Paper Doll
Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done
ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS FOR TACKLING YOUR TO-DOS
Getting things done takes a lot of moving parts.
- You need to know WHAT to do. (This is where a to-do list or a task app comes in.)
Our brains can hold about seven things in our short-term memory, plus-or-minus a few. I always think of it as plus-or-minus three, given that phone numbers in North America being seven digits plus a three-digit area code. However, a misinterpretation of a famous psychological paper from 1956 leads people to understand Miller’s Law as allowing us to remember 7 things, plus-or-minus two.
That said, we can certainly remember more things, as long as we don’t have to recite them in very quick sequence. After all, a neurosurgeon doesn’t consult a to-do list to remember all of the steps in a complicated surgery, and we can (usually) handle remembering to make dozens of turns to get from where we work to where we live without benefit of GPS, assuming we’ve driven the route several times.
The simplicity or sophistication of your list of tasks is immaterial. Whether it’s on a sticky note, a page of a legal pad, a digital note in Notes or Evernote or OneNote, or any of a variety of task apps, if it shows the things you need to accomplish, you’re golden.
- You need to know what to do first.
The delightfully weird comedian Stephen Wright used to say, “You can’t have everything, where would you put it?”
Prioritizing is a toughie. We often say, “Well, all things being equal…” but of course, things aren’t equal. Some things are naturally high-priority — if you’re dealing with smoke, fire, blood, a baby crying (or a grownup crying hysterically), you need to tend to that first.
Most tasks in life don’t come with such obvious signs of their priorities. Usually, things we want to do are high emotional priorities but may be low productivity priorities. If I gave you a choice between doing an expense report or going to brunch, and assured you my magic powers extended to bippity-boppity-boo-ing your expense report for you and taking all calories and carbs out of your meal, you’d pick the corner table on the patio, convivial conversation with friends, and bottomless mimosas over filling cells on a spreadsheet.
We must prioritize our tasks. As we discussed in Paper Doll Shares Presidential Wisdom on Productivity, the key is to identify two essential characteristics of tasks: importance and urgency.
The Eisenhower Matrix isn’t the only method for determining these two factors, but it illustrates that only once you’ve figured out what are the most important and urgent things to get done, can you can figure out what things you should do yourself now, what you can delay and schedule for later, what you can delegate or assign to someone else, and what you can delete (or schedule for that non-existent “someday”).
Some people like to eat the frog, per a quote originally ascribed to Mark Twain, “If the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you.”
This method encourages attacking the biggest, hairiest task first. Proponents of Eat the Frog, like Brian Tracy, who authored Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, believe will this prevent you from spending the day procrastinating.
Me? I’m not so sure. I mean, yes, if you do the thing that you’re most likely to avoid first, of course you’ll feel strong and mighty and start knocking everything out of the park.
But how will you get yourself to do that? Even armed with all of the advice in last week’s and today’s, some of us are just going to keep avoiding the BIG YUCKY, certainly at the start of the day. Personally, I’m more inclined to start with something easy, as I believe that small victories breed success.
So, prioritizing isn’t just about the relative measure of the tasks, but of your emotional relationship to doing them. In other words, you do you, boo!
- Sit down (or stand up) and do it!
Knowing what you have to do and in what order (or at least at what level of soon-itude) is great, but it won’t get your tushy in the chair. As Sir Isaac Newton reminded us in last week’s post, Paper Doll On Understanding and Conquering Procrastination, a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion. If your particular body has been at rest for a bit too long, how are you going to get it to hunker down, in derriere-in-chair position, to get cracking?
Today’s post examines the methods, both popular and lesser-known, for proudly placing your posterior in position for productivity.
ONE HOT TOMATO: THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE
Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato, and a popular form of kitchen timer in the 20th century was tomato-shaped.
In the 1980s, Francesco Cirillo developed the Pomodoro Technique as a method for circumventing procrastination. The steps are basic:
- Identify the task you’re going to work on.
- Set a (kitchen) timer for 25 minutes.
- Work on that task (without interruptions or distractions) for the entire 25 minutes.
- Stop after 25 minutes (and if you’re strictly following the technique, check the task off on your official “To Do Today” sheet).
- Take a short break of about five minutes.
After four completed pomodoros, take a longer break. Four pomodoros plus four short breaks would equal about two hours, so that’s an opportunity for quite a bit of focus each day.
Simple, eh? But there are a few caveats. If you get interrupted, you start over. If you get distracted, you start over. And no matter how well you enter the flow state when working, when the buzzer goes off after 25 minutes, you have to take the break.
You remember flow state, right? We talked about it extensively in Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the “father of flow,” described flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake” and when our sense of self and our surroundings cease such that we hyper-focus on a task.
For some people, that last part is a real sticking point of the Pomodoro Technique, because the break in the flow at 25 minutes may lead to a break in inspiration and concentration. For others, it’s like stopping a movie just when it’s getting to the good part — you can’t wait to get back to it.
Does it have to be a tomato-shaped timer? No, although it may help some people feel they are doing the technique in an “official” way, and for rule followers, that may help them get into the right head space.
Does it have to be a physical timer? Not necessarily. But the mind-body connection is a powerful thing, and physically manipulating a handheld kitchen timer (tomato-shaped or otherwise) might be be the key for some people to feel their activation energy getting triggered.
If the physical sensation of turning on a timer helps you set your attention on using your time intentionally, then use that to increase your motivation. But if you’re just not that touch-feely, just give a shout to Siri or Alexa to set a timer for 25 minutes, or use some of the zillions of digital pomodoro sites and apps out there.
Does it have to ring like a kitchen timer? Once again, no. Some people may find the harsh and unyielding ring or buzz of a timer to be too jarring, not only ending the flow state, but setting them on edge. If you are neurodivergent or categorize yourself as a highly sensitive person, you may be overwhelmed by an intense buzz; consider a tangible timer with a more melodious sound or pick a digital timer or phone alarm with your favorite “ta da, I did it!” song to gently break you out of your reverie.
Again, only you know what’s going to help you surface from your underwater focus bubble vs. what’s going to make you feel like you’ve narrowly avoided fender bender.
TOCKS
Tick-tock goes the clock, and that 25-minute tomato-based technique is practiced world-wide. But a similar method was developed independently by Daniel Reeves, co-founder of the productivity app Beeminder. (It’s been years since we covered Beeminder, but it’s a data-driven, habit-tracking productivity app where you put your money where your mouth is, pledging that if you don’t hit your goals, Beeminder will charge your credit card!)
Back in 2004, Reeves (independently) developed a variant of the Pomodoro Technique based on the idea of working for 45 minutes and taking 15-minute breaks. Each 45-minute block is called a tock. Like the Pomodoro Technique, Tocks rely on specifying what you’ll be working on during the tock.
Those who practice these hourly tock/break blocks are encourage do start on the hour, making it easier to track how much you accomplish (and see when it’s time to get your tushy back to work). Reeves also urges users to take note of mental distractions so they don’t end up like the guy in the Distracted Boyfriend meme.
This reminds me of something I heard Alan Brown of ADD Crusher once say, that when one is being distracted by other possible tasks, it’s important to remember that there are “only three types of things.” There’s:
- What I’m working on now
- Important things that are not what I’m working on now, and
- BS things that are not what I’m working on now.
I see two advantages of noting your distracting thoughts. First, it will give you confidence that you won’t forget the (possibly) brilliant ideas that you had, and letting go of that fear will allow you to focus on what you’re doing. Second, it will yield a tangible list of other tasks to consider when you take your break, or later on when you’re deciding what is important or urgent to schedule.
Beeminder is bee-themed, and the original Tocks blog post sourced a bee-shaped timer that was later unavailable. However, I’ve found it, as well as a slightly less adorable alternative. If something like this would inspire you to be a busy (and productive) bee, go forth and create some buzz!
Etsy has the original version for $19.98 (plus shipping) for a set of two Spring Bumble Bee Design 60 Minute Kitchen Timers:
Less adorable and lacking actual deelyboppers, but available with Amazon Prime for $17.55, is this Kitchen Bee Timer:
THE 90-MINUTE FOCUS BLOCK
At first glance, this just seems like a super-sized Pomodoro. Instead 25 minutes of focus plus a break, you work for 90 minutes. But there’s scientific backing.
The field of sleep research has found that our bodies experience ultradian rhythms, recurrent 90-minute cycles throughout each 24-hour day. These are similar to the cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, discovered by researcher Nathaniel Kleitman. (This is why sleep researchers advise sleeping in multiples of 90 minutes to ensure you don’t get awakened mid-cycle, and why 7 1/2 hours of sleep (five 90-minute cycles) may make you feel more refreshed than 8 hours (four 90-minute cycles but then being jarred awake partway through your fifth).
Kleitman found evidence that we have 90-minute periods of high-frequency brain activity alternating with 20-minute periods of low(er)-frequency brain activity. (There’s a whole science-y explanation of how the cycles are governed by how our brains use our potassium and sodium ions to conduct electrical signals, but this is a blog post about productivity, not neurobiology. Thank goodness.)
So, if our energy levels and cognitive functions are optimal during particular 90-minute periods when we’re awake, and we attack tasks during the 90-minute blocks when our high-frequency brain activity is running on all cylinders, we’re going to be more attentive, more creative, and more productive. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Our brains use more energy than any other organs in our bodies, and when our brains are in that high-frequency mode, we’re using up that energy and freaking out the sodium/potassium levels. We NEED that 20-minute break, but we’re too distracted to take it. So the brain says, “hold my beer,” and slows us down into the low(er) brain wave frequencies, making us distracted, tired, foggy, and cranky.
If we take that 20-minute break, the sodium-potassium partnership ramps back up and we’re ready to tackle our tasks in a focused way. If we ignore that break, we’re going to experience a diminishing return on our time-and-focus investment.
TimeTimer Plus 120-Minute Timer
So, using a 90-minute focus block is similar to the Pomodoro Technique, except that you’ll trade your 25-minute work sessions for 90-minute blocks, and extend your 5- or 10-minute breaks to 20.
That said, humans can be weird. Have you ever gotten hungry but instead of eating (which you knew you should do), you pushed yourself to keep going to the point that you pushed right through hunger and into queasiness? Those of us who get migraines know that when we first experience symptoms, we should take meds, hydrate, go to a dark room, etc., but many migraineurs will tell you that at least sometimes, they ignore the symptoms until it gets much worse. Again, humans are weird.
Alarms may not be enough. You might want to set the sleep mode on your computer monitor — or borrow from the accountability and body doubling lessons I’ve recently shared. For example, ask a friend to call or swing by your desk to remind you to stop after 90 minutes, then go for a refreshing walk outside.
THE 52/17 METHOD
Perhaps you feel that somewhere between 25 minutes and 90 minutes is your sweet spot? There’s an option that looks random, but anecdotal research may persuade you otherwise. As Julia Gifford wrote in a piece for The Muse, she identified another work-to-break ratio workflow that might help you focus more productively.
Gifford’s team studied the top 10% most productive employees using the time-tracking and productivity app DeskTime — and learned these folks rocked at taking productive breaks. (If you read my Toxic Productivity Part 3: Get Off the To-Do List Hamster Wheel, the efficacy of these breaks won’t surprise you.) In particular they found that, on average, these super-productive employees were working for 52 minutes and then taking 17 minute breaks before getting back into the thick of it.
Giffords’ theory is that these highly-productive employees treated their 52-minute blocks as sprints, a popular concept in the corporate world, particularly in technology fields. In a sprint, you work with “intense purpose” and dedication to the task, whatever it is, and then (as with the 90-minute focus block) let the brain rest and recuperate (and NOT think about work, or at least that work) before the next big sprint.
We aren’t robots. We just can’t sit and stare at a screen or make the widgets on a factory floor, or whatever, for 8-hours straight. Even robots can’t always work like robots!
“Repeating tasks causes cognitive boredom,” says Gifford, and whether we break it up with cake in the staff room (mmmm, cake) or a brisk walk or a convivial chat around the water cooler, we need a pause that refreshes.
So, the big drivers of 52/17 are purpose (backed, I’m sure, with a hearty dose of motivation), distraction-free worktime, and flow.
FLOWTIME
The Flowtime Technique, as developed by educator Zoe Read-Bivens (writing as Urgent Pigeon for Medium) in 2016, was designed to take a major drawback of The Pomodoro Technique — that it interrupted the flow state — and use performance analysis to improve productivity.
All of the above options count on working for a set time (25 minutes, 45 minutes, 52 minutes, 90 minutes), and then stopping at a pre-ordained time as prompted by an alarm. As noted, for some people who are neurodivergent, have ADHD, or are otherwise sensitive to loud noises or task transitions, this can be counterproductive.
As with all of the other methods, Read-Bivens’ Flowtime approach insists on uninterrupted work sessions, but instead of stopping when an external force (like an alarm) prompts you, you work until you start to feel distracted, or mentally or physically fatigued. Then you log how long your focused work session lasted — how long you stayed “in flow.”
- Pick a specific task from your to-do list.
- Write down your start time for each task.
- Work with focus as long as you can.
- Write down the distractions taking you out of your flow state as they happen.
- When you’re tired or hungry or muddled, stop.
- Write down your stop time, and then note the total elapsed time you focused on the task. Basically, it works like a time sheet; you can use an app like Taskade or create a spreadsheet with cells formatted for time, and create a formula to calculate the elapsed start/stop time.
- Take a break for however long you want.
- Lather, rinse, repeat.
Without scheduled breaks, you’ll be less likely to anxiously await the “end” and be more likely to get into flow and stay there. Flowtime gives you flexibility to have productive sessions personalized to your work style, and it pushes you to be really clear on what’s interrupting your focus.
I can also imagine that if you get to know your cycles of productivity, it can help you block out your work time around meetings and other obligations so that you have adequate space in your schedule for your work without friction, and lead you to schedule your high-effort tasks when you’ve got the most mental energy.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of admin associated with this method, requiring planning beforehand and performance analysis afterward. It’s adding more work to your work. If you’re the kind of athlete who tracks your steps and reps and miles and measures performance to better know yourself, Flowtime might be ideal. However, if giving yourself no stopping time isn’t enough of a trade for all this admin, or if not having a limit on your break time might lead you to procrastinate on getting back to work, it may not be for you.
I suspect Flowtime might be best used when your work is creative in nature. I’d never encourage my clients who are artists to paint for 25 minutes and then take a break, and novelists probably shouldn’t be zapped out of flow by an alarm. If your entire job is creative, perhaps in the arts, or you’re needing to do brainstorming sessions for ad campaigns or client pitches, Flowtime might make sense. But if you’ve got lots of distinct (and perhaps not-entirely-creative) tasks to complete, one of the strict time-based methods seems like a better fit.
What methods to you use to get your activation energy, circumvent procrastination, and get your work done? Which methods might you try in the future?
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll On Understanding and Conquering Procrastination
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. ~ William James
We all procrastinate. Everyone knows that it’s irrational to put off doing something until the quality of the work might suffer. It’s obvious that it doesn’t make sense to keep not doing something when the deadline is fast approaching. And yet, at least sometimes, everyone procrastinates.
WHAT IS PROCRASTINATION?
Contrary to what you might have been told in your childhood (or even more recently), procrastination is not about laziness. Rather, it’s a self-protective mechanism.
Research shows that we use procrastination as a technique to regulate our moods. More specifically, to regulate, manage, and prioritize a negative emotion in the present over the negative outcome of our procrastination in the future.
Instead of delving into the science and scaring you off with words like amygdala and prefrontal cortex, here’s a cartoon to ease you into what’s actually happening in your brain when you procrastinate.
WHAT TRIGGERS PROCRASTINATION?
The tippy-top expert on procrastination, Canadian professor of psychology Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University in Ottawa, is the author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.
According to Pychyl, there are seven triggers that cause people to procrastinate:
- Boredom — Whether a child is delaying doing homework because the assignment isn’t challenging or an adult is facing a stultifying task (vacuuming, I’m looking at you!), doing anything stimulating (even if it’s counterproductive) may feel better than doing the boring thing.
- Frustration — The task itself may be frustrating because it’s full of difficult, fiddly little steps, like putting together a spreadsheet from multiple sources of data or figuring out how to build an Ikea desk without any written instructions; or, you might be frustrated because the work involves dealing with annoying members of your team.
- Difficulty — When something seems like it’s going to be too mentally or physically taxing, it’s comforting to procrastinate. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we’re preparing, or doing pre-work, to set the stage for the difficult task, but there are only so many pencils your teen can sharpen before settling in on that calculus homework.
- Lack of Motivation — This may seem the same as boredom, but it’s actually more complex. Boredom is mostly about the task; some activities are just inherently lacking in stimulation. But motivation relates to internal drive. Even if you aren’t happy in your current role at work, you may not be that excited about applying for a new job (perhaps because of depression, anxiety, or fear of change). You have to see the benefit of working on your resume and prepping for an interview as steps toward a personal goal of being more professionally confident, rather than just items to be completed to “get a job,” which may not be inherently motivating.
- Lack of Focus — Mental focus depends on physical and emotional stimuli as well as external stimuli. A variety of emotional concerns related to the task at hand — fear of failure, being embarrassed in public, losing a scholarship or a job — as well as unrelated issues like family or relationship troubles, or health concerns, can detract from your focus. Similarly, working in a crowded or noisy space, or even in an environment with visually distracting elements, can dilute your focus. Some people need to turn down the radio while driving to find the address they’re seeking; others need a tidy desk in order to read, even if the desk is outside their line of sight. You can’t focus if you’re hungry or tired, either.
- Feeling Overwhelmed — Too much of too much will always keep you from taking clear action. In the professional organizing field, we talk about suffering from decision fatigue and often say, “The overwhelmed mind says ‘No’.” Have you ever stood in the toothpaste or shampoo aisle and been shocked by the ridiculous number of competing alternatives? Similarly, if there are many different ways to approach a talk (writing a blog, replying to an email, making a plan for a move), overwhelm may lead us to just physically or mentally wander away.
so much to do pic.twitter.com/fiSm7Y2Erg
— poorly drawn lines (@PDLComics) December 21, 2022
- Being Overworked — Burnout is definitely a trigger for procrastination. If you’ve ever worked day-in and day-out on a project such that by the time you got home, you had literally no mental space or physical energy to do anything, even to prepare food, that’s a sure sign of overwork. Alternative options might be more or less pleasant (think: socializing or housework), but you might choose to lay on your couch and mindlessly scroll through social media instead of either thing you were supposed to do. Overwork eliminates the energy necessary for doing anything in the now, so everything gets pushed to a theoretical later.
Of course, Pychyl is not the only one to define triggers for procrastination. Others have identified fear of failure, impulsiveness (sometimes associated with ADHD), and generalized anxiety. Various executive function disorders can make it difficult to sequence or prioritize tasks.
The point is, procrastination is not laziness, but a conscious or even subconscious need to not feel icky now, even if you’re going to feel doubly icky later.
Procrastination is not laziness, but a conscious or even subconscious need to not feel icky now, even if you're going to feel doubly icky later. Share on XPRACTICAL STRATEGIES TO COMBAT PROCRASTINATION
Obviously, once you identify your trigger to procrastinate, you can employ techniques to reverse the behavior. For example, if a task is boring, like housework or working out, you might pair it with music or a streaming TV show.
It also may be helpful to take away the temptations of more entertaining options. Lock your phone in a drawer — having to unlock it to play Candy Crush may give you the necessary pause to stick with your task. If you’re tempted by websites that are more entertaining than the work you’re supposed to be doing, lock yourself out of those websites (for whatever time period you set) by using a website-blocking program like:
Cold Turkey — works with Windows and MacOS
Focus — works with MacOS-only
Forest — designed for your phone, it works with Android, iOS, and in your Chrome browser
Freedom — works with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, in as a plugin for Chrome
LeechBlock — works in various browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera (but not Safari)
Rescue Time — works with Windows, macOS, Android, iPhone, and iPad
Self-Control — works with acOS-only
There’s also Paw Block, which, while it only works as a Chrome or Firefox extension, has the benefit of showing you pictures of kittens from the around the internet when it prevents you from accessing distracting websites.
If you’re frustrated by the elements or situation of the task, you might bring in a friend or colleague to help you do it, someone who doesn’t have the emotional connection to the stressors that are throwing you off. They don’t necessarily need to perform the tasks, but just body double with you so you feel soothed and less frustrated.
You can break down difficult tasks into the tiniest possible elements, or seek a supervisor’s guidance, so the annoyances seem less annoying. (It’s tricky in the moment, but you might also try to reframe “difficult” tasks as challenges and contests with yourself.)
If you’re feeling unmotivated, see if you can find a short-term reward. (Cake? Cake is always good! But a refreshing walk outside after finishing the first of three elements of a task may help you get your head back in the game.) For a deeper lack of motivation, work with a therapist or coach to help you identify the meaningful benefits you can get from doing the things at which you tend to procrastinate, or possibly find a life path that eliminates those tasks. (If creating PowerPoint slide decks gives you a stomachache, maybe you need to consider becoming a lumberjack or a lighthouse keeper. Not everyone wants to be an knowledge worker, and that’s OK!)
If your procrastination is due to floundering focus, determine what’s contributing to the lack of focus. If it’s internal (troublesome thoughts and emotions), consider meditation, walking in nature, and talking through the excess thoughts with a friend and/or in therapy.
But if it’s external, if you’re feeling attacked from all sides by an overload of sensory stimuli, you may need to declutter and organize your space or move your workspace elsewhere (or invest in noise-canceling headphones). But it’s possible you’ll want to see if an ADHD or other diagnosis might help support your efforts to get assistance dealing with distractions.
Overwhelm may seem a lot like frustration. While you may be frustrated by just one (big) annoying thing, overwhelm feels like you’re getting pelted with dodge balls from all directions. It’s a good time to sit down with someone who can help you see the Big Picture and identify the priorities and sequences. Professional organizers and productivity specialists excel at helping you battle overwhelm and get clarity.
And if you’re overworked and experiencing burnout, it’s time to have a realistic discussion with your partner, therapist, boss, and anyone else who can help you achieve balance before you suffer health consequences more serious than just the emotional distress related to procrastination.
In the short term, some meditation and schedule modifications might work, but if you’re experiencing chronic overwork, more intense career and life changes might be necessary. Start by revisiting my series on toxic productivity, below, and pay special attention to post #3.
Toxic Productivity In the Workplace and What Comes Next
Toxic Productivity Part 2: How to Change Your Mindset
Toxic Productivity Part 3: Get Off the To-Do List Hamster Wheel
Toxic Productivity, Part 4: Find the Flip Side of Productivity Hacks
Toxic Productivity Part 5: Technology and a Hungry Ghost
You’re more than your job pic.twitter.com/qAHwtnT6Ux
— Junhan Chin | Illustrator (@junhanchin) August 31, 2022
EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL STRATEGIES TO COMBAT PROCRASTINATION
Making changes in your space and schedule, breaking your projects into smaller tasks, and giving yourself rewards are all smart practical solutions, but they’re external. Changing your external world can only eliminate some of the obstacles to your productivity. To truly conquer procrastination, experts advise making internal changes as well.
Admit it!
Denial is not just a river in Egypt. When you catch yourself procrastinating, acknowledge it. Once you call your own attention to the fact that you’re delaying doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing, you can look at that list of triggers and say, “Yikes! I’m avoiding writing this report. Why is that?” You can’t solve a problem if you don’t realize it exists. Admitting it gets you halfway to a solution.
Forgive yourself
This isn’t the same as letting yourself continue to procrastinate. And just like forgiving someone else isn’t the same as saying that the undesirable behavior never occurred, forgiving yourself gives you the opportunity to recognize that past behavior doesn’t have to dictate future performance.
A 2010 study by Michael J.A. Wohl, Timothy A. Pychyl, and Shannon H. Bennett entitled I Forgive Myself, Now I Can Study: How Self-Forgiveness for Procrastinating Can Reduce Future Procrastination found, as the title indicates, that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on preparing for exams earlier in the semester were far less likely to procrastinate on studying for the next exams.
You’re human; if you were a perfect person … well, you’d be the first one ever. Forgive yourself for having procrastinated in the past.
Practice self-compassion
Related to self-foriveness is self-compassion. Researchers found that people who procrastinate tend to have higher stress levels and lower levels of self-compassion, and theorized that compassion cushions some of the more negative, maladaptive responses that cause repeated procrastination.
Think of it as similar to overeating. If you cheat on your diet, low self-compassion might get you so down on yourself that you figure, “I’ll never lose this weight. I might as well just eat the whole ice cream carton!” But if you’re able to have self-compassion, you may tell yourself, “Yup, I did eat more than a half-cup serving of ice cream. But I understand why I did it. Next time, I’ll try drinking a glass of water and walking around the block first. Or maybe I’ll go out and eat the ice cream on the front porch, where the rest of the carton won’t be so accessible!”
(Seriously, whoever thought half a cup of ice cream was an adequate serving, anyway?)
Be intentional
All of the alternatives I described up above for seeking assistance and changing your environment (and the ones we’ll discuss next week) will only happen if you place your intention and attention on making changes.
Yes, this means a little extra labor on your part. If you know you procrastinate because you anticipate interruptions (from co-workers in the office or tiny humans when remote-working), you’re creating a problem before the problem exists, so you’re missing out on productivity before you need to and then again when the problem actually occurs. (And then you’ll spend the time after the interruptions being resentful about them, and that will lead to less productivity, too!)
Once you know what you’re up against and which triggers present a problem for you, build time into your schedule to plan your way around the obstacles and triggers. That might mean seeking out time with professionals who can help you, whether those are therapists, professional organizers, productivity specialists, or life or career coaches.
Embrace consistency
The various popular books on forming habits, like James Clear’s Atomic Habits, all agree that it starts with changing your identity, and seeing yourself as “the kind of person who” does things in a more agreeable, positive way.
Showing up daily is easier than showing up once in a while. pic.twitter.com/5CrOdIQjCu
— Sarah Arnold-Hall (@saraharnoldhall) February 6, 2023
One of the ways you can prod the formation of that kind of identity is to develop consistent actions and behaviors. In order to be the kind of person who goes to bed on time (and thus, can get up on time), you need to jettison the behavior of doom-scrolling for hours before bed. To consistently do that, you might set an alert on your phone for 8 p.m. to put the phone away, somewhere far from the couch or your bed. (Afraid you won’t get up on time if the phone isn’t near your sleeping area? Revisit my post from last summer, Do (Not) Be Alarmed: Paper Doll’s Wake-Up Advice for Productivity.)
Be a Self-Starter
You’ve heard me talk about activation energy before. In my post, Rhymes With Brain: Languishing, Flow, and Building a Better Routine, I wrote:
We also depend on activation energy. Because the hardest part of what we do is the getting started, we have to incentivize ourselves to get going. There are all sorts of ways we can trick ourselves (a little bit) with rewards, like pretty desk accessories or a coffee break, but the problem is that action precedes motivation. We’re not usually psyched to get going until we have already started!
Action precedes motivation. We're not usually psyched to get going until we have already started, whether it's a runner's high or Csikszentmihalyi's flow. Share on XA huge key to breaking the procrastination habit is getting started. After all, Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body at motion tends to stay in motion. (OK, it actually says, “a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.” But this isn’t Physics 101.)
Did you watch the cartoon at the start of this post? (It’s OK if you skipped it; just scroll up and watch now and we’ll wait.) If you did watch, you know that you’re more likely to feel negative emotions about a task when you’re avoiding it, but when you’re actually doing the task, it doesn’t feel so bad.
So, get yourself in motion so that you can stay in motion! Get yourself past the hurdle of starting and that small victory of starting, and the realization that it wasn’t as bad as you feared, might make you less likely to procrastinate the next time you’re facing that same challenge.
GET STARTED AT GETTING STARTED
Once you’ve read all of the preceding advice, you still have to get your butt in the chair. (OK, yes, you could use a standing desk. Let’s not be pedantic!) There are two key ways to do that.
First, embrace accountability. As I’ve previously described in these various posts, borrowing willpower from others by getting support from “partners in crime” can be just the motivation you need to get started and stick with it, whatever the “it” is:
Paper Doll Sees Double: Body Doubling for Productivity
Paper Doll Shares 8 Virtual Co-Working Sites to Amp Up Your Productivity
Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions
Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek
Second, even when you’ve got accountability support (and especially when you don’t), there are techniques for helping you get started on tasks in ways that feel hopeful, and that make finishing seem possible.
So, come back for next week’s post, Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done, where we’re going to be doing a deep dive into a variety of well-known and sleeper strategies for eliminating procrastination. We’ll be talking about tomatoes and frogs, blocks and tocks, and so many numbers that you’ll think we’re in math class. (But I promise, just in case you tended to procrastinate on math homework, there will be no trains leaving Chicago at 120 miles per hour.)
Until next time, read more about the nature and causes of procrastination:
Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing To Do With Self-Control) ~ The New York Times
Why People Procrastinate: The Psychology and Causes of Procrastination ~ Why People Procrastinate
6 Common Causes of Procrastination ~ Psychology Today
7 Triggers of Procrastination ~ ChrisBaily.com
Procrastination triggers: eight reasons why you procrastinate ~ Ness Labs
When you tend to procrastinate, what triggers tend to haunt you? What methods do you use to keep procrastination at bay?
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Organizes Temporary Papers and Explores Third Spaces
WISDOM IN THE COMMENTS SECTION
Although the comments sections of most locations online can be scary, organizing and productivity blogs tend to avoid that unpleasantness. In fact, some of the niftiest ideas for posts come from the comments sections of other posts.
Last week, commenting on the cute magazine files in Paper Doll Refreshes Your Paper Organizing Solutions, Sara Skillen mentioned:
I’ve always loved magazine holders for all kinds of paper…but also, high quality, shallow, flat trays work for a lot of my clients (those who pile). I know, I know, we all think piling is not a great idea, but for temporary kinds of paper like bills, notices, etc. it can be an amazing solution. Less barrier to putting things into broad categories, and easy to dump in the recycle bin when things are no longer relevant. I’m also a fan of very small filing boxes (like the Bigso ones at the Container Store) for temporary paper. Easy to place on the desk for quick access.
I think that Sara and I might slightly disagree about what constitutes “temporary” paper. I believe that if you receive a paper bill, the best practice is to have a system in place so that you not only pay the bill, but file and store it for later (potential) retrieval for tax purposes, troubleshooting, budgeting, etc.
However, Sara has truck on a topic that we discuss far too infrequently — paper that doesn’t fit into either of the two main, overarching paper categories.
Last week, I referenced a guest post I’d written for Yve Irish’s blog. In that guest post, How To Make Paper Less Overwhelming, after discussing the reasons why paper management can be so difficult, I wrote:
Paper categories can be much more complex and require more thought than most other tangible items. It starts off easily enough, with two basic categories:
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Action paperwork — This reflects all the paper that triggers an activity. From the lowly coupon for a free car wash at the new Wash-o-Rama to the reminder postcard for your medical appointment to the registration forms for your child’s summer camp, action paperwork is relatively easy to corral in an in-box or my preferred method, a tickler file. (Getting motivated to actually do the tasks is another issue altogether.)
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Reference paperwork — If a piece of paper doesn’t trigger an action, but it’s something you need (or want) to keep for later retrieval, it’s reference.
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In between the action paperwork that’s designed to trigger us to do something and the reference paperwork (whether current, or archival) for us to keep records at least semi-permanently (until they expire or are replaced), there’s a third category of papers that neither requires our activity or our long-term storage. For want of a better name, let’s go with Sara’s simple title, temporary papers.
WHAT ARE TEMPORARY PAPERS?
Beyond describing what they are not, let’s look at what constitutes an example of a temporary paper.
- Receipts — Certainly, there are different categories of receipts, each treated differently. If you’ve purchased something in cash that is not, for whatever reason, going to be returned, you can immediately shred or toss the receipt. A lunch at fast food restaurant comes to mind.
Other receipts need to be filed and kept semi-permanently, such as for any big ticket items for which you’ll need to prove value or ownership (like a piece of jewelry) for insurance purposes or use as support for your taxes.
But there are a whole slew of receipt types that you may need to keep temporarily, for short-term purposes. For example, if you’re cautious about making sure your credit and debit card receipts are accurate, you may keep a month of receipts (please — tidily in an envelope for that month and not crumpled all over your dresser) until the credit card bill comes or you remember to check online. (Restaurant receipts seem to be the most common culprit for inexact matches. Although sometimes the charge reflects a tip much higher than what you wrote on the slip, I recall one restaurant that regularly (at least 25% of the time) failed to apply the tip. Eventually, I gave up and started tipping in cash.)
Another common temporarily-maintained receipt is for any purchase you might return. Except around the December holidays, most retail locations have a return policy limiting returns to no more than 30 days. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to file away a receipt only to dig it out a few weeks after you make a purchase; you’ll want to have those receipts handy in case something fails to fit or flatter. (Some people, like Paper Mommy, hold onto their grocery receipts in case something turns out to be yucky or spoiled; only you know whether you have the time and willingness to return a $3 bottle of salad dressing.)
- Temporary Driver’s License — To get a driver’s license, you generally have to go to the DMV, fill out all the forms, pay a fee, and take a written test and a driving test. If your experience doesn’t turn out like Reverend Jim’s on Taxi, you’ll be approved for a license and then have your photo taken.
(If the last minute or two of this video doesn’t make you feel like the laughing-crying emoji, I don’t know how you ended up on my blog.)
However, because driver’s licenses are hard, fancy plastic cards with bar codes and holographic images and sometimes magnetic stripes, you generally don’t get your real driver’s license the same day. Instead, you usually get a paper printout of what your card should look like.
When you come from another state, most DMVs will require you to turn in your out-of-state license, and your temporary license is all you have to prove that you are a licensed driver until the real license arrives. You’ll want to keep this temporary license with you, in your wallet until the new, real license is in hand.
However, if this is a driver’s license renewal, the paper version is just your proof that your new license, with an extended expiration date is coming. If you’ve renewed at least a few weeks ahead of the expiration of your current license, there’s no need to carry the temporary paper around with you (unless you’re afraid you’ll forget that the process isn’t complete. In that case, set a reminder on your phone for a day before the expiration date to make sure you’ve received the new license and replaced the old one in your wallet!).
- Shipping and Return Slips with Tracking Information
When you ship packages and documents, the United States Postal Service has a variety of ways to ensure that you can protect your package and track its progress. For example:
Registered Mail Receipts and Tracking Numbers — Registered Mail provides security when you send something that’s difficult to replace, valuable, or otherwise needs to be tracked for additional security. You might choose Registered Mail if you’re sending something via First-Class Mail, First-Class Package Service, or Priority Mail. In theory, at least, your mail or package is secured in a sealed container or locked cage or safe during transportation, and the USPS obtains electronic and physical signatures to show you the chain of custody along the way.
You get a receipt for the item when you send it, and the then your recipient must sign for it. And if you want proof that the item was delivered, you can purchase Return Receipt or Return Receipt After Mailing service and get electronic verification of either delivery or an attempted-but-failed delivery.
Mailbox Photo by Abstrakt Xxcellence Studios
When you send a letter through Registered Mail, the post office gives you tracking information. This is important to keep handy so that you can type the tracking number into the online system or scan the QR code or bar code to track the item until it arrives at its destination. At that point, whether you keep it or not depends on the situation.
You get similar information when you send something through a delivery service like UPS or FedEx. Have you ever returned an Amazon package at a UPS store or another retail location? Brandish a printout of an email or show a QR code on your phone, and a staffer enter the essential information into the computer and hand you a sticker with the vital details, including the tracking code. Type the string of letters and numbers into the delivery service’s tracking system (or even directly into Google!) to track your item.
So, if you’re making sure your grandchildren got their birthday gifts and your son-in-law calls to let you know the LEGO arrived, the temporary paper (the tracking slip) can be discarded. (Let’s hope you don’t have to wait for toddlers to get old enough to write their own thank you notes!)
If, however, you’re returning an ill-fitting or broken item to Amazon or other vendor, you’ll want to hold onto that temporary paper until your account has been properly credited or a replacement item makes its way to you.
USPS Certified Letter Receipt — Certified Mail is similar to, but not the same as Registered Mail. With Registered Mail, you get all that yummy tracking goodness, but you’re (allegedly) getting extra security for your item. However, with Certified Mail, you’re just paying for tracking and proof of delivery, generally for important documents like tax returns, legal notices, and financial transactions.
To send a certified letter, you fill out two forms, a flimsy piece of green and white paper and a stiff green piece of card stock.
The flimsier piece of paper is your receipt, and it shows your unique article number so you can prove the piece was mailed and track the delivery status online. When it gets delivered, you’ll get notified of the time and date of delivery and then you’ll get the signed green card back in the mail.
If you’ve taken the measure to send something via Certified Mail, it’s pretty likely that you’re going to want to prove, longer-term, that the thing you sent was delivered, so your receipt (and the eventual green card) may not be so temporary.
It may be temporary while you’re waiting to confirm delivery, but if you don’t get proof of receipt, it’s likely to turn into an action item, because you’ll have to fuss with the post office, but even if it is delivered, you’ll then have to wait for the attorney, the IRS, or the person you’re paying to acknowledge that the item was received and that they are actually acting upon said receipt.
So, your Certified Mail paper may go from being temporarily temporary paper to being action paper (and go into your tickler file) and/or permanently stored in your reference paperwork in case there are long-term legal or financial implications.
- Problem/Conflict-related Papers — How often do you receive a bill that appears to have a mistake on it? Do you ever get a notice about a recall for your car or a household appliance? Ever get invitations to showers or weddings that give no indication of where the person’s gift list is registered?
Sometimes, you open the mail and immediately make a call or send an email asking for clarification. And then you wait. And wait. It would be nice if all questions and conflicts could be handled within moments, but sometimes you have to wait hours or days for a response before you can determine whether the temporary piece of paper is now fodder for the trash or recycling bins or needs to be scheduled as task or filed away.
So what do we do with this temporary paper while we wait?
WHERE SHOULD YOU KEEP TEMPORARY PAPERS?
There are two main approaches to keeping temporary papers. As much as I’m tempted to say, “my way or the high way,” it really is a matter of either Paper Doll‘s way or a Third Space way.
Tickler File
Longtime Paper Doll readers know I like using a tickler for action-oriented paperwork. It avoids paper clutter on the desk, and it triggers the owner of the paper to make decisions about when and how the piece of paper will be acted upon. How strongly do I feel on the topic? Well, I did write a whole ebook about it!
Whether you purchase a tickler file with slots for each day of the month and for each month of the year or create your own DIY version with 43 file folders, you get a parking space for anything that requires, or might require, action. Sometimes, the action required is checking to see whether you still need to be waiting.
In examples above, you might use the tickler file for temporary papers in the following way:
- Receipts — Keep receipts in a #10 envelope located in a slot for a particular day of the month, like the 1st or the 15th. If you need to return something, you’ll know exactly where to find the receipt for what you purchased. Otherwise, on a monthly basis, when you get to that day’s slot, flip through the receipts, check them against your credit/debit statement (if you’re so inclined), and then toss or shred receipts for anything that went unreturned and didn’t need to be questioned/resolved.
- Temporary Driver’s License — If told you’ll receive your permanent license within 7-10 days, pop the temporary one in the tickler for that 10th day (or, if you need to carry the temp in your wallet, just leave yourself a note in the 10th slot). If the new one arrives, shred the temporary one that day; if you open the tickler file on the 10th day and your permanent license still hasn’t arrived, it will trigger the action of following up.
- Shipping Slips with Tracking Information — Unless you have a reason to track the path of whatever you’ve shipped on a daily basis, just set it in the tickler file for the day you expect the item to arrive (based on estimates) and when you get to that day’s slot, if you haven’t already received some kind of confirmation, track the item online.
- Problem/Conflict-Related Papers — Put the paper on the day you intend to act on it (by making a call, sending an email, visiting a venue, etc.). If you’re waiting for a return call/email, move the paper forward, day after day, until you hear back or choose to take another follow-up action.
In summary, I treat temporary papers as action paperwork. It keeps them tidy and sorts them according to the likely day on which you want to act.
But it takes commitment to the system. If you aren’t that into commitment (to your paper system — Paper Doll doesn’t need to know your private beeswax), there’s a second path.
Sara Skillen remarked in her original comment, “we all think piling is not a great idea, but for temporary kinds of paper like bills, notices, etc., it can be an amazing solution.”
So, how can you pile your temporary papers and make it work?
Third Spaces
I’ve been fascinated by the concept of third spaces in modern life. We spend most of our lives in two places, home or work (or, if you are a student and doing the work of childhood or youth, home or school). But a third space is an all-important “somewhere else.” The official definition of Third Space Theory says it’s a “postcolonial sociolinguistic theory of identity and community realized through language.”
Um. OK. But all a third space really needs to be is another place where you get together with others of your kind, in a space that’s neither home nor work (or school). Examples of third spaces are coffee houses (like on Friends), bars (like on Cheers or How I Met Your Mother), houses of worship, barber shops/beauty salons, or gyms.
As I got to thinking about Sara’s comment, I couldn’t help thinking that for people who aren’t inclined to use a tickler file, what they really need is a third space for their temporary papers to hang out, a place that is neither for action papers or permanent files.
Sara suggested high quality, shallow, flat trays. Examples of these would range from the standard “in” tray (available in black or white, for about $20 for 2),
to a repurposed acrylic serving tray
to any kind of fancy wooden or leather in-box tray.
If your piles get high, you’ll have to sift through them, and there’s no date to trigger your attention, but they’ll be kept front-and-center.
Sara also referenced very small filing boxes, like the Bigso boxes at The Container Store. A document box (12-1/4″ x 17-1/4″ x 3-3/8″) like this one is less than $12, and the low profile keeps you from letting it fill up with papers long after their temporary use has passed.
A smaller letter-sized box (10-3/8″ x 13-7/8″ x 3-3/8″) is similar for about $9, and both come in a variety of colors (Navy, White, Steel Blue, Graphite, Grey, Gold dots on White, Blush, and Sage Green).
Bigso of Sweden (and, obviously, other companies) also makes stacked paper drawers, also called paper chests or drawer chests, like this one in Blush (and all of the colors listed above) for about $18:
These kinds of boxes will take up about the same amount of desktop real estate as a tickler file or in-tray. However, the lid creates an out-of-sight, out-of-mind concern not present with in-box trays.
If you get distracted and fail to keep your eye on tasks that are hidden from you, set a daily alarm on your phone or computer to approximate the kind of reminder that a tickler file offers, counteracting the tidy-but-forgettable hidden aspect.
But what if you lack desk or counter space to keep your temporary paper handy?
Try a vertical third space alternative:
- Clipboards — Attach your temporary papers to a clipboard and hang one or more on hooks on your wall or from a retractable laundry line. If you have a lot of temporary paper, you might want to label each clipboard with a life or work category, like “household,” “kid #1,” “financial stuff,” and so on.
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- Magnetic Bulletin Boards and White Boards — If you’re looking for a vertical solution in your work space, and especially if you don’t want to risk poking a hole in a temporary document or piece of paper, a magnetic board will keep a page vertical and visible (provided you’re using strong enough magnets). While there are a lot of standard metal and whiteboard options, a little searching will bring you offbeat or stylish options to fit your office décor, like this framed, marble magnetic board:
- Cork Bulletin Boards and French Boards — If you don’t have a lot of temporary paper but do need to keep it at eye level or you’ll tend to forget about it, bulletin boards and French boards are far tidier options than refrigerator doors, and the kids are less likely to put their sticky jam hands on your papers. Aim for a traditional cork bulletin board, go a little upscale with a French board that matches your decor,
or if you really need a lot of space for temporary papers, a cork room divider is a nifty option.
Unlike the file boxes and drawers, a vertical solution will keep your temporary paper visible, but will you actually see it?
The problem with vertically displaying papers is that it’s common for anything on the walls to eventually turn into wallpaper, blending in with the scenery and becoming forgettable, adn what’s forgettable becomes unnoticeable.
Where do you keep your temporary papers?
Do you have a third space for the papers in your life that are neither action-oriented or for reference?
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Refreshes Your Paper Organizing Solutions
Springtime gives us an opportunity to refresh how we do what we do. Today, we’re going to give some new thought to our obstacles and strategies for keeping our papers organized, and then take a peek at opposite ends of the spectrum for paper storage solutions: one fun and one seriously sturdy.
REFRESHING YOUR PAPER PROCESSES
My friend and professional organizing colleague Yve Irish in Rochester, New York recently asked me if I’d like to write a guest post for her blog.
We’re in the same Mastermind group, and we’re often talking about how we can help support one another’s businesses, and this seemed like a fun opportunity. It made sense for me to talk about my favorite topic — paper!
How To Make Paper Less Overwhelming
In that post (which is much shorter than the typical Paper Doll post, so you might not need a sandwich to sustain you as you read it), I cover:
- Why it’s so difficult and frustrating to keep paper organized
- The difference between action papers and reference papers
- How to break your files down into clear categories so that you can quickly file them and easily access them again when you need a specific document
- Secrets for success when trying to get — and keep — your papers in order.
I invite you to read the post and visit the rest of Yve’s blog at your convenience. Tell Yve I said “Hi!”
MAKE YOUR SPACE HAPPY WITH MAGAZINE FILES
Most of the time, when we talk about keeping paper organized, we focus on using files folders. (In the guest post above, I even explain why file folders are usually preferable to three-ring binders.) But there are definitely other paper storage solutions, depending on the types of paper we’re talking about.
For example, if the paper is teeny-tiny, like an index card, there are a variety of appropriate storage options, such as I discussed in The Humble Index Card: Organize Your Life, Then Organize Your Cards.
Similarly, although we don’t discuss them often, there are a variety of uses for magazine files. For example, you can use them to store:
- Magazines — Duh! But don’t keep all of your magazines forever, or the foundation of your house will buckle. Instead, magazine files are great for maintaining the most recent month of your subscriptions. When the new ones arrive, you can sub them in for last month’s issue. Magazine files are also useful for keeping oft-referenced magazine issues on a particular topic, such as holiday issues for recipes (though I’d still suggest creating your own recipe file system, as I suggested in Calm Cooking Chaos (Part 1): Organize Your Paper Recipes).
- Store Catalogs — If you like ordering from catalogs, or just have fun flipping through them and dreaming about what you might buy, neatly stashing catalogs in a magazine file keeps them tidy and accessible. Do note, however, that almost all catalogs have the same items in them month and after month, just with different layouts and updated pricing, so there’s no need to keep old catalogs once the new ones arrive.
- Travel Brochures, Maps, and City Guides — Although I’m not ready to get back on airplanes (which felt like germy tin cans even before COVID), I had so much fun on my Smithsonian tours of Italy (2018) and the UK (2019) that I keep the most recent Smithsonian Journeys catalog of trip options so that I can refresh my inner aspirational traveler. You might like to keep a magazine file of local city guides on a side table in your guest room to help overnight visitors consider where they might like to dine or travel.
- Instruction Manuals — For simple manuals, a file folder works fine, but depending on how many manuals you keep, and the sizes of them, or if you’re short on filing space, you might want to maintain a bookshelf of matching magazine files. Consider separate magazines files for different categories, such as:
- Major household appliances (water heater, refrigerator, washer/dryer, electric garage door)
- Kitchen appliances (air fryer, food processor, bread maker, microwave)
- Home theater electronics (televisions, stereos, DVRs)
- Computer hardware and software (including peripherals like printers and scanners)
- Communication devices (phones, digital assistants like Home Pod or Alexa)
- Personal electronics (smart watches, ebook readers, pedometers, heart rate monitors)
- Specialty manuals (exercise equipment, home medical equipment)
- College Catalogs — Once your kids start taking the PSATs and other pre-college tests, they will receive a shocking number of catalogs for colleges and universities in far-flung places. (A few years ago, I went back to my childhood home and found that my teenage closet was still filled with multiple paper grocery sacks of college catalogs circa 1984-1985, and I would not be hyperbolic in stating that at least 20% were, mystifyingly, from Valparaiso University in Indiana.) Try to keep only the catalogs for schools to which they’re likely to apply (and not your dream schools).
- Phone/Address Directories — We rarely see old-style phonebooks, the ones suitable as booster seats for toddlers. Many communities no longer have “white pages,” at all, and where “yellow pages” exist, they’re often about the thickness of a magazine. Church and school directories are often only available online. But if you do have bound directories, keeping them all together in a magazine file makes it handy when you need to make a call.
- Takeout/Delivery Menus — You probably use your phone to order delivery or get takeout. But new restaurants will still stick their menus under your windshield or between your screen door and front door, so whether you want them or not, you’ve probably got a pile of them. Don’t just stack them on the microwave or stick them in a kitchen drawer — but do keep them if the food appeals to you. When Paper Mommy, my sister, and I are together in my sister’s city, we often have to juggle phones to plan food delivery. My sister has an Android, so she can’t Airdrop a menu to the two of us (Apple users); instead, she tells me the name/URL of the restaurant, and I look it up and then Airdrop it from my phone to my mother’s iPad. It’s a whole process even before we start figuring out what we want to order. Having a takeout menu collection might make it much easier. Just plop the ones from which you’re likely to order in a magazine file.
I recently found a few intriguing magazine files.
First, Ikea’s TJABBA (a variation on their only-slightly pricier but less adorable TJENA magazine file) is currently on sale for only 99 cents/2 pack, so I suspect it won’t be around long, but it’s so cute!
The smiley face design is made by adding two tiny punch-out circles above the open space used to pull the file off of the shelf. You get a sneak peek of the contents but still get to keep the “messy” side of the magazine file toward the wall.
The TJABBA files are easy to assemble and can collapse and fold up to save space if you don’t need them for a while. They measure 9 3/4″ deep, 11 3/4″ high, and 4″ wide.
If you prefer to support independent small businesses and don’t mind waiting a little extra time for shipping, the Bluble shop on Etsy has magazine files designed to look like townhouses. They’re handmade of “woodlike” (or solid color) laminated high density fibreboard.
There are three styles of these magazine files:
# 1 measures 34.7 cm high, 11.0 cm wide, and 23 cm deep
# 2 measures 34.3 cm high, 9.3 cm wide, and 23 cm deep
# 3 measures 34.5 cm high, 8.0 cm wide, and 23 cm deep
You can select any of the three styles in a variety of colors, depending on what kind of cityscape you’d like to create on your shelf. The options are maple, oak, pine, cherry, apple, nut, “wenge” (sort of darker brown), black, grey, and white.
These Bluble storage solutions are $5.70/each, which seems incredibly reasonable for a hand-made townhouse-style magazine file, but Etsy calculated that shipping from Germany to my own zip code would be $28, so this might be better if you are planning on buying many of them for practical décor and not just to hide in a cabinet.
If you order, be prepared to state the number for the type you prefer along with the letter for the finish you want. (I’m fond of the wider townhouse #1 in pine or white, but you could mix-and-match to create your own cityscape).
Bluble also makes a version of these townhouse magazine files with different window and door stylings and colored rooftops. The color options are navy blue, blue, light blue, mint, green, light green, black, violet, red, orange, and yellow. These magazine files run $6.23/each.
SOLVE STORAGE FOR A TON OF PAPER
It can be really annoying when you have a lot of paper that you need to store, but there are a variety of solutions depending on whether you have a little bit of a lot of paper or a whole lot of a lot paper.
Traditional (manilla) file folders are scored on the bottom (near the crease), so with a little bit of effort, the bottom of the folder can go from a sharp fold to a boxy-bottom, but that can only help add contents for so long. Plus, if you increase the bottom surface area of your file folder by folding it at the creases, fewer folders will fit in a traditional hanging folder, and eventually, that’s going to present a challenge.
Box-bottom hanging folders and expandable files are the traditional solution, and you can generally find them in sizes that providing expanding room for one-to-four inches of paper storage space, but they’re not particularly attractive.
Recently, I came across a product from our friends at Smead, a 3.5″ Hanging File Pocket with an interesting design.
Smead 3.5″ Letter-Sized Hanging File Pockets
Suitable for collections of lots of bulky documents that you need to both hang and transport, the 3.5″ Hanging File Pocket is strong enough to expand to 3 1/2″ and has oval die-cut handles to make it easier to lift and transport a large collection of papers.
These 3.5″ Hanging File Pockets have full-height gussets (reinforced accordion-like sides rather than the typical open-sides you find with hanging folders). The gussets ensure that the paper contents of the pockets will stay secure and won’t get stuck on the file rails when the pocket is removed from a file drawer.
While the accordion style sides will expand to up to 3 1/2 inches, they take up minimal space until/unless the expansion for extra capacity is needed. For example, if you’re putting in documents for one fiscal quarter, no expansion is necessary, but as you add more paper for additional fiscal quarters, more expansion can occur.
The Hanging File Pockets come in two sizes:
- Letter-sized are 11-3/4″ wide by 9-1/4″ high, not counting the hanging rods, which add an additional inch (total) of width
- Legal-sized are 14-3/4″ wide by 9-1/4″ high, not counting the hanging rods, which add an additional inch (total) of width
Smead 3.5″ Legal-Sized Hanging File Pockets
The letter-sized file pockets come in standard green or multi-color (red, green, yellow, and blue); the legal-sized version are only available in standard green.
(Boo! I wish someone at Smead or any of the other file supply companies could tell us whether green hanging folders and jackets are somehow less expensive to produce. Like, is Army Green a less expensive coloring agent? Why are filing solutions in pretty colors almost always more expensive?)
I should note, these Hanging File Pockets are priced for corporate use for lawyers, accountants, and people who wear serious suits each day. The pockets, and specifically the die-cut ovals that make these heavy-duty hanging file pockets so appealing, aren’t really designed for residential or home office use, the assumption being that the average person or small business isn’t going to need to keep an entire ream of paper in one folder or pocket.
The pricing is:
- $38.50 for four of the letter sized, multi-color (red, green, yellow, and blue) 3.5″ hanging file pockets (Yes. Almost $40 for four hanging pockets!)
- $75.33 for ten of the letter-sized, standard green 3.5″ hanging file pockets
- $83.61 for ten of the legal-sized, standard green 3.5″ hanging file pockets
- There is no option for the multi-color hanging file pockets in a legal size
These 3.5″ Hanging Pocket are only available directly from Smead.
Happy Spring from Paper Doll HQ, and please let me know if you spot any fanciful or fun paper storage solutions in the wild and I’ll be happy to credit you in a future post.
Paper Doll Post:
What’s in a Name? “Addressing” Organizing and Productivity
THE MISTER PRODUCTIVITY PODCAST
Recently, I had the delightful experience of appearing on an episode of The Mister Productivity Podcast, hosted by Mark Struczewski (pronounced stru-CHESS-key).
When Mark initially contacted me, I recognized his name, but not the name of his podcast until I realized that the show I knew as the Mark Struczewski Podcast been renamed as The Mister Productivity Podcast in late 2022. (As you’ll soon see, naming/labeling things is a theme in today’s post.)
The show is targeted to solopreneurs, with a mission of helping “banish overwhelm, reduce stress, and get more done.” However, I find that most of his content is applicable for all professionals and anyone trying to thrive in a world of too much sensory overload.
Over almost six years, Mark has covered the gamut of productivity-related concepts, both on his own and with an intriguing variety of guests (like friends-of-the-blog Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks). He’s talked about everything from leadership, virtual work, and goal setting to sleep, confidence, and mindset. My favorite of all of his episode titles is Are You a Winnie The Pooh, a Tigger, or an Eeyore?
The episode in which Mark interviewed me is entitled Organizing Old School in 2023. Once we discussed what Mark and I have in common besides a passion for productivity, we got down to a meaty conversation that covered a wide variety of topics including:
- The Pomodoro Technique “Police” and modifying the method to work for you
- The essential nature of brain reboots for our productivity and mental health
- The power of analog in a digital world, including paper planners, journals, and notebooks
- The role of the mind-body connection in note-taking at school and in meetings, as well as in journaling.
- Systems and tools for improved productivity, including a solution orientation and an understanding that the definition of the “best” tool isn’t what you think it is.
If you’re a longtime Paper Doll reader, you won’t be surprised to hear some of my disclosures, both personal (that I am not an outdoorsy person) and professional (the value I place on going back-to-basics with analog productivity tools).
During our discussion, Mark also referenced the literal nature-based practice of grounding, which I referenced in a larger context in Toxic Productivity Part 5: Technology and a Hungry Ghost when discussing Brad Stulberg’s The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds — Not Crushes — Your Soul.
In that part of the conversation, Mark referenced a documentary called The Earthing Movie: The Remarkable Science of Grounding, available on YouTube, which looks at the psychological and physical benefits of maintaining a connection to the earth.
I hope you’ll listen to my episode of Mark’s podcast, and if you enjoy it, please consider subscribing to The Mister Productivity Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Audible, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Pandora, JioSaavn, Deezer, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your juicy podcasting goodness!
THE ADDRESS BOOK
A while ago, friend-of-the-blog Hazel Thornton recommended a book to me. That’s not unusual, as we’re real-life pals as well as buddies on Goodreads, and we generally enjoy similar reading, both in non-fiction and fiction. So, when Hazel told me about Deirdre Mask’s The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, I was intrigued.
To be honest, I was expecting it to be about issues like the 20th-century American practice of redlining, where banks discriminate against certain neighborhoods or areas populated mainly by people of color and/or low-income residents, denying credit or insurance. In actuality, this book is a fascinating, eye-opening, and wide-reaching look at global history and socioeconomic movements related to street addresses.
And, as often happens when I’m reading books that involve history and culture, I found that it all relates to organizing! You’ll have to stick with me here as I geek out and show how it all connects.
The Meaning of an Address
Have you ever thought about what an address is, and what having one (or not having one) could mean for you? In the 21st century, without an address, you can’t apply for a job, even though employers would almost certainly contact you by email, phone, or text. Without a fixed address, you can’t register to vote. And because health and auto insurance rates are determined by the county in which you live, and sometimes the specific address at which you dwell, your address can be your destiny.
A Brief History of Addresses
The book tells fascinating historical tales. For example, it traces the increasing understanding of how cholera epidemics spread, and shows how John Snow (the Victorian era physician-turned-cholora detective — not the differently spelled Jon Snow of The Game of Thrones) used maps of London to trace the origin and spread of the disease.
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine life without street addresses, but before the 1700s, while there were street names, numbered street addresses were almost non-existent. Then, they suddenly came into being — independently — in various locations in Europe and the Americas.
One major example involves Maria Theresa, the Empress of the Habsburg Empire. (Don’t worry if you don’t remember her from Social Studies, but she was the mother of Marie Antoinette.) Because she was losing the 7 Years War, Empress MT (as I’m sure her friends called her) needed soldiers, but feudalism was still going strong, and the landlords didn’t want to send their serfs.
So, Maria Theresa sent military officers and civil servants to paint house numbers on all doors, and created a census of able-bodied men. (Sadly, her representatives used cheap ink, which blurred in the winter rain and snow, just like badly hand-labeled file folders splashed with coffee.) While Maria Theresa’s efforts mainly failed, it shows how numbering addresses along a street makes it easier for a government to identify, tax, and conscript individuals.
So, something that seems obvious to have, like a numbered street address, and beneficial to have (whether for pizza delivery or mail call or an ambulance coming to your aid) was not necessarily inevitable, and not always positive in nature.
In the 21st century, addresses and maps are no less essential to finding the origin of diseases as well as the location of those who are lost or injured, only now organizations like Missing Maps can offer assistance.
Missing Maps uses remote volunteers to manually trace satellite imagery into OpenStreetMaps. Then, community volunteers add in local detail and identifying information about neighborhoods, street names, and evacuation centers.
Armed with this mapped information, humanitarian organizations can plan “risk reduction” strategies, disaster response activities, and find people during emergencies. Just because there are no addresses doesn’t mean they can’t be created outside of a local or national government plan.
Mask also covers how the lack of street and home addresses in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India keeps people from getting Aadhaar cards, biometric identity cards. Without these cards, citizens cannot get access to health services, food subsidies, education, or any of a variety of social services.
Some of the causes date to colonialism, while others are modern, but all lead to continued inequity. And this is certainly not just an issue in India. Here at home, lack of street addresses in rural West Virginia have delayed emergency services and missing addresses on Native American reservations in Utah have short-circuited voting rights.
Addresses — and the lack thereof — are a big deal not only with regard to how we organize ourselves, but how we are organized by others.
Technological Solutions When No Addresses Exist
Organizations like Addressing the Unaddressed are working hard to help create unique geo-based postal addresses for each of the 1.4 million residents of the Kolkata slums, and are using Google’s Plus Codes to do so.
Another fascinating option for creating pseudo-addresses is something called What3Words.
Sometimes, we have to give locations that don’t lend themselves to addresses. In the book, Mask tells the story of a rural health clinic in South Africa where ambulances are in short supply, and patients may live in unmapped locations where they’d be unable to specify to ambulances (or even taxi drivers) specifically where they were located. In a less agonizing example, there are music festivals or temporary outdoor events where specific locations (tents, Port-o-Potties, stages) lack real ways to identify and direct people to them.
What3Words has divided the entire world into 3 meter by 3 meter squares, and each square has been assigned three words, which you can look up on the company’s free map in a browser or the What3Words app. So, the area of the front door of Maple West Elementary School (which I attended back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) has been assigned the “address” of prowess.hollow.lavished.
My car is currently parked at orators.broccoli.gulls. The middle of White House Rose Garden is army.likes.jukebox. And the clock tower in Orvieto, Italy, my favorite town I visited on my 2018 trip, is at yards.potions.cosmetic.
Experts in linguistics work to make sure that a word in one language won’t be confused with a homonym and that naughty words (in any language) don’t make the cut. And care is taken to make sure that words aren’t too long or confusing. Apparently the longest words are used for locations in the middle of the oceans, deserts, or in the Arctic.
The Rest of the Book
The Address Book also covers complexities of science, history, and culture.
- neurobiology, and the relationship between memory, “place neurons,” and the hippocampus, working to develop multi-sensory maps and explaining how the ancient Romans found their way in a complex city without any maps
- the pottymouth origins of London street names and how “niceties” modernized not only the names but the cultural significance of streets and neighborhoods
- how Philadelphia led the world in implementing numbered streets
- the ugliness in the revision of street names under the Nazis and later, Stalinization, in Europe, Confederate street names in the United States, and post-Apartheid street names in South Africa.
- how street names and numbered addresses can be faked for those who have the money ($11,000, via cashier’s check or money order) to buy classier-sounding vanity addresses in New York City!
ADDRESSES, NAMING CONVENTIONS, AND ORGANIZING
As I traveled through time and across continents reading The Address Book, I was repeatedly considering that how we are organized and labeled in the world determines whether a government can locate us (for good or ill), how emergency services come to our assistance, how prospective employers can find us, and more.
This further prompted me to consider the way in which homelessness — addresslessness — can perpetuate lack of ability to seek out social services, get education, or obtain a job. As a professional organizer, I immediately saw the connection between how we label who lives where in our cities, towns, and countrysides and how we label what lives where in our filing cabinets and our computers and our minds.
The advantage is that we can change the address to which we assign our possessions much more easily than we can convince 911 services that our vanity address, which doesn’t exist on GPS, is where we are actually located.
Organizing clients are often surprised to learn that the names applied to locations in their homes or spaces can be modified to make their lives easier.
Room Addresses
You can change what you call a room to redefine what happens there. “The nursery” becomes “Johnny’s room” and after Johnny’s long out of college, it’s “the craft room.” But we don’t have to wait for major household transitions to change the names/addresses of our spaces.
Clients lacking an official playroom for their children found toys got strewn everywhere and their little ones were unhappy without a designated space that was their own. The parents were uncomfortable with their tiny humans playing unsupervised in upstairs bedrooms, but were tired of stepping on LEGOs in the kitchen.
Looking around, I found that they had an enormous formal dining room — one that they never used, and one that lacked a dining table, dining chairs, or a china cabinet. They’d moved in before acquiring that kind of “grownup” furniture and with life and kids keeping them busy (and without a lifestyle that included formal dinner parties), the room was just an empty space.
When I suggested they use the room as a playroom for at least a few years so that the kids could play in close proximity to the kitchen, family room, and home office, all on the first floor, the clients were puzzled. “But it’s a dining room,” the husband remarked with uncertainty. “It says so on the blueprints.” The wife laughed. “It would be great to have the kids down here, but are we allowed to do that?” They were! You are!
After we chatted a bit, I made a copy of the printed floor plan we’d been looking at earlier in the day, and printed a “Playroom” label on my label maker, and covered the words “Dining Room” with it. By the time I’d come for our next session, a comfy rug had gone down on the cold wooden floor of the former dining room, brightly colored toy bins and book shelves had be relocated to the space, and both the tiny humans and the full-sized ones were delighted.
Elsewhere, I’ve found that an “address” can mean destiny. At the risk of making too direct an analogy, a person without an address can’t get social services; papers without an address (a labeled folder or digital location) can’t get accessed, processed, or used.
A client family all referred to a particular room in the house as “the scary room” and nobody ever went in; the door was opened just enough to throw things in.
When we purged the room and reorganized it, I encouraged them to all use a new name to inspire keeping the room from getting scary again. Temporarily, they called it the “sunny” room, because it was now a lovely, sunny space. It inspired the family to use it as a more social space for the teens and their guests, and the name stuck.
Space/Zone Addresses
When I became a professional organizer, I started reading books by Judith Kolberg, the founder of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (now the Institute of Challenging Disorganization), a fellow member of my chapter and now, I’m proud to say, a friend. Two of her books, Conquering Chronic Disorganization and What Every Professional Oragnizer Needs to Know about Chronic Disorganization, really hit home.
Her concept of “wholistic organizing” considers the way clients, particularly those with chronic disorganization, see the world and their spaces differently. She introduced the idea of themes, “a way of holding a whole together while you take it apart.” As her example, she shed light on how she and her client, a doctor, renamed spaces in a way that made sense to him.
An expert on the human body, the doctor was able to re-envision his office systems much more clearly when Judith helped him break things down into The Brain (his leather office chair, where his research, reading materials and resources lived), The Heart (a separate section of papers related to the doctor’s volunteer work at a children’s shelter), The Leg Bag (holding items that needed to be taken when he went on errands), and so on.
Re-addressing a zone or space can help your brain make sense of what belongs there, allowing you to remove (and relocate) things that don’t belong and remember to put objects away with related items.
File Addresses
Because I am a Paper Doll, I have a lot of experience helping clients deal with files and paper clutter. In most cases, files should be labeled according to a series of rules that help you access them when you need them. I’ve covered that in many classic posts:
Family Filing—As easy as (eating) pie
Financial Filing—Scrapbooking snapshots of your money’s life
Mom, why is there a receipt stuffed in the turkey?
I Fought the Law…and the Paperwork Won!
Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Doctor: “Then don’t do that!”
Paper Dolls Live In Paper Households
I Hope Nobody Ever Writes a Nasty Tell-All Called “Paper Doll Dearest!”
Paper Doll Gives You the Business (Files) — Part 1
Paper Doll Gives You The Business (Files) — Part 2: Reference Papers
Paper Doll Explains How To Avoid Paper Management Mistakes — Part 1
How To Avoid Paper Management Mistakes–Part 2: Fat Vs. Skinny Jeans
But just because there are rules doesn’t mean all rules work for everyone. Years ago, I had a client who was going through a divorce and had to deal with a lot of legal paperwork related to depositions, custody arrangements, and the like. Unfortunately, the divorce was acrimonious and the client’s children were distraught each time they heard about or anything related to the situation.
My client wanted to keep the papers handy, but found that just having a “Divorce” folder on her desk led to distress when her younger daughter walked by her desk. I suggested that we rename the folder “Dallas Project” after we’d shared a joke about the country song “I’m Going Through the Big D and Don’t Mean Dallas.” My client knew exactly what was in the file, but to her children, it appeared to be just another work project.
I’m sure I was guided to make this suggestion by Judith Kolberg’s advice about “muttering.” Her books explained that sometimes clients had a fear of filing, of putting things away and not being able to find them again, and I’ve definitely seen this over the years. By watching how clients muttered concepts to themselves about specific papers, it would be easy to see and hear how clients thought of their documents, and labels (basically, addresses — where these papers would live) would be unusual, but clear.
Thus, a folder I might call “Tax Prep 2023,” a client might think of as “The Tax Man” (and humming The Beatles’ The Tax Man while filing might make the concept more concrete). Some of Judith’s funny examples for action and reference files were:
- Friendly Correspondence
- Hostile Correspondence
- Stuff I Can Never Find When I Need It
- Did I Get Paid For These Yet?
- I Have Got to Call These People
My point, and I do have one, is that what we call something — whether it’s a paper or digital file, a zone in our office, a room in our home, or otherwise — helps determine where it will go and how easily (and how likely) we will access it and use it.
Don’t be afraid to be creative and “bend” the rules once you know them; if you can confidently find your possessions or direct someone to them, consider it a success.
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