Archive for ‘Books and Reading’ Category
Organize Your Life for More Reading Opportunities
If you love reading, summertime means finding a good beach read. Thanksgiving and the December holidays may mean finding books to read for when you finally escape the hubbub. And the darkest part of winter gives you a great excuse to snuggle up with a good book.
However, whether you’re a reader or just want to be one, chances are that you’ve found yourself too busy doing too many things (and probably things you like less than reading) such that you make it to the end of the year with more books on your TBR (To Be Read) pile than your already-read list. And you aren’t be alone.
The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), put out by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing. An analysis published this summer in iScience recently found a downward trend in reading for pleasure over the past 20 years.
In fact, per the New York Times:
Researchers from University College London and the University of Florida examined national data from 2003 to 2023 and found that the share of people who reported reading for pleasure on a given day fell to 16 percent in 2023 from a peak of 28 percent in 2004 — a drop of about 40 percent. It declined around 3 percent each year over those two decades.
I don’t think it’s because people don’t want to read; prior research found that during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, people spent significantly more money on recreational reading material than they had in 2019. Indeed, consumer spending on recreational reading went up almost 23% in 2020 and another 1.8 percent in 2021. When people have the time, they do read.
To borrow from an old phrase, the spirit (to read) is willing, but the flesh (of our eyeballs? of our tushies?) is weak.
People are busy — with work, parental obligations, sandwich-generation obligations to kids and parents, volunteering, and with anxiety over [Paper Doll waves her arms around, frantically] everything going on in the world. Studies, particularly from the pandemic era bear this out, as people living in households without children and people 75 and over read (for pleasure) significantly more than those in the middle categories.
So, as you make up your wish lists for Santa, I’m hoping this post will give you confidence that if you asks for books, you’ll have read them by this time next year.
HAVE BOOKS, WILL TRAVEL (OR SIT)
It’s easier to be inspired to do something specific than something vague. Start by figuring out your options.
Be a Book Collector
Walk around and gather up every unread book in your home. Use a laundry basket, if you have to, and drag everything to a central location. You may have enough for a bedside table, a bookshelf or an entire library, but once you’ve got these all together, divide them into three piles:
- books you’re excited to read now — They may be in your favorite genre, by an author you adore, or just books that if you had the time, you’d grab a hot cocoa and a blanket banish everyone while you read them.
- books you’re somewhat enthusiastic about, but daunted by — Maybe this is because the book is thick, the writing is complex — hello, 19th-century Russians — or you just don’t have the focus right now, but with some situational support, you could/would embrace the books.
- books you have no desire to read — These might be books that once appealed to you, or that were lent or given to you with great glee on the part of the person who loved it and felt it necessary to press it into the hands of everyone (no matter their tastes). You have this random internet stranger’s permission to move the book along (to a friend who is a voracious reader with varied tastes, to used book stores, or to Little Free Libraries).
You may have to rearrange your bookshelves a little, or create a reading shelf out of a deep windowsill or mantle or the back or far side of your desk (with the help of some sturdy bookends). This is where you will keep your To Be Read books. Put the most desirable books front and center so you’ll be more inclined to read them! (The more daunting books can go on a lower shelf for once you’ve tackled the ones with more sparkle.
No books at home? Visit your public library (in person, or digitally) to pick two books that get you excited. (If one fails to spark, you’ve got a backup.)
CREATE A READING ENVIRONMENT
Earlier this month in David Kadavy’s Love Mondays newsletter, in a piece entitled “Why I bought a $600 Lamp,” notes that while, “Lots of people with a scrolling habit would rather have a reading habit,” it’s hard to really break that habit of grabbing your phone to scroll (when you’re bored, when you’re anxious, when you are procrastinating doing something that will take you toward your goals).
Longtime readers have heard me say many times that developing an organized system for being productive, whether at home or in your workspace, requires eliminating friction; as Kadavy says, “you need to remove the resistance.”
Kadavy writes:
Invest in reading. Buy all the things that make reading comfortable, easy, even luxurious. I bought a $600 lamp, which was more than enough to get me to say, “Well, I spent all that money on this reading lamp…”
I’m not going to encourage you spend $600 on a reading lamp; I’d rather buy more books. But what could you more reasonably buy, make, rearrange, or otherwise revise in your environment to make reading more inviting?
What’s your resistance to reading, and how can you get rid of it?
Don’t assume that the space you’ve assigned yourself for reading, by default, is a good reading space. For example, I have a bonus room that the blueprints for my apartment designate as “the library.” There’s one overhead light, a door to the balcony, and a window. However, the door is mostly glass, so during cold months, it’s chilly, and during much of the rest of the year, it’s too hot and sunny. I never read in there.
Conversely, the outer “wall” of my kitchen cabinet that faces my carpeted dining room-turned-office has ideal lighting, and I often enjoy sitting on the floor with my back to that end of the kitchen. I’m similarly comfortable reading when sitting criss-cross-applesauce at my desk chair, turned 90° from my desk and computer.
What would make your reading environment more inviting?
- Seating — First, where are you comfortable sitting to read? Some people can dive into a book anywhere, while others need a squishy sofa or chair. Conduct an experiment, and every day for a week, pop into a different seating option in your home. You might be surprised to find reading comes naturally in an unexpected location, like the bottom of your steps or in your guest bedroom.
- Ambiance — Can you read in the middle of a coffeehouse or university library? Are you able to delve into a story while your kids are running circles around you? Or do you need to control the environment so that you can concentrate? There’s no right or wrong, but the more easily you can fall into your book, the more time you’ll spend reading rather than adjusting the variables.
- Lighting — I’m an overhead-lighting girlie. My mother and my sister can’t stand light from overhead, and prefer lamps. I have clients who prefer soft lighting, and have known a few who prefer to read in the dark with the adult equivalent of a night light.
Have you ever seen these LED neck lights? For under twenty dollars, you can get six levels of brightness and three different colors of light from a rechargeable, bendable light that fits around your neck!
For readers with sensitive eyes, having a reading light that comes from your direction toward the book, is key, and more comfortable than the more traditional overhead approach of the descendants of clip-on Itty-Bitty Book Lights.
- Bookmarks — It may seem small, but an appealing bookmark might be exactly what you need to bring you back to your book. Sure, you can dog-ear a (non-library) book or use a CVS receipt to mark your page, but a bookmark that reflects your passion, whether it’s kittens or Doctor Who, fine art or a silly catch phrase, is likely to level up your reading experience, and motivate you to get back to your book.
- Beverages — Depending on your personal style, you may prefer to read in a snack-free environment or devour sweet or salty goodies while reading. Paper Doll does not judge. However, if you’re developing a cozy reading habitat, consider investing in a corded or cordless coffee (or tea) warmer.
DEVELOP A READING HABIT BY SYNCING TIME AND SPACE
In her recent piece, The 10-10-10 Plan for Reading 50 Books a Year, Laura Vanderkam suggested finding forty minutes per day to read, six days a week, to achieve 240 minutes (four hours) of reading per week, or possibly about an average-sized book each week.
Of course, finding forty minutes in your day — when you’ve got in-person meetings and Zooms and carpool leaves very little buffer space in your calendar — might seem impossible. Beyond the larger issue of time management, Vanderkam’s 10-10-20 approach says that in lieu of finding 40 consecutive minutes, get the same effect with smaller doses of reading time.
She suggests finding two ten-minute blocks you can comfortably commit to and put them on your schedule, and then add a 20-minute reading slot before bed.
If you feel that you truly don’t have forty minutes of potential reading time in your day, whether all at once or in chunks, I challenge you to set an alarm on your phone to remind you to put your phone down or on airplane mode for a fixed amount of time (say, a 25-minute Pomodoro), and set another alarm to let you know when your self-commitment is complete. Chances are good that you merely replaced doom scrolling with reading.
Scheduling the time is one thing; sticking to it is another. If you do all of your reading on an e-reader, or in an app on your phone, you’ve only got one thing to keep at hand. However, if you (like Paper Doll) prefer the heft of a traditional book, there are definitely ways to use those books to tempt you.
And if you’re never without a book, at least you never have that excuse for not being able to read.
- Keep a book in the kitchen and read while you wait for the coffee and your breakfast to be ready. (If the book is good, you’ll likely to continue to read while eating.
- Place a book on your vanity to read while you dry your hair. (Obviously, there are hygiene concerns with leaving a book in the bathroom, but having a book in one hand while drying your hair with the other not only evenly builds up the muscles in your arms, but it gives you something to do while you can’t listen to anything.)
- Tuck a book in your purse or work bag to read:
- on your commute (if you’re taking public transportation)
- in the driveway or parking lot (if you arrive at your appointment early, or — and here’s a nifty idea, to read when you return to your car before driving home or to your next location!)
- when someone (your doctor, the friend meeting you for lunch, etc.) is inevitably late
- Keep a book in the trunk of your car — Imagine you get a flat or some other vehicular annoyance and you won’t merely be waiting ten minutes, but perhaps an hour. A book you can dip in and out of — perhaps a collection of short stories or a memoir that doesn’t require that you recall details from chapter to chapter — is perfect.
- Stash a book under the crib, next to the changing table, or anywhere in your child’s room so whether you’re called to rock an infant or keep a toddler company until they nod off, you don’t have to count tiles on the ceiling. While we tend to sleep in the dark, it seems a lot of kids nod off in a soft glow, so you may find that you can read either a traditional book or a phone/e-reader.
- Keep a small stack of books for professional reading in your workspace. — Most of the above ideas are best used for fiction or light reading, but if you’re trying to keep up with reading in your professional life, you’re most likely to pay attention when you’re in your workspace. Put three books within reach of your desk. Use reading time as a transition: read for ten or fifteen minutes before you leave for lunch, or spend your last 15 minutes of the workday (or fifteen minutes after your work is done) to get ahead on reading professional journals or books. Read with tape flags or a highlighter nearby to capture important concepts.
- Load audiobooks and ebooks onto your phone so you can listen when you can’t look. (It’s hard to read print while folding laundry or walking on the treadmill.) I’m not going to get in the middle of the debate over whether listening counts as reading. But I will suggest you check your public library for access to audiobooks (and ebooks); even if you prefer reading text, if you’re stuck for a while without the book you want to read, catching up with a few audio (or virtual) chapters will keep your committed to your reading plan.
Yes, that’s a lot of different places to stash books. You don’t necessarily have to keep moving your books from place to place; you can keep a few different books at the ready in various places.
If you only read fiction, it may be difficult (or impossible) to read multiple books simultaneously, especially if they’re in the same genre. However, reading a novel before bed and a non-fiction book in small bites throughout the day may keep your brain sharp.
I generally read one fiction book and two non-fiction books concurrently, with each assigned a different “home.” It’s less like trying to keep the plots and characters of Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, Doc, and Brilliant Minds all straight in your head, and more like keeping up with both The Diplomat and The Great British Bake-Off.
MOTIVATE YOURSELF TO READ MORE
Zig Before You Zag — You Don’t Have to Tackle Reading Head-On
One of my friends is an eager reader, but due to work has strayed from the habit. However, he really enjoys Shakespeare, and goes to monthly communal Shakespeare readings where participants take turns reading sections of the plays. While that counts as reading, it wasn’t helping him tackle his backlog.
Last year, I got him Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, a memoir of sorts by Dame Judi Dench, where she regales the interviewer with tales of her decades of performing Shakespeare on stage.
The idea was that independently reading something easy and fun, but in the same neighborhood as his monthly group readings, made the leap easier.
If you plan to start reading books by a particular author (or on a non-fiction topic), try short stories or essays to whet your appetite. Be creative. If you want to carve out time to read a biography of the Founding Fathers, pay closer attention to who’s who and what they do in Hamilton, or musical grandpa, 1776!
If you haven’t read books with long chapters since college and feel wobbly, try picking books with short chapters. Ask your friendly librarian for some recommendations, or pick titles from 50 Books With Short Chapters at Keeping Up with the Penguins.
The key is that if you want to read, but aren’t feeling up to the task, it’s OK to find a back door. With classics, read a character description on Wikipedia. With modern books, read professional reviews, which are far less likely to reveal spoilers than reader reviews.
Give Yourself a Challenge
Just as with any habit you want to establish, sometimes you need to give yourself a push. I participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge annually, setting a goal for how many books I’ll read each year. If I hit my goal, I increase it for the next year; if I fail, I set the same goal again. (I’ve been stuck at 39 books for a few year’s running.) I’m often reading three books concurrently, so my reading achievements lag for a while and then jump forward.
Because I not only log, but review, each book after I complete it, it forces me to really think about what I’ve read. This makes it more likely that I will remember the book (for my own purposes and to recommend to friends), but it also makes the challenge more real to me.
Other reading challenges encourage not just volume of books read, but types. If you’re looking for a challenge that’s more, well, challenging to the diversity of your reading endeavors, check out The Candid Cover’s 2025 Reading Challenges: The Ultimate List.
The More (Readers), the Merrier
Join the Club
Joining a book club is one way to inspire you to invest more of your time in reading. In small groups, you may feel obligated to speak up and put your take on a book (perhaps one you didn’t like) on display; if you’re an introvert, you may find the whole idea distasteful. However, there are a variety of book club options that don’t require you to meet in person; these existed before 2020, but since the pandemic, online book clubs have proliferated.
Whether you prefer time travel or romantasy, classics or graphic novels, business books or psychology, there’s a group somewhere that’s reading and discussing what you like to read. Just use your favorite search engine (or AI, cough, if you must) to point you in the direction of a group — in person or virtual — up for discussing your preferred author or genre. Or try the suggestions in these articles:
The 15 Best Online Book Clubs to Join (Reedsy)
These Are the Best Online Book Clubs to Read More (Good Housekeeping)
What are the Best Free Online Book Clubs for Adults in 2025? (BookBrowse)
Read Along
Of course, not all book discussions are book clubs. You may want to look for something billed as a “read along.”
My favorite (classic) novelist is Jane Austen. I’ve read all of her novels (multiple times), but this year, I’ve participated in the Austen Connection’s Jane Austen Read Along in honor of 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth.
Janet Lewis Saidi (going by the non-de-plume Plain Jane), author of the recently released Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist, is our fearless leader.
We do “close reading” of a handful of chapters each week; we’re rounding out the year having just hit the middle of our final book, Persuasion. Plain Jane’s weekly essays are a lively mix of her personal wisdom, erudite academic resources, and pop culture references, and subject matter experts share wisdom on related topics and diverse perspectives.
In the comments section each week, we heartily discuss and debate everything from geography to the in-joke of “shrubberies,” from why every man seems to be Charles or Williams or Thomas to (and I have to admit I think I started the whole kerfuffle) which of Austen’s heroes and cads are the most, um, bed-able. (My take? In the novels, it’s Mr. Knightley from Emma. In the adaptations, it’s Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice.)
A read-along provides the benefits of an in-person book club, but doesn’t obligate you to pipe up. You can just, quite literally, read along, reading the book, the leader’s thoughts, and the comments. But you may find delight in eventually sharing your thoughts.
Shhhh, We’re Reading
Some people want company when they are reading, but don’t want to have to actually interact with anyone, or at least not interact about the book. Have you heard of the Silent Book Club, sometimes (not-so) jokingly called Introvert Happy Hour?
If grabbing ten minutes for yourself here-and-there makes you feel unproductive because you really crave serious reading time but the people in your life don’t respect your need for isolated reading time, Silent Book Club might be a better bet. From the site:
Silent Book Club is a global community of readers with 2,000 chapters in 60+ countries. There’s no assigned reading — it’s bring your own book.
More than a million members gather in person, online, and in destinations around the world to read together and swap stories. All readers are welcome!
Celebrating it’s tenth year, Silent Book Club gives you the opportunity to show up, socialize or not (with friends or strangers) for a bit, and then read for a solid block of time. I found three different groups within a dozen miles of my home!
Read more in the blog post, Highlights from 10 Years of Silent Book Club.
Over the last 18 years, Paper Doll has covered a variety of reading-related posts, including:
- 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 1 (When, Where, What, With Whom)
- 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 2 (Reading Lists, Challenges & Ice Cream Samples)
- Blending Libraries: How To Organize Books with Your Sweetheart
- A Professional Organizer’s Take on National Library Card Sign-up Month
- Organizing Your Reading Space for More Reading Time
- 12 Tips for Organizing Your Reading Time
- Ask Paper Doll: How And Where Can I Donate Lots of Books?
- Paper Doll To the Rescue: How To Save Wet Books & Documents
When was the last time you got lost (and found yourself) in a good book?
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
Organize Your College-Bound Student for Grownup Life: Part 3
Parents, you’re counting down the precious days left with your college-bound students. Meanwhile, they’re counting down until they experience “freedom” and (gulp) adult responsibilities. In recent posts, we’ve covered a wide variety of skills and information to ensure they are prepared for the world beyond having you as a backup ride, bank, chief cook, and bottle-washer.
Organize Your College-Bound Student for Grown-Up Life: Part 1 identified essential legal documents and insurance policies, and reviewed the key financial skills every first-year student needs.
Organize Your College-Bound Student for Grownup Life: Part 2 looked at communication skills, staying safe on campus and off, and the under-appreciated life lessons of mastering laundry.
This third installment of the college life skill syllabus delves into keeping all the time management balls in the air, developing an academic safety net, being a safe car operator, and social etiquette to ensure good relationships. There’s even a smattering of bonus life skills.
We finish up with with a bibliography of reading resources for you and for your college-bound student.
HOW TO MASTER TIME AT COLLEGE
In high school, time is fairly regimented; the bell rings every fifty minutes, moving students on to their next classes. There’s study hall to get a start on homework, and teachers provide periodic, staged deadlines for students to show their progress and keep from falling behind; they turn in a topic idea, then a bibliography, outline, first draft, and finally a completed report. Class periods before tests are earmarked for reviews. Academic prep time is spoon-fed.
In college, the freedom to set your own schedule has the drawback of requiring an adult sense of perspective on prioritizing what’s important (and not just urgent or fun). Wide swaths of free time must be divvied up and self-assigned: for studying new material, doing problem sets, completing projects, and preparing for exams.
Food and clean clothes are not delivered by magic fairies; they may require transportation, funds, labor, and time!
College-bound kids may not want to take advice regarding time management, but try to start conversations to get them thinking about how to:
- Wake up on time — If they can’t count on conscientiousness, encourage them to make breakfast plans with a friend who can swing by prod them. Also, point them toward Do (Not) Be Alarmed: Paper Doll’s Wake-Up Advice for Productivity.
- Develop a schedule — In order to make time for academics, extracurriculars, sleep, exercise, and self-care, discuss the value of time-blocking and planning an ideal week, then tweaking as the semester goes along. Keeping a schedule in one’s head is a recipe for disaster; a paper or digital planner makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. A few helpful guides:
- Highlights from the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit
- Surprising Productivity Advice & the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit
- Paper Doll Shares Secrets from the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit 2022
- Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Doll’s Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022
- Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity
- Develop and maintain healthy routines to support their goals — Brainstorm ideas for how to ensure healthy habits (exercise, eating actual meals somewhere near meal times, etc.) by linking activities to make a chain of positive behaviors.
- Don’t fight your body clock — In business, we’re often made to feel like there’s something wrong with us if we’re not morning people, but in college, people look askance if you don’t want to party all night. There’s no shame in needing an early night if you have an 8 a.m. class.
- Get out in front of procrastination — We procrastinate because we’re nervous about how something will turn out. We’d prefer our Present Self feeling comfortable; Future Self is on its own.
Explain how to beat procrastination by understanding its causes and then incorporating good planning, prioritizing, and decision-making techniques (like the Eisenhower Decision Matrix), and locating accountability support. These Paper Doll posts can help:
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- Paper Doll On Understanding and Conquering Procrastination
- Use the Rule of 3 to Improve Your Productivity
- Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done
- Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions
- Paper Doll Sees Double: Body Doubling for Productivity
- Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek
- Paper Doll Shares 8 Virtual Co-Working Sites to Amp Up Your Productivity
They can even try some Study with Rory Gilmore videos, including this one that incorporates the Pomodoro Technique!
I can’t think of a better expert for your college (and college-bound high school) students, especially those with ADHD, than my fabulous colleague Leslie Josel. She’s the one who developed an amazing Academic Planner for middle-grade and high school students, and I interviewed her for Paper Doll Peeks Behind the Curtain with Superstar Coach, Author & Speaker Leslie Josel.
Order Leslie’s book, How to Do It Now Because It’s Not Going Away: An Expert Guide to Getting Stuff Done, before the semester gets too far, and you’ll help your first-year college student conquer procrastination, develop excellent study skills, and really dissipate their stress.
HOW TO SUCCEED ACADEMICALLY
Paper Mommy has been many great things, but an eager student was never one of them. In the mid-1950s, she and her friends stood in the college gymnasium, lost in the registration chaos. They asked one snazzy-looking fellow what he was taking. Statistics. And that’s how my mother, who majored in nursery school education, ended up in a statistics course.
The professor asked Paper Mommy‘s friend, Shirley to her Laverne, about one of the concepts. As if on a game show, the friend said, “I’ll pass.” The professor replied, “You wanna bet?”
Seek support
Navigating college academic life requires a different set of skills and strategies compared to high school. Paper Mommy and her friends would have benefited from knowing to:
- Talk to your advisor — Paper Mommy and her friends did not know that they had assigned advisors, not merely the college equivalent of a high school guidance counselor, but someone with expertise in a student’s chosen major.
- Read the syllabus — A syllabus is a magic wand for success, spelling out everything a student must know and do, and when. Take notes on the deadlines to plan backward.
- Go to office hours — College professors and teaching assistants won’t spoon-feed the material; it isn’t high school. But showing up for office hours (after studying to figure out what questions to ask) will help clarify material and set your kid apart from fellow students,
- Seek out peer tutoring — Colleges offer a variety of academic help, but students have to advocate for themselves, ask for help, and make their own appointments.
- Find or form study groups — To be certain you understand something, try to teach it to someone else.
Expand upon good learning and study habits
- Participate in class — Lectures, labs, and tutorials may contain insights that textbooks don’t. Encourage asking questions and participating in discussions. Engaging with the material and observing how the professor and other students engage with it deepens understanding and make the material more compelling.
- Explore different note-taking methods — From outlining and mind-mapping to the Cornell Note-taking Method and the Boxing Method, students can find ways to take notes that support differing learning styles and specific coursework types.
- Find the right study environment — Students should experiment to figure out where they concentrate best, whether it’s the library, a coffee house, or an empty classroom, or under a tree, as Rory Gilmore found at Yale. (The TV Ambiance YouTube page is full of virtual study environments from favorite TV shows!) Just be sure to have a backup location in case someone steals your space!
- Embrace active learning — Go to study skills labs to learn how to use active learning techniques like summarizing, teaching the material to someone else, or using flashcards.
- Review material often — Spaced repetition, or reviewing material frequently, in small chunks, helps reinforce learning and improve retention better than cramming.
- Embrace editing — One of the biggest failings of new (smart) college students is that they fail to edit their papers. Proofreading is correcting errors; editing involves reviewing arguments to make sure they are logical and actually respond to the assigned questions. Read aloud to see if it makes sense. Seek feedback; does it make sense to someone else?
Parents, encourage your student to balance academic work with self-care. Burnout is real and presents a danger to mental and physical health. Urge them to work hard, but also to participate in informal and formal social activities, hobbies, and relaxation.
Talk often so you can recognize if your student is struggling academically or personally.
DEVELOP SOCIAL ETIQUETTE FOR COLLEGE
Manners aren’t just about knowing which fork to use when there are a multitude on the table. (But in case they get a good internship and rub elbows with movie stars or royalty, the basics are as simple as: start with the utensils on the outside and work toward your plate!)
They’ll roll their eyes, but remind them that basic manners will help them live more easily with dorm-mates, work smoothly with fellow students on group projects, and not embarrass themselves if invited to the home of a professor or to stay a weekend with a roommate’s family. Like:
- Don’t eat or use what isn’t yours without permission. (Then replace it or return the favor.)
- Don’t move something that doesn’t belong to you; if it’s in your way, put it back as soon as possible.
- Return borrowed items quickly. Launder or dry-clean borrowed clothes. Refill the gas tank of a borrowed car.
- Reciprocate other’s kind behaviors.
Other real-world manners and etiquette tips college-bound students might not have absorbed:
Dining
- Know which is your bread and which is your drink — Make the OK sign with both hands on the table in front of you. One makes a lowercase “b” (on your left) and “d” (on your right). The “b” for bread means your bread plate goes to your upper left; the “d” for drink means the glass to your upper right is yours. Don’t butter an entire slice of bread or roll and then eat it (except at your own breakfast table). Break off a bite-sized piece of bread, apply butter (or jam, etc.) and eat.
- Wait until everyone has been served (or seated with their dining tray) to eat. Don’t gobble your food. You are not Cookie Monster.
- Don’t rush to leave before your companions are done eating. (If you need to leave to get to class, apologize for not staying until the other person is finished.)
- Know when and how much to tip in restaurants, for pizza delivery, etc.
Social Interactions
- Introductions — Know how to properly introduce yourself and others in a social setting, with first and last names.
- Handshake — Offer a firm (not limp, not crushing) handshake, smile, and make eye contact. (If eye contact makes you uncomfortable, remember, it’s not a staring contest. Connect, then look anywhere in the general vicinity of the other person’s face.)
- Personal space — Respecting others’ personal space in social and professional settings requires situational and cultural awareness and understanding the nuances of physical boundaries. Don’t touch people without asking.
- Phones — Don’t look at your phone when you’re eating or socializing with others unless responding to something urgent. Put phones away at the meal table.
- Thank You Notes — A good thank you note, sent promptly, goes a long way to show appreciation after receiving a gift, being hosted, getting interviewed, or being the beneficiary of an act of kindness.
- RSVP — Explain that not replying to an RSVP inconveniences a host. Replying in a timely manner and committing to that response helps the host plan (financially and logistically).
- Online social interactions — A digital footprint lasts forever, and online behavior matters. Being a jerk online has the potential to ruin a reputation just as much as being a jerk at a party.
- Networking — Your college kid isn’t thinking about the business world, but people help and do business with those they know, like, and trust. Help them see the importance of strengthening connections by sharing personal stories where maintaining connections, being generally useful, and even sending a LinkedIn connection request with a personalized message can mean a lot down the road.
Cultural Sensitivity
Good cross-cultural etiquette means not judging people who don’t follow the above guidelines.
Respect diversity. Understand cultural differences in manners, and be open to learning and adapting when doing study abroad or interacting in other cultural settings.
Use language that’s respectful, inclusive, and kind.
CARE FOR THE CAMPUS CAR
@the_leighton_show The low fuel warning also doesn’t stop my wife from going to @target #teenagers #drivinglessons #driving #parentsoftiktok #funny
Even if your student has been on the road for a few years, being a car owner (or responsible party) is different from driving Mom’s car to school. Car care can be a mystifying area of adulthood.
Oversee that inspections and major maintenance gets done when your student is home for breaks, and jointly go through the recommended auto maintenance schedule in the car’s manual. Help them figure out how to either do basic car care or to get it done professionally.
Teach the basics, like how to:
- Fill the gas tank before it’s only 1/4 full (and not when the gas light comes on). This is especially important if they attend school in wintery locales.
- Fill the tank on a schedule, not when it’s empty, but perhaps every Saturday after lunch. (And don’t try to put diesel in a non-diesel vehicle!)
- Download an app for finding the best gas prices, like Gas Buddy.
- Know how to check the oil before the oil light comes on. Oil and filter changes don’t have to be done as frequently as they used to, due to synthetic oil, but it still must be done.
- Know how to check tire pressure and fill tires properly.
- Know what the dashboard lights mean. — I once heard someone call the tire pressure alert the “Surprise Light.”
- Understand how to check and change fuses, replace windshield wipers, and know when to seek a professional mechanic.
Prepare them for emergencies. They should:
- Know how to jump start a car — If you’re sending your kids off to college with jumper cables, teach them how to use them! Consider also writing out step-by-step instructions and tucking it in with the cables.
- Know how to change a flat tire — Not everyone has the physical strength to change a tire, and not all locations are safe. Spring for a membership in AAA or similar roadside emergency service.
- Know what to do in case of an accident, or if someone breaks their window or steals the car:
DON’T GET SCAMMED AT COLLEGE
According to a study by the Better Business Bureau, 18-24 year-olds are more often victims of scams than senior citizens! Teaching college students to recognize and avoid scams is crucial. Encourage a skeptical mindset.
Common Scams Targeting College Students
Just as I wrote about scams that target seniors in Slam the Scam! Organize to Protect Against Scams, there are many that target college students, including:
- Scholarship and grant scams — Legitimate scholarships don’t ask for fees.
- Student loan scams — Be wary of companies that promise to forgive or lower student loans for a fee. Confirm loan information through the school’s financial aid office or consult government (.gov) websites like Federal Student Aid.
- Housing scams — When seeking off-campus housing, avoid listings requiring upfront payments before touring properties. Use reputable rental sites; don’t send money via wire transfer.
- Job scams — Know that legitimate employers don’t ask for bank information until you’ve been officially hired. Be wary of job offers promising high pay for minimal work.
Watch for Red Flags
- Urgency and high pressure tactics — The world is full of deadlines, but scammers use fear of missing out to create a sense of urgency. Don’t become a victim by being pressured to act quickly without time to analyze what’s happening.
- Unsolicited Offers — Be dubious about any unsolicited contact from outside of the school’s usual resources, whether by email, phone, or (especially) text, whether seeking personal information or offering services, funds, or assistance.
- Unusual Payment Methods — Students need to understand that payment by check or credit card is normal, but requests for payment by gift card, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency are hallmarks of scams. Legitimate transactions use secure, traceable payment methods.
- If a financial loan, grant, paid internship, or side hustle seems “too good to be true,” especially if the college’s financial aid office or academic departments doesn’t know anything about it, it’s likely a scam.
Always do independent research and verification. Check websites, Google to make sure phone numbers and addresses aren’t fake, and seek unbiased reviews. Consult trusted sources, including professors and advisors, college financial aid and work/study divisions, and yes, parents.
Online Safety
GenZ will be dubious that parents can advise them on online safety, but talk about:
- Privacy Settings — Adjust social media privacy to limit personal information visible to the public.
- Phishing Scams — Be wary about emails, texts, or social media direct messages that appear to be from trusted individuals or institutions but ask for personal information or money, or contain suspicious links. Pick up the phone and verify by calling people or institutions directly.
- Secure Websites — Look for “https://” in the URL and the padlock icon in the URL bar before entering personal or financial information!
Report Scams
- Report scams to campus security, local police, and organizations like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fraud division, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the U.S. Department of EducationOffice of Inspector General (OIG).
- Document — Keep records of all suspicious communications and transactions to support resolving issues.
RANDOM LIFE SKILLS
I lived in the International Living Center at Cornell for all four years of college. Of 144 students in our dorm, only about 15% were from North America; whether they were the youngest freshman or the oldest grad students — from ages 16 to 34 — many students experienced some sort of culture shock.
College is already its own kind of culture shock. Your students shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help. That said, adopting an attitude of weaponized incompetence instead of seeking to learn how to do something themselves may eventually annoy roommates, friends, and professors. In these last days before college, make sure they know:
- How to tell time on an analog clock — Additionally, it appears that many GenZers are miffed when GenXers and Boomers use expressions like “a quarter ’til” or “half past” because they think it’s some kind of code. And does your student understand time zones?
- How to use public transportation — If your kid will be living in a city where subways, light rail, or busses are essential for moving around, they’ll need to learn…fast. If you don’t know how to navigate, where to stand, or how to pay, ask someone who does know to give you and your student a lesson in the basics.
- How to read a map — GPS can be flawed. GPS (and cellular service) can go down. Being able to read and understand both digital and paper maps is a key navigation skill. (So is orienteering, but if your kid is leaving for campus in a week or two, it may be too late.)
- How to hide emergency money — “Mad money” was a 20th-century term for having some cash set aside so you could escape a bad date and get home safely. You never know when you might need money or an approximation thereof and Apple Pay won’t cut it.
A friend recently recalled how fellow students used to keep subway tokens in their penny loafers in the 1980s. My grandfather, Paper Mommy‘s dad, was interviewed by a newspaper in the 1930s after being robbed outside of a hotel; he reported that hadn’t lost all of his cash because he’d hidden some bills in his socks!
Advise hiding a few dollars inside their phone case.
- How to unclog a toilet or a drain — Bonus points for teaching them how to turn off the water at the source. It may not be necessary in the dorms, but once they have an apartment, knowing how to find the shutoff valve for an overflowing toilet, sink, or washing machine will be a nifty skill.
- How to change a light bulb — Yes, seriously. Turn it off and let it cool before unscrewing it. As with screws, hoses, shower heads and similar items: righty tighty, lefty loosey.
- How to sew a button back on.
- How to swim — Yes, we’re cutting it close in mid-August, but some schools (such as my alma mater) required and still require swimming proficiency (for safety’s sake).
No matter how much these three posts have tried to cover everything, it’s likely you’ll have your own submissions for Chip Leighton’s The Leighton Show by the end of the school year. (The caption is the same, but this one is different from the videos in the last two posts.)
@the_leighton_show What’s your street name?? #text #college #freshman #son #daughter #mom #dad #humor #greenscreen
RESOURCES FOR COLLEGE-BOUND STUDENTS
The Adulting Manual by Milly Smith
The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College by Harlan Cohen
RESOURCES FOR PARENTS
Articles for Parents of College-Bound Students and New College Students
- 15 Life Skills Every Kid Should Know Before They Leave for College (SheKnows.com)
- 70 Life Skills Your Kid Needs Before College (MommyPoppins.com)
- 11 Things Your Kid Should Know Before They Leave For College (Huffington Post)
- 100 Essential Life Skills Teens Need to Learn at Home (Grown&Flown.com)
- First kid heading to college next year – what do you wish you knew/wish your parents had known before you went? (Reddit)
- College Parent Central
- A Parent Guide to Supporting Your College-Bound Student (Study.com)
- Tips for Parents/Families of First-Year Students (UC Santa Cruz)
Support and Advice Groups for Parents
- CollegeConfidential.com Parents’ Forum
- College Parent Insider’s Group
- Facebook groups for parents of students at your child’s college — Search Facebook for “parents” and the school’s name. Official groups may be moderated by school personnel; others are independent and moderated by fellow parents.
- College-based forums — Some colleges set up their own online forum or listserv for parents. Google “parent groups” or “parent forum” and your child’s school, and you will find sites like this one from the University of Minnesota.
Note: there’s a balance between asking group members to recommend an emergency dentist for your first-year who just cracked a molar and being a “helicopter parent” who tries to stir up controversy over a professor who gave your student a B. Check out Before You Join That College Parents Group on Social Media… at CollegeInitative.net.
Blending Libraries: How To Organize Books with Your Sweetheart
Did you know that in addition to February 14th being Valentine’s Day, it’s also International Book Giving Day and Library Lovers’ Day? As someone who’d much rather receive a bouquet of books than flowers, this makes sense to Paper Doll. And February 20th is Clean Out Your Bookcase Day!
The literary and the romantic will always be tied together. I mean, watching or hearing someone declare their love is nice, but being able to read (and reread) the declaration more than two hundred years later? Jane Austen knew what she was doing when she had Persuasion‘s Captain Wentworth’s write this to Anne Elliot.
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant…
Reading can be romantic. But let’s face it, there’s nothing romantic about organizing books.
Or is there?
What could be more romantic than your sweetheart making sure you don’t fall and break your neck tripping over their pile of unread books? What could be a finer proof of your love than moving your books off of the kitchen counter so your darling can actually make lunch?
Other than commingling finances, what could require more love and trust than combining your personal libraries?
ORGANIZE YOUR PERSONAL LIBRARY FIRST
Organizing, downsizing, and protecting your personal library (and your reading time) involves a great deal of thought and planning, as I’ve written before in various posts over 17 years, including:
- Ask Paper Doll: How And Where Can I Donate Lots of Books?
- Book ’em, Danno! Organizing Your Beloved Books
- 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 1 (When, Where, What, With Whom)
- 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 2 (Reading Lists, Challenges & Ice Cream Samples)
- Organizing Your Reading Space for More Reading Time (which includes links to six super-classic Paper Doll posts dating back to 2010!)
- Paper Doll Cleans Out Her Backpack: Book Lover Edition
- Paper Doll To the Rescue: How To Save Wet Books & Documents
- Shhhhh… We’re organizing the library…
Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. For example, you could read what Martha Stewart and her favorite peeps have to say about How to Organize Books in a Way That Works for You.
Conversely, you could review what the Washington Post says in How to Organize Your Books, According to People with Thousands of Them.
And, of course, even though I’m a professional organizer, I’m a reader first, and I know that there’s much more to a personal library that just arranging books. To that end, I invite everyone to read Freya Howarth’s How to Nurture a Personal Library.
If your own book collection is sprawling, full of duplicates and titles you’ll never read again (or read at all), outdated college textbooks, or other book clutter (did you gasp at “book clutter”?), you can find ways to hide your biblio-addiction in your own, private space.
That works for hermits. However you choose to organize your own books, organizing books when you live with your significant other adds multiple layers of complexity.
WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN BLENDING PERSONAL LIBRARIES
First, you have to decide whether you’re going to try to blend your books, or keep them separate. Then you have to embrace the difficult work of culling your collections. (If you came to blows trying to figure out whose air fryer or toaster oven you’d use, that was mere child’s play.)
When friends ask me if they should blend book collections with their sweethearts, I say, “Don’t. Books are intimate. Mixing your books is like mixing your toothbrushes. Blech!”
When clients ask me the same question, I am more sanguine, or at least more practical.
When friends ask me if they should blend book collections with their sweethearts, I say, 'Don't. Books are intimate. Mixing your books is like mixing your toothbrushes. Blech!' When clients ask me the same question, I am more… Share on XSpace Invaders — Introducing One Library to Another
We love our book collections. Our personal libraries say something about who we were, are, and hope to be. Exposing our private collections may be awkward or embarrassing, less like when your parents share “baby on the bearskin rug” photos and more like when they show photos of you, all braces-and-bad-perm, at the junior prom.
So, let’s imagine that you and your beloved have just decided to cohabit.
- Are they moving into your space?
How will you keep from feeling like your terrain is being invaded? If you’ve previously shared an apartment with a friend or just a sub-letting housemate, it’s probably been very clear whose space belongs to whom. Perhaps the division was congenial and you easily divided everything equally; perhaps not.
Will you resent reducing the space available for your carefully curated collection?
It’s one thing to give up space in your closet, bathroom cabinet, or even your underwear drawer, but if you guard your bookshelves fiercely (as most avid readers do), how will you welcome your sweetheart and fellow reader into your space?
- Are you moving into their space?
Any time two people move in together where one has already been residing, there’s an implicit turf war. How will you feel at home in a home without adequate and fairly representative space for your books, which you may love as much as someone else loves their Labradoodle! You don’t want to feel like an invader, but neither do you want to feel like a guest in what should become your new home.
Divide Without Conquering — How to Share a Space When Both of You Have Custody of Books
Maybe you’re moving together to a new home and get to start fresh. Or, it’s possible you’ve been living together for a while. Whether the two of your are married or otherwise, your home has the potential for a “yours, mine, and ours” problem in the book department.
Separate but Equal, or Joint Custody?
Even couples who enjoy a hot romance may prefer a cool detente when it comes to blending books. You might decide to keep your personal collections completely separate, or only blend books related to your mutual interests or things related to the family as a whole.
If you decide not to mix your collections, you’ll need to at least designate space for who gets which bookcases and shelves. But this leaves questions:
- How do you achieve fairness?
Do you opt for parity?
Your instinct may be to just start unboxing your books wherever you’ve identified as a good space for you, like how the first college student to arrive picks the bed and gets the nearest shelf. That’s fine in a dorm room, where each item has its mirror image, but whose apartment or house has truly equal (and equally appealing) space?
If you decide to choose parity, is the solution equal shelf space or equal number of books? What if one person has hundreds of thin volumes of cozy mysteries but another has far fewer titles but they’re all thick and leather-bound?
You may scoff, but I’ve seen married couples who otherwise seem sane and satisfied in their love come to verbal blows over one having more books taking over their joint space. Leaving aside that all but the mildest scuffles might be better suited to the marriage counseling couch than the organizing session, it’s better to anticipate the problem and talk out the solutions.
If you do blend your collections, either partially or in total (notwithstanding your bedside table To Be Read piles), you’re still going to have a lot to consider.
- How do you deal with duplicates?
First, there’s the issue of when the two partners own the same book. In the name of organization, Sweetie may want to keep the pristine first edition of The Sun Also Rises, but Darling has a bent copy with every margin filled with the wisdom gleaned from a much-loved college literature course (when Darling went through a beret-and-Gauloises-smoking phase).
Typically, when professional organizers work with clients who have duplicate skirts or screwdrivers or spatulas, we focus on what’s in the best condition. However, weighing the value of something that is “the same but different,” like a book that has financial value vs. one that has sentimental or intellectual value, is more difficult.
Before shelving, Sweetie and Darling need to decide how they’ll move forward. Will they purge based on monetary value or let sentiment win?
As Emily Dickinson said, the heart wants what the heart wants. If one partner pushes to purge by discounting sentiment, what will the other partner’s heart want if forced to give up too much?
This doesn’t even take into account when one member of the couple has what the other considers an excessive number of duplicates all on their own. Maybe Sweetums has a copy their first sweetheart gave them, then a refined leatherette copy, and maybe even a 50th anniversary edition? Whether it’s Stephen King or F. Scott Fitzgerald, you’ll have to come to terms regarding how much one “gets” to keep.
- What organizing system will you use?
Will you shelve randomly, just getting everything out of boxes and onto your bookshelves, figuring you can always organize them later — or perhaps one of you doesn’t care about organizing them at all? (Yes, that was Paper Doll you just heard go, “eek!”)
Will you be systematic, perhaps by author or title or genre? Is it enough for you to separate your fiction from your non-fiction? Or must fiction be chunked into historical eras and then by author, with non-fiction classified by Dewey and his (sexist, racist) decimal system or Library of Congress?
What if you want to organize by genre and your Honeybunny painstakingly orders (and reorders) books in the order HB intends to read them? Readers have quirky preferences. In Anne Fadiman’s famous essay Marrying Libraries (linked below) she proposed to organize American authors alphabetically by last name, but put British authors chronologically, and then their works chronologically by their publishing date!
How to organize books is hotly contested. A You.gov survey a few months ago asked more than 29,000 Americans how many books they owned and how they organized them. The results shows a variety of preferences; what’s the chance your Romeo or Juliet organizes books exactly as you do?
(I’d like to refrain from judgement, but — have you met me? I understand the 28% who don’t organize their books, but the 5% who don’t have books? Please, dear readers. Don’t fall in love with serial killers or people who don’t have books.)
- What role should aesthetics play, particularly with books in public spaces (like the living room or den)?
Should crumbling (but well-loved) books go on the home’s fanciest library shelves? What if one person wants to organize by color, while the other is nauseated by anything too removed from the Dewey Decimal System?
If you share a library with someone who organizes books by whether the cover is red or purple, will you start re-thinking your commitment to the relationship?
What about rules for home library organizing? If you (like Paper Doll) are the type to bring all books up to the edge of the shelf, how will you share your library with someone who pushes books all the way back of the shelf so that the fronts aren’t smooth and picture frames and knickknacks get piled in front of them, or worse, overflow books get double-layered in front of the books in the back and … OMG, I’m hyperventilating!
- What about the inherent public-facing messages related to content?
What if your partner is embarrassed by your middlebrow tastes? (Maybe they shouldn’t be such a snob about your collection!)
Perhaps you’re cringing at the political leanings reflected by your partner’s books? (You might start wondering if you shouldn’t be with someone whose politics give you “the ick.”)
- How will you organize the finances of growing your mutual libraries?
This is part of a larger discussion in your household. If you’re “just” cohabiting, then you may each buy whatever books you want with your own money. But if you’re married, this is a whole other marriage counselor/financial advisor/professional organizer triple-threat conversation. Will you have “yours, mine, and ours” bank accounts and purchase books accordingly from those accounts?
What about digital purchases going forward? Having one unified Kindle account can be a mess, not only for organizing your digital libraries, but for dealing with ownership if the relationship sours.
The Ugly Truth
The sad truth is that not all relationships last. The Gotye song Somebody I Used to Know is heartbreaking and universal, especially when he says,
No, you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
Nobody wants to think about the end of a relationship — of pre-nups and post-nups and dividing community property. But other than personal photos (and the alluded-to music libraries), what could be harder to disentangle than a couple’s library of books?
- How will you de-blend your book collections in case of a breakup or divorce?
In the mid-1990s, I lent my (now-former) boyfriend my copy of Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy.
The end of the relationship stung. Time heals, but I still seethe over the loss of the book.
Which is more misery-inducing? Haggling over whose signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird this is, or playing keep-away and refusing to take ownership of The DaVinci Code or Atlas Shrugged or Eat, Pray, Love?
If you do blend your libraries, perhaps take the precaution of putting your initials on the inside cover of your books. Maybe that little insurance policy that you won’t lose your books will give you the confidence to keep working together through the tough times?
BLENDING BOOKS: THE ONGOING DEBATE
This post was supposed to be about love, and now I’ve shared all the troubles I’ve seen in my professional (and personal) capacity. Maybe you’d like someone else’s take?
This 2018 piece from Minnesota’s Star Tribune, Bookmark: Should newlyweds combine their book collections?, offers a sweetly messy take.
The truth is, though, there’s no one right answer. Even the popular blog Book Riot can’t agree. In 2012, Book Riot published How to Say “I Do” to Shared Bookshelves Without Ruining Your Relationship; nine years later, it published, Don’t Merge Book Collections.
The thing is, they were both right.
The earlier, more optimistic post focused on the how-to advice: work together to create a new, joint organizing system; display your books so you and your partner can operate from a position of strength and wisdom; “Leave your Judgy McJudgerton pants in the closet” (which is quite possibly my favorite piece of organizing advice, ever); and compromise. The author, Book Riot’s Chief of Staff Rebecca Joines Schinsky, acknowledged that if things got hot (and not the good kind) over the discussions, you might just decide to blend everything except books.
But Schinsky ends with, “Like committing to a relationship, merging your bookshelves is an exercise in hope.” She eschews the idea of an exit strategy.
A different Book Riot author, Associate Editor Danika Ellis, was less optimistic in 2021, giving four reasons not to blend books: personal libraries are a reflection of our unique, personal selves; our sorting systems are similarly personal; our systems should work for us; and, as I’ve already noted, relationships end. More cynical than her colleague, Ellis ends with:
Your books will outlive you, and they’ll certainly outlive your relationship, no matter how charmed. So make the right call: prioritize your books. You’ll thank me later.
ORGANIZE BOOKS (WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER) WITHOUT BLOODSHED
Romantic or cynic, you can’t keep the books in moving boxes piled up around you. (Well, as I’ve seen with many clients over the years, you can, but I don’t advise it.)
A few years ago I wrote Paper Doll’s Pop Culture Guide to Decluttering with Your Valentine. It reflected my definitive approach to organizing with the love of your life. Before you think about organizing your mutual libraries, read that. (But I’ll now always look at my comment, “Purge the judgement and toss the guilt,” and wish I’d written, “Judgy McJudgerton pants.”)
Beyond that, communication is key. You may have a history of long, romantic discussions over favorite books, authors, and genres, but have you ever talked about organization? Go through the issues I raised above: about resentment over invasion or not feeling at home, about parity and systems, about aesthetics vs. function, about finances. And yes, about how to have an insurance policy so the books don’t suffer if the relationship doesn’t make it.
Compromise is hard. I advise creating a system that requires as little compromise as possible. The best relationships are the ones where you are able to maintain a sense of your personal identity as you grow a mutual identity in a couple. You will face enough compromises in other areas of your relationship; do what you can to keep your relationship from impinging on your reading comfort.
Pare down your individual book collections, and then start with them separate — your shelves and their shelves. You can always create shelves with books for family-specific topics like travel, cookbooks, or household care, and if you grow your family, books for any tiny humans who come along.
That said, be open to reversible experimentation. Getting rid of out-of-print books is hard to reverse, while a new organizing system causing confusion is easily remedied.
Look for helpful alternatives. If you’re both willing to blend libraries but not willing to cull duplicates, consider putting them on a bookshelf in your guest bedroom. Your guests can easily find something to read on sleepless nights.
Create a library inventory. There are so many apps and online options, like Libib, Goodreads, Library Thing, for documenting what books you own and where you’ve organized them. Just scan your books’ bar codes and the information will populate in a database. Most let you create a field for who brought it into the household (a high-tech version of penciling your initials inside the cover). It will also help you identify duplicates if your collections are large and sprawl across rooms or even floors of the house.
LOVING ESSAYS ABOUT BLENDING LIBRARIES
No Valentine’s Week post on the romantic blending of libraries would be complete without sharing two seminal essays on the topic:
Marrying Libraries by Anne Fadiman, excerpted from her excellent book, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. (My favorite essay in the collection is My Odd Shelf, but the whole book is a reader’s paradise.)
The Books by Alexander Chee for The Morning News with this:
It’s hard to explain how moving it was to me to sit down with Dustin’s books on the night I combined our fiction. It took me completely by surprise. I had truly thought it was an ordinary exercise. But it never is with books, I know now.
I began by carefully lifting them off the shelf, dusting them and taking them into the living room.
In some way that wasn’t apparent to me before they sat on the side table, waiting to be sorted, I could see these were the books that had kept him company in those years before he knew me, the books that had helped him turn into him. This hadn’t quite been apparent to me before I took them down to move them.
but also this bit about duplicates, which sums up the whole discussion:
You don’t keep the doubles because you believe you may not stay together. You keep the doubles because the one you own, that’s your friend. The one he owns, that’s his. To only have one, it would be like sharing an email address.
Not everything can be shared. And that isn’t a crisis. It’s how it should be.
If you share your home with a sweetie-pie, how do you organize your mutual book collections?
Paper Doll Presents 4 Stellar Organizing & Productivity Resources
Given that it’s Valentine’s Day week, I wanted to give all of my Paper Doll readers some treats. In this post, we’ll be looking at three books covering organizing, motivation, and productivity, as well as an upcoming video interview series for taking a proactive approach to productivity in leadership.
GO WITH THE FLOW! (The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook)
If you’ve been reading Paper Doll for a while, the name Hazel Thornton won’t be new to you. We’ve been colleagues and friends for many years, and I’ve shared Hazel with you when I interviewed her (along with Jennifer Lava and Janine Adams) for Paper Doll Interviews the Genealogy Organizers and when I profiled her stellar book, What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy in my 2021 holiday gift list post.
Hazel is a delight and full of wisdom — and how many other professional organizers do you know who are experts on photo organizing, genealogy, and family legacies and who served on the jury in the famed Menendez trial?
But Hazel is pretty famous for one other thing — flow charts. If the topic of flow charts even comes up in any organizing circles, Hazel’s is the first (and sometimes only) name that gets raised; she’s that much of a subject matter expert. So, it made sense that Hazel would take her favorite creations from her wealth of flow chart wisdom and leverage them into a resource.
Hazel’s newest book, published just a few weeks ago, is Go With the Flow! The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook. And it’s a whopper for anyone looking for some turn-by-turn directions for getting organized, from where to start to how to progress logically so you don’t get stuck.
This 170-page, 8.5″ x 11″, portrait-oriented paperback workbook includes 17 charts covering all different kinds of clutter:
- clutter in your spaces (closet, garage, kitchen, office)
- daily clutter (to-do lists, general paper, kids’ paper, cash flow, mental clutter)
- legacy clutter (keepsakes, ancestry, photos)
- life event clutter (holiday activity, holiday décor, occupied staging)
There are even flow charts to tell you which clutter flow chart you need and to help you get back on track if you’ve had some backsliding in the decluttering process.
(You won’t be surprised that Paper Doll‘s favorite flow chart was the one on dealing with paper clutter. But I suspect one of the most useful flow charts overall might be the one on keepsakes.)
Of course, the book would be pretty short if it only had flow charts. In each section, Hazel follows the flow chart with detailed answers to four questions.
- What is clutter? — You might think you know what type of clutter you’re dealing with, but the book helps you identify items you may not have even considered. In each chapter, this section asks pertinent questions about how you interact with the item (tangible or otherwise) and feel about it, probes whether it needs to be in your life, prompts you to consider its condition or situation, and leads you to make wise decisions regarding whether it still fits you and your life. These are the exact questions we professional organizers gently pepper clients with when we work together.
- Why can’t I part with my clutter? — As a veteran professional organizer, Hazel doesn’t just tell you to “buck up, buttercup!” but employs the analysis of the “what is clutter?” sub-questions to dig deeply into why the reader might be experiencing challenges in letting go.
- What should I do with my clutter? — With each distinct category, the book offers clear suggestions as to where that clutter can go so it will really, truly leave your life in the most beneficial way possible.
- What if, despite my best intentions, I am still living with clutter? — Nobody’s perfect. And Rome wasn’t built (or decluttered) in a day. So, the book has guidance for continuing to make progress and for getting support.
There’s bonus material, like resources for getting help organizing and decluttering and blank clutter worksheets to help you identify answers and track efforts. (Be sure to read the content in the clutter worksheet examples, because Hazel’s down-to-earth sense of humor shines there!)
In addition, there’s a special section advising professional organizers how to use the content of the workbook with clients.
Go With the Flow! is subtitled The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook, and for those who are feeling stuck with (or stymied by) their clutter, this can be the catalyst to actually make progress by working through the clutter instead of just reading about it. The combination of the flow charts, where their visual approach to “If X, then Y” fork-in-the-road decision trees, with straightforward prose coaching through the what’s and why’s of decluttering, offers a one-two punch for knocking clutter out of your life.
Go With the Flow! The Clutter Flow Chart Workbook is available for $27.50 at Amazon. If you’re in Australia (to which Amazon/KDP will not market books with color images), or if you desperately want a landscape-oriented version of the book, you can purchase a PDF copy directly from Hazel’s website. (It’s a slightly finicky process, Hazel reports, so do follow the instructions.)
DO IT TODAY
You’ve got dreams that sparkle. Friends see your eyes light up when you talk about your big, bold visions for the future. You know you’ve got fabulous ideas inside of you that can make the world smarter, happier, healthier, weirder (in a good way), or just plain better.
So why aren’t you working on them?
Why aren’t you getting on that stage, giving your TED Talk or taking a bow for your award-winning creation? Why are you scrolling through social media or counting your excuses or being held back by fear?
Once I got Kara Cutruzzula’s Do It Today: An Encouragement Journal in my hands, I realized I’d never seen a journal like this. It’s colorful and beautiful, with each turn of the page yielding a vibrant new palette, but the aesthetics are just the frosting on this empathetic, wise cake, a combo of a journal and motivational coach.
Friend-of-the-blog Kara Cutruzzula is a writer and editor, and I start my day reading her newsletter, Brass Ring Daily. BRD is pithy, perky, and just philosophical enough to get you out of your bed and headed to the coffee maker. (Kara is other things: a musical theater lyricist, playwright, podcaster, and fellow Gilmore Girls aficionado. But the rest I’m saving for an upcoming interview, so you’ll just have to be patient.)
As a follow-up to her Do It For Yourself, the first in her Start Before You’re Ready series, Do It Today offers gentle motivational coaching. Read straight through and tackle the guided motivational exercises one by one, or devour the section-starting essays and then ping-pong through exercises that resonate most with you on that day.
(Or, perhaps start each day with the journal, using an exercise as Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way-style morning pages?)
Personally, I’ve started using Do It Today to help me avoid procrastination by — you guessed it — procrastinating with the journal. When I find myself doing everything except the writing or project I really know I should be working on (to reach my own goals), I settle in to reread one of Kara’s essays and then tackle a journal entry. (In full disclosure, the journal is so beautiful that I can’t bring myself to actually write in it, and tend to type my responses so that I don’t obsess about my ever-more chicken-scratchy handwriting.)
To give you sense of the approach, the chapter-starting essays include:
- Go Toward Your Nerves
- Start Before You’re Ready (I’m sensing a theme here!)
- Don’t Be Productive, Percolate Instead — Worth the price of admission!
- Stamina, Courage, and Mirages
- Sweet, Sweet Rejection — Trust me, whether you fear failure (or, like me, fear mediocrity), Kara’s stance here will conjure up the best kinds of attitude adjustments.
- Weave a Generous Web
- Do It Today
It would be hard to pick, but the chapter on percolation is probably my favorite. Maybe because Kara’s writing here dovetails with what I wrote in my series last year on toxic productivity, I was prepared to embrace what she had to say. Or maybe it’s because she illustrates (through a tale of John Steinbeck and examples you’ll recognize from your own life) that percolation is a brilliant cheat code.
Have you ever circled an idea for a while, finding the tendrils of a concept while never locating key to actually getting started?
Percolation is “…giving yourself time and space to think without the extra pressure to track your performance…allowing yourself to enjoy reflecting and exploring your options.” Instead of coming up with ready-for-Prime-Time ideas, Kara helps you find your sources of inspiration, ideas, and solutions, areas you may have closed yourself off from by focusing on the perfect end result. Long story short, when you’ve focused too long on the checkmark at the end, Kara reminds you to focus on the joy of creation and accomplishment.
In each chapter of Do It Today, Kara has interspersed pop-art messages to uplift, free-writing journaling prompts, and list templates to get you thinking.
Some of my favorite, deceptively astute lines and what they mean to me:
- You are more powerful than your productivity — battering toxic productivity’s lie that your worth comes from what you deliver
- Everyone is just trying their best with the information they have — reminding you that none of us are perfect and prompting us to start now (because you can’t edit a blank page)
- Look at all you have — focusing on gratitude as well as noticing the bounty we possess rather than the short stack and what we lack
- Do, don’t overdo — I think I resemble — I mean, resent — that remark. I feel seen.
In terms of journaling prompts, in the section on starting before you’re ready, there’s a page that asks, “Is there one conversation you’re not ready to have? Even if you don’t know how to say it, begin here by writing a few possible opening sentences.” Down deep, you know this works. You’ve felt a sense of ease after telling your BFF about a problem at work and how you dread dealing with it. But by letting yourself stop thinking of the issue, and just giving yourself a few minutes to think about it, in context, you’ll find the weight is lifted!
I suggested one of the prompts from the Courage chapter to a client who wanted to apply for an opportunity but feared putting herself forward. Kara writes, “Have you ever had to ask someone to write you a letter of recommendation? What if you wrote one for yourself, highlighting your strengths and what you would bring to your next opportunity?” It worked!
The list-making prompts are incredible in their powerful simplicity. If you’re feeling like a slug, unable to clarify your thoughts, Kara encourages that you write a list of ten ideas completely unrelated to your current project, and offers some examples. The key is that taking your focus off of a lack of productivity hoovers up all the cobwebs.
Other list prompts help you strengthen your arsenal of motivation-boosting weapons of stress-destruction, like noting people who’ve historically provided safe spaces for you to share your works in progress.
I can’t do justice to this creative, colorful guide to getting un-stuck, but I’d describe it as being like meeting your most inspiring friend for brunch and leaving full of waffles and excitement.
Do It Today is available in paperback for $16.99 or Kindle for $9.99 at Amazon, as well as at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, Powell’s, and Indigo. You can also purchase directly from the publisher, Abrams Books.
PRODUCTIVITY FOR HOW YOU’RE WIRED
My longtime colleague Ellen Faye is a consummate professional and ridiculously unflappable. She’s a Certified Professional Organizer®, Professional Certified Coach, and Certified Productivity Leadership Coach. She’s even been the president of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals!
Ellen recognized that there are far too many books out there by coaches telling readers how to be successful they way they, the coaches, have done it. Ellen, however, saw that her clients needed productivity solutions and systems that worked for them, not merely for her. That realization of the need for customization inspired her to write Productivity for How You’re Wired: Better Work. Better Life.
Ellen’s book is designed for people seeking to be “more intentional about how they use their time and live their life,” and the book approaches this concept in three main ways.
First, she wants readers to understand how they are truly wired with regard to how they deal with time and productivity. Ellen recognizes that individuals have different needs and ways of thinking in terms of structure preference as well as productivity style.
In the first section of the book, Ellen guides readers to identify how their brains work best. She explains far better than I could even attempt, but the key is that you have to understand whether your priority focus is tasks vs. relationships, and then really comprehend what kind of structure (low, medium, or high) you need in your work and life — that’s situational structure. Through clear examples and charts, she walks you through identifying where, given your focus and structure preference, you’ll thrive or feel overly confined, struggle or succeed, power up or feel lost.
Meanwhile, Ellen’s take on productivity style borrows from, and refines, other research on the topic, and the book helps you isolate which productivity style (Catalyst, Coordinator, Diplomat, or Innovator) best fits you, laying out the characteristics and best work process approach for each. It’s really eye opening.
This section also illustrates how understanding challenges like perfectionism, procrastination, chronic stress, and burnout plays into making positive changes.
In the second part of the book, Ellen teaches the reader how to create a productivity flow framework to transform current unworkable systems into customized pathways to success. Productivity for How You’re Wired walks you through setting your goals and intentions, using a time map, defining the essential structures, creating a priorities task list, and doing your daily and weekly planning.
Productivity books often have one uniform approach to everything and then vague pointers for understanding how to begin and continue; you have to find where you fit in. Instead, Ellen provides detailed guidance so that no part of your life is going to fall through the cracks. Basically, it’s like having Ellen as your coach, sticking by you step-by-step, so you can get clear on your priorities and focus on the essentials elements for achieving what means the most.
The third part of the book combines the deep understanding you’ll gain regarding the right approach for you and the overarching framework you developed so you can apply the concepts to your own life and work demands. Using the right structure preferences and productivity style, you’ll see how to deal with meetings, email, decision-making, remote work, team leadership, and more.
I particularly liked that Productivity for How You’re Wired‘s chapters start with “Highlights,” overviews of what’s coming so that you can find your place. (I like to know where I’m going when I read so I have an “ah-ha” when I get there!)
The book has myriad real-life stories to help you see parallels between your situation and others who’ve been through it and achieved success. To that end, each chapter also has “Making It Fit” charts so you can make decisions using your own structure preference and productivity style and know what to do in the situation described.
You can use the Productivity for How You’re Wired as a bit of a workbook, as each chapter ends with a place to note those “Takeaways” you don’t want to forget and commit to the “Actions” you’ll take to help you develop your own systems.
The only drawback to the book is that some of the material on the charts can be hard to read (due to the confines of a tangible book); however, there are colorful versions of the charts available online, which allow you to expand the charts so you can see them more clearly. There are also supplemental resources on the website.
Productivity for How You’re Wired is fluff-free. This is just about the meatiest book I’ve ever seen on achieving personalized productivity. This book is a real commitment — to yourself and the material — but short of working in person with Ellen herself, it’s an amazing way to tweak every detail of your approach to work and life to fit in everything important to you. If you make the commitment, I think you’ll be impressed with what you get out of it.
Productivity for How You’re Wired is available from Amazon for $17.64 for paperback or $9.99 on Kindle.
CREATING ORDER AMONG CHAOS
Starting February 15, 2023 and running through February 28, 2023, I’m participating in the adventurously titled Creating Order Among Chaos: How To Effectively Manage The Everyday Whirlwind Of Responsibilities So That You’re Empowered To Do More Leading & Less Reacting!
This free online video retreat is headed up by personal coach and business consultant Robert Barlow from Perpetual Aim. You might recall his name from when I did Robert’s The Leader’s Asset series on prioritization and leadership last summer.
If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner, you know what it’s like when you’re constantly reacting instead of acting, always putting out fires (that often turn out to be fireflies) instead of setting off your own carefully planned fireworks. Simply put, it can feel impossible to feel like you’re running the show, and instead everything (and everyone, and every sensory input) is distracting you from achieving success.
It’s hard to lead when the ducklings behind you keep getting out of line. It’s hard to make progress when the phones won’t stop ringing about yesterday’s efforts (and other people’s priorities). That’s where the video retreat comes in!
Robert has gathered 14 speakers, myself included, who all share a passion for empowering small business owners and professionals to work more on their businesses instead of in their businesses (to borrow from Michael Gerber’s now-classic The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.)
Each of us participating are bringing our knowledge and expertise to these short but powerful video interviews with Robert, and you can anticipate that each will leave you with actionable options to achieve your priorities. Topics covered will include:
- How to manage juggling responsibilities
- How to lead and delegate to others
- Ways to create stronger boundaries so that you are less overcommitted and overwhelmed
- Tips, tools, and strategies that move you forward in life
- What thinking patterns are keeping you mired in place
- How to stay connected with your vision, goals, and ideals
- How to manage your time on a day to day basis to accomplish what you desire.
This two-week video series is virtual; that means you can watch it at home, in the office, on your commute (provided someone else is driving the car/bus/train), or wherever you can get away from the hubbub.
I think we’d all love the opportunity to pick the brains of experts in productivity and leadership, and have conversations to help guide professional success. I’m excited to not only have contributed my thoughts, but I can’t wait to hear what the other experts have to say. Participating experts include:
- Dr. Frank Buck, long-time friend-of-the-blog, with whom I’ve shared many virtual stages. (You might recall that Frank interviewed me on his podcast last year, and I’ve referenced him often on these pages.)
- Alexis Haselberger is a fabulous coach and consultant whom I fist met when I spoke at Ray Sidney-Smith‘s 2019 Productivity Summit. I love her motto: “Do More, Stress Less.”
- Steven Dossou is all about personal transformation. His background in marketing leadership, his executive and life coaching experience, and what I’ve heard him say about fear, self-doubt, and self-esteem, has me really intrigued about what he’ll discuss in his interview.
- Rudy Miick, founder of the Miick Method for purpose-driven creating, maintaining, and expanding excellence, should bring some fascinating ideas to the table.
- Stephanie Paillé is a leadership coach specializing in mindset shifts and high performance culture.
- Gill Tiney, an expert on the power of collaboration, should have an amazing take on how we can do more (even with all those distracting inputs) by working together.
And that’s only hitting half of the presenters!
I have a complimentary ticket for you to attend. Just click on https://perpetualaim.com/JulieBestry to register for this free, online two-week “retreat,” and you’ll start getting emails to take you to each daily interview. I hope you’ll attend, and if you watch my interview with Robert, feel free to come back and share your thoughts on what I’ve said about conquering overwhelm and achieving prioritized focus for improved leadership.
Happy Valentine’s Day, my wonderful readers. I hope these books and the video series will help you achieve your organizing and productivity goals.
Much (productive) love,
Paper Doll
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