Paper Doll
Use the Zeigarnik Effect to Finish Off Your Unfinished Tasks
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
~ William James
Yes, I know I’ve used this quote here before, but it’s an important one, especially at this time of the year.
As I type this post, there’s barely more than a week left in 2024. As we look toward 2025, I can’t help thinking about what I didn’t quite finish this year. (Yes, even professional organizers fall short of our sometimes-lofty goals.)
THE ZEIGARNIK EFFECT: WAITERS AND THE CUSTOMERS WHO HAVEN’T PAID
Tasks left un-done scratch at the brain. There’s even a name for it — the Zeigarnik Effect.
As the theory of this phenomenon goes, people remember tasks that are unfinished or interrupted better than the ones they complete. Initially, psychologist Kurt Lewin recognized that waiters had clearer recollections of the orders of patrons who hadn’t yet paid for their orders. Once everyone paid, the waiters basically wiped their brains and couldn’t recall the details of the orders anymore.
This is why I am always so dubious of Law & Order episodes when the police track down a suspect by credit card order to pump the bartender or waiter for details. Invariably, although paid (and ostensibly tipped), servers seem to still remember all the details. Yet somehow these Manhattan waiters remember not only the patrons’ orders but what their dates looked like and the basics of the conversations they were having? Is the world of Dick Wolf a Zeigarnik-free zone?
But I digress.
The central concept of the Zeigarnik Effect is that once you start a task, there’s a “task-specific tension” created in the brain which keeps the task active. Basically, when you start something but don’t finish it, it’s like it’s still on the burner on the stove, and (assuming you’re not distracted by other things you’ve started), that tension pushes you to work on the task. Get interrupted again? The tension persists.
Once you actually do finish the work, the tension is relieved. Keeping that continuous tension up — having the task pop to the top of your To-Do list, putting a sticky note on your steering wheel, etc. — keeps the essentials of the task accessible to the part of your brain that says, “Damn, I really have to work on that!”
(Usually, men get the credit for women’s work, but in a striking rarity, the effect is named not for Lewin, but for Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who continued the line of research of her friend and mentor, Lewin.)
The Zeigarnik Effect keeps unfinished tasks sticky in the brain and work in several ways to get you across the finish line. Unfinished tasks can prompt you to finish them by acting on your brain in the following capacities. They:
- Serve as Mental Reminders — You naturally keep remembering things you started but haven’t finished doing. The unfinished tasks stay top-of-mind, prompting your brain to say, “Hey, you got interrupted (or got bored and wandered away) but this thing is still here! Don’t forget about it!”
Wooden Brown Scrabble Tiles Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels
- Boost Motivation — The next time you curse your brain for reminding you of an unfinished tasks, give yourself a little slack. This mental tension can increase your drive and magnify your focus to resolve those icky, lingering tasks. Sometimes, that motivation may just be, “Dang, I don’t want to be reminded of this again!” but that’s motivation in its own right.
- Build Momentum — My clients hear me say this all the time, but “Small victories breed success.” Even — and sometimes especially — when you take action on the tiniest of unfinished tasks, it can create a domino effect. Have you ever noticed that when you knock something off your list, particularly something that’s been hanging out there a little too long, it gives you the push to tackle more and larger tasks?
- Give You the Satisfaction of Closure — That “whoohoo!” you get from finishing something? It can make you feel like a bit of a superhero. It can work magic. That relief you get when something is no longer hanging over you frees up mental energy so you can set (and tackle) new goals.
Sidebar on the Zeigarnik Effect and ADHD
Of course, the Zeigarnik Effect is just a typical psychological phenomenon and may not hold up under all circumstances. For example, if you’re undergoing a lot of stress, whether at work, or due to illness, or an upheaval in your relationship, an unfinished task that has nothing tangible or digital bringing your attention back to it may just, in effect, escape your brain and fall out of your ears.
When I started to write this post, I wondered whether anyone had researched the relationship between the Zeigarnik Effect and the experiences of individuals with ADHD. They have, but it turns out some of my initial instincts were wrong.
Since the Zeigarnik Effect says that that people remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones, I figured that people with ADHD might have so many simultaneous thoughts and unfinished tasks that newer unfinished tasks would push older ones off the burner. Nope. Or at least, not always.
Actually, the research shows that there’s sometimes a heightened sense of unfinished task recall in individuals with ADHD. Even with all my professional work with organizing clients who have ADHD, I still figured they’d forget more of their unfinished tasks. In actuality, the research shows that the brains of people with ADHD often keep unfinished tasks active, which has just as problematic an effect as forgetting — it increases mental clutter.
So, it’s a good news/bad news situation. The Zeigarnik Effect isn’t making people with ADHD forget their not-yet-completed tasks; it’s just filling their brains with a lot of blinking lights about those tasks. And that “mental tension” that’s supposed to be good for remembering creates real, human tension (that is, stress), that hurts productivity. Ouch.
Luckily, research also indicates that planning is a particularly effective mitigation strategy for reducing the stressful aspects of the “mental tension” of the Zeigarnik Effect. According to Harnessing Two Horsemen of Productivity Havoc, the kind of detailed planning we talk about here at Paper Doll HQ all the time really helps.
Florida State University researchers found that when people with ADHD were allowed to create their own super-specific plans for completing their unfinished projects, the distracting Zeigarnik-esque thoughts went poof! As we talk about here all the time, planning is powerful; it frees up your mental resources and quiets all those Zeigarnik beeps and boops in your brain reminding you of what needs to get done.
But there’s a hitch. I suspect it works for people for ADHD much like it works for those of us without ADHD (especially when we’re overwhelmed), which goes back to why we’ve got unfinished business at the end of the year.
The Zeigarnik Effect has our brains full of stuff we have yet to finish. So we look at when the thing has to be completed, and think, “Aha, I’ll make a plan to attack it.” The problem is that, too often, we either see no deadline (so we don’t feel any pressure to complete a task) or we see a deadline far on the horizon — perhaps several weeks out — and our brain convinces us that it’s easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, we have plenty of time, and we procrastinate. Oops.
So, be sure to embrace the advice in Paper Doll On Understanding and Conquering Procrastination when planning your attack on whatever is incomplete.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t entirely wrong about ADHD and forgetting. In one study on the impact on prospective memory — that is, the ability to remember to perform an intended action in the future — researchers looked at activity-based prospective memory in people with ADHD found that the Zeigarnik Effect can influence how unfinished tasks or “intentions” remain active in memory.
Their findings suggests that the ADHD brain sometimes puts uncompleted tasks in a state of “suspended activation,” which can adversely impact task recall and completion upon waking up. (This points to the idea that if your unfinished task is going to remain unfinished overnight, you’re going to need more support than if you just have to remember to take the pot off the stove in the next five minutes.)
For what it’s worth, whether you have ADHD or not, research shows that intentionally starting a task, even for the briefest bit of time, can increase the likelihood of returning to the task again and completing it.
ZEIGARNIK YOURSELF INTO FINISHING THE LINGERING TASKS
We can’t finish everything.
Finish Line Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU
I know, that’s a shocking comment on someone who comes here each week to tell you how to organize and be productive, but it’s the truth. It’s why I don’t believe in Inbox: Zero, or Laundry Basket: Zero, or any other Task:Zero mentality.
Seriously, the email, like the laundry, keeps coming. Unless your family members are all about to become nudists, the laundry will always be piling up, and while you can try to keep up with it, like all those inbound emails, when it comes down to it, email and laundry aren’t why you are here on this planet.
Finish what you can, and what you must, and get on living your life. The goal is to have more time to focus on what matters most to you, not to have the emptiest in-boxes.
As we head into the final week of the year, I encourage you to finish up as many of the small, hanging-on tasks you can, just so you can go into the new year unencumbered and more revved up for the tasks and projects about which you feel passionate.
- Make a list — Santa isn’t the only one who is busy making lists and checking them twice. Grab a pad of paper or your phone (because you’ll want to be mobile) and walk around your house (and if applicable, your office) and make a list of all of your unfinished tasks and projects. The Zeigarnik Effect means that a bunch of these tasks are in your brain already, or at the periphery of your focused thought, but some tasks may have edged others off the front burners. Write them all down.
- Delete what doesn’t matter anymore — I know, this feels like failure. But it’s not. Before you can really prioritize what matters, you have to let go of the things that really don’t matter anymore. It doesn’t mean those things never mattered (though they might not have), just that dragging them around with you is doing yourself a disservice.
If it’s been three months since your friend’s birthday, give up the belief that you’re going to time-travel back and send her the perfect card. Forgive yourself (as she’d forgive you) and send her a New Year’s card with all the good gossip about why your life has you so frazzled. You remembered her birthday is September 20th. You just forgot that September 20th was September 20th when September 20th came around.
If there was a grant you were going to apply for, but the deadline has passed, or a work opportunity that you never quite got things together to pursue, forgive yourself and move on. The universe will present new opportunities. Not all unfinished tasks have to be finished. Focus on the ones that shine a light on what fits your values and goals in your life and at work.
- Break down the list into smaller component pieces. — You’ve heard this before: projects are not tasks. You can’t DO a project. Divide every item on your list into small, actionable tasks. This will reduce your sense of overwhelm, making it easier to start…and then to finish.
- Identify your priorities — Let’s face it, some lingering tasks are more vital than others, and the amount of time they take to accomplish isn’t always the key factor.
There are big things you may not have finished. There are small ones, too. Spend one 25-minute Pomodoro to see how they rank. It’s OK to revise your priorities. You don’t have to create a list of 72 ranked items, but get a highlighter and pick out what will give you the most bang for your buck.
If you started it and still value it, see the next bullet. If you didn’t tackle it at all but want to keep it on your list, dig a little deeper and define what the obstacles have been so you can tackle the tasks with awareness.
What are the most important ones to start so you can finish? Do those first!
- Commit to a time and place for taking action — Someday is not a day on the calendar. If you don’t schedule when you’re going to work on a task, you’re not going to start working on that task.
This is where time blocking comes in handy. You don’t have to schedule working on that 2024 bookkeeping task for 3:15 p.m. this Thursday. But if you have a block for doing financial tasks every Thursday afternoon, it’ll be easy to slot that bookkeeping into a cozy spot on your schedule. Revisit my past posts on time blocking to get thinking about the kinds of blocks you need to tackle your overhanging tasks:
Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity
Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done
Paper Doll Shares Secrets from the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit 2022
Highlights from the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit
I have previously written a lot about activation energy and its importance in getting you over the hump when motivation isn’t doing the trick. William James had a nifty quote about this, too:
“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”
We can’t wait to be inspired. Sometimes, we just have to take out the trash, replace the light bulb, or call to complain about a mistake on the bill, whether we feel like it or not. But it’s easier to do if there’s a slot on the calendar for household care or dealing with problems.
- Celebrate every win — There’s a reason why so many of us write down things we’ve already done on our task list for the day, just so we can check them off. Having done something, and particularly something that’s been hanging over us for a while, is an accomplishment.
Acknowledge each and every completed task. It will reinforce your sense of satisfaction and motivate you to keep taking action. Nobody is saying you have to shout it from the rafters (though that would be cool), but perhaps go out for a nice meal to celebrate and see if you can spot a server doing a great job remembering all the orders.
Once you have it on your schedule, give some thought to where you’ll work on this task. Find the right environment, or create a virtual one to get you in the mood. I’m already tickled to use this 12-hour Gilmore Girls-themed video so I can finish my tasks at Luke’s Diner in Stars Hollow.
You might prefer a Yule Log video like the ones that used to run on television on Christmas Day. Youtube is full of them, and there’s even a playlist of the best. But if you’d like to feel like someone is cozily keeping you company while you check items off your list, perhaps Nick Offerman’s ten-hour Yule Log might be the way to go.
FINISHING UP
In James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter from Thursday, November 14, 2024, I was introduced to Emily Dickinson’s poem Forever – is composed of Nows – (690), on the power of the moment.
Take advantage of the upcoming moments in the quiet lull between now and the end of the year. Use these moments to get started. You don’t have to DO THE THING, but you can plan to do the thing.
You don’t have to rebalance your financial portfolio to make your retirement more accessible. But you can call and make an appointment with your financial planner, or with a certified financial planner if you don’t already have one. (And hey, my colleagues at Eddy & Schein Group have even put together some guidance on Wrapping Up Year-End Personal Financial Affairs regarding with whom you should be speaking, and about what, in terms of your money life.)
Perhaps your hanging-on task is spending down your flexible spending account (FSA). If your employer permits it, you can carry over up to $640 of unused funds from 2024 into 2025, but why not get your goodies, now? You set aside money, pre-tax, for healthcare stuff; don’t let it go to waste because you forgot to check what you could buy. Look up how much you’ve got left in your account, and then Google your options. For example, Yahoo Tech has 35 Surprising Things You Can Buy with Your FSA Money. (Seriously, did you know you could buy an Oura ring with your FSA?)
You were supposed to pick a new dentist or doctor or schedule that mammogram but just never found the time? OK, don’t kick yourself. But look at your insurance website or app to find out who is in-network, and schedule. (Well, yes, you’ll then sit on hold for a bit before you get to sync up your nifty 2025 calendar with a provider’s schedule. But it’s not going to take as much time as learning calculus. For what it’s worth, I learned just enough to pass the class in college and then, Zeigarnik-style, let all that unnecessary knowledge fall out of my head. You will not be shocked to know that it’s all been OK.)
Go through the unanswered emails in your inbox and send replies, even if the reply just says, “The year got away from me, but I appreciate you contacting me about [whatever], and if it’s still something you want to discuss, let’s get on each other’s calendar’s for late January.” Or you can say “nope, but thanks anyway.” Whatever you do, you’ll feel like you moved forward.
Make a list, chuck the tasks that no longer really matter, pick the ones that will be most satisfying (emotionally, financially, or practically) to complete, schedule time to do them, and give yourself a resounding “HUZZAH!” And if you could use a little accountability, feel free to share in the comments section: what overhanging task might you complete in the next week?
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Way Out of the Winter Doldrums
Sigh. the musical Annie may be right that “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow,” but the sun never came out yesterday.
Granted, it was a rainy day, but in addition to the dark, dreariness of the day, and the too-swift passing of a December Sunday, the sun went down without my noticing because it really never seemed to come up. As I may have alluded to in Organize Your Sleep When the Clocks Change and Beyond, I’m not much of a fan of Standard Time. I like lots of sunshine, and particularly want long, light evenings to run errands and move about in the world.
We’re in a darker, gloomier time of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere. That, combined with the wonkiness of the end of the year, makes this a weird time. Some folks are delighting in preparing for the holidays, getting ready to entertain and celebrate, but over and over, I’m hearing from friends and clients alike that they aren’t quite “feeling it,” or at least not yet.
A few people have asked, having jokingly, if there are ways to organize yourself out of feeling out of sorts at the end of the year. I think there are.
This is the final “normal” week of the year. Next week is Christmas and the start of Hanukkah, and the week after, is New Year’s. While many folks are (or will be) with family and celebrating, there are many who are feeling a walking-through-molasses sluggishness at this time of year. Half their co-workers are out of the office, and while some clients are expecting attention, there’s a widespread, tacit understanding that nobody is starting anything new for the next 2 1/2 weeks.
So, if you’re in your annual happy place, please feel free to skip this week’s post. But if you’re grumbling about the dark and the cold, about another year over and about the “meh” of it all, I have some suggestions.
COPING WITH THE “BASEMENT WEEKS” OF THE YEAR
These weeks aren’t just the bottom of the year. They can feel dark, cold, even soggy. There’s a hurry-up feeling just before the holidays and, for most, a drop-off in delight between the holidays and again at the start of the year.
But winter really can be the most wonderful time of the year if you have the right mindset, according Kari Leibowitz, PhD., a Stanford-trained psychologist. She’s written a book on how to improve mental health by changing how you think about the winter months.
Leibowitz moved to Tromsø, Norway, above the Arctic Circle, to live for a year. For two entire months, the sun doesn’t rise in Tromsø! You’d think everyone there would be crabby and stabby during that time, but she found that the community approached the season with a chipper mentality. She similarly explored places on earth with “some of the coldest, darkest, longest and most intense winters, and discovered the power of “wintertime mindset”— viewing the season as full of opportunity and wonder.”
To help those of us (who can at least feel grateful that we’re not above the Arctic Circle) starting to struggle with finding inspiration this time of year, Leibowitz wrote How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days.
Get Psyched for Winter
Liebowitz says that changing our mindsets about winter is key. Apparently, we tend to psych ourselves out, adopting a mindset that assumes that winter will be grim, so it feels that way. I get it. As a professional organizer, I’ve seen how often people expect that organizing will be boring and that they’ll be grumpy, so when they do it on their own, it is. They’re surprised when a professional organizer comes in and treats the experience as hopeful and (dare I say it?) entertaining?
As an organizer, I approach working with a new client, or even a new session, by focusing on the possibilities of finding delight. I see myself, in partnership with a client, as an explorer, a detective, an anthropologist, and more. Because I expect fun, I will (generally) find it (and get to share it with the client).
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, and interpret, new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. If you expect winter to be misery-inducing, you’ll find signs of it everywhere.
Easier said that done? Maybe not. Instead of seeing winter as two potentially fun (but possibly disappointing) weeks followed by months of darkness, we can look for ways to see winter, as a whole, as fun.
Create a Winter Wonderland in Your Space
I’m sure you’ve heard about hygge. A few years ago, books about hygge, the Danish approach to winter coziness, was all the rage. (If you need an introduction, The New Yorker‘s 2016 piece, The Year of Hygge, the Danish Obsession with Getting Cozy, is a great place to start.)
Western articles about hygge tend to focus on the physical atmosphere. Every single piece will reference candles. The Danes are very big on candles being comforting. Personally, I worry about candles getting knocked over. If you have pets and tiny humans, consider safe alternatives to lit candles, like fairly lights or tiny, flickering LED tea lights.
If you have a fireplace and don’t have to worry about kids or creatures in close proximity, consider making a ritual out of lighting a nightly fire to increase the cozy atmosphere.
There’s no official hygge-ness to it, but I think it’s wise to create a winter beverage station. Think about the coffee stations you see in bed & breakfast venues and boutique hotel lobbies. Consider investing in a cute tray and a variety of teas, coffees, mulled ciders, and hot chocolates. Buy a few tiny bottles of flavoring syrups, or fill a glass canister with mini-marshmallows. Whether you’re working from home or recovering from exposure to a snowy day, your daily beverage experience can be a ritual for emotional, as well as physical, warmth.
If you’re up for some “scentsational” improvements, extend the scents of the holiday season and use essential oils like cinnamon, pine, or citrus. (Generally, I prefer unscented products, but am obsessed with buying citrus-scented foaming hand soaps. Even before COVID, I was in the habit of washing my hands as soon as I came in from the outside world — you never know what supermarket shelf had germs! — and those citrusy, foamy bubbles and warm water are a great transition when you first come in out of the cold.)
Increase comfort in various places in your house. Plush blankets are soft, warm, and nurturing. The weather outside may be frightful, but you can feel snuggly the whole day (and night) long.
Fellow GenXers may recall how cozy it was to wear leg-warmers in the 1980s, both inside and outside. You might think leg-warmers disappeared when Jane Fonda workout videos did, but they’re still available in a variety of styles and colors.
It’s not necessarily hygge to use them this way, but on a day where you need a lift, dance around your house to a TikTok video and pretend you’re an extra in an episode of Fame.
Organize Your Winter to Embrace Hygge Attitudes
In addition to the physical comforts that can improve your mood in the winter, there are hygge-related attitudes (irrespective of holidays) that can give you some uplift when you’re struggling against the (literal or figurative) darkness.
- Be present — It’s so easy to get caught up in the news and crummy things happening halfway around the world or just elsewhere near you, but miss the small treasures in your own life. Be present in the moment by stepping back from technology. For more reasons and inspiration, read my post, Celebrate the Global Day of Unplugging.
- Add pleasure rituals to each day — You can counteract the glumness of winter by adding little treats to your day (and to the days of everyone around you). Call a friend to come over and hang out while you bake cookies. Of course, winter treats don’t have to be caloric. Come home after a work day to glory in a bubble bath. Try skincare rituals that may have seemed like silly luxuries before, like a face- or full-body sheet mask.
- Create a cadence to the week with personal and social rituals — Rituals added to the ebb and flow of your week can make the winter pass more quickly. For the next few months, try having a standing date with friends, whether it’s a low-effort Sunday dinner (rotating houses), board-game afternoon, or a movie night. Consider pancake/waffle breakfasts on Saturday with the kids and experiment with different types recipes or shapes. The key is that you don’t have to go out in the winter weather (though you could) to have something to look forward to each week that’s not a big production, but that will lift your spirits.
- Practice gratitude — Hey, at least you don’t live above the Arctic Circle. At least we don’t live in horse and buggy days and have to get our drinking/cleaning/bathing water from the river. At least there’s Zoom and Door Dash and electricity. Be thankful for small mercies, for loving friends, or for whatever you don’t have that you don’t want. Journal, write gratitude lists, or write notes to the people to and for whom you are grateful! Imagine how getting such a note could brighten their winter days!
- Volunteer — If you’re having trouble even feeling grateful, consider volunteering with a local charity, at a shelter (for unhoused persons, for victims of domestic violence, for animals looking for their forever homes, etc.).
- Practice mindfulness — The Polish website Prze Kroj’s Mindfulness Exercises for a Cold Day provides a variety of approaches to reframing the thoughts we have about the stagnation of these dark days (“Oh, no, another year is ending and I still haven’t written my novel!”) and offers ideas for positive reinforcement and self-awareness.
Behave “As If” and Upgrade Your Winter Activities
I will never ski. I ice skate maybe once every fifteen years. You know how some people are “at one” with nature? I am at two with nature.
But Leibowitz found that the folks of Tromsø found ways to spend their winters living more closely in sync with nature, adapting to the seasons by giving in and taking cues from our animal friends. Perhaps we need not hibernate, but that hygge coziness (resting more, slowing down) apparently blends nicely in concert with Thumper and Bambi (playing outside).
So, following Leibowitz’s advice that we act as if we were outdoorsy folks, we could:
- Take an energizing walk when the sun is out. (You may recall from the Organize Your Sleep When the Clocks Change and Beyond that getting daylight helps reset the body clock so our insides know that it’s time to go night-night.)
- If you’re not me, try a winter sport or activity that’s less about competition and more about having fun: ice skating, sledding, skiing (downhill or cross-country), snowshoeing, tubing, tobogganing. etc.
- You don’t have to be athletic. You and the neighbor kids (or the cute neighbor guy, if your life imitates a Hallmark movie) can make a snowman or build a snow fort.
Love and Other Indoor Sports
Of course, you don’t have to go outside. Leibowitz recommends the dark winter months are ideal for engaging in “low-arousal positive activities,” — activities that give us a warm glow rather than ruddy faces and iced-lung wheezes.
If you’d like to explore an activity that makes the winter brighter or cozier but without having to put on your shoes, winter is a great time to organize your hobby exposure.
- Take up a craft or hobby. Give yourself permission to be terrible at knitting or painting. Nobody needs to know.
- Explore an online class (live or recorded) to learn how to do something (cook, take better photographs, do those viral social media dances) or just to know something (about the Holy Roman Empire, or what are the other parts of a cell, because all you remember is that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, and there must be more to it).
- Take up an indoor physical activity. Every January, people sign up for gym memberships as part of New Year’s resolutions. They go a few times and their motivation peters out. Don’t let winter beat you up or guilt you out. Try an online exercise class. There’s a reason why Yoga with Adriene is a perennial favorite, even with those of us with wonky balance and no flexibility. Adriene and her doggie offer a comforting yoga practice, and you don’t have to switch out of your jammies and into Spandex. (Though you might want to try out the aforementioned leg-warmers!)
Conversely, go the reverse route. Instead of trying something new, reinvigorate yourself with the love of something old.
From my late twenties and through my thirties (and beyond), I had a favorite regional band, The Floating Men. They weren’t MTV-famous, but I attended their small- and medium-sized venue concerts in various cities where I lived (or traveled to) and always felt immense joy as we all (The Floatilla) sang along and danced with revelry.
The band stopped playing gigs as their grownup careers got in the way, but last year, they announced they were going to start performing again. There wouldn’t be shows every few weeks, but there would be a show in Nashville and I was jazzed! But it sold out in moments. They added a second show. It sold out right away again. I shrugged and figured I’d just comfort myself with the CDs that have sustained me for decades.
I was surprised and delighted when they announced a show here in Chattanooga, and I managed to get tickets; that show, too, had sold out quickly and a second night was added, and as frugal as I am, I arranged to go to that show, too. I’ve been listening to the band’s music for a long time, but in the months since I bought the ticket, I listen much more often, singing out loud and dancing around the house. I’m remembering the concerts, but also the joy of hearing the music for the first time, or introducing it to others. Sometimes, recalling old loves can kindle new sparks.
What old loves can you bring back into your life? (No, don’t call your ex.)
- Re-read books that brings you joy or comfort — I re-read all the Jane Austen novels almost every year. (This winter, I’m considering a movie marathon over weeks, watching every movie based on an Austen novel.)
- Listen to music from your youth — Listen to your tangible music formats or go to Spotify, but pretend it’s your senior year of high school or college and play what thrilled you back then. If it’s Squeeze’s Singles – 45’s and Under, let me know in the comments and we can sing Tempted together over Zoom.
- Re-binge your favorite shows from way back — Chances are good that there are shows you loved back before there were DVRs (or even VCRs). Watch them again, and maybe share the love with a partner, friend, or kid who never experienced the show the first time through. (I’m ready for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch.)
- Listen to podcasts that review the stuff you loved — I’m a sucker for podcasts where fans talk about TV shows, but also where actors talk about the shows they were in, and each show focuses on one episode. I loved The West Wing Weekly when there was a new episode every week, and my plan is to start listening to I Am All In, Scott (Luke Danes) Patterson’s Gilmore Girls podcast.
And as long as I’m talking about Gilmore Girls, have you seen the new Walmart commercial with the cast?
Unlike some of the rest of us, Lorelai loves winter. If you’re a fan, you know how happy she gets when she can smell snow.
The point of all of this is that you can use the darkness of winter as permission to slow down, rest, and rebuild for a coming spring. Soon enough, we’ll be talking about all you want to accomplish for the new year. Until then, maybe reinvigorate yourself gently?
A PERSPECTIVE TO HELP YOURSELF LET GO
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Holiday Gift-Giving With Social Science Research
It’s that time!
Every December, my professional organizing colleagues and I write blog posts about giving (and asking for) clutter-free gifts, experiential gifts, and gifts that that help you be more organized.
The years I’ve written about consumable gifts, I’ve made myself so hungry that I’ve stopped blogging halfway through to eat close approximations of whatever I’ve researched. And I’ve coveted experiential gifts of practicality, adventure, education, and pampering. I still want the Petite Cheese Storage Vault that I wrote about in Paper Doll’s Holiday Gift List: Warm Their Hearts and Fill Their Tummies.
Apparently it no longer exists, though Cheese Grotto™ seems to have a nice approximation!
But recently, I’ve been reading some scientific research that may help organize and improve the gift-giving process and reduce some of the (emotional and financial) stress around gift-giving.
HABITUATION AND THE DELIGHT OF GIVING
I’m reading Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There, by Tali Sharot and Cass R Sunstein.
The book is focused on helping us appreciate habituation, the way we are less and less delighted by things — from tangible items to our homes to our relationships — as we get used to them, and how we can change our behaviors (take breaks from our spaces, our habits, social media, and our habitual ways of living) to “resparkle” and appreciate our lives more.
The authors even quote economist Tibor Scitovsky’s classic, The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction, explaining that “pleasure results from incomplete and intermittent satisfaction of desires.”
In other words, things are more fun when we do them intermittently, rather than constantly. It’s one reason why we get delight from giving and getting gifts at the holidays. Goodies are nice, but we’d probably get bored, or at least habituated, if we got gifts every day. (OK, yes, I’m sure we’d all like to test that theory out.)
Early in the book, Sharot and Sunstein talk about the values of happiness (however you define it) and having a meaningful purpose are key to enjoying life, but that we tend to habituate to both happiness (new jobs with new salaries or new relationships) and meaning.
As an example, you might enjoy bingeing a TV show, which isn’t particularly meaningful, and the ROJI (return-on-joy-investment, in my own silly coinage) will wear off; conversely, you may invest your time in volunteering, which is fulfilling and purposeful, but you may not be particularly happy if the effort is laborious or wearying. (Why is it that good deeds can be both uplifting and exhausting?)
The authors note that one exception is the joy and meaning that comes from raising children, and they posit that we habituate much more slowly to the “satisfaction” that results from doing things for (or giving things to) others.
They evaluated and built on the social science research of Ed O’Brien and Samatha Kassirer in People Are Slow to Adapt to the Warm Glow of Giving in the journal Psychological Science, and found that if individuals were offered a $5 treat day after day for five days, the sense of joy wore off quickly.
However, when people were given (or “won”) similar funds to spend on others, day after day, while the delight they experienced did lessen somewhat, over the course of the week, they habituated to the “warm glow of giving” much more slowly. Per Sharot and Sunstein, giving “provides a greater sense of meaning than getting” and according to O’Brien and Kassirer, this is because focusing on the act of giving is inked to feelings of social connection, and by extension, value.
This doesn’t mean that you’re always going to feel great about giving your sister-in-law a gift that you know from past experience she will return. However, from an organizational perspective, keeping this concept in mind might help you avoid procrastinating on getting that “difficult” gift.
For example, when you’re dealing with the hubbub of the holiday season and are perhaps feeling dubious about the prospect of shopping or giving the “right” gift, or are even wondering if your efforts will be for naught because the other person won’t be getting you a gift that is as nice or that takes as much effort as you’re putting in, take a breath.
Gift-giving isn’t obligatory, and you need not go into debt for the holiday season. But it’s also not so that you’ll get a gift of equal value and effort. (I mean, it can be, but it shouldn’t be. Let’s organize ourselves out of these habits and attitudes.)
If you are giving gifts, and the shopping and the lists and the traffic are all giving you a headache, pause. Go have a hot cocoa (or whatever overly frothy Starbucksian beverage is your fave) and think about the fact that you’re going to get more sustained joy out of giving gifts that you might think.
Cocoa photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash
Give yourself kudos and let yourself feel some delight with the knowledge that science says gift-giving is good for you.
WHAT SCIENCE SAYS ABOUT GOOD GIFT-GIVING
Did you know there’s serious research into what goes into giving a good gift? In fact, there’s a lot of it.
In the Society for Consumer Psychology Journal, Julian Givi and his team reviewed more than 160 published research papers on the topic and reported on their findings in An Integrative Review of Gift-Giving Research in Consumer Behavior and Marketing. (If you’re into reading social science research, there are links to the source material at the end of their abstract, and you can read some of the papers through Google Scholar. However, social science research tends to be a little dry, and you might nod off into your egg nog.)
Why understand the science of good gift-giving if we know the mere fact that giving gifts makes us happy?
To start with, a lot of gifts end up in the landfill. According to one estimate in 2017, five billion pounds of gift returns ended up in the landfill! And an updated 2020 estimate placed that figure at 2.6 million tons, and yes, this is just counting the United States. If we give better gifts (and here’s a one of many plugs for experiential gifts, that don’t take take up space anywhere, let alone a landfill), we’ll be kinder to the environment.
Experiential Gifts for the Win!
Every year, I sing the praises of experiential gift-giving. For example, here’s what I said last year, in Paper Doll on Clutter-Free Gifts and How to Make Gift Cards Make Sense:
The social-psychological research is sound — experiential gifts are both more memorable and more satisfying.
Memorable
With rare exceptions of special surprises and greatly anticipated gifts, we tend not to remember the tangible stuff we get. (This also means we often don’t remember the gifts we’ve bestowed on others; my organizing clients and I have discussed how we’ve received quite a few “repeats” from well-intentioned loved ones.)
Tangible gifts rarely take us out of the way we live; they fit into the lives we already lead. We may be changing what we’re wearing or how we’re cooking or what we’re playing with because the new gift varies the activity (as an accessory), but experiential gifts are uniquely different from how we spend our everyday lives. Participating in an experience changes our cognitive and physical lives in a few ways.
Part of the fun is anticipatory. When we get a tangible gift, we unwrap it and then…what? Maybe we’ll use it, maybe we’ll put it away until we think of wearing it or using it (or attempt reading the manual to learn how to use it). But when we get a gift of an experience, from the time we receive the gift card or certificate or gift announcement, we begin anticipating everything it involves. We research and get a sense of what might happen. Our imaginations take the gift we receive and add flourishes to what has been given to us.
When we get a gift of an experience, we begin anticipating everything it involves. We research and get a sense of what might happen. Our imaginations take the gift we receive and add flourishes to what has been given to us. Share on XGive someone a gift that allows them the excitement of anticipating the experience on top of the experience itself and it will be a gift that delights on the holiday, during the intervening period until the experience, and then later in retrospect in the relived and shared memories of the experience. Whoohoo! Now compare that to a sweater or a gadget (if your recipient hasn’t specifically asked for a sweater or that gadget) and you can see how an experiential gift is more nuanced and layered.
Uniquely Satisfying
Experiential gifts are unique. Human beings are social animals and even when we don’t intend to be, we are competitive. We log onto social media, see what our co-workers or our exes’ new partners got for gifts and we compare. Even if we loved our gifts before we logged on, if they got a fancier upgrade or a snootier brand, our holiday cheer is just a bit tarnished. Even if our tangible thing is somewhat superior, the excitement doesn’t last.
However, we don’t compare experiences in the same way. Even if we both went to the same escape room or to Las Vegas or on a cruise, the variables — who we’re with, the weather, our moods, etc. — are going to be so different that there’s no valid comparison. Our experiences are unique to us.
But guess what, it’s not just me saying that!
In reporting on his research review, Givi said that the published papers he looked at found several interesting things about experiential gifts.
What a Girl (or a Guy) Wants
First, as much as we professional organizers have tried to persuade you that experiences are the way to go, gift-givers like giving material gifts but recipients really want gift of experiences. In “Remember me, will you?”: Overusing Material Gifts for Interpersonal Memory Management, researchers found:
Givers are more likely than recipients to consider the memory consequences of gift options, as givers intuitively use material gifts as interpersonal mnemonic devices to facilitate the recipient’s retrieval of giver-related memories. As such, this preference discrepancy occurs in various stages of developing relationships but is mitigated in very close relationships.
In other words, “Hey, mom, remember when I got you that expensive hair dryer made by the people who made your vacuum cleaner?”
We’re often focused on trying to make sure our recipients remember not just the gift (which, as I’ve already suggested above, is less likely with tangible things than experiences) but remember that we were the ones who gave it. I mean, I don’t want to say we’re being manipulative when we do that, but there’s obviously some ego involved. Are we buying love? Are we jockeying for position in the family hierarchy relative (no pun intended) to our siblings? Are we trying to get our in-laws to stop referring to us by our significant other’s ex’es name?
Personally, I suspect that if you give your Aunt Sylvia a gift certificate for a massage or Gramps a National Parks pass, they’re going to remember where the gift originated from a lot more than they would with a fuzzy sweater or a book about World War II.
Don’t Focus on the Face!
Second, not only do we not give people what they want (leaving aside the people — usually teens — who are very specific about what they want), but research says that we tend to give people what will yield a more (visibly) positive reaction than one what will actually satisfy them!
In The Smile-Seeking Hypothesis: How Immediate Affective Reactions Motivate and Reward Gift Giving, researchers found (through six (!) studies) that people put a lot of effort into giving gifts based on what they anticipate the recipient’s reaction will be, “independently (and even in spite of) anticipated recipient satisfaction.”
(When the first of my friends had a child, I put way too much effort into imagining how they’d react when opening the gift. Given my terrible job trying to wrap a stuffed lion, I suspect the emotion was pure relief that the gift was finally uncovered!)
If you’re dealing with a five-year-old, the “affective reactions” and their feelings about their Barbie or video game will likely be the same, but adults mask their true feelings and give socially-acceptable reactions to gifts. (Think about how moms and dads made a huge show of getting misshapen clay ashtrays as gifts even if they didn’t smoke, or how fancy-pants successful young adults in Hallmark movies give their parents expensive but impersonal gifts when the parents just want their kids home for the holidays on their reindeer milk farm.)
One other intriguing thing: this “reaction-maximizing preference” where givers focus on reaction rather than recipient satisfaction was lessened when the gift wouldn’t be opened in the presence of the giver.
Apparently, we try to psychoanalyze our recipients and figure out what’s going to make them make us feel good about what we gave them. If we’re not going to be there to see their faces, especially in this era where almost nobody sends thank you notes, we don’t fret as much about their reactions.
Maybe this explains why we’re less likely to give experiential gifts? There’s a ritual involved in unwrapping a gift and showing it off to all in attendance, and you can’t really do that to the same effect with a gift certificate, theater tickets, or a fancy reservation.
We don’t know that’s what we’re doing, so it’s not like we’re monsters, but maybe now that we know, we can reign in this behavior? (If nothing else, you can share this post with your significant other so that when your whole family is exchanging gifts and you get something wildly inappropriate that you know you’re supposed to gush over, you can tug on your ear Carol Burnett-style to share an understanding of the ridiculousness of the situation.)
Build Stronger Connections
Third, Givi found another reason for giving gifts of experiences that I’ve never touched on in all the years I’ve written about this topic. He notes that in Experiential Gifts Foster Stronger Social Relationships Than Material Gifts in the Journal of Consumer Research, Cindy Chan and Cassie Mogilner found that, as the title notes:
…experiential gifts produce greater improvements in relationship strength than material gifts, regardless of whether the gift giver and recipient consume the gift together. The relationship improvements that recipients derive from experiential gifts stem from the intensity of emotion that is evoked when they consume the gifts, rather than when the gifts are received. Giving experiential gifts is thus identified as a highly effective form of prosocial spending.
Which is all a dry, academic, social science-y way of saying that when you give someone an experiential gift — even if they’re not going to be having the experience with you — it strengthens the bonds between you.
And further, the Big Wow of emotion doesn’t come at the moment when you tell someone that you’ve bought them tickets to Hamilton (though they’ll likely be super-psyched) or a year’s supply of car washes; it comes when they’re all dressed up and humming “The Room Where It Happens” or driving through the car wash without having to open their wallet.
Other Findings About Gift Giving
Skip the novelty gifts — Once again, gift-givers are focused on the moment the gift gets unwrapped.
I get it. You see something cute or funny or outrageous and want to see your giftee’s expression when they see they got Big Mouth Billy talking bass, but aside from the fact that it’ll be one of the first things their eventual professional organizer will be helping them let go of, recipients are focused more on the long-term utility of a tangible (non-consumable) gift.
Skip grand but meaningless gestures — Similarly, a gift that evinces shock, surprise, or humor isn’t as big a draw as things that are useful. If your recipient has an Amazon wish list, look at it and select a gift from it. (If you must do something that reflects your personality, make that a stocking stuffer or night 7 Hanukkah gift.)
Rethink gift cards — As I wrote about last year, gift cards give people flexibility. Yes, there are some negative connotations surrounding gift cards among the Silent Generation and older Boomers. But the younger people are, the happier they are likely to be if they get a gift card that reflects their tastes. (Still, unless they asked for it, don’t give your spouse a gift card as their main gift. Figure out what they really want.)
If you give a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon-master a gift certificate to her favorite game store or a fashionistas gift cards to their favorite clothing shops, letting them pick out what’s perfect for them, you’ve ensure that the thought does, indeed, count, and the thought is that you know them well enough to guess, at least generally, and care enough not to impose your own tastes.
Don’t be afraid to be sentimental — Researchers (such as in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) have found that people tend to avoid giving sentimental gifts because they may seem schmaltzy or fear they will miss the mark. A candle or a picture frame may seem safe, but is “safe” the way you want to go when giving a gift to someone you love? I think not.
And again, as with experiential gifts, sentimental gifts have a value that keeps you off the hedonic treadmill.
You remember the hedonic treadmill, right? As I wrote in Toxic Productivity Part 2: How to Change Your Mindset,
In the famous story of Diderot’s dressing gown, the French philosopher was gifted a fancy robe to replace a tatty one. As Diderot got used to his new dressing gown, he came to see his sense of self as defined by its finery. He felt dissatisfaction with his older possessions and began of spiral of 18th century keeping-up-with-the-Joneses consumerism, replacing the perfectly good items associated with his old life and going into debt to keep up with the identity of the new.
Just as experiences are unique and uniquely satisfying, sentimental gifts that recall (and reinvigorate) personal relationships — gifts like photo books, albums, family recipe collections, and anything that evokes memories — are unique to those involved. You don’t habituate to sentimental gifts the way you do to an air fryer or bathrobe.
So, to wrap it up:
- Remember that gift-giving will make you feel good.
- Take your ego out of gift-giving and focus on the recipient’s needs and tastes.
- Give gifts of experience because they’re meaningful, recipients like them, and it’ll bring you closer together.
- Don’t focus on the big reveal (when they unwrap the gift) or your recipient’s social-norm-induced reaction.
- Think about what they asked for, what you know about their tastes, and what will make them really happy.
RECAPPING THE BEST OF PAPER DOLL’S GIFT-GIVING ADVICE
If you need some inspiration for what to get the people in your life this holiday season, I invite you to explore some of my posts over the last few years.
Paper Doll on Clutter-Free Gifts and How to Make Gift Cards Make Sense
Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Clutter-Free Experiential Gifts: Adventure, Practicality & Pampering (Note: this is one of my of all of my holiday posts over the last 17 years.)
Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Clutter-Free Experiential Gifts: Educational
MORE GOOD ADVICE FROM MY COLLEAGUES
Collectively, my colleagues have written too many stellar posts on giving great clutter-free, experiential, or organizing-themed gifts over the years for me to name them all. However, I think you’ll enjoy taking a peek at these recent posts:
Great Organizing and Productivity Gifts for 2024 from Seana Turner of The Seana Method is chock-full of gifts that — if you are set on giving someone something to unwrap — will solve organizational problems without screaming “I’m practical and boring!” (I’m partial to the rechargeable lamp and the cool yoga storage tube.)
Tons of No-Clutter Gifts for the Holidays from Sabrina Quairoli of Sabrina’s Organizing focuses on consumable gifts (so, yummy!), memberships, and charitable donations, as well as her Sabrina’s take on experiential gifts with days/evenings out and lessons.
Plus, The Spruce interviewed three professional organizers for their 5 Holiday Gifts That Will Only Make Your Home More Cluttered, According to Organizers, and I have to say I agree.
That said, I have to admit that I’m a sucker for coffee mugs with messages or images that delight. Several years ago, my colleague Dr. Regina Lark gave me a coffee mug with a funny (though naughtily unprintable in a “family” blog) message that delights me each morning that it comes up in my rug rotation. Also, I really like my Mr. Rogers mug. (His sweater changes colors when you pour in a hot beverage!)
Again, this is where knowing your recipient is important!
As this post goes to press, you’ve got about two and a half weeks until Christmas and the start of Hanukkah. I hope today’s post and the links to past advice will help you find delight in giving.
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Charitable Donation Strategy
Every day last week, your email inbox was filled with Black Friday and Cyber Monday notifications. But starting today and throughout the month, you’ll probably notice an influx of requests for charitable donations.
This starts with tomorrow’s Giving Tuesday, a unified movement that:
…unleashes the Power of Radical Generosity around the world. GivingTuesday reimagines a world built upon shared humanity and generosity.
Our global network collaborates year-round to inspire generosity around the world, with a common mission to build a world where generosity is part of everyday life.
Whether it’s making someone smile, helping a neighbor or stranger out, showing up for an issue or people we care about, or giving some of what we have to those who need our help, every act of generosity counts, and everyone has something to give.
The term “radical generosity” is defined as the concept that the suffering of others should be as intolerable to us as our own suffering. This may seem like an odd topic for an organizing blog, but I believe that organizing your efforts can allow radical generosity to reinvigorate the delight of giving.
THE UNIVERSALITY OF CHARITABLE GIVING
In Judaism, the concept of tikkun olam means “to repair the world,” and refers to the notion that people have a responsibility to improve the world through acts of kindness and social justice. Judaism also has the concept of tzedakah, commonly used to mean charity, but more fully is explained by the notion of making the world a more just place.
Though I am no expert on other faiths, I do know that charity is an important tenet throughout faith practices. In Christianity, it’s reflected in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Islam notes that the prophet Muhammad said, “Charity does not decrease wealth” to point out the value to the benefactor as well as to those who receive kindness.
In Hinduism, “There is none other who does greater good than the one who removes the hunger of those in a difficult situation, helpless, weak and disturbed.” And Sikhs believe in the concept of sewa, which means “selfless service,” helping others without expecting any reward or personal gain.
Of course, donating money (and goods) is not a concept specific to any one religion, or indeed any religion at all. Ideas such as charity and mutual aid (where a community shares and exchanges resources and services to help one other) can be found in every nation and at every income level. People make donations in their houses of worship and to their schools, to strangers on the street and to well-known non-profits.
Donating money (as well as volunteer time and skill) is a great way to model your values to your children and to others in your community. You could limit round-robin gift exchanges at work or among your extended family and work together to donate funds or effort to non-profits or causes that reflect your highest good.
So yes, thoughtful giving is good (and good for you), but the requests for giving can be overwhelming.
Just like how the clutter of too many possessions in a household can paralyze someone and prevent them from knowing what to do next, a mailbox or inbox cluttered with charitable donation requests can be problematic, particularly during the holiday season from Thanksgiving through the New Year, when everyone is focused on gratitude and lovingkindness.
But if you woke up to seventy-three charitable requests today, you might not be feeling very grateful, loving, or kind. I get it.
THE CHALLENGES OF CHARITABLE GIVING
There are a variety of obstacles people face when inundated with charitable requests.
Stress
- Being inundated by a flood of donation appeals — Non-profits know that you’re in a giving mood (or are feeling pressured to be in a giving mood). People are accustomed to donating at the end of the year, whether for religious, social, or tax reasons, so the donation campaigns behind mailers and emails and social media requests are part of the design.
- Pressure and guilt — It’s common to feel obligated to respond to every request with a donation or gift, even when it exceeds one’s budget or doesn’t align with one’s values. Nobody wants to feel selfish, but it’s important not to give more of yourself than you can afford.
Fears about security
- Increases in frauds, hoaxes, and scams — Sometimes, “charitable” requests come from bad guys using guilt trips and names just similar enough to real charities that it’s common to worry about whether your gift will get to anyone except a thief’s pockets.
- Validity of a charity — Even if a charity is “real,” even if it’s well-known, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a sizable portion of the funds raised will get to the expected recipients. Sometimes a shocking percentage of those donation funds go toward administration, chief executives, advertising, and anywhere but where you’d hope it would go.
Financial anxieties
- Budget constraints and unrealistic goals — At this time of year, our wallets pulled in different directions, like taffy. You’re likely to want to earmark funds for holiday gifts, meals, and travel, on top of regular expenses, but it can be tough to find the Benjamins for donations. Being overly ambitious with our charitable giving leads to the same kind of anxiety as when we’re overly ambitious about gift-giving to friends and family. It feels good in December, but when our January bank and credit card statements arrive? Ouch!
- Unplanned donations — There’s a reason you hear financial advisors talking about planned giving. Planning is organized, and when you are organized, you feel in control. When unexpectedly faced with an in-person appeal for a donation, the emotion of the experience combined with social pressure (on top of financial pressure) can prompt you to spend more than you can comfortably do.
Emotional kerfuffles
- Family disagreements — You thought the political arguments at the Thanksgiving table were stressful? Imagine trying to come up with a plan for family giving when the members of the family are of two minds regarding who is “deserving” of family donations. If one person wants to give to the NRA and another to support of LGBTQ+ teens, but the funds need to come from one couple-owned or family-managed source, sparks may fly.
- Decision fatigue — The sheer volume of need can be overwhelming. Everyone wants your money, and so many charities and worthy causes requesting donations, it’s often difficult to decide which ones to support.
- Charitable burnout — People who donate regularly may feel resentful from the ever-increasing demands during the holiday season.
- Compassion fatigue — Let’s face it. We’re human. Constant reminders of those who are hungry, abused or victimized, troubled, or struggling can become wearying, especially for those who already struggle with some of the harder emotions of the holiday season. While such requests often remind us to feel grateful for what we have, it’s not unusual to feel guilty for not feeling quite so grateful about our own struggles.
OVERWHELM COMES FROM LACK OF PRIORITIZING, PLANNING, AND ORGANIZATION
Over the past 23 years I’ve worked as a professional organizer, one of the constant holiday-time struggles my clients face is what to do about all of the charitable donation requests. Several years ago, I worked with a client on her backlog of important documents and papers. We were making great progress until I arrived one day to find her agitated. She admitted that she’d been “hiding” some papers because they were so stressful for her to think about.
In a room we’d never entered, there were desks, tables, chairs, and a bed, and a variety of other horizontal surfaces covered in envelopes — most of which had never been opened — all seeking donations! There were multiple years of requests!
At first, this sweet woman had just given a few dollars to everyone who asked, but that just led to more and more requests. (I’m not saying that non-profits sell their mailing lists, but yes, some non-profits sell, or at least “rent” their mailing lists. It’s ethically questionable, so before you give, you may want to read a charity’s privacy policy regarding whether they will share donor information without prior consent.)
The client and I started by eliminating all requests from prior giving seasons, then deleted duplicates (and triplicates). Then we developed a strategy that works for most people.
START WITH YOUR BUDGET
Just as some people prefer to say they are on an “eating plan” rather than a “diet,” feel free to think of this as a giving plan, rather than a budget. The idea is to set boundaries you can live with, as it makes no sense to donate so much to end hunger that you will be eating ramen noodles every day to make up for your economic shortfall!
Consider these factors:
- How much can you reasonably afford to give? This requires first having a handle on all of your fixed and variable expenses.
- Would you like to allocate a percentage of your monthly budget for donations? Do you prefer to tithe, set aside a fixed dollar amount per month, or pick some other percentage approach?
- Do you prefer to give an annual gift or arrange monthly contributions?
- If you choose monthly donations, do you want to donate to the same charity every month, or multiple charities but during different months?
- Do you want to set aside extra money (in monthly petty cash) for unexpected, ad hoc requests by organizations or individuals? (You might choose to keep a stash of gift cards for grocery stores or restaurants to give to unhoused or struggling folks you come across, rather than giving cash, to prevent them from becoming victimized by thieves.)
- Does your company offer an annual charitable donation match? If so, taking advantage can stretch your donation dollars!
FOLLOW THE MONEY
You will want to track your donations to make it easier to file your taxes and take all possible deductions.
If you respond to mailed requests for donations, you can write a note on the donation letter, stating how much you donated, on what date, by what method (check number or which credit card). Put that in your tax prep folder for the current year. When/if you get an official letter from the charity thanking you for your donation, match it to the corresponding note and staple it.
If you tend to make donations online, be sure to print a copy of your receipt as a PDF (if you want to keep records electronically) and maintain a donation folder on your computer or in your cloud storage. (You could also print receipts on paper and put them in your tax prep folder; just don’t double-count donations that appear in digital and print form.)
Of course, you can also use financial apps, budgeting software, or spreadsheets to track your charitable contributions. The more money you donate, or the more complex and numerous your donations, the more cautious you will want to be to keep these records for tax purposes. But tracking your donations is about more than just taxes.
In the heyday of magazines, as soon as you’d renew a subscription, you’d start getting reminders to renew again. The more subscriptions, the harder it would be to realize you were being prompted so often that you were subscribing more than once every twelve months. Well, with charities it can be much the same thing. Keep a written record of when you’ve donated to make sure you’re not donating more often than you planned.
CHOOSE YOUR CHARITIES, DON’T LET THEM CHOOSE YOU
Professional organizers often talk with clients about the dangerous power of advertising and in-store displays. We can be going along, thinking we’re doing great with our spending plans and then all-of-a-sudden we are sucker-punched by an enticing commercial or a product display. We didn’t plan to buy it. We didn’t need it. But oops, we got it.
Those donation emails and envelopes may as well be shouting: “This offer is available for a limited time only. Operators are standing by!” but the truth is that non-profits are always in need of money. You may get dozens of requests for donations in December, but your contributions will be no less valuable, life-saving, or appreciated if sent three or six months down the line. Unless you have a very specific need for making a very specific dollar amount of donations before the end of the calendar year, don’t let yourself feel pressured.
Decide on your giving goals in advance. Make this a giving plan.
Prioritize Your Values First
When you try to downsize a closet on your own, you might pick up one article of clothing and ask yourself “keep or set free?” (whether “set free” means toss or consign or donate or use as a rag). A straight-up yes/no choice can be difficult. But if a professional organizer asks you to first pick your ten favorite pieces from your closet and set them aside, it will be much easier to start evaluating your less-loved pieces.
Similarly, if you’re facing a mountain of charitable giving requests, choosing yes or no may feel like you are saving or damning the recipients of each non-profit. No wonder you’re stressed!
So, start by prioritizing the causes that align most closely with your values. For example, those might be:
- education
- the arts
- health/medical
- hunger
- animals
- children
- the environment
- faith communities
- disaster relief
- international relief
- social causes
- political causes
- at-risk communities
- marginalized communities
Once you’ve identified a general cause area that matters to you, you can narrow your focus. You can determine whether you want to donate locally to keep funds in your community or donate to a national effort with a more powerful network of resources.
Research Potential Charities
You do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are some excellent resources for evaluating non-profits and explaining how they rank on transparency, impact, and mission alignment. Consider:
Charity Navigator
Charity Navigator has been around for almost 25 years, and has rated 225,000 charities. Their ratings focus on the “cost-effectiveness and overall health of a charity’s programs, including measures of stability, efficiency, and sustainability.”
GuideStar
Candid’s GuideStar focuses on non-profits in the United States. Search to verify a charity’s legitimacy, learn whether contribution will be tax deductible, view up to three years of a non-profit’s IRS Form 990, read revenue and expense data for the current fiscal year, and learn about a charity’s CEO, Board Chair, and Board of Directors.
BBB Wise Giving Alliance
Give.org, the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance, generates reports that address all of the issues a donor might want to consider, including governance, finances, results reporting, transparency, and appeal accuracy
Charity Watch
Charity Watch, originally founded in 1992 as the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) claims to be the only independent charity watchdog in the United States. Charity watch notes that they “dive deep into charity audited financial statements, tax filings, state solicitation filings, and other information so we can let you know how efficiently a charity will use your donations to fund the programs you want to support. CharityWatch exposes nonprofit abuses and advocates for your interests as a donor.”
GiveWell
Rather than focuses only on financials, GiveWell conducts “in-depth research to determine how much good a given program accomplishes (in terms of lives saved, lives improved, etc.) per dollar spent.”
If you decide you want to focus on local charities, you’ll need to do more of your own legwork. For example, if you want to support a local shelter, food bank, or other community initiative, read the website, research who sits on the board of directors, and see where local news media has covered the impact of these charities.
Concentrate on local efforts that focus on long-term community solutions and have a record of efficient use of funds and a history of measurable results.
DEVELOP A DONATION STRATEGY
Once you know which causes are meaningful to you, you can delete or discard donation requests from causes that aren’t high on your list of values.
Yes, really.
Charitable causes are important, but not all causes have to be equally important to you, just as they need not be equally important to all individuals. You get to pick what you value.
Once you identify the causes you value, you can research the specific charities in each.
Let’s say eliminating hunger is important to you. It’s possible you’ll get requests from Feeding America (a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks), the World Food Programme (an international organization within the United Nations that provides food assistance worldwide), No Kid Hungry (providing grants to schools and partners to end child hunger), Meals on Wheels (working to end hunger and loneliness among the elderly), etc.
- Collect all the requests that come in via mail or email in a “holding area” until you’re ready to research them.
- Research the charities to see which appeal to you the most.
- Decide the number of charities to which you will give.
- Pick the frequency of your donations: one time or recurring?
- Divide your giving budget by the number of donations.
- Donate in a way that works for you.
- Record and track your donations for tax purposes. (Save receipts and acknowledgment letters in your paper or digital files)
- Evaluate amounts and charities annually.
For example, might decide to give to one national charity, once per year, in an amount that feels generous to you. Conversely, you might pick four of these charities and give once per quarter.
Alternatively, you could set up a monthly payment to one (or more charities) on your credit card, but you’ll want to revisit that plan annually to make sure the charity still fits your values.
Or, this process of reviewing your values may make you turn your attention to local concerns. You could still give small donations to one or more of the charities that fits you criteria, but then you could contact a local elementary school and offer to pay all outstanding meal fees. In many school districts, children whose families are behind on their lunch fees are unable to get hot lunches and are given cold lunches that make them a target of bullying. In other districts, they simply get no lunch at all. Hungry children cannot learn.
You could pick an amount to pay toward students’ outstanding lunch debt each month, or pool resources with your colleagues or neighbors to pay off those debts once or twice per year.
This is merely one example. You can make lots of donations in December to lots of charities, and then skip the rest of the year. You can pick twelve charities and give equal amounts, one per month, all year, and revisit the charities you’ll choose each year. Or you can mix-and-match local and national donations as you see fit.
The key is to mindfully research, plan, and track your giving so that it allows you to feel generous (and lucky to be able to help) rather than overwhelmed by charitable request clutter and anxious about the entire experience.
LIMIT DONATION ANXIETY
Creating a giving plan and sticking to it (at least for one year) will allow you to eliminate the excess requests before they pile up, but there are additional things you can to do keep from feeling like a Grinch.
Limit the solicitations that come your way.
If you are getting too much donation request mail or email — which, again, is really just (earnest) advertising, it’s OK to click to unsubscribe from the email or call to opt-out of the mailing lists.
Alternatively, you can use a dedicated email address (like PaperDollDonations@gmail.com) whenever you make donations. That way, you only need to check that address when you’re looking for donation confirmations for tax purposes, or when you’re in the mood to actually look at the plethora of mail sent your way. But it never has to hit your main inbox.
Let Go of the Guilt
Just because you receive address labels does not obligate you to make a donation to a charity, just as receiving a holiday card from a distant acquaintance does not obligate you add the individual to your card list. Don’t let them turn advertising techniques into a free ticket on the Guilt Trip Express. Use your brain — then give from the heart.
Learn to say “No” gracefully. Just as you cannot keep everything you ever bought or were gifted, you cannot donate to ever cause that asks.
To increase your comfort with saying no, prepare a mental (or written) script for declining requests.
Remind yourself (and if you wish, explain to others) that you have a planned giving strategy. You have organized your giving to ensure that your efforts are mindful and value-driven. You can, if you wish, give an ad hoc donation, but you can also just say you’ll be happy (if you will be) to consider a donation in your next giving cycle in 2026.
Finally, remember that you need not always give money. Donating your possessions, time, and service to non-profits can be even more valuable than the amount of money you could afford to donate.
Speaking of volunteering, we are sometimes asked to donate our time and effort to worthy causes at the holidays when our schedules least allow us to help. (Also, many popular volunteering activities, like serving meals at shelters, are booked quickly during the holidays.) But guess what? Shelters and food kitchens need volunteers year-round! Just as money is needed just as much on July 25th as on December 25th, our support of our neighbors, in our schools, in faith communities, and in standing up for others is always needed, no matter the season.
Happy Giving Tuesday (and Giving Season). Intentional and organized giving is rewarding. Build a sustainable, organized habit of giving and you will feel more in control of your finances, less stymied by paper and digital clutter, and less likely to feel burned out.
Keep the spirit of giving alive in a way that uplifts you.
Paper Doll Post:
Whoopsie! What To Do When Your Week Doesn’t Go As Planned
This isn’t the post I planned to write today.
And last week’s post never got written. In fact, last week did not go as planned at all. It went BOOM!
VERTIGO, BUT WITHOUT JIMMY STEWART
It all started last Sunday evening. I was chatting on the phone with a friend and getting ready to start writing a post for Janet Barclay’s excellent monthly Organizing and Productivity Blog Carnival. Usually I submit a post from the Paper Doll vault, but this time I wanted to write a new post, specifically for the carnival. (We’ll get to that later.)
As my friend and I were talking, I sat on the edge of the bed and then lay down to stretch my back. Immediately, I was overcome with a powerful sense of vertigo — not mere dizziness, or as though the room were spinning, but as though I weighed tons and was going to go barreling through the Earth. While it was not the worst I’ve felt in my entire life, it would rank in the top three.
Publicity Poster from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo
I’ve had benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) twice before, and both times it was quickly dispatched by a seemingly magical series of movements called the Epley Maneuver. I’ve seen it be such a freaking miracle that I’m a typical explanatory video in this post. (Think of it as organizing for the inner ear!)
Unfortunately, this time, Epley let me down.
The next six hours seemed to pass like jump-takes in a movie. It was 6:35 p.m. and I was on the phone with Paper Mommy. The next thing I knew, it was almost an hour later. And then another hour. My insurance company has Teladoc built-in, and I’d previously registered, so I used the app to reach a physician for a video consult.
As a professional organizer, here’s how I thought it should work: I register for everything in advance (which I had). I click the button and provide my reason for seeking an appointment (which I did). And then I’d be connected with a medical professional.
Nope.
Although I registered for Teladoc when it first became available, I still had to try to type/dictate my medical history, all while lying flat on the floor and spinning. And I had to provide the address and phone number of my pharmacy…which was written on my prescription bottles…in the other room. (Crawling was agonizing. Have you ever seen someone try to do the backstroke on plush carpet? It was not pretty.)
After all that, I got a message saying someone would be with me within ten minutes. Then a message saying that {name redacted} was reading my file. Then a message saying, “Oops, sorry, we’ve canceled your video appointment. If you still need help, please try to schedule another Teladoc appointment.” Seriously?!
As I went through the entire process again, I noted the clock on my phone. I’d have sworn only minutes had passed, but almost another hour had gone by.
I’ll spare you readers the sordid medical details, but by the time I finally spoke to a Teladoc physician, I was instructed to call 911. When I asked why, the response was troubling enough that I only asked if someone could just take me to the ER.
I live upstairs. The prospects of having to go downstairs by myself to let first responders in or having them break down my door were equally unpleasant. Instead, I called my local bestie, Jen, to see if her husband could stay with her kids, and she immediately headed over to take me to the emergency room.
Moms know everything! She arrived with all sorts of Mom Emergency Paraphernalia, including an old-fashioned ice pack.
While waiting for the Teladoc appointment, I’d voice-texted to tell my Jen what was going on, and I said that the symptoms were giving me a panic attack. She said that if I could get to the freezer, to grab an ice pack and hold it against my chest. (I briefly recalled that I’d seen a TikTok explaining that if you were with someone having a panic attack, you should grab a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer and hand it to them. The cold apparently short-circuits the symptoms of a panic attack.)
Although the panic was secondary to the rollicking vertigo and related symptoms, Paper Doll offers a full-service blog atmosphere, so may I also share this advice from Valera Health’s Mastering the Art of Panic Attack Prevention: From Panic to Peace (bolded emphasis is mine):
The keywords here are ice and sweets. If you’re able to, grab a cold washcloth, water bottle or ice cube and rub it on your face. Panic attacks can induce hot flashes so cold stimuli may help you to cool down and calm down, which in turn can shorten panic attacks and make them more bearable. Another way to try this type of sensory grounding is to quickly dunk your head or face under cold water (make sure the water isn’t too freezing first!).
Some people prefer to do the “sour candy trick” instead by sucking on a super sour candy when feeling panicked. The tart taste helps with refocusing and shifting attention away from the symptoms of a panic attack. If you’re prone to panic attacks, we recommend carrying sour candy around whenever you’re out and about so you always have them handy, just in case.
MAKING SENSE IN THE AFTERMATH OF AN EMERGENCY
Once the emergency, itself, is over, you’re left mopping up the mess. Dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster or a medical situation is usually more problematic than coping with your schedule, but eventually, you’re going to have to turn your eyes to the smoking piles of debris that used to be your carefully planned schedule.
You may not be able to do much right away. I collapsed into bed as soon as I got home from the ER. Though the meds they’d given me had me sleepy while there, my brain was spinning almost as much as the room had been. I had SO MUCH planned for the week prior to Thanksgiving. How would I get back on track?
The following are some of the concepts I put into practice. Whether you have a family emergency or just something that keeps you down for the count, these ideas should be useful until you can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Assess the Damage
Whether you’ve taken to your bed with the flu or a tree has toppled across your driveway (as happened to so many after this hurricane season), you can’t take action right away. But when you do have a sane, cogent moment to breathe, grab your calendar and your To Do list, and either a pad and pen or a blank Word doc or Evernote note.
Don’t be listless! Take a moment to list everything in your schedule that was disrupted (or will be disrupted).
That first morning was a Monday. Normally I would have completed the weekly Paper Doll post on Sunday night and spent the day doing marketing tasks, sharing my post and those of my organizing colleagues. Again, I hadn’t written the post, which I’d intended to submit to the blog carnival, but even if I had, dragging myself to the computer and lifting my head to the screen was a non-starter. But the world wasn’t going to end because my post hadn’t shown up in someone’s mailbox or social media feed.
Later that day, I had an appointment to get my hair cut, and had blocked time to prepare for guesting on Frank Buck’s Get Organized! podcast on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s schedule included the podcast recording, a first-time physical therapy appointment, a two-hour co-writing session, and two webinars I’d planned to attend.
As the week went on, I had client sessions, prospect consultations, and the variety of life activities (bill-paying, shopping, preparing for this week’s Thanksgiving adventures) that everyone has.
In addition, I had to figure out how (when the world was still spinning, though at a slightly less malevolent pace) to get my prescriptions filled and talk to my own physician regarding some things I suspected I’d need beyond what the ER had advised.
When I floated up into consciousness on Monday, at least I knew what was on my plate.
Prioritize Key Activities
In Use the Rule of 3 to Improve Your Productivity (which I invite you to read and embrace with all your heart and soul and calendar), I reviewed all the ways to manage your schedule and To Do list to keep life from getting in the way. But, as with my week last week, sometimes life is a giant elephant and you have no choice but to let it get in the way.
In that post (and further, near the end of Paper Doll Shares Presidential Wisdom on Productivity) I explained that when you’re overwhelmed, a great way to prioritize what you have to get done (and how and when to do it) is the Eisenhower Decision Matrix.
The Eisenhower Matrix gives you the opportunity to graph each task from your brain-dumped list to identify where it falls along a continuum of importance and urgency.
In a typical week of my schedule, what’s important is anything that brings in money, protects from “danger” (whether that’s a late fee or something more problematic), or directly impacts someone else. What’s urgent is anything that is time-specific in the short-term.
Identify What to Do, Decide (and Delay), Delegate, or Delete
Do
As I looked at the tasks, I realized that while my hair cut was not important, it was urgent to cancel so that my stylist would not be inconvenienced by a no-show. The podcast recording on Tuesday would have been both important (to me and to Frank) and urgent. And I had to arrange to get my prescriptions filled, as it turned out that one medication required me to be present at the pharmacy; it couldn’t be filled in absentia.
I sent two texts (to my stylist and to Frank) and arranged to get my prescriptions filled.
Decide
At this point, my wobbly brain decided that I could delay considering anything else until after more sleep. I didn’t know if I’d be able to go to my physical therapy appointment on Tuesday or my client on Wednesday, but I let that be Tuesday Julie’s responsibility. I crawled back in bed.
Delegate
I didn’t really have anything to delegate. I did, however, let my friend and colleague Hazel Thornton know what was going on in case I did not show up to our Tuesday co-writing session or a regularly scheduled Friday night Zoom.
I get it. Delegating is hard. Sometimes, it involves asking for a favor, and most of us are loathe to presume upon others or to seem as though we aren’t operating at 100%.
But delegating — whether it involves asking a friend to take you to the emergency room or trusting your spouse to take care of family responsibilities even if they won’t get done the way you would do them or giving the nod to an employee to handle something you would normally do yourself — is essential.
We can’t do everything. Even if we could, we shouldn’t. Leaning on others — respectfully — strengthens all of our human bonds.
This is my friend Jen, who rescued me. We’re afternoon tea buddies.
Sometime in the mid-1970s, I had a big event happening in third grade. I think I was giving a presentation, or maybe getting an award. Parents were going to be in attendance. But when I woke up that morning, my father told me that Paper Mommy had fallen and cracked her ribs during the night and would not be coming to school. I’m not sure how she managed it in those scant daylight moments before I woke up, but Paper Mommy had already arranged for my sister (eleven years my senior and attending college locally, living in the dorms) to be my plus-one at this event.
If she could have been there, she would have. That’s how Paper Mommy rolls. But she made sure that my eight-year-old self felt loved and valued without schlepping her wounded self to a ridiculous elementary school event. My sister rocked it!
Delete
My plan had originally been to write last week’s post about children’s books on organizing and productivity, and I would have included a link to Paper Doll Interviews Melissa Gratias, Author of Seraphina Does Everything! and talked about both my favorite books in these categories, as well as a few surprises from my childhood bookshelf.
I forgave myself for not writing the post and deleted it from my sense of self-obligation. By the time I left the emergency room, I told myself I could just submit some other post I’d previously written about organizing and productivity books.
For example, I could have submitted Paper Doll Presents 4 Stellar Organizing & Productivity Resources, which referenced Hazel’s What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy and reviewed her Go With the Flow! The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook.
That post also reviewed Kara Cutruzzula’s Do It Today: An Encouragement Journal, and Ellen Faye‘s Productivity for How You’re Wired: Better Work. Better Life.
I could have submitted Paper Doll Introduces 5 New and Noteworthy Books By Professional Organizers, which reviewed:
- Emotional Labor: Why A Woman’s Work Is Never Done by Dr. Regina F. Lark, Ph.D, CPO® and Judith Kolberg
- Organizing and Big Scary Goals: Working with Discomfort and Doubt to Create Real Life Order by Sara S. Skillen
- Filled Up and Overflowing: What to Do When Life Events, Chronic Disorganization, or Hoarding Go Overboard by Diane Quintana, CPO®, CPO-CD® and Jonda Beattie, M. Ed.
- Mind Body Kitchen: Transform You & Your Kitchen for a Healthier Lifestyle by Stacey Crew
- Perfectly Arranged by Liana George
I could even have have bent the rules and submitted a link to the Book page at Best Results Organizing where I list my favorite organizing and productivity books.
Sigh.
But in the end, I slept through most of the ensuing days and missed the deadline to submit anything at all (likely disappointing nobody but myself). And sometimes, just as we have to tell ourselves that it’s OK to delegate, we have to accept that it’s OK to delete things from our task list.
Although I bowed out of Janet’s The Best Organizing and Productivity Books – Productivity & Organizing Blog Carnival, twelve of my colleagues had great submissions, and I hope you’ll read them. And Sabrina Quairoli wrote a post called Children’s Books About Organizing Their Lives! Although it’s different from what I would have written (or may still eventually write), knowing that topic is out there in the world made it easier to delete this from my list.
Create a Realistic Recovery Plan
Before I was a professional organizer, I was a television program director. Partially because of my Type A personality and partially because the television industry eats people and spits them out, being realistic about what you could get done in a day wasn’t actually realistic.
We were expected to be able to do everything, at any moment. After two days out with the flu, I once almost passed out in the hall and ended up just working on the cold floor where there was nowhere to fall.
That’s wackadoodle.
Nowadays, I teach clients to break down their tasks into manageable steps and schedule them across the upcoming days or weeks to avoid overwhelm.
When your week has been blown to smithereens, you absolutely have to be realistic. Sometimes (OK, often), that means being prepared to change direction more than once. When Tuesday hit, I felt worse (until my doctor called in that additional prescription). I revisited everything on my list, and applied the Eisenhower Decision Matrix again.
I decided to not do anything on Tuesday beyond rescheduling that physical therapy appointment to the end of the week and canceling client sessions. Y’know what? The nice physical therapist was glad I was taking care of myself, and rebooked me without a fee. My sweet Wednesday client was soothingly concerned and called to see if her adult daughter could bring me any groceries when she’d be in my neighborhood.
Everything that I tell my clients — that it’s OK to stop and take care of yourself, and that people will generally understand — was true.
Remember to Communicate
Once you evaluate your priorities and figure out what you have to delay, delegate, or delete, make sure you communicate the essentials to the people who can make your life easier, as long as they know what’s going on. That may be family members, friends, colleagues, or team members.
Set realistic expectations, ask for help where and when you can, and just keep them updated on delays. At some point later, you’ll want to renegotiate deadlines, but until you’re feeling clear-headed and calm, you won’t really know what will fit where on your calendar.
Be Flexible with Replacement Dates
Whatever “whoopsie” of a week you’re trying to recover from, it won’t help to triple-stack the next week. Don’t try to overcompensate and “make up for lost time” — you’ll burn out.
Just as we always discuss when talking about time blocking, set aside blocks of unscheduled time in future weeks to catch up. But don’t fill every block of time. You need buffer time and breathing space.
Reflect On What You Might Do Differently Next Time
We always learn more from our mistakes and kerfuffles than we do from our successes. If your week gets blown up by an unanticipated event, use it as a learning experience.
Block a little time on your schedule for the next week to evaluate how you handled the disruption. Consider what kinds of changes, contingency plans, emergency backup, etc., you might put in place to make next time (and there’s always some kind of “next time”) into a softer landing.
Give Yourself Grace
Julie circa 1999 would have tried to show up for work the next day, and attempting to barrel through every task, even while dizzily wobbling into colleagues and walls and copy machines.
Julie circa 2024 made sure that nobody was left in the dark, didn’t over-apologize, and got about 18 hours of sleep each day for most of a week. And everything turned out fine.
Appreciate Normal Weeks
When my sister was in college, she had a poster of the poem Normal Day by Mary Jean Irion, founder of the Writers’ Center at Chautauqua Institution. Eleven years later, I rescued it from the basement and put it up in my own dorm room. I hope it will help you appreciate the weeks where, even when nothing goes perfectly, it’s all mostly OK.
Readers, I hope you all have a safe, healthy, and happy Thanksgiving!
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