracing Analog Productivity Solutions in an Increasingly Digital World:

Because I know my own style, I know what works best for me. Because I stay abreast of all of the options out there, I know how to suggest what might be best for my clients. And my job is to know that what works for me won’t work for each of my clients, and what works for my overwhelmed, 30-something client with ADHD and a toddler won’t be the same as for my single-dude on-the-road salesperson client or my new-retiree client whose spouse was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We’re each unique.

So, it’s important to know that it’s normal if the productivity strategies that work for your bestie don’t work for you. As you read blogs and books and incorporate advice, instead of accepting every bit of it “hook, line, and sinker,” Francis encouraged what he calls an ETaPS framework.

Simply put:

Evaluate your current situation and needs
Target where you want to move the needle (and by when)
Plan how you’re going to incorporate change into your approach, and get
Support through coaches, friendly accountability, and exposure to a wide variety of opinions and methods.

The summit was one stellar way to get that exposure. 

These three jam-packed days included 27 recorded video presentations as well as live interviews, panel discussions, and networking at digital Zoom-like tables. It would be impossible to share all of the highlights, which ranged from Olga Morett‘s compassionate, vulnerable approach to “unmasking” and self-exploration for neuro-diverse individuals to Hanifa Barnes‘ framework for building without burnout (which included a deep dive into understanding circadian rhythms and body clocks for chronotypes — apparently I’m a cross between a wolf (night person) and a dolphin (insomniac).

Dolphin photo by Ádám Berkecz on Unsplash

Thus, rather than providing a full recap of the summit, I’m going to share highlights and snippets that caught my attention, and which I look forward to sharing with my own clients.

QUICK BITES

“The menu is not the meal.”

Henrik Spandet, while talking about the differences among task management, calendar management, and meeting management, cautioned participants to remember that a task list is merely a list of opportunities, just as a menu is a list of dining alternatives. One must prioritize to maximize the experience. You can’t expect to do it all, or do it all at once. (He did not, however, discuss the advantages of eating dessert first.)

“If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, just sit.”

Carl Pullein‘s take on self-discipline dovetails with my own advice for dealing with writer’s block, and it’s kind of like the reverse of the bartender yelling, “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” You don’t have to perform the task you’ve set for yourself, but if you don’t, then you can’t do anything else. No perfectionist procrastination by tidying your desk; no mindless scrolling.

Sit. Just sit.

And in sitting and not doing, you may find yourself motivated to start writing, creating, or tackling whatever you’ve been avoiding. If not, you will find yourself having to face the reason for your avoidance, which may prove equally productive.

During a third-day “Boundaries, Burnout and Balance: Finding Peace When Working from Home” panel with Renee Clair, Clare Evans, and Olga Morett, the concept of “the booty hour” came up — and how getting the butt-in-the-chair is that make-or-break moment.

Do, or do nothing, is a powerful choice. We are so fixated on never being bored that the idea of having to do nothing may make the thing we are avoiding suddenly a much more compelling alternative!

“What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.”

Too often, Peter Drucker‘s quote is truncated as “What gets measured gets managed” but the full quote is so much more powerful. In other words, be aware of how your methods and strategies impact your work, but do not get so caught up in the minutia of how many emails you’ve cleared (or not), and focus on the bigger picture of accomplishing what you want and need to do.

Don’t spend so much time tweaking your systems to get a micro-percentage point of difference. Know what metrics will help you achieve the return on investment of your time, energy, and attention, and focus there. Prioritization can feel abstract, but pay attention to what has the greatest impact on your life, and what brings you closest to your goals.

“Busy leads to burnout; productivity leads to prosperity.”

Ayana Bard‘s message at the start of her five-part approach to mindfully productivity has been in my head for the past week. Her approach involves gaining clarity (and understanding yourself and your tasks so that you can prioritize), knowing where your time is actually going (by doing a time audit), and managing your attention and (mental, emotional, and physical) energy. 

Ayana accented the importance of mindfulness (i.e., paying attention with purpose), and noted that practicing mindfulness is easy to skip but not easy to do. (Hence the practicing part, eh?) She recommends incorporating mindfulness of your energies with regard to ultradian rhythms by working 90 minutes at top performance, taking 20 or so minutes for healing and recovery, and then starting another 90 minute cycle of top performance.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Professor Bret Atkins‘ presentation The Zen of Ten offered lists of ~ten (though he cautioned, not “top” ten) books (both well-known and a second list of sleepers), podcasts, videos, terms, and tools. The big-name list included works by David Allen, Steven Covey, Cal Newport, and Brian Tracey, as well as the “habits” triumvirate of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

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Slightly lesser-known gems ranged from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (worthy of a future Paper Doll post), Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic, Tony Buzan’s The Mind Map Book, 1908’s How to LIve on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett, and 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, about which I wrote extensively in Toxic Productivity Part 3: Get Off the To-Do List Hamster Wheel.

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There is no way to do his superb lists justice (and will be revisiting his other recommendations in future posts), but I will note that out of 22 highlighted books (yes, there were a few bonuses), there was only one book authored by a woman: Molly McCarthy’s The Accidental Diarist: A History of the Daily Planner in America.

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I note this because it’s a more damning comment on the publishing industry than of Atkins and his discernment. But that’s also a topic for a future day! 

Other books recommended by presenters were:

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Time Surfing: The Zen Approach to Keeping Time On Your Side by Paul Loomer

SCOPE — IT’S NOT JUST A MOUTHWASH

Trevor Lohrber felt that the true key to time management is often reducing the scope of a task rather than trying to increase your productivity and ability to do more. After all, our time is limited by strictures — where we have to be and when and how soon the work must be completed. Trevor presented three concepts, but it was the idea of pacers that caught my attention.

Did you ever take an exam in school and spend so much time writing the first part of your essay that when they called “15 more minutes!” you had to rush through your remaining points?

Although the point of deep work is to get into flow, Trevor points out that we often hit a wall when we look up and realize, “Oops, I’ve run out of time!” He suggests that by becoming more aware of time passing while we’re within a block of time, we can adjust our scope.

Trevor encourages using gentle timers at fixed intervals during a time block; for example, every 15 minutes during an hour-long work session. They key points are that these aren’t alarms (in that they’re not alarming), but gentle sounds, like an ocean or wind chimes; set your “snooze” to 15-minute increments and you can brush it away with the flick of your finger across your phone.

The idea isn’t to startle you out of flow, but just lightly alert you to the passing of time so you can stop to consider whether you need to limit the scope of what you’re doing now so you can finish the whole task on time.

The benefits of Trevor’s approach is that these “moments of mindfulness” keep you from going down any rabbit holes and ensure you’re repeatedly reassessing the work to be done in the time allotted. It allows you to work smarter because you are reassessing your scope regularly through the process, and improve your focus because you’re more aware of the scarcity of your time. (Trevor also cautions that this is not ideal for creative tasks, like writing a key chapter in a novel, because that focus can lead to tunnel vision, something you want when you’re trying to finish your accounting but not so much when you’re trying to develop dazzling prose.)

THE HOCUS POCUS OF FOCUS AND WHAT’S GOING ON IN OUR BRAINS

Achieving focus is the Holy Grail of productivity. We can do a brain dump to make sure we’ve examined all of our obligations, prioritize so we can work first (and longest) on what matters most, and create blocks of time dedicated to that deep work. 

But how do we gather the motivation to get our tushies in the chair and then maintain our focus to actually get it all done?

This is where mindset is essential. Misha Maksin talked about the flow state, something we’ve covered here extensively, starting with Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek (in the section called Sidebar on Flow and the Unpronounceable Mihali Csikszentmihalyi), and how four “mega” time wasters (anxiety, overwhelm, indecision, and procrastination) block our ability to achieve flow.

He casts it as a question of whether we are in a “primal state” where we feel we are under threat, ruled by our sympathetic nervous system, and using closed, contractive survival thinking, vs. in a “powerful state” ruled by the parasympathetic nervous system, thinking in an open and expansive, creative way. I mean, wouldn’t you prefer to be curious, compassionate, and joyous vs. fearful, anxious, and overwhelmed? I know Ted Lasso would!

Misha explained how the mechanism of unproductive behaviors starts with beliefs driving our thoughts, which then drive our emotions, which lead to our actions, and then results, and those results then determine our core beliefs. This means that results are both initially determined by past beliefs and reinforce future beliefs, in a perpetual cycle that, if our beliefs about ourselves or our abilities are negative, our results very likely will be, also.

However, we can rewire our mindset so that the driving force is not our beliefs but our decisions. Per Misha, if decisions determine thoughts, which activate emotions, which motivate actions, which produce results, which reinforce decisions, keeping us in that productive “powerful state,” — we have a much better shot at attaining flow in our work and joy in our lives. 

The key, Misha posited, was to notice when our brains are moving us to that ineffective “primal state” and use our tools to focus on making wise, proactive decisions rather than being ruled by the negative self-talk often inherent in our beliefs. Perhaps easier said than done, but it’s a powerful switch. We can decide to get our butts in the chair now rather than repeat a belief ingrained since childhood that we “always” procrastinate.

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

Dr. Melanie Wilson identified a three-part approach to changing reaction distractions, and while there are practical elements, this is basically a psychological approach.

  • Adopt a new identity, eschewing the one that says “I am an easily distracted bunny” and trading it for one that says, “I’m a focused, productive person.” This echoes what James Clear says in chapter 2 of Atomic Habits.
  • Identify your unmet (emotional) needs so you can stop using ineffective, distracting coping mechanisms. Wilson notes that certain feelings lead us to distract ourselves with unproductive alternatives — overshopping, overeating, drinking, gambling, compulsive social media scrolling — and that the common advice to replace those habits with more productive ones (go for a walk, read a book) fails because they don’t get at the underlying emotion that drives the self-distraction. If we can identify the negative emotion, we can satisfy it with planned activities that do satisfy it. For example, Wilson’s personal example was having ADHD and craving novelty. By planning her days with lots of intentional novelty built in, she was less likely to seek distractions (like compulsive shopping) when she was supposed to be doing deep work.
  • Acknowledge troubling issues (what she calls “gnawing rats”) instead of avoiding them. Wilson notes that scheduling quiet time to think (and not merely to meditate), journaling, praying, or planning time to deal with a distracting issue, you’ll be less likely to experience the  harsh (and distracting) negative side effects of those problems, like sleep issues, IBS, heart trouble, etc. 

BEGIN WITH PERFECT

We know there’s no such thing as perfection in achieving a schedule that doesn’t overwhelm. That said, there was a repeated theme across the summit, the idea of starting with a “perfect” or “ideal” week, beginning with a completely blank schedule.

Carl Pullein advice was to:

  • Block out your sleep for the amount you really need, not the amount you usually get
  • Create a morning routine and block time for that (and if that’s not when you want to be doing physical self care, block out the optimum time for that for your needs elsewhere in your schedule)
  • Section off one or more blocks for communication (like replying to emails) rather than having it be the task you return to each time you transition between meetings or projects
  • Create space for “dynamic” aspects of your calendar that change, like appointments. Carl noted that we all need to have blocks on our schedules for our “Core Work” — basically, the thing for which we are paid. For me, that’s time working with clients, and those blocks are fixed; I work on weekday afternoons. For a salesperson, that time is spent on sales calls, not in staff meetings.
  • Set boundaries for the available times for these elements (obviously, depending on the level of control you have over your own schedule). For example, Mondays are my Admin Days when I don’t see clients, and I only schedule personal appointments (doctor, dentist, haircut) on Mondays; if your energy levels make it hard for you to be creative in the late afternoons, make sure your core work isn’t scheduled at those times.

Anna Dearmon Kornick and Trasetta Washington both took a similar approach, hewing closely to the formulation laid out in the well-loved “Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand” story of filling a jar.

Using slightly different language, Anna described the elements as:

  • boulders — the immovable, important, but non-urgent essentials of life, like health and wellness, and maintaining our major interpersonal relationships,
  • big rocks — our high-priority, important-and-urgent-but moveable aspects of work, particularly our deep work focus,
  • and pebbles — everything else, the non-important/non-urgent to-dos from laundry to errands to all the random reports and meetings that endlessly tend to crowd us out of our own lives if we do not preserve our boundaries.

Anna encouraged designing one’s week with four concepts in mind:

  • Parkinson’s Law — Basically, work expands to fit the time available.
  • Planning Fallacy — Due to an optimism bias, we consistently underestimate the time it takes to complete tasks.
  • Time Blocking — The act of carving out specific sections of our schedule for specific categories of tasks
  • Task Batching — Grouping thematically or platform-related tasks together, like replying to emails or sourcing graphics for blow posts.

Meanwhile, Trasetta added an element to the story, with the professor being prepared with containers of big rocks, pebbles, sand, and two beers (indicating always having time in your schedule for a friend). Her approach to designing the perfect week included color-coding (and name-theming) calendared categories with:

Green Machine — tasks that drive revenue
Blue Skies — educational and personal development
Mellow Yellow — self-care and rest activities
Red Tape — meetings, commutes, and essential but ultimately unimportant activities

She also added “advanced” operations, color-coding them as: 

Orange Operations — general business operations
Violet Vision — planning and strategic activities
Purple Passion — tasks related to community and spirituality

TECH OR NOT TO TECH, THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION

My own presentation,“Paper Shame” — Embracing Analog Productivity Solutions in an Increasingly Digital World, delved into the idea that focusing on what we need to do and then getting it done varies; it can be helped or hampered by a system or platform depending on our own personal needs and characteristics.

In our live panel, Ray Sidney-Smith led me and Misha Maksin through a discussion of “Paper vs. Digital in Time Management,” but it was less of a debate than the title might imply. We acknowledged that we each embrace a hybrid approach, whether by choosing disparate methods for different areas of our lives, or by combining them.

This year’s summit had the fewest presentations on using particular types of technology, and instead looked at platform-agnostic approaches to understanding your task management needs at a personal level. For example, Dr. Frank Buck‘s presentation on handling multiple projects looked at removing the friction often inherent in task management from three perspectives: using an analog (paper) approach or either of two different digital models.  

Again, not only does one size not fit all people, it doesn’t even fit all different versions of ourselves.

That said, Gynanendra Tripathi introduced us to his new player in the productivity realm, AlphaNotes, which seeks to help users “carve out their own trusted system for employing GTD elements.” They concentrate on leveraging digital storage and “lightning-fast query” ability to store and access information to support getting things done. The presentation went down a bit of a technical rabbit hole, but luckily, AlphaNotes has made an introductory explainer video.

ONE SIZE FITS YOU — TODAY

During a live recording of the Productivitycast podcast at the summit, Ray led Francis, Augusto Pinaud and Art Gelwicks in a lively debate and discussion about the concept of “one size fits all” within the framework of productivity.

Francis posited that we are inherently greedy — we want to do more and achieve more, and the concept of “more” means that we will eventually outgrow many of the systems, tools and methods we have in place. Augusto reflected on what happens when we reach capacity — this is where our geeking out on productivity (and not just productivity tools) comes into play.

 

 

 

 

    

 

 
Our skill sets may stay the same, but our tools may need to change. To the idea that “one size fits all” with regard to tools and platforms may fit just for that particular function, Art made a great metaphor about “pants” in the closet. Tuxedo pants, sweatpants, work pants, etc. all serve one narrow function, but each is not appropriate for other functions.

They’re all pants, they served the needs you have at a particular time, but we have to accept that we probably won’t find one pair of pants to rule them all. We have to stop to think, “What fits you now” and:

“What productive pants do you have on today?”

Later, during networking, a bunch of us continued the “one size fits all” and “productivity pants” metaphors and I got to shock the Art, Trevor, and many of the men, who had no idea that women’s clothing sizes are not based on measurements (waist, inseam, neck circumference, etc.) as mens’ are but are often arbitrary and conflicting, and that even the same size across different clothing designers, or the same size across different styles in the same designer’s line, won’t fit the same.

Just trying to buy a pair of pants can adversely impact productivity! Maybe we can discuss that at the 2024 summit?

Surprising Productivity Advice & the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit

Posted on: February 27th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 12 Comments

In fields like science, medicine, and technology, surprising information comes out all the time, and with that, novel guidance and advice. In the world of organizing and productivity, however, there aren’t a lot of unexpected, planet-sized discoveries or wrecking balls to old beliefs.

Rather, in most aspects of organizing and productivity, we seek to find novel examples and tweaks to help people understand the best approaches for what they already know deep down. Today, I’d like to share three intriguing ideas I’ve heard recently, and an opportunity for you to discover more.

WORK AS HOBBY: OVERCOME PROCRASTINATION WITH A MINDSET SHIFT

The first concept comes from my friend and colleague Hazel Thornton. You may recall her from Paper Doll Interviews the Genealogy Organizers and when I profiled her new book, Go With the Flow! The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook, in Paper Doll Presents 4 Stellar Organizing & Productivity Resources a few weeks ago.

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I love Hazel’s blog, because she always offers practical yet warm insights. Earlier this month, she came up with an idea for a mindset shift for conquering procrastination, and it really got me thinking.

Usually, we approach procrastination from a practical perspective. For example, we look at how to use planning and scheduling, particularly time-blocking, to set expectations. Social science research, for example, has found that making a voting plan for when and where you will vote and how you will get there makes it more likely that you will cast a ballot. 

We also look at tactical methods for getting ourselves into position to complete a task, such as using the Pomodoro Method, or enlisting accountability, as we discussed recently in Paper Doll Sees Double: Body Doubling for Productivity and Paper Doll Shares 8 Virtual Co-Working Sites to Amp Up Your Productivity.

Hazel, however, piqued my interest in suggesting something I hadn’t seen before in her post entitled Think of Your Big Project as a New Hobby. Now, I don’t want to steal Hazel’s thunder, so you should read her post in its entirety. But the basic concept is that when you find yourself procrastinating on a big project — as I recently found myself doing — a shift in mindset could ramp up your enthusiasm and make the work more appealing.

Hazel notes that the more often you do something, the easier it gets. Typically, we choose to do something repeatedly — like a hobby — because it’s fun. So, Hazel suggests approaching a project, particularly one about which you’re procrastinating, as if you were embracing a new hobby.

She notes that new hobbies usually require the acquisition of new skills and new information — just like projects do — and setting aside time to work on them. Hazel even offers a list of practical solutions (and even pointed people back to my body doubling posts — neato!) for hobby-fying a project. 

If we perceive something as drudge work, we’re more likely to procrastinate on it, not set aside time to do it, and think about it as something to be avoided. We don’t get particularly excited about doing expense reports or preparing our taxes. But if we reframe a project and consider it as something that benefits us, or the people we love, or our community, if we re-set our expectations regarding how to approach something not-that-fun, our avoidance might fade away to nothing.

I think Hazel was right on the money. Over the last month, I’ve had a number of projects that were out of the ordinary for me, and one in particular involved employing technological skills that aren’t in my wheelhouse. I had to create a video (of which, more later), and as the days ticked down, I remembered my misery at completing the project last year, even though I was excited about the content. Shockingly, the video editing skills I learned in 1989-1990 in my graduate program in television production and management have very little application in 2023!

This year, I was eager to do the research and prepare my presentation, but anticipating the video production and editing was wearing me down. However, with Hazel’s blog post in mind, I started exploring ways to learn about new approaches with what Zen practitioners call, shoshin or Beginner’s Mind. It’s supposed to encourage eagerness, dispel anxiety and frustration, and yes, make procrastination less likely.

I hate being a beginner, but I psyched myself into beginnerhood for the “hobby” of making a visually-appealing, non-talking-head video. The same day I read Hazel’s post, I spoke with my accountability partner and all-around cool kitten, Dr. Melissa Gratias (whom I’ve also interviewed on the blog, in Paper Doll Interviews Melissa Gratias, Author of Seraphina Does Everything!).

Melissa had some amazing ideas that let me drop-kick PowerPoint and edit video content directly in Canva, the same platform I use to make the blog post banners at the top of every Paper Doll post. (Melissa also came to my aid every time I was stymied by an aspect of Canva that Googling didn’t solve.)

Hazel may not have realized she was channeling a key idea in Zen Buddhism, but by inspiring me to transform a hyperventilation-inducing project into one that was more hobby-like, she changed my entire outlook. I enjoy researching. I love learning new concepts. I particularly like developing skills that I can make systematic so they’re easier and easier as I do them more often. Hobbies for the win! 

If you’re having trouble getting your mojo going on a project (or can envision that happening in the future), give the ideas in Hazel’s post a try.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF BACKUP

If you’ve read the Paper Doll blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me promote the importance of backup. Usually, I’m touting computer backup, such as in Paper Doll’s Ultimate Stress-Free Backup Plan.

But I’ve also looked at backing up from the perspective of human backup, such as in Cross-Training for Families: Organize for All Eventualities. Those two posts reflect both a plan for backing up, and having a backup plan for life.

However, last week I heard about a different concept for backing up that’s worth discussing. At the start of the year, in Paper Doll’s 23 Ideas for a More Organized & Productive 2023, I mentioned that I was going to be doing Laura Vanderkam‘s annual 168 Hours Time Tracking Challenge. I enjoyed it so much that I also signed up for her Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge based on her book, Tranquility By Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. (I already knew I’d like it because she previewed the book at the 2022 Task Management and Time Blocking Virtual Summit. See below)

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For each week of the challenge, Vanderkam sends emails encouraging participants to put one of her nine lessons into practice. Last week was Lesson #5: Create a Backup Slot. Here, Vanderkam talked about how even the best of intentions are not enough when we try to create a schedule that allows us to be productive and accomplish all of the things that are important to us. Most tellingly, she wrote:

I have learned that anyone can make a perfect schedule. True time management masters make a resilient schedule.

Yes! Resilience is essential! A schedule is a map of our time. With a road map, sometimes there’s a crash up ahead, or a road is washed out, or someone gets car sick. If we want to accomplish what’s important to us, we have to be prepare for unanticipated calamities.

To this end, Vanderkam advises that we not fill our schedules from morning to night (of course!) but instead designate more times in our schedules than we plan to use.

Borrowing from my cross-training approach for human backup, I might schedule Monday afternoons for writing, but cross-train Saturday so it knows how to handle the task. (OK, we’re anthropomorphizing the days of the week. Just go with it.) You might plan to do your bookkeeping on Wednesday mornings, but if an all-hands meeting gets called or you have to pick up a sick kid from school, and your Wednesday morning blows up, Thursday needs to step in as backup.

Rather than searching your schedule for places where you can either cancel something or squeeze in one more task, if you already have backup slots scheduled, you’re prepared in the eventuality of your life falling tush-over-teakettle.

Rather than searching your schedule to cancel something or squeezing in one more task, if you already have backup slots, you're prepared for when your life falls tush-over-teakettle. Click To Tweet

Vanderkam’s approach is wise but too rarely practiced. We see blank spots in our calendars and jump to fill them, to do more, to accomplish more, to achieve more. This can be aspirational, or it can be stressful. If the latter, harken back to my posts on toxic productivity from last summer:

If the idea of too much empty space on your schedule makes you nervous, try just one or two slots, maybe an hour or ninety minutes, on Thursday or Friday, where you’ll be the most likely to catch up on tasks that got displaced from earlier in the week. Think about designating themed slots, like for marketing or accounting or personal development. That way, if you get to your backup slot and don’t need it, you can use it either for something within that theme, or for something fun and rejuvenating. 

If you find that you’re drop-kicking things that matter to you because something blew up your schedule, adding backup slots could help you master your time and life. And Vanderkam asks, “If life went perfectly, what would you use your open time for?”

Good question. After all, why are you doing all this work in the first place?

THE WORK IS NOT ENOUGH

I read a lot of email newsletters. (Seriously. It may be an addiction.) So, to remember to read blog posts and newsletters of people whose work I’m not regularly seeing on social media, I use an RSS feed. My preferred platform is Feedly, and I can segment the blogs I read by category like entertainment, finances, productivity, tech, etc. and do a deep dive into all the posts I’ve missed over a week or month, keeping my inbox less crowded.

One of the authors I read is Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study. The essay that caught my eye was a fairly personal one, The Work Is Not Enough. (Note, there is one not-safe-for-work vocabulary word in the essay. Please do not click through if you are likely to be offended.)

Petersen’s post dovetailed with Vanderkam’s lesson, because, starting a few weeks ago, her life and schedule sort of blew up. Her partner was ill, her doggie was sick, it’s tax season, and there were work kerfuffles. Each thing caused the dominoes to fall:

Losing a day, an hour, an afternoon — if that was time used to put things in place to keep them rolling through the week, and that time is lost, then you find yourself in a 17-task pile-up. … and pretty soon you’re in laundry apocalypse, and the only thing that’s going to save you is […] the next weekend.

Can’t we all relate?

Petersen notes that all of the tasks, in their own version of a sort of life laundry apocalypse, could have been handled individually, but together, her mind was whirling trying to figure out which enjoyable things she should have culled to avoid the apocalypse, or could cull in the coming days to get back on track. But she recognized, 

I don’t need to stop taking care of my friends’ kids, or stop running, or stop having dogs, or stop skiing in order to make this all [waves hands wildly] fall into place. I just need to be vigilant about not taking on more work than I can reconcile with the rest of my life. The work matters; the work is important; the work is wonderful. But the work is not enough.

Petersen is recognizing that often, when we have to choose what to toss from our busy schedules to get back on track, we throw ourselves overboard. 

For most of us, the thing that’s easiest to jettison is the thing that’s most precious to you — because letting it go ostensibly affects you and you alone. A hobby, a personal goal, a book club, a walk, a nap, all so readily sacrificed. But those are the things that allow us to stand up straight as we carry the weight of everyday annoyances and tasks. They are the counter-balance. They are essential. We cannot mistake the ease with they can be put down with disposability.

Wow. Seriously, wow. I wish I’d had this essay to share back when I wrote the toxic productivity series, and I’m glad I can share Petersen’s wisdom here. Yes, we should develop our skills to manage our time and tasks well, but let’s not do it at the risk of what makes our lives worth living — our relationships, our joys, or our humanity.

THE 2023 TASK MANAGEMENT AND TIME BLOCKING VIRTUAL SUMMIT

For the fourth year in a row, I’m participating in Francis Wade‘s Task Management and Time Blocking Virtual Summit. Francis is a fellow Cornell University alum — we actually lived in the same international dorm — founder of 2Time Labs in Jamaica, and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity: How To Protect Your Mind As Time Demands Increase.

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In last year’s preview to the 2022 summit, I covered a lot of the reasons behind productivity struggles in Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Doll’s Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022, from external struggles like lack of structure and technology overwhelm to personal challenges and tool/user mismatches.

I recapped the gems from experts at the summit in Paper Doll Shares Secrets from the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit 2022. So, if you missed all that, basically you’ve got a tons of wisdom (theirs, as well as mine) to review.

This year’s theme absolutely delights me: One-Size-Doesn’t-Fit-All. Now what? If you ever read my post, The Truth About Celebrity Organizers, Magic Wands, and the Reality of Professional Organizing, you know how how I feel about the inadequacy of one-size-fits-all approaches to organizing and productivity.

My own presentation by pre-recorded video (about which you’ve now heard) is Paper Shame — Embracing Analog Productivity Solutions in an Increasingly Digital World. (Pssst: Melissa Gratias helped inspire the title!) I’ll also be a panelist on Saturday afternoon (because Francis has his wife/co-founder Dale know I’m not a morning person). The topic? “Paper vs. Digital.”

That panel will be moderated by friend-of-the-blog and productivity dude extraordinaire Ray Sidney-Smith. We’ll be joined by Artificial Intelligence expert, Misha Maksin.  

Each year, the summit is refined and improved. This year, 27+ experts are participating, and I’m excited that I know so many of them!

On each of the three days of the summit, attendees get 24-hour access to a selection of video recordings on topics with titles like:

  • Handling Multiple Projects with Ease: How To Remove the Friction and Handle the Details
  • Productivity and Neurodiversity: Should I Fit in Productivity’s World or the Other Way Around?
  • Mastering Productivity with Mindfulness in 5 Steps
  • Build Without Burnout: Setting a Schedule for Your Business and 9-5
  • What’s Really Driving Your Distractions?
  • From Micro to Macro: How to Make Time Blocking Work for You
  • 3 Techniques to Level Up Your Time Blocking
  • Get a Game Plan: Three Steps to Designing Your Winning Week
  • Why You Aren’t Achieving Your Goals: Breaking the Cookie Cutter Approach to Goal Setting
  • Your Ultimate Productivity Tool: You Already Have It and It’s Not Paper or Digital

And that’s barely a third of the video options this year!

On Friday, the live portion of the TMTB Virtual Summit begins with Francis opening the event, followed by a full day of live panels and interviews. Another slew of video presentations will also be released.

I’m looking forward to Dr. Frank Buck interviewing his sort-of namesake, Dave Buck, as well as a live episode of The Productivitycast, with the aforementioned Ray, Augusto Pinaud, Art Gelwicks, and Francis. (Read more about this gang in Paper Doll Picks: Organizing and Productivity Podcasts.) I’ve been a guest on that podcast many times, and am sure it’ll be a hoot.

I’m also really excited about the panel discussion, “How Does Time Management Work Across Cultures and Countries?” and the interview with Mike Vardy about The Productivity Diet. 

On Saturday, there will be more video presentations released (including mine!) as well as another spate of live interviews and panels. (You’ll enjoy everything, but if you want to see my panel, it’s from 1:45 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Saturday.)

There are also oodles of bonus offers and “swag bag” items.

The whole event takes place on a very cool interactive platform called Airmeet, allowing us to interact at digital “tables” in a sort of cloud-based ballroom and attend Zoom-like lecture rooms for official events. As with previous summits, there’s time for networking with attendees and these great speakers and geeking out on productivity.

When you register for a free e-ticket to the event, you get 24-hour access to each “chunk” of videos, plus all of the live interviews, panels, and networking events in the Airmeet Lounge. 

Again, attendance is free, but you’ll have to carve out time in your schedule to watch the videos — it helps that Thursday is a video-only day! — and attend the live events, which run from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

If you want more time to absorb everything, you can purchase an All-Access Pass, which is basically a smörgåsbord of summit offerings and bonus extras, including:

  • recordings of all of the pre-recorded video presentations (including mine!)
  • recordings of all of the live panels, interviews, and events
  • an audio or PDF copy of Francis’ book
  • a 50% discount on Francis’s My Time Design Rapid Assessment program

(Be sure to pay attention to the resulting screen post-purchase so you know how to access your goodies.)

The full price for the All-Access pass is $249. But because I love you, I’ve got a super-nifty coupon link good up until the start of the summit that takes the price down to $99! 

What project might you approach as if it were a hobby?

Where can you create a backup slot in your schedule?

How will you protect the elements of your schedule that give your life meaning?

Will I see you at the 2023 Task Management and Time Blocking Summit?

Paper Doll Presents 4 Stellar Organizing & Productivity Resources

Posted on: February 13th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

Given that it’s Valentine’s Day week, I wanted to give all of my Paper Doll readers some treats. In this post, we’ll be looking at three books covering organizing, motivation, and productivity, as well as an upcoming video interview series for taking a proactive approach to productivity in leadership.

GO WITH THE FLOW! (The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook)

If you’ve been reading Paper Doll for a while, the name Hazel Thornton won’t be new to you. We’ve been colleagues and friends for many years, and I’ve shared Hazel with you when I interviewed her (along with Jennifer Lava and Janine Adams) for Paper Doll Interviews the Genealogy Organizers and when I profiled her stellar book, What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy in my 2021 holiday gift list post.

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Hazel is a delight and full of wisdom — and how many other professional organizers do you know who are experts on photo organizing, genealogy, and family legacies and who served on the jury in the famed Menendez trial? 

But Hazel is pretty famous for one other thing — flow charts. If the topic of flow charts even comes up in any organizing circles, Hazel’s is the first (and sometimes only) name that gets raised; she’s that much of a subject matter expert. So, it made sense that Hazel would take her favorite creations from her wealth of flow chart wisdom and leverage them into a resource.

Hazel’s newest book, published just a few weeks ago, is Go With the Flow! The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook. And it’s a whopper for anyone looking for some turn-by-turn directions for getting organized, from where to start to how to progress logically so you don’t get stuck.

This 170-page, 8.5″ x 11″, portrait-oriented paperback workbook includes 17 charts covering all different kinds of clutter:

  • clutter in your spaces (closet, garage, kitchen, office)
  • daily clutter (to-do lists, general paper, kids’ paper, cash flow, mental clutter)
  • legacy clutter (keepsakes, ancestry, photos)
  • life event clutter (holiday activity, holiday décor, occupied staging)

There are even flow charts to tell you which clutter flow chart you need and to help you get back on track if you’ve had some backsliding in the decluttering process.

(You won’t be surprised that Paper Doll‘s favorite flow chart was the one on dealing with paper clutter. But I suspect one of the most useful flow charts overall might be the one on keepsakes.)

Of course, the book would be pretty short if it only had flow charts. In each section, Hazel follows the flow chart with detailed answers to four questions.

  • What is clutter? — You might think you know what type of clutter you’re dealing with, but the book helps you identify items you may not have even considered. In each chapter, this section asks pertinent questions about how you interact with the item (tangible or otherwise) and feel about it, probes whether it needs to be in your life, prompts you to consider its condition or situation, and leads you to make wise decisions regarding whether it still fits you and your life. These are the exact questions we professional organizers gently pepper clients with when we work together.
  • Why can’t I part with my clutter? — As a veteran professional organizer, Hazel doesn’t just tell you to “buck up, buttercup!” but employs the analysis of the “what is clutter?” sub-questions to dig deeply into why the reader might be experiencing challenges in letting go.
  • What should I do with my clutter? — With each distinct category, the book offers clear suggestions as to where that clutter can go so it will really, truly leave your life in the most beneficial way possible.
  • What if, despite my best intentions, I am still living with clutter? — Nobody’s perfect. And Rome wasn’t built (or decluttered) in a day. So, the book has guidance for continuing to make progress and for getting support.

There’s bonus material, like resources for getting help organizing and decluttering and blank clutter worksheets to help you identify answers and track efforts. (Be sure to read the content in the clutter worksheet examples, because Hazel’s down-to-earth sense of humor shines there!)

In addition, there’s a special section advising professional organizers how to use the content of the workbook with clients.

Go With the Flow! is subtitled The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook, and for those who are feeling stuck with (or stymied by) their clutter, this can be the catalyst to actually make progress by working through the clutter instead of just reading about it. The combination of the flow charts, where their visual approach to “If X, then Y” fork-in-the-road decision trees, with straightforward prose coaching through the what’s and why’s of decluttering, offers a one-two punch for knocking clutter out of your life.

Go With the Flow! The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook is available for $27.50 at Amazon. If you’re in Australia (to which Amazon/KDP will not market books with color images), or if you desperately want a landscape-oriented version of the book, you can purchase a PDF copy directly from Hazel’s website. (It’s a slightly finicky process, Hazel reports, so do follow the instructions.)  

DO IT TODAY

You’ve got dreams that sparkle. Friends see your eyes light up when you talk about your big, bold visions for the future. You know you’ve got fabulous ideas inside of you that can make the world smarter, happier, healthier, weirder (in a good way), or just plain better.

So why aren’t you working on them?

Why aren’t you getting on that stage, giving your TED Talk or taking a bow for your award-winning creation? Why are you scrolling through social media or counting your excuses or being held back by fear? 

Once I got Kara Cutruzzula’s Do It Today: An Encouragement Journal in my hands, I realized I’d never seen a journal like this. It’s colorful and beautiful, with each turn of the page yielding a vibrant new palette, but the aesthetics are just the frosting on this empathetic, wise cake, a combo of a journal and motivational coach.

Friend-of-the-blog Kara Cutruzzula is a writer and editor, and I start my day reading her newsletter, Brass Ring Daily. BRD is pithy, perky, and just philosophical enough to get you out of your bed and headed to the coffee maker. (Kara is other things: a musical theater lyricist, playwright, podcaster, and fellow Gilmore Girls aficionado. But the rest I’m saving for an upcoming interview, so you’ll just have to be patient.) 

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As a follow-up to her Do It For Yourself, the first in her Start Before You’re Ready series, Do It Today offers gentle motivational coaching. Read straight through and tackle the guided motivational exercises one by one, or devour the section-starting essays and then ping-pong through exercises that resonate most with you on that day.

(Or, perhaps start each day with the journal, using an exercise as Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way-style morning pages?)

Personally, I’ve started using Do It Today to help me avoid procrastination by — you guessed it — procrastinating with the journal. When I find myself doing everything except the writing or project I really know I should be working on (to reach my own goals), I settle in to reread one of Kara’s essays and then tackle a journal entry. (In full disclosure, the journal is so beautiful that I can’t bring myself to actually write in it, and tend to type my responses so that I don’t obsess about my ever-more chicken-scratchy handwriting.)

To give you sense of the approach, the chapter-starting essays include:

  • Go Toward Your Nerves
  • Start Before You’re Ready (I’m sensing a theme here!)
  • Don’t Be Productive, Percolate Instead — Worth the price of admission!
  • Stamina, Courage, and Mirages
  • Sweet, Sweet Rejection — Trust me, whether you fear failure (or, like me, fear mediocrity), Kara’s stance here will conjure up the best kinds of attitude adjustments.
  • Weave a Generous Web
  • Do It Today 

It would be hard to pick, but the chapter on percolation is probably my favorite. Maybe because Kara’s writing here dovetails with what I wrote in my series last year on toxic productivity, I was prepared to embrace what she had to say. Or maybe it’s because she illustrates (through a tale of John Steinbeck and examples you’ll recognize from your own life) that percolation is a brilliant cheat code.

Have you ever circled an idea for a while, finding the tendrils of a concept while never locating key to actually getting started?

Percolation is “…giving yourself time and space to think without the extra pressure to track your performance…allowing yourself to enjoy reflecting and exploring your options.” Instead of coming up with ready-for-Prime-Time ideas, Kara helps you find your sources of inspiration, ideas, and solutions, areas you may have closed yourself off from by focusing on the perfect end result. Long story short, when you’ve focused too long on the checkmark at the end, Kara reminds you to focus on the joy of creation and accomplishment.

In each chapter of Do It Today, Kara has interspersed pop-art messages to uplift, free-writing journaling prompts, and list templates to get you thinking.

Some of my favorite, deceptively astute lines and what they mean to me:

  • You are more powerful than your productivity — battering toxic productivity’s lie that your worth comes from what you deliver
  • Everyone is just trying their best with the information they have — reminding you that none of us are perfect and prompting us to start now (because you can’t edit a blank page)
  • Look at all you have — focusing on gratitude as well as noticing the bounty we possess rather than the short stack and what we lack
  • Do, don’t overdo — I think I resemble — I mean, resent — that remark. I feel seen.

In terms of journaling prompts, in the section on starting before you’re ready, there’s a page that asks, “Is there one conversation you’re not ready to have? Even if you don’t know how to say it, begin here by writing a few possible opening sentences.” Down deep, you know this works. You’ve felt a sense of ease after telling your BFF about a problem at work and how you dread dealing with it. But by letting yourself stop thinking of the issue, and just giving yourself a few minutes to think about it, in context, you’ll find the weight is lifted!

I suggested one of the prompts from the Courage chapter to a client who wanted to apply for an opportunity but feared putting herself forward. Kara writes, “Have you ever had to ask someone to write you a letter of recommendation? What if you wrote one for yourself, highlighting your strengths and what you would bring to your next opportunity?” It worked!

The list-making prompts are incredible in their powerful simplicity. If you’re feeling like a slug, unable to clarify your thoughts, Kara encourages that you write a list of ten ideas completely unrelated to your current project, and offers some examples. The key is that taking your focus off of a lack of productivity hoovers up all the cobwebs.

Other list prompts help you strengthen your arsenal of motivation-boosting weapons of stress-destruction, like noting people who’ve historically provided safe spaces for you to share your works in progress.

I can’t do justice to this creative, colorful guide to getting un-stuck, but I’d describe it as being like meeting your most inspiring friend for brunch and leaving full of waffles and excitement.

Do It Today is available in paperback for $16.99 or Kindle for $9.99 at Amazon, as well as at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, Powell’s, and Indigo. You can also purchase directly from the publisher, Abrams Books. 

PRODUCTIVITY FOR HOW YOU’RE WIRED

My longtime colleague Ellen Faye is a consummate professional and ridiculously unflappable. She’s a Certified Professional Organizer®, Professional Certified Coach, and Certified Productivity Leadership Coach. She’s even been the president of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals!

Ellen recognized that there are far too many books out there by coaches telling readers how to be successful they way they, the coaches, have done it. Ellen, however, saw that her clients needed productivity solutions and systems that worked for them, not merely for her. That realization of the need for customization inspired her to write Productivity for How You’re Wired: Better Work. Better Life.

Front cover of Productivity for How You're Wired by Ellen Faye

Ellen’s book is designed for people seeking to be “more intentional about how they use their time and live their life,” and the book approaches this concept in three main ways. 

First, she wants readers to understand how they are truly wired with regard to how they deal with time and productivity. Ellen recognizes that individuals have different needs and ways of thinking in terms of structure preference as well as productivity style. 

In the first section of the book, Ellen guides readers to identify how their brains work best. She explains far better than I could even attempt, but the key is that you have to understand whether your priority focus is tasks vs. relationships, and then really comprehend what kind of structure (low, medium, or high) you need in your work and life — that’s situational structure. Through clear examples and charts, she walks you through identifying where, given your focus and structure preference, you’ll thrive or feel overly confined, struggle or succeed, power up or feel lost. 

Meanwhile, Ellen’s take on productivity style borrows from, and refines, other research on the topic, and the book helps you isolate which productivity style (Catalyst, Coordinator, Diplomat, or Innovator) best fits you, laying out the characteristics and best work process approach for each. It’s really eye opening.

This section also illustrates how understanding challenges like perfectionism, procrastination, chronic stress, and burnout plays into making positive changes.

In the second part of the book, Ellen teaches the reader how to create a productivity flow framework to transform current unworkable systems into customized pathways to success. Productivity for How You’re Wired walks you through setting your goals and intentions, using a time map, defining the essential structures, creating a priorities task list, and doing your daily and weekly planning. 

Productivity books often have one uniform approach to everything and then vague pointers for understanding how to begin and continue; you have to find where you fit in. Instead, Ellen provides detailed guidance so that no part of your life is going to fall through the cracks. Basically, it’s like having Ellen as your coach, sticking by you step-by-step, so you can get clear on your priorities and focus on the essentials elements for achieving what means the most.

The third part of the book combines the deep understanding you’ll gain regarding the right approach for you and the overarching framework you developed so you can apply the concepts to your own life and work demands. Using the right structure preferences and productivity style, you’ll see how to deal with meetings, email, decision-making, remote work, team leadership, and more.

I particularly liked that Productivity for How You’re Wired‘s chapters start with “Highlights,” overviews of what’s coming so that you can find your place. (I like to know where I’m going when I read so I have an “ah-ha” when I get there!)

The book has myriad real-life stories to help you see parallels between your situation and others who’ve been through it and achieved success. To that end, each chapter also has “Making It Fit” charts so you can make decisions using your own structure preference and productivity style and know what to do in the situation described.

You can use the Productivity for How You’re Wired as a bit of a workbook, as each chapter ends with a place to note those “Takeaways” you don’t want to forget and commit to the “Actions” you’ll take to help you develop your own systems.

The only drawback to the book is that some of the material on the charts can be hard to read (due to the confines of a tangible book); however, there are colorful versions of the charts available online, which allow you to expand the charts so you can see them more clearly. There are also supplemental resources on the website. 

Productivity for How You’re Wired is fluff-free. This is just about the meatiest book I’ve ever seen on achieving personalized productivity. This book is a real commitment — to yourself and the material — but short of working in person with Ellen herself, it’s an amazing way to tweak every detail of your approach to work and life to fit in everything important to you. If you make the commitment, I think you’ll be impressed with what you get out of it.

Productivity for How You’re Wired is available from Amazon for $17.64 for paperback or $9.99 on Kindle.

CREATING ORDER AMONG CHAOS

Starting February 15th and running through February 28th, I’m participating in the adventurously titled Creating Order Among Chaos: How To Effectively Manage The Everyday Whirlwind Of Responsibilities So That You’re Empowered To Do More Leading & Less Reacting!

This free online video retreat is headed up by personal coach and business consultant Robert Barlow from Perpetual Aim. You might recall his name from when I did Robert’s The Leader’s Asset series on prioritization and leadership last summer.

If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner, you know what it’s like when you’re constantly reacting instead of acting, always putting out fires (that often turn out to be fireflies) instead of setting off your own carefully planned fireworks. Simply put, it can feel impossible to feel like you’re running the show, and instead everything (and everyone, and every sensory input) is distracting you from achieving success. 

It’s hard to lead when the ducklings behind you keep getting out of line. It’s hard to make progress when the phones won’t stop ringing about yesterday’s efforts (and other people’s priorities). That’s where the video retreat comes in!

Robert has gathered 14 speakers, myself included, who all share a passion for empowering small business owners and professionals to work more on their businesses instead of in their businesses (to borrow from Michael Gerber’s now-classic The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.)

Each of us participating are bringing our knowledge and expertise to these short but powerful video interviews with Robert, and you can anticipate that each will leave you with actionable options to achieve your priorities. Topics covered will include:

  • How to manage juggling responsibilities
  • How to lead and delegate to others
  • Ways to create stronger boundaries so that you are less overcommitted and overwhelmed
  • Tips, tools, and strategies that move you forward in life
  • What thinking patterns are keeping you mired in place
  • How to stay connected with your vision, goals, and ideals
  • How to manage your time on a day to day basis to accomplish what you desire.

This two-week video series is virtual; that means you can watch it at home, in the office, on your commute (provided someone else is driving the car/bus/train), or wherever you can get away from the hubbub.

I think we’d all love the opportunity to pick the brains of experts in productivity and leadership, and have conversations to help guide professional success. I’m excited to not only have contributed my thoughts, but I can’t wait to hear what the other experts have to say. Participating experts include:

And that’s only hitting half of the presenters! 

I have a complimentary ticket for you to attend. Just click on https://perpetualaim.com/JulieBestry to register for this free, online two-week “retreat,” and you’ll start getting emails to take you to each daily interview. I hope you’ll attend, and if you watch my interview with Robert, feel free to come back and share your thoughts on what I’ve said about conquering overwhelm and achieving prioritized focus for improved leadership.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my wonderful readers. I hope these books and the video series will help you achieve your organizing and productivity goals.

Much (productive) love,

Paper Doll

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