Motivation | Best Results Organizing

How to Use Cathedral Thinking and Intentional Words to Organize Your Year

Posted on: January 6th, 2025 by Julie Bestry | 22 Comments

We’re not quite a week into the year. And yet, if you had resolutions, you may have already broken them. Vowed to eat healthy, but that boozy New Year’s Day brunch blew that plan out of the water? Planned to exercise daily, but those two days back at work wore you out, so you slept in instead of going to the gym this weekend?

You aren’t alone. In fact, the second Friday in January is known as Quitter’s Day because so many people have already tossed their resolutions by that day. Research by Baylor College of Medicine found that 88% of people give up their New Year’s Resolutions by the end of January; a large percentage of the remainder part ways with their resolutions before the end of April.

WHY DON’T NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS WORK (FOR MOST PEOPLE)?

It’s not that resolutions can’t work, but that people generally go about them in the wrong way.

Unrealistic Expectations

It’s cute when three-year-olds tell you they’re going to be princesses, basketball stars, or wizards. But if you’re a grownup and you “resolve” that you’re going to change who you are in some massive way, your ambitious goals may get in the way of reality.

If you set an aspirational goal that’s so ambitious that you can’t possible achieve it, you’re guaranteeing that you’ll be discouraged each time you hit a setback or your progress is glacial.

Think about what I wrote in Paper Doll Explains Aspirational vs. Inspirational Clutter. Just as when you fill your space with tangible aspirational clutter, filling your head with an aspiration to achieve something lofty without the any undergirding infrastructure guarantees disillusionment and falling short.

Black-and-White Thinking

It’s common to approach goal-setting with an all-or-nothing mentality.

“Either I will publish a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel this year (even though I haven’t written anything since college)!” or “I’m going to keep this house perfectly organized every day from now on (even though I haven’t seen my keys in three weeks)!” leads people to give up when they hit the first bump in the road, so they stop writing or putting things away.

Too often, people craft their resolutions as, “I’m going to completely change how I behave” and that means that the minute they revert to their innate habits, they declare a loss. (A hot fudge sundae doesn’t mean your diet is dead and buried; tomorrow, have a salad.)

We don’t need a new year, or a new month, or even a new day to continue on with our goals. As I talked about in Organizing A Fresh Start: Catalysts for Success, we can always find new opportunities to re-set.

Shame-based Motivation

Are you a carrot or stick person? Are you motivated to win something for the glory or by fear of not achieving?
Are you more likely to go after a goal because it’s something you truly desire, or because you’ve been guilted into it?
Do you want to achieve something because it’s your dream, or because you’ve been conditioned through social pressure (or from your mother-in-law or your work frenemy) to do something?

If you only set a goal because someone makes you feel bad about who you are now (whether in terms of your shape, your status, or your accolades), that extrinsic motivation probably isn’t going to have staying power to get you out of bed to run on a rainy morning or to get your butt on the piano bench to practice scales.

If you’re focused on something negative and are shamed (or shaming yourself) into changing who you are, that self-criticism is going to prevent you from making any sustainable change.

And whenever we don’t meet our resolutions, that above-mentioned black-and-white thinking can lead to low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, and poor mental health.

Lack of Strategic Planning

If you rang out the old year by resolving to “lose weight in 2025” or even to “lose 25 pounds in 2025,” you were resolving to magically achieve something. You can’t really “do” a resolution.

This is why the concept of SMART goals is so popular, because they promise that if you sit down and define your goals by making them specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time sensitive, and strategize how you’ll take action, when, and how often, and are clear on your purpose, you’ll stand a better chance. I’ve written about that often, and back in 2014 in Achieve Your Goals: Modern Truths Behind the Urban Legend, I spelled out my alternative steps to really making your goals come alive.

Merely stating your resolution without spelling out the strategies and actionable tactics is a recipe for a pretty weak soup of achievement.

For more on the problematic nature of New Year’s resolutions, read:

Instead, Make Real Change Through Intentions and Habits

Set positive intentions — When you do create goals, focus on whatever you want to achieve because the goal uplifts you, not because you’re trying to avoid something. (Will you be delighted, or will you only be avoiding a negative result? Unless you’re motivated by the stick, find the carrot…or the cookie.)

Have a plan, not a dream — Identify any obstacles you’ve faced in the past anticipate what may arise in the future so you can develop strategies to overcome them.

Set small, achievable objectives — You’re not going to put away everything the minute you are done with it, but you can set a timer for ten minutes before your lunch break to file away everything that’s piled up on your desk during the morning. Keep breaking down large aspects of change into ever-smaller, more manageable tasks.

In fact, if you really want to change your behaviors, I suggest reading (or re-reading) James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

Clear’s book is one of the most approachable guides to making small behavioral changes so that you can replicated them and build on them to achieve what you want.

Treat yourself with kindness — Don’t beat yourself up over backsliding; use it as an opportunity to investigate what’s tripping you up and look for creative solutions. The goal is to catch yourself winning.

Acknowledge that setbacks happen to everyone; focus on progress, not perfection. (Perfection is boring! Figuring out why you always throw your coat on a chair instead of hanging it up or always procrastinate about refilling prescriptions gives you opportunities to win!)

Seek — and accept — support! — There’s a reason people say it takes a village and that no man is an island. Humans are social animals; we’re not meant to do it all ourselves. Whether you seek the support of family or friends, delegate lesser tasks to staffers so you can focus on improving your unique skills, or work with a counselor, therapist, or professional organizer who can provide accountability and training, don’t feel like you have to go it alone.

GO LONG; MAKE A CHANGE

I’m just not a fan of resolutions. I am far more enamored of changing habits. If resolutions work for you and help you make a fresh start, go for it. But if you struggle with resolutions, it’s OK. There are better ways to introduce change in your life.

Longtime Paper Doll readers know that I’m a big fan of using words to create a positive mindset. Once I have a vision for what I want my life (or my year) to look like, I can build a theme and see if each habit or action dovetails or departs from that theme. And we’re going to look at that in a moment. But I’ve recently been introduced two additional concepts for guiding your thoughts and actions.

Cathedral Thinking

Greta Thunberg has been quoted as saying, “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”

Oooh, cathedral thinking! I’m picturing time-lapse video of a cathedral being built from the foundation upward as the people and the city around the area change and grow over decades and centuries.

I was unfamiliar with the term “cathedral thinking” before I heard Thunberg’s quote, and did some research. Officially, cathedral thinking is a mindset focused on long-term planning and thinking about the future rather than the present. Originating in medieval Europe, the concept developed from the fact that builders of grand cathedral began projects they knew would not reach fruition in their lifetimes; they were thinking generationally.

Duomo di Orvieto (Orvieto Cathedral) Umbria, Italy @2018 Julie Bestry

Cathedral thinking is a way to view the problems we face as challenges requiring effort — sometimes collective effort by that village — and an investment of time, and perhaps money, over the long haul. When you’re talking about building literal cathedrals, that long-term planning, investment in the future prioritization of sustainability can create a tangible monument to the work you’ve put in.

But ever since I heard Thunberg’s quote, I’ve been thinking about how cathedral thinking applies to building our future selves. Maybe our initial goals are short-term: to get our homes or offices organized, or to learn how to say no to obligations that don’t fulfill us, to go to the gym, or start eating healthy.

But none of these goals exist in a vacuum. We don’t want to lose weight because the number on the scale is somehow meaningful. We’re not decluttering (merely) so that our homes look more orderly. We’re not culling the energy vampire tasks from our schedules so we’ll have a more balanced work-life schedule. Those are the interim benchmarks; those are the foundations and scaffolding and various levels of the cathedral of our individual selves.

But our true cathedrals are who and what these habits will help us become. Better eating, exercise, self-care, stress-reduction, and organized spaces mean that we will be happier, healthier, and alive and vital for longer so that we can be with the people we love, doing the things we care about.

Anyone doing a reality check knows we don’t write books to become rich; almost no published authors are making that kind of bank; nor are artists. Instead, it’s about legacy.

James Clear suggests that we can change our habits by aligning them with our identity. “I am the kind of person who eats five servings of vegetables a day” or “I am the kind of person who hangs up her clothes” may not be true, yet, but it’s tying acts to the self-image to which one aspires.

As long as that identity isn’t so aspirational as to seem out of reach, it can override the tendency we all have to blow off our goals when we just aren’t feeling it; when we just don’t wanna.

Your aspirational goals are part of your legacy, and your legacy is going to take a lifetime to build. You are a cathedral. Start by laying the foundation, and keep the future generations (that is, iterations) of your identity moving forward.

Make a Change

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

We all struggle. Change is scary. Fear of failure, fear of success, and annoyance (and avoidance of annoyance) keep us stuck, year after year.

Recently, I was thinking about how, ever since the start of the pandemic, I’ve felt stuck. I work hard to stay safe, in terms of my health. I still wear a mask in indoor public settings and avoid crowds. But in the last six weeks, I’ve still had health issues; first, as I reported last month, I had a rough bout of vertigo; then mid-December, I had a cold (and it was, though lingering, just a cold). I petulantly resented that I’ve taken all of these precautions, have missed out on a lot of the joys of life in these years since 2020, and still got sick.

We all take precautions to protect ourselves professionally or personally, to avoid pain (the stick) but that often means we never get the carrot or the cookie. Eventually, as I wrote about in Paper Doll Says: Don’t Get Stuck in a Rut — Take Big Leaps, we have to get out of our comfort zones.

This was in my head when I had a conversation last week with the always-fabulous Deb Lee, productivity consultant, connector-of-humans, and amazing friend. Deb was talking about marketing and entrepreneurship expert Amy Porterfield, and how she often advises people to Do Something Different. You can listen to Amy’s podcast, #497: Do Something Different: A Method For Getting Unstuck, for a sense of how this philosophy, of doing something in a different way, can shake you out of your rut, blow out the cobwebs, and bring new ideas and new opportunities.

And it wasn’t just Deb quoting Amy. Within a day, my colleague and the best darned Evernote Expert you could want to know (and I’m saying that as someone who has been an Evernote Certified Expert for the past decade), Stacey Harmon of Harmon Enterprises, echoed the same idea. In her newsletter, she talked about how she chooses a word/concept of the year, and for this year, Stacey wrote,

“For 2025, I’ve chosen “Do things differently. Get different results.”

(In her newsletter, she talks about how each year, she creates a custom Evernote Home cover image containing her word or phrase of the year, overlying a photo that’s attractive to her and is in alignment with her goal. Read more about how Stacey tracks her word/phrase of the year in Evernote.)

Although hers isn’t my phrase for 2025, I’m borrowing the inspiration to remind myself to spread my wings a bit more and embrace a larger life.

USE YOUR WORDS TO ORGANIZE THE LIFE YOU WANT

Most years, I blog about the advantage of selecting a word or phrase of the year to create your mindset. While resolutions state where you want to end up and goals allow you to spell out the habits that can get you there, words or mottos for the year are different.

Scrabble Tile Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Whether you pick a word or phrase or song doesn’t matter. Rather, all formats of these words allow to set your intentions for where you want to focus your energy for the coming year in a way that uplifts and expands instead of setting restrictions and boundaries.

Last year, in Toss Old Socks, Pack Away 2023, and Adjust Your Attitude for 2024, I talked about my approach to each new year.

In particular, I went deep and wide into the concept of the personal review, a method for reflecting on the year that’s ended to get a sense of what is really meaningful to you (in categories like health, finances, professional development, business, relationships, personal growth, and community) for guiding your approach to the new year.

I recommended the amazing Year Compass, for doing your annual review and for developing your hopes, dreams, goals, and plans for the coming year.

And I’d picked the word UPGRADE as my guiding word of 2024, but explained that it was battling it out with PRONOIA. I wrote:

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it. Honestly, the first time I heard the word, I assumed it was made up. It’s opposite of paranoia; a person experiencing pronoia believes that the world around them conspires to do them good. Obviously, taken to extremes, it might seem like psychological or spiritual irrationality.

But Buddist principles haven’t been working for me, I’m still trying to get a handle on the Stoics I talked about in Toxic Productivity Part 2: How to Change Your Mindset. I feel the pull of a bigger change in my life, and I think “pronoia” dovetails with the idea of a life upgrade.

Thus, I keep coming back to the Carly Pearl song in which I first heard the word “pronoia.”

This year, I’ve decided to upgrade the word “pronoia” to be my personal life motto. The concept that the world conspires in your favor is just too inspiring to apply to only one year.

Once you do your personal review, you’ll know what you want to accomplish this year, and more importantly, why. Maintain the motivation and energy of your “why” with a word or phrase that reflects the overall concept you want your year to engender. It’s not about losing weight, or maybe even health, but a word that reflects beyond the literal to the the larger idea of how you want to feel. Maybe buoyant or lighthearted or delighted?

Consider:

a word of the year
multiple words (like a trio of words) of the year
a quote or motto or mantra of the year
a song of the year (or a song title, or a lyric)

Whatever you select is your personal theme for the coming year. Whatever you want to remember about your goals and your attitude is what this word or phrase or mantra will reflect.

But don’t just leave your word sitting there on a notepad. Your goal is the best product or service — it’s the business of you. Use your (organized) space to keep your attention on your intention for the year, the building of your personal cathedral.

Advertise your theme word(s) anywhere or everywhere it’ll catch your attention. Don’t let it fade into the woodwork!

Promote your theme to yourself wherever you need a little push to live in accordance with the values you’re setting for yourself. Display it:

on a sticky note on the fridge or your bathroom mirror
on a bookmark you’ll see each time you open or close whatever book you’re reading
on a both sides of the door leading to and from your garage, so you’ll be reminded of it when coming and going
on one of those fun little felt word board with changeable letters placed so you see it from your desk chair or wherever you spend the most time

on the lid or door of the washing machine, to remind you that those “adulting” tasks deserve appreciation
on the door to your closet so you’ll be reminded to dress and act in accordance with your theme
as the title of a vision board, along with images reflecting the meaning of your motivating words, phrases, and songs.
on the lock screen of your phone
as the desktop graphic of your computer
on whatever software allows you to customize your home screen (like Stacey’s advice for Evernote Home)

Don’t just engage your visual sense. Add an auditory component:

Change your wakeup alarm on your phone to your theme song.
Record yourself speaking your word or mantra (or have a loved one do it) and use the sound file as an alarm to remind you periodically at a point in the day when your inspiration is likely to flag.
Recite your word or phrase every night before you go to sleep and upon waking. Make it a mantra.

Whatever you pick should soothe and motivate, providing you with clearer sense of the vision you want your actions to reflect. Picture it on a banner as you cross the finish line, or carved into the marble over the doorway of your personal cathedral.

Find Your Inspiration

You don’t have to rush to find your word or phrase. A year is 365 days and we’re only six days in. And if you find that the word your pick is ill-fitting, like a jacket that’s too tight in the shoulders, you can change it.

To get you started, peruse:

Choose a One-Word Theme: We Review Our 2024 Themes and Reveal Our 2025 Themes (Happier Podcast with Gretchen Rubin)

One Word Themes for 2025 (Gretchen Rubin)

How To Choose A Word Of The Year (Elizabeth Rider)

New Year Intention (Jonda Beattie)

246 Word of the Year Ideas for a Better 2025 (GoodGoodGood.co)

2025 Word of the Year Ideas (Morgan Harper Nichols has 60 great, often unexpected words)

2025 Word of the Year (and 100 ideas for yours) (Elizabeth McKnight)

Paper Doll’s Words of Intention

I’ll be honest — I’m not ready for 2025. I usually use the last two weeks of the year to do my annual review and find the right word or phrase for the coming year. But, as mentioned, I had the creeping crud from the week before Christmas until close to the new year, and haven’t yet found my word. I’m leaning toward ENGAGE.

I liked having a word and a song last year, and keep hearing Florence and the Machine’s Dog Days Are Over running through my head, but suspect it’s one of those songs where I’m not sure that the lyrics mean what I think they mean. I’ve noticed that Natasha Beddingfield’s 2004 hit, Unwritten, is playing everywhere lately, and feel like it’s speaking to cautious, perfectionist me:

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries are outside the lines
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes
But I can’t live that way

Songwriters: Danielle A. Brisebois / Natasha Anne Bedingfield / Wayne Steven Jr Rodrigues
Unwritten lyrics ©2004 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Whatever I choose, I’m considering the advice of Deb and Stacey, and remembering the words of essayist and novelist Susan Sontag, in her Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, where she emphasized courageously taking leaps and embracing change:

“I must change my life so that I can live it, not wait for it.”

Do you have a word, phrase, motto, or song of the year to support your 2025 mindset?

24 Smart Ways to Get More Organized and Productive in 2024

Posted on: January 1st, 2024 by Julie Bestry | 13 Comments

Happy New Year! Happy GO Month!

January is Get Organized & Be Productive (GO) Month, an annual initiative sponsored by the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO). We professional organizers and productivity experts celebrate how NAPO members work to improve the lives of our clients and audiences by helping create environments that support productivity, health, and well-being. What better way to start the year than creating systems and skills, spaces and attitudes — all to foster a better way of living?!

To start GO Month, today’s I’m echoing Gretchen Rubin’s 24 for ’24 theme that I mentioned recently, and offering you 24 ways to move yourself toward a more organized and productive life in 2024. There are 23 weekdays in January this year, so if you’re feeling aspirational and want to conquer all of these, you can even take the weekends off as the last item is a thinking task rather than a doing task.

I broke these organizing and productivity achievements down by category, but there’s no particular order in which you need to approach them, and certainly you don’t need to accomplish every one on the list, in January or even all year. Jump in and get started — some only take a few minutes.

PUT LAST YEAR AWAY

1) Make many happy returns!

Did you know that shoppers will return $173 billion in merchandise by the end of January? Chances are good that you (or someone for whom you oversee such things) got gifts that need to be returned.

Don’t put it off. The longer you wait, the more clutter will build up in your space, and the more likely you will be to suffer clutter-blindness until the return period has expired. Most stores have extended return policies during the holidays, but they can range upward from 30, depending on whether you have a gift receipt.

The Krazy Coupon Lady blog reviews the 2024 return deadlines for major retailers. She notes that you’ll get your refunds faster by returning items to the brick & mortar stores rather than shipping them back. You’ll also save money, because some online retailers charge a restocking fee.

2) Purge your holiday cards.

While tangible greeting are getting fewer and farther between, you probably still got a stack. Reread them one last time, and then LET THEM GO.

Did Hallmark or American Greetings do the heavy lifting, and the senders just signed their names? Toss them into the recycling bin. Paper Doll‘s grants you permission to only save cards with messages that are personal or resonant.

If they don’t make you cry, laugh, or go, “Ohhhhh,” don’t let them turn into the clutter you and your professional organizer will have to toss out years from now when you’re trying to downsize to a smaller home! It’s a holiday message, not a historical document; you don’t transcribe your holiday phone conversations and keep them forever, right?

The same goes for photos of other people’s families. You don’t have to be the curator of the museum of other people’s family history; let them do that.

3) Update your contacts.

Before you toss those cards, check the return addresses on the envelopes and update the information in your own contacts app, spreadsheet, or address book.

Next, delete the entries for people you’ll never contact again — that ex (who belongs in the past), that boss who used to call you about work stuff on weekends (ditto), people who are no longer in your life, and those who are no longer on this mortal coil.

If you don’t recognize the name of someone in your contacts, Google them or check LinkedIn (is it your mom’s doctor? your mechanic?) and if you still don’t know who it is, you’re obviously not going to be calling or texting them. Worst case scenario, if they text you, you can type back, “New phone, who dis?”

BOX UP YOUR INBOXES

4) Delete (most of) your old voicemails.

How often do you return a call only to hear, “The voicemail box is full and is not accepting messages. Please try again later.” When someone calls you and requests you call them back but their voicemail is full, it’s frustrating because it makes more labor for you.

Do you assume that it’s a cell phone and text them? (I believe texting strangers without permission is a breach of etiquette.) Plan to call back later? Assume that they’ll see the missed call and get back to you, starting another round of phone tag? ARGH!

Dial in to your voicemail and start deleting. Save phone numbers for anyone you’ll need to contact and log anything you may need to follow up on. But unless you’re saving a voicemail for legal purposes or because you can see yourself sitting in an airport, listening to a loved one’s message over and over (cue sappy rom-com music), delete old voicemails.

If you’ve got a landline, clear that voicemail. If you’ve still got an answering machine, how’s the weather in 1997? Yeah, delete old messages.

Smith.ai has a great blog post on how to download important voicemails (from a wide variety of phone platforms) to an audio file. Stop cluttering your voicemail inbox!

5) Clear Your Email Inboxes

Start by sorting your inbox by sender and deleting anything that’s advertising or old newsletters. If you haven’t acted on it by now, free yourself from inbox clutter! Delete! Then conquer email threads, like about picking meeting times (especially if those meetings were in the past).

Photo by 84 Video on Unsplash

Take a few minutes at the end of each day to delete a chunk of old emails. To try a bolder approach, check out a classic Paper Doll post from 2009, A Different Kind of Bankruptcy, on how to declare email bankruptcy.

6) Purge all of your other tangible and digital inboxes.

Evernote has a default inbox; if you don’t designate into which folder a saved note should go, your note goes somewhere like Paper Doll‘s Default Folder. Lots of your note-taking and other project apps have default storage that serves as holding pens. Read through what you’ve collected — sort by date and focus on the recent items first — and either file in the right folders or hit delete!

Walk around your house or office and find all the places you tend to plop paper down. Get it in one pile. (Set aside anything you’ll absolutely need in the next few days to safeguard it.) Take 10 minutes a day to purge, sort, and file away those random pieces of paper so that you always know where they are.

HIT THE PAPER TRAIL

7) Embrace being a VIP about your VIPs.

You need your Very Important Papers for all sorts of Very Important Reasons. If the last few years have proven anything, it’s that life is unpredictable, so we need to find ways to make things as predictable and dependable as possible.

Yes, putting together essential paperwork isn’t fun. It’s boring. But you want it to be boring. The more boring your vital documents are, the more it means there will be no surprises for your loved ones in troubling times (like during and after an illness, after a death, while recovering possessions after a natural disaster) or even when you’re just trying to accomplish something like getting on an airplane.

Start with these posts, then make a list of any document you already have (and where it is), and another list of what you need to create, and plan meetings with your family and a trusted advisor to set things in motion.

How to Replace and Organize 7 Essential Government Documents

How to Create, Organize, and Safeguard 5 Essential Legal and Estate Documents

The Professor and Mary Ann: 8 Other Essential Documents You Need To Create

Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Getting a Document Notarized

Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Legally Changing Your Name

A New VIP: A Form You Didn’t Know You Needed

8) Create your tax prep folder now so you’ll be ready for April 15th.

Do you toss non-urgent mail on top of the microwave? Might those important 1099s and 1098s and 1095-A and W-2s get lost? Don’t lose deductions, pay more taxes, or get in trouble with the IRS!

By the end of January, you’ll start getting tax documents in the mail. Pop them in a folder in your financial files or in a dedicated holder like the Smead All-in-One Income Tax Organizer.

Nothing will get lost and you’ll be able to see your accountant (or get into your tax prep software) sooner, saving time and money (in CPA dollar-hours and tax deductions).

SANITIZE WHAT YOU DIGITIZE

9) Delete the apps you never use.

Yes, really. This is even easier than donating possessions you never use, because you can always re-download the apps if you suddenly need them.

Delete the apps you never use. This is even easier than donating or tossing possessions you never use, because you can always re-download the apps if you suddenly need them. Share on X

Start with the apps you used the least often (or never). To see the last time you used an app on iOS (for iPhone or iPad), follow this path: Settings>General > iPhone (or iPad) Storage. There are a few different ways to check app usage on Android devices. If you haven’t used an app much, delete it. If you’ve used it TOO much, move the icon to a secondary screen so you’ll be less tempted by it.

10) Unsubscribe to all of those emails trying to sell you stuff.

In August, I bought one thing at Lane Bryant (prompted by my colleague Danielle Carney, who has impeccable taste), but generally, their clothing doesn’t fit me. When I clicked the unsubscribe link, it offered me an option of getting only one email a week. FIB!!! This holiday season, they sent me up to five emails a day!

A pair of eyeglass frames I liked from EyeBuyDirect was out of stock, so I added my name to a list to be notified if they returned to the inventory. In the month afterward, I got at least three emails a day.

Type “unsubscribe” in your email’s search box and you’ll find newsletters and sales emails. Scroll to the bottom to find tiny links to their unsubscribe pages. Don’t be tempted by their scorned romantic partner act. Buy things when you need and want them, not when advertising (and that’s what this email is!) inveigles you to do it! You can always sign up again to get discount codes (and the unsubscribe after your purchase!

Buy things when you need and want them, not when advertising (and that's what this email is!) inveigles you to do it! You can always sign up again to get discount codes (and the unsubscribe after your purchase! Share on X

11) Close the browser tabs.

Your hard drive is exhausted by the oodles of tabs you’ve had open for days, weeks, months. Your phone is pooped, too.

Plan time to read your open browser tabs or store them (with a bookmark or in Evernote/OneNote/Notes). If you know you’ll never look at a stored link, why would you look at a perpetually open tab? Read it, or text the link to a friend who will read it and tell all about what you need to know.

And, honestly, close the tabs in your brain. Whether it takes therapy or a good vacation, let go of the ruminations and recriminations that haunted you last year. Ban brain clutter!

PERK UP YOUR PLANNING

12) Pick a planning system that works for you.

Are you a paper person? If you don’t have a planner that will make sure you honor all of your commitments, buy a planner today. Consider these three guidelines:

You need a month-at-a-glance view. Daily and weekly views don’t offer enough long-range details to let you plan your life over time.
You need enough space for you to write. Paper planners force people with messy/loopy handwriting to stay within limits but show vital details. Digital calendars tend to hide most of the details until you click through. (Will you always remember to click through?)
You need ONE planner for your business and personal appointments. If one calendar has your medical appointments and your kids’ schedules, and another has work obligations, you’ll never protect against recitals or games conflicting with your big presentation. (Yes, digital calendars like Google’s have an advantage; with one click, you can layer or remove different calendar views.)

Organizing your life starts with the ability to visualize your time. Stick with any method that works for you, but if digital has come up short for you, going analog will help you see the forest AND the trees.

13) Update every detail in your planner for the entire year.

Filling in January isn’t enough. Assuming you’ll remember that you always have a specific meeting on the fourth Tuesday of the month is a recipe for disaster the first time you schedule something when you’re sleepy or cranky or ill.

Go through last year’s planner and copy over everything that recurs on the same dates (like birthdays and anniversaries).
Add in the things that happened last year and are already scheduled to happen again, but not on the same dates (like conferences, work retreats, mammograms, medical appointments, etc.).
Use last year’s calendar to prompt you to make a list of everything you need to schedule or add to your long-range tasks, like setting an sit-down with your CPA or scheduling medical appointments.

14) Refresh your commitment to your planning system…daily.

If you’re so overwhelmed that you forget to check your planner (or to write down appointments in the first place), upgrade your accountability:

Set an alarm on your phone to ring at around 4:45 p.m. daily to remind you to check your calendar and tickler file for the next day and the coming week.

Have an assistant? Schedule time each day to review revised appointments and obligations.
Hold weekly family meetings to make sure every appointment and school pick-up is covered.
Schedule your next appointments before leaving anyplace you visit intermittently (dentist, massage therapist, hairdresser) — but only if you have your calendar with you. Otherwise, have them follow up. Never agree to any date without your planner nearby.

CONTROL YOUR MONEY, HONEY!

15) Wall off your wallet from clutter.

Clutter in your wallet keeps you from realizing how much money you’re really spending. It’s hard to be intentional if your wallet is full of old receipts, ATM slips, and gift cards you’ve forgotten you own.

Purge, then inventory everything you decide to keep in your wallet. Now gather info on your license, insurance cards, and debit/credit cards. Empty your wallet, and line up your cards in two columns. Either place them on your printer to scan/photo copy them or take a snapshot with your phone; be sure to flip each card over in the same position, and capture the backs. Password-protect the document and keep it safe and handy.

If you have to do multiple sets of columns stacks, you may have too much in your wallet. Consider keeping loyalty cards in your phone’s digital wallet (like Apple Pay) or use stores’ apps. You’ll be able to scan a QR code in lieu of a tangible card.

16) Cash in your coins.

Do you have piles of coins next to your bed, in a jar the laundry room, in your coat pockets, and at the bottom of your bag? It weighs you down (literally) and wastes financial potential. If you’ve got kids, let them roll the coins and take them to the bank, giving them a cut. (Make sure they wash their hands afterwards.) Or, take it to a Coinstar machine or a credit union that accepts counts coins for free.

Photo by Pixabay

If you find foreign coins in your pile and you won’t be headed back to that local, donate them to UNICEF’s Change for Good program the next time you fly one of their partner airlines.

17) Get the big picture.

Let 2023 be the year you figure out what’s going on with your money. As your bills and statements come in, make a list of all of your credit cards, loans, and other debts, as well as their balances and interest rates. Seeing it in black and white in one place is the first step toward taking organizing your financial future.

PRESERVE YOUR LEGACY

18) Preserve and secure preserve your photos.

Do you have print photos that would be lost in case of a fire or flood because you don’t have the negatives (or store them with the photos)? Would digital photos on your phone be lost if your phone got smushed or stolen? You need backup!

Contact a NAPO member who specializes in organizing photos, or visit The Photo Managers to find experts who can help you safeguard your photo history.

And because I can’t speak highly enough of it, read What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy by my colleague Hazel Thornton.

(See my review, here.)

19) Secure your digital assets and your digital legacy.

I know you don’t want to hear it — but you need to back things up. If your computer crashes (or an asteroid crashes through your roof and right onto your computer), you need to have backups of important stuff of work and life. First read this:

Paper Doll’s Ultimate Stress-Free Backup Plan

If it stresses you out, reach out to a professional organizer who specializes in organizing technology who can walk you through each step.

That takes care of the info as long as you need to access it. But what if your loved ones need to access your digital assets after you’ve reached a higher plane of ascendancy? I’ve got you covered.

Paper Doll Explains Digital Social Legacy Account Management

How to Create Your Apple & Google Legacy Contacts

So far, we’ve hit your paper, your money, your time, and your digital life. But what about YOU? Sometimes, the hardest part of getting organized and productive is getting out of our own way.

20) Declare bankruptcy on clutter debt.

Holding onto something just because you spent money on it, or because it was a gift, or because you feel guilty letting it go doesn’t make it any more valuable or useful; it just ends of costing you time (dusting or caring for it), space (that you could use for more important things), or money (spent on dry-cleaning or storage rental).

Holding onto something just because you spent money on it, or because it was a gift, or because you feel guilty letting it go doesn't make it any more valuable or useful; it just ends of costing you time, space, or money. Free up the… Share on X

Give yourself permission to declare bankruptcy on the “debt” of clothing that doesn’t fit, unread books and magazines, or charitable contribution requests that aren’t your vibe. Quit clubs you don’t enjoy. Resign from volunteer positions that don’t fulfill you. Whether it’s clutter in your space, schedule, or psyche, declare bankruptcy and move on!

21) Invite support and accountability.

It can be hard to ask for help, but nobody gets to the top of the mountain alone.

Have a serious talk with your spouse about sharing the load — not just the physical labor, but the mental load, too.
Be honest with your friends instead of trying to keep up with the Instagram Joneses. Ask for accountability when you’re struggling to fulfill your obligations to yourself. Be accountability partners over phone, text, or Zoom to get tasks done.
Go virtual for formal accountability. Check out Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions and Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek.
Hire a professional organizer or productivity expert! Locate a specialist near you (or one who works remotely — more and more of us do that now) by using the NAPO’s search function. You may also want to consult with our colleagues in the Institute for Challenging Disorganization.

We aren’t just experts in organizing stuff, but in helping you figure out how best to organize your ways of thinking and living. As a Certified Professional Organizer®, I guide and support my clients as they surmount obstacles, make difficult decisions, and develop new skills and systems.

22) Take care of yourself.

We’ve talked about the importance of taking breaks as short as 20 seconds and as long as vacations. Revisit Take a Break — How Breaks Improve Health and Productivity and Take a Break for Productivity — The International Perspective to get some ideas on how to prevent burnout.

Then check out The Good Trade‘s 99 Inexpensive Self-Care Ideas For Your New Year.

23) Figure out what you want to do once you feel more organized and productive.

In Toss Old Socks, Pack Away 2023, and Adjust Your Attitude for 2024, I got you started on ways to do your annual review and figure out what you want your life to look like. I used Bing Image Creator to help me design a photo representing something I ultimately want — brunch in Tuscany!

These 99 Reflection Questions To Ask Yourself For Personal Growth (also from The Good Trade) range from daily self-checkins to incredible (and life-affirming) stretches. If you read only one (non-Paper Doll) reference in this post, let it be this one.

24) Let go of the need to be perfect.

Being organized isn’t about aesthetics. Being productive isn’t about doing more things. It’s all about making life easier.

Drop-kick the guilt and negative self-talk. Living rooms in home and garden magazines aren’t real — those rooms were specially designed and curated to look “perfect.” Supermodels on magazine covers are airbrushed and photoshopped. The colleague who got the corner office may have three week’s of unwashed dishes in their kitchen sinks, or might have stayed up all night to finish that presentation. Stop comparing your life to everyone else’s highlight reels.

I’m not a sports person. I call basketball “squeaky floor ball.” However, I’ve been fascinated by Giannis Antetokounmpo ever since I saw him interviewed on 60 Minutes. The wisdom this young man applies to sports is exactly how I hope you’ll think of your approach to getting organized and being more productive.

GO Month is about getting organized, step-by step. You have the rest of 2024 to work on staying organized.

Paper Doll’s 23 Ideas for a More Organized & Productive 2023

Posted on: January 2nd, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

Happy New Year! And welcome to GO (Get Organized) Month 2023, where we celebrate efforts to make our spaces more organized and make ourselves more productive.

We in the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO) love this opportunity to help you make this year your best. To that end, today’s post offers up 23 ideas for achieving what you want this year in your space, schedule, and life.

CREATE A FRESH MINDSET

1) Learn last year’s lessons to build next year’s success.

You were probably super-busy last week, but I encourage you to read the final Paper Doll post of 2022. (Trust me, it was a good one!)

Organize Your Annual Review & Mindset Blueprint for 2023 is full of questions and resources for figuring yourself (and your last year) out.

I often joke to clients that while I’m not a mental health professional, I am like a marriage counselor between you and your stuff. Well, last week’s post is like a cross between a therapy session and a deep dive with your BFF. It rejects the demoralizing proposition of resolutions in favor of creating a fresh, motivating mindset for the coming year, whether with a word, quote, or motto of the year, and uses signage, a vision board, or a music playlist to keep your eyes on the prize that is your new and improved life.

2) Don’t take my word for it. Listen to James Clear.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news in the “habit” realm at all in the last few years, you know that James Clear wrote Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, a book that takes the research of habit researchers (like Charles Duhigg in his The Power of Habit) and makes it all actionable.

Theory is good, but what most of us want is someone to tell us how to do it, and preferably in a way that doesn’t make us hungry, cranky, poor, or frustrated. Clear delivers.

But this year, he’s doing something special. Clear is offering a free email course called 30 Days to Better Habits: A simple step-by-step guide for forming habits that stick.

It’s not a bootcamp. Rather, as Clear explains, “Habits are not a finish line to be crossed, they’re a lifestyle to be lived.” Over eleven emails (after an introduction), one sent every three days, he’s going to gently teach principles to help cultivate a new lifestyle (and not merely a set of “tasks you can sprint through during a 30-day challenge.”)

There’s also an 18-page PDF workbook and a Google spreadsheet with more than 140 examples (!) of how to implement the strategies in the course and apply them to different habits.

The course is based on Atomic Habits, but he notes that you don’t need the book to successfully complete the course. However, because I originally read a library copy, I decided to buy my own, because he’s also got a nifty set of bonus packages for those who do buy the book. Basically, you email a copy of your receipt or other proof of purchase, and you get:

Bonus Guide: How to Apply Atomic Habits to Business
Bonus Guide: How to Apply Atomic Habits to Parenting
The Habits Cheat Sheet
Companion Reading Guide email series
Habit Tracker

For what it’s worth, I bought my copy New Year’s morning, and had received the bonuses by the time I had lunch!

3) Make strides towards delight, too!

One of my favorite sites is the UK-based Action for Happiness. Each month, they put out a stellar calendar of tiny (Clear might even call them atomic) actions you can take toward a better life. Each month is themed, and you can find daily reminders on their Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

January 2023’s theme is Happiness, and on New Year’s Day, the assignment was to “Find three things to look forward to this year.”

If you’re wondering what happiness has to do with organizing and productivity — hi, you must be new here!

But seriously. Clutter — all the excess stuff in our spaces, in our schedules, and in our brains — wears us down. It’s not at all uncommon for clients to be dealing with clinical depression or anxiety disorders, and disorganization and lack of productivity (and the stress of toxic productivity), only contribute to greater unhappiness. Think of these daily themes less as homework (“I have to”) and more as opportunities (“I get to”) on the path to organizing your mental health.

4) Collect good days — literally!

Each day, make a habit of writing down something great that happened. You can consider this part of (or instead of) a gratitude practice.

Our lives fill up with what we give our attention, so let’s pay attention to the good stuff. Next year, when you’re doing your annual review, you’ll have a tangible resource for looking back on the year and see the highlights, what you considered valuable at the time, and what might have been forgotten had you not made a notation.

Our lives fill up with what we give our attention, so let's pay attention to the good stuff. Share on X

Create a spreadsheet, an Evernote note, a pretty notebook, or — and this is my favorite idea — a Jar of Joy! (Someone else came up with the concept, but I came up with the name. Write a few words or a sentence about whatever great thing happened on a slip of paper. Fold or roll it up, and toss it in a jar or glass canister. Consider using colored slips of paper to make the contents look prettier, and keep your Jar of Joy visible, so you can be reminded each day that good things are happening!

5) Remember that tiny tasks count toward a more productive life.

There’s a reason why James Clear (and, ahem, Paper Doll) believes that those teeny, tiny steps lead to success. Whatever you want to achieve, whatever goals you have, I’d like to encourage you to figure out the teeniest, tiniest, itsy-bitsyist thing you can do to get yourself microscopically closer to the finish line…heck, to the starting line.

Adam Bulger at Fatherly.com came up with 27 Life-Changing Micro Habits That Require Only A Few Minutes. Many of the habits on this list take less than a full minute to accomplish. I liked item #23 on his list:

Always put one thing away before you leave whatever room you’re in. If you’re overwhelmed by clutter, you feel like you don’t have time to clean but habitually chipping away at the mess, one piece at a time, can make it more manageable.

pic.twitter.com/tUyJbfeIpU

— Liz Fosslien (@fosslien) June 28, 2022

START PLANNING YOUR YEAR

6) Select your planning system.

If you’re a digital person, your calendar is a continuous scroll of everything you’ve got planned. But if you’re a paper planner person (try saying THAT three times quickly!), you may have delayed getting a planner out of fear of buying the wrong one, or perhaps you’ve just not written in what you did buy, because you “don’t want to mess it up.”

It’s your planner. You can fill it in with crayons and use scratch-&-sniff stickers, and it’ll be OK. Whatever inspires you to log your meetings and appointments, block your time, and work toward your deadlines is fine with me. (And if anyone gives you guff, send them to Paper Doll. I’ll set them straight!)

If you’re still struggling with how you’ll plan your 2023, go visit Paper Doll’s Guide to Picking the Right Paper Planner. It covers the features you need to consider in a planner (including whether you’re better off with digital or paper), as well as pointing out some of the best options.

Photo by 2H Media on Unsplash

The key to organizing your life is being able to visualize your time. So get everything out of your head and in front of your beautiful eyeballs.

7) Move into your new planner now.

Make a cup of cocoa, grab last year’s planner or pull up your digital calendar (using two screens, like your computer and your phone simultaneously) — compare apples-to-apples.

Go page-by-page through last year’s schedule and copy over everything that recurs on the same dates, like birthdays and anniversaries. Digital users can skip this step.

Next, add events that happened last year and are already scheduled to happen again, but not on the same dates (like conferences, work retreats, mammograms, dental appointments, etc.).

Use last year’s calendar to help prompt you to make a list of everything you need to schedule or add to your long-range tasks, like setting an appointment with your CPA to discuss tax issues.

8) Don’t forget to plan time for your activities.

Appointments aren’t everything. Make time in your schedule for thinking, doing your creative work, attending to self-care, and so much more. Whenever clients complain to me that they don’t have time to accomplish something that they swear is important to them, I ask them to show me where they’ve put it on their schedules. [Insert cricket noises here.]

The truth is that if you don’t prioritize something by making time for it, it’s not really a priority to you. Treat yourself with the same respect you’d treat your boss or your best client or your Grandma, and make time for what matters:

Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Doll’s Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022 (I’ll have news about the 2023 summit coming soon!)

Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity

Organize Your Writing Time for NaNoWriMo 2022 (Even though the post is ostensibly about making time to write, it’s applicable to make time for anything you value.)

9) Nurture your commitment to your planning system…every day.

If there’s so much going on in your life that you forget to check your planner or digital calendar and task system until it’s too late, upgrade your accountability support:

Set an alarm on your phone to ring at around 5 p.m. daily to remind you to check your calendar and tickler file for the next day and the coming week.

If you have an assistant (especially if you both work remotely) schedule time each day to review newly-added appointments and obligations.
Have a family meeting on the weekend to make sure every appointment and school pick-up is covered.
Schedule your next appointments before leaving anyplace you visit intermittently (doctor, dentist, massage therapist, hair or nail salon, etc.) — but only if you have your calendar with you. Otherwise, ask them to call you. Never agree to any date without your planner nearby. In fact, if you tend to agree to too much, say that your professional organizer told you that you’ll have to wait to check your schedule before taking on any new obligations. (Blame me; I won’t tattle.)

10) Know where your time is going — before it gets away from you!

It really doesn’t help you schedule all of the things you’re supposed to be doing if you don’t have a handle on what you’re actually doing. To that end, Laura Vanderkam is doing something nifty.

You may know Laura from her podcasts, her blog, or her several books, including 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done, and the recently published Tranquility By Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters.

Laura is running the 168 Hours Time Tracking Challenge — and yes, I signed up for this one, too. I’ve always enjoyed Laura’s writing, but when we both participated in the 2022 Task Management and Time Blocking Summit, I really got to peek behind the curtain to see how she thinks about time and our use of it. She’s talking about time concepts and strategies that are too rarely discussed.

The 168 Hours Time Tracking Challenges doesn’t start until the middle of next week, January 9, 2023, so there’s still time to sign up. After signing up, you’ll get links to resources and suggestions for tracking your time on paper (via Laura’s time sheets) or digitally, as well as links to her other writings on the subject.

Like tracking what you eat (which can be emotionally distressing), tracking what you do with your time can be uncomfortable. When you realize you’re spending 3 hours a day on social media — and your job is not as a social media influencer — you may be upset. But if you recognize that you’re spending 90 minutes (or more) of every day “making do” with software that keeps freezing or helping a co-worker who takes advantage of your kindness, you’ll become more aware of challenges you can then overcome!

BECOME YOUR OWN MONEY HONEY

11) Make a TAX PREP folder. Actually, make two.

Tax season has started. Within a matter of weeks, your mailbox will start filling up with W-2s and 1099s, and you’ll need to keep them safe. At the very least (if you haven’t done it already), create a folder with a simple name like 2022 Tax Prep.

Look around for all of your tax-deductible receipts and charitable donation paperwork, and pop those in; when forms start arriving in the mail, put those in, too. Some of your important tax forms may come by mail; others, like your investment accounts or health insurance annual summary, might live in your online accounts, requiring you to log in.

This one two-minute task will save you so much time down the road. And time is money, so whether you do your own taxes or hand things off to a CPA, you’ll be saving the Benjamins as well as the clock-hours.

You don’t have to get fancy. A manila folder set in the front of your financial files is fine; or get a dedicated accordion folder like the Smead All-in-One Income Tax Organizer.

12) Stop hiding from your financial truths.

You have to answer mail call! Not looking at your bills when they come in the mail (or email) is like ignoring a pain that gets worse and refusing to go to the doctor because you’re afraid of bad news. Financial ills don’t go away on their own.

Not looking at your bills when they come in the mail (or email) is like ignoring a pain that gets worse and refusing to go to the doctor because you're afraid of bad news. Financial ills don't go away on their own. Share on X

Why not start bossing your money around instead of letting it bully you?

Over the course of the next few weeks, get in the habit of putting your bills and statements all in one place, like a folder next to your computer. If you normally just get a reminder to log in and pay a bill, make a point of downloading and/or printing out your monthly statement.

Make a list of all of your credit cards, loans, and other debts, as well as their balances and interest rates. Seeing it in black and white is the first step toward taking control of your financial future.

13) Get a financial accountability partner!

Last year, I said, “If you don’t know the difference between an NFT and BBQ…” It turns out a lot of people were investing in NFTs and cryptocurrency when they would have been better off having a backyard barbecue and inviting their friendly neighborhood fee-only Certified Financial Planner.

I’m no expert in cryto-currency. (And your brother-in-law’s cousin almost assuredly isn’t!) But whether you want to know whether you invest more in your 401K or your IRA, a fee-only CFP can help you out when your eyes start to glaze over. You pay for their expertise, and they give you unbiased advice because fee-only CFPs don’t get any commissions on investments you make.

Does thinking about investment vehicles feel like choosing between between becoming a rock star or an NBA star (because of their equal improbabilities)? If you need support and strategies for getting your bills paid on time, every time, there are NAPO members who are financial organizers; you can also find a Daily Money Manager through the American Association of Daily Money Managers (AADMM).

BECOME A VIP WITH YOUR VIPs

14) Get your vital documents in order.

It’s a sad fact of life that people get sick or incapacitated, and sometimes shuffle off this mortal coil far too soon. Whether it’s illness or natural disasters or some other kind of calamity we don’t want to think about, we need to get our affairs in order. And that means getting paperwork straight.

Check in with these posts for step-by-step guidance to making sure you’re covered with up-to-date vital documents and a way to keep them organized.

A New VIP: A Form You Didn’t Know You Needed — If you or anyone in your life is in Medicare, please make sure you read and act on this post! This is not one that you should put off.
Ask Paper Doll: Do I Really Need A Safe Deposit Box?
How to Replace and Organize 7 Essential Government Documents
How to Create, Organize, and Safeguard 5 Essential Legal and Estate Documents
The Professor and Mary Ann: 8 Other Essential Documents You Need To Create
Protect and Organize Your COVID Vaccination Card

15) Put your foot on the brake before automatically renewing your car insurance.

If you haven’t shopped insurance to compare prices and coverage in recent years — or ever — this is really the time to do it.

This year, I updated an older post that explained all of the elements of auto insurance, as well as how and where to organize your paperwork.

Organize for an Accident: Don’t Crash Your Car Insurance Paperwork [UPDATED]

But the post also talks about the wisdom of comparison shopping. While you’re at it, shop around for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance, as well. Why not organize some discounts while you’re organizing your paperwork?

16) Clean out your wallet and make an inventory.

You’ve probably got too much in your wallet. If you keep it in your purse, it’s giving you shoulder pains; if it’s in your back pocket, you’re likely misaligning your spine. Why not take a lunch hour and declutter your wallet, and then put it all back so it makes sense to you?

While you’re at it, this is the perfect time to take an inventory of the licenses, insurance cards, and debit/credit cards you have in there and all the information contained on them.

Pull everything out of your wallet, make two columns of cards on the table, and take a photo with your smartphone. Then flip each card over in the same position, and photograph the back. Easy-peasy. (If you’ve got a home scanner/copier, it’s fine to use that, but I’ll discourage you from using a public copier; it’s too easy for someone to surreptitiously snap photos of your information over your shoulder.)

Remember to password-protect the document on your phone or in your cloud back-up.

EMBRACE PAPER DOLL‘S CLASSIC PRINCIPLES ABOUT ORGANIZING

17) Follow the Ice Cream Rule.

I tell my clients, “Don’t put things down, put them away.” The word “away” assumes you’ve already got a location in mind. But good organizing systems have two parts: the where & the how.

When you bring groceries home, you put the ice cream away in the freezer immediately to keep from having a melted, sticky mess. It’s pretty rare for someone to put away the toilet paper or breakfast cereal before the frozen foods. The freezer is the “where” but putting the ice cream away first is the “how.” It’s so innate, you don’t even think about. But for most of your stuff, including papers, you do have to think about it.

Whatever comes into your space, when you go shopping, or even when things are free, decide on a home before you bring it in.

Once it’s in your space, build fixed time into your schedule for how/when you’ll deal with maintaining it or getting it back to where it lives. When will you do laundry? When will you file financial papers? What will be your trigger — when the laundry basket or in-box is full, or will you put it on your calendar?

Remember: “Someday” is not a day on the calendar.

18) Everything should have a home, but not everything has to live with you.

Clients are often so focused on organizing what they already have that they ignore a key truth: not everything you own needs to stay with you forever.

If it’s broken and you’re not willing to spend the time or money to repair it, let it go. If you’re sentimentally attached to something that’s outdated or takes too much space or effort to keep, take a photo of you holding it or wearing it. Then set it free!

If you have piles and files full of clippings and articles you haven’t looked at in years, you’re not alone. 80% of what gets filed is never accessed again. Trust that the internet is a vast storehouse of everything you’d want to look up, and if the paper you’re holding has nothing to do with you, personally, or reflects information you’ve long since learned by heart, recycle it and give yourself space.

19) Don’t fight clutter with more clutter.

I love The Container Store and all the office supply stores as much as every other professional organizer. (Really!)

But buying oodles of storage containers — bins, boxes, tubs, and shelves — can only help you organize if you pare down to what you need and want.

Photo by Lia Trevarthen on Unsplash

When you see a great outfit at the store but it’s not in your size, you shouldn’t say, “Hey, I’ll buy this now and then lose (or gain) 30 pounds to fit into it.” Even if you do declutter the personal poundage, you never know from where, exactly, that weight will disappear. It almost certainly won’t be a perfect fit.

I’m not saying never to acquire storage containers (adorable or otherwise), but do it last. Once you pare down, pick colorful, fun containers that suit your needs, space, and tastes.

20) Take baby steps. Declare small victories. Don’t feel like you have to do it all.

When it comes to clutter, it’s not the space it takes up in your house, it’s the dent it puts in your life! If you’re late every day because you can’t find your keys and your kids can’t find their homework, it’s a much bigger deal than a cluttered guest room closet or drawers of old birthday party pictures that haven’t been scrapbooked.

Focus on your biggest daily stressors, break them down into small, actionable steps, and solve those first. You don’t need to do it all at once, but if you develop a habit of doing a little bit at a time, once your space is straightened up, maintenance will feel natural.

What you don’t do is just as important as what you do. pic.twitter.com/sE6BrMyUAm

— Sarah Arnold-Hall (@saraharnoldhall) November 6, 2022

21) Declare bankruptcy on clutter debt.

Give yourself permission to declare bankruptcy on the “debt” of unread magazines, charitable contribution requests that aren’t really your cause, unworn clothes three sizes too small, or email from last July. In the words of Elsa, LET IT GO!

Keeping something just because you spent money on it or because it was a gift doesn’t make it any more valuable or useful; it just ends of costing you time (dusting or caring for it), space (that you could use for more important things), or money (spent on dry-cleaning or storage rental).

Keeping something just because you spent money on it or because it was a gift doesn't make it any more valuable or useful; it just ends of costing you time, space, & money. Free up the mental energy! Share on X

22) Hire a professional organizer.

As a Certified Professional Organizer®, I see how much my clients get out from support to make difficult decisions and develop systems to surmount those challenges. Find a professional organizer near you (or a virtual organizer) by using NAPO’s search function. You may also want to consult with our colleagues in the Institute for Challenging Disorganization.

Whether you need to reinvigorate a closet, learn how to use Evernote to get your productivity zipping along, or downsize Grandma’s house so she can move to Boca, professional organizers can show you the way. We’re not just experts in organizing stuff, but experts in helping you figure out how best to organize your ways of thinking and living.

23) Be gentle with yourself.

Getting organized and being productive is a constant battle between your goals and other people’s expectations of you. Focus on what you need and want.

In the words of Mary Oliver poem The Summer Day, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

The purpose of organizing and being more productive is to make your life easier — so that you can spend it doing the things you like with the people you love.

Happy New Year! Happy GO Month!

How Professional Organizers (& Hair Stylists) Reverse Some Intolerable Problems

Posted on: September 19th, 2022 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

Kabarett der Komiker; Gisela Schlüter unter Friseurhaube by Willy Pragher (CC BY 3.0)

What’s annoying you today? What’s been annoying you so long that you almost don’t notice the annoyance until someone else mentions it?

Over Labor Day weekend, my air conditioner died. This was an acute problem, one that I noticed almost immediately (as the temperature was rising overnight instead of going down) and which led to much misery until the holiday weekend ended and the maintenance staff could address the problem fully.

(To be fair, they did bring a mobile A/C unit, which cooled my bedroom to a bearable temperature; unfortunately, it was so loud, I felt like I was sleeping adjacent to a jet engine. Sometimes, you trade one intolerable thing for another. That’s often what keeps you from seeking, or implementing a solution in the first place.)

That same weekend, I realized that my fridge was dying. Unlike the A/C unit, this was a less obvious thing to tolerate. The freezer was still working perfectly, and the contents of the fridge weren’t warm; they just weren’t entirely full-on chilly. Weeks earlier, the refrigerator had been making some moaning noises, but fiddling with the settings of the circa-1986 fridge seemed to stop the noise. And then I stopped noticing.

Two household problems, but one felt a lot more urgent than the other. But these weren’t the only problems.

Early in the pandemic, to ensure everyone’s safety, our complex had asked us to understand that they’d only be performing inside maintenance for emergencies. So, when we had torrential rains in the summer of 2020, the roof was repaired immediately; the ceiling, well, not so quickly.

When my hot water heater expired in the spring of 2021, I vacated my home and the nice gentlemen figured out the complexities of draining a water heater on the second floor to enable removal and installation of a new one. And later that summer, my smoke detector decided to start beeping in eight sequences of three loud bursts, every ten minutes, ALL.NIGHT.LONG. That was something I could not tolerate (and thankfully, the leasing office agreed).

However, there were other, smaller repairs where I managed DIY solutions or made do. It was easier to avoid contact during the pandemic for non-emergency issues. And then I just started tolerating some inconveniences.

WHAT YOU TOLERATE NEVER GOES AWAY

A few years ago, in Organize Away Frustration: Practice The Only Good Kind of “Intolerance,” we discussed how the first step to creating the kind of life you want is to start by identifying the unsatisfying things that you tolerate. Knowing what makes you unhappy helps you create a strategy for eliminating those “tolerations,” the obstacles to your happiness. (This is true with organizing tangible items, as well as dealing with things in your schedule, and even non-organizing things, like annoyances in our relationships and whether we live our true values.)

Knowing what makes you unhappy helps you create a strategy for eliminating those 'tolerations,' the obstacles to your happiness. Share on X

As I mentioned in that prior post, I see part of my role as a professional organizer and productivity expert as helping my clients identify the areas in which they’ve been tolerating inconveniences far too long. Recent client situations have included:

Carla* never could find gift certificates when she was ready to use them. They were always in drawers, or in the greeting cards with which they were given. We collected all of them and then separated restaurant gift certificates from shopping gift certificates. The former might be used on any given evening when she and her spouse were already out of the house and might drop in somewhere to eat, so we created a wallet for dining out cards. For the latter, given that Carla only shopped on Saturday, we clipped them together and put them in the Saturday slot of her tickler file. (Every new gift card or certificate went to one of those two places from then on.)
Joe always had trouble figuring out how to adjust the settings on his DVR. It didn’t help that his box of manuals included instructions for every gadget and device he’d owned since the early 1970s. We purged all of the manuals that applied to defunct gadgets, created folders in the “household” section of the Family Files with one folder for each type of technology (computers, entertainment, kitchen, etc.) But then we scanned the DVR instructions that plagued him as a PDF and put it in the Notes app on his phone so it was even easier to access (and enlarge).
Jenny’s pantry was crowded with ingredients, including a wide variety of items marked “gluten-free.” But nobody in Jenny’s household was avoiding gluten! It turns out that an occasional weekend houseguest cooked while visiting and she needed gluten-free ingredients. We rearranged the pantry so that the occasional guest had her own labeled shelf, and everyone was happier.
Patsy saw that when she’d click on a link, her browser would sometimes give her a “web kit error” or just a blank page. She’d been copying the link from one browser (Safari) to another (Chrome) where it would work just fine, but lately, she’d been having to do that more and more, increasing her frustration. Upgrading her operating system allowed her to upgrade her browser, and she no longer had to struggle.

* All names have been changed to protect client confidentiality.

Sometimes professional organizers are dealing with clutter, but all organizers end up dealing with obstacles to productivity. The problem is that we’re all more likely to ignore a problem that can’t be fixed immediately.

When we’re focused on the task at hand, whether that’s work or school or driving or parenting, the thing we’re doing is more likely to have a deadline or at least be time-based. We postpone removing the obstacle until such time as it becomes too large or problematic to withstand. This is what happens when people keep driving with the “Check engine” light glowing on their dash panel.

RECENT TOLERATIONS TACKLED

As I wrote about in Organize Away Frustration: Practice The Only Good Kind of “Intolerance,” many of the “intolerables” in our lives can be conquered with a little research and applying one of the following:

A product
A service
A change in behavior
A change in attitude

In that post, I shared how I was almost unrelievedly ecstatic to find a new kind of shower curtain hook that made changing out shower curtain liners much easier on my short-of-stature self. Today, I’d like to share just a few recent examples of how applying a combination of solutions have removed annoyances.

A Tale of Two TVs

Do you have any of those old, boxy CRT TVs in your home? I did. In fact, I had three, which is kind of ridiculous when you realize I’m a singleton. You see, I’d had a television in my living room and another in my bedroom. When the bedroom TV died (so long ago that I’m embarrassed to discuss the exact date), I moved the living room TV to the bedroom.

When I met a friend for lunch one day, she surprised me by having brought one of her old, boxy CRT TVs for my use! To this day, I’m flummoxed as to how she ever got it into her car, and though I recall basically rolling/sliding it up the carpeted stairs of my apartment, I’ve got no idea how I ever managed to get it from my car to my own front door. (Perhaps this is like how they claim women forget the pain of childbirth?)

Eventually, I got a modern flat-screen TV for my living room. But I also embraced the advice not to have screens in the bedroom (to avoid that sleep-stealing blue light) and got rid of cable in that room. Thus, I had a broken TV, a gifted (no longer used) TV, and an unused TV. All on the second floor of my home.

Did I mention these are big, heavy, boxy TVs?

Remember how I said I had my hot water heater replaced last year? Well, one of those TVs took up most of the empty space at the top of the staircase, and so even though our apartment complex had been pretty insistent that we were never to ask the maintenance men to carry or remove anything unrelated to their work, the guys decided that it would be to everyone’s benefit to get that one TV out. Yay! But that still left two.

To be fair, I wasn’t always just tolerating the annoyance of having two unused, dust-catching, space-hogging CRT TVs in my home. I had called the various junk haulers in town, but they wanted a frustratingly large fee for something that I could have done myself, had I only been stronger, had slightly longer arms to get fully around the TVs, and had been a bit taller (so I could have seen the stairs over the top of the TVs and not feared tumbling down).

Yes, even we professional organizers fall prey to those self-imposed obstacles. Had I thrown a little money at the problem, it would have been solved back then.

I also called many non-profits, but nobody wanted donated CRTs.

Fast forward to late August, when I contacted Chattanooga’s Always Be Recycling. The owners, a couple who’d moved from Pennsylvania, opened their business here just at the start of the pandemic. I’d networked online with Leann Cinaglia to see how their services might dovetail with my clients’ needs. The last time we’d spoken, they weren’t able to handle CRTs because of the difficulty in recycling them, but on a day where the frustration had just gotten too high, I called to see if they might have any suggestions for other solutions. And that’s where the magic happened!

It turns out that annoyingly boxy 20″ CRT TVs have become popular with the retro gaming crowd! After one short phone call, Always Be Recycling’s co-owner Jamison Cinaglia and his associate Bret (pictured above) arrived on time the next day and quickly removed both TVs and oodles of old landline phones, cables, and cords as well — at no charge. (Had I lived significantly farther from their venue, there would have been a fee, but significantly less than the various junk haulers had quoted me.)

Throughout the entire interaction, they were professional, careful, friendly, and polite. This bodes well for knowing they’ll treat my clients, especially the elderly and/or delicate ones, with respect and compassion.

So, this is a reminder that sometimes, the key is to continue to ask for input on solutions until the right one appears.

No Longer Hot Under the Collar

Not all intolerances are about excess or clutter. A major frustration in my life is heat. (And no, that’s not specific to the air conditioning and refrigerator woes.) I’m just always too hot. I hydrate. I wear temperature-appropriate clothing. But no matter what, even my head perspires and my hair frizzes and I end up looking like Art Garfunkel. (No offense, Art.)

And yes, I realize that a Buffalonian living in the Deep South might have found a more obvious solution to that problem over three-plus decades.

I’ve tried those evaporative cooling neck scarves and “chilly towels.”

Honestly, they just end up feeling damp and heavy.

However, in addition to my own research, I’ve made it a habit of telling everyone I know, particularly people who participate in outdoor activities, that heat is the non-clutter bane of my existence. So, friends are on the lookout for solutions on my behalf.

Recently, Paper Mommy was at the hair salon and saw a stylist wearing something that looked like headphones around her neck. When my mom casually asked, the stylist enthused about this life-changing product, a fan that you wear around your neck. Paper Mommy bought me one (in pink) that very day!

Two days later, I received a Jisulife bladeless neck cooler. (Due to autocorrect, I accidentally praised it to my BFF as a “bloodless” neck cooler. Thankfully, it’s also that.)

You place it around your neck as if you’d just removed headphones, and the three-speed fan gently blows cooling air upward, along the neckline and up into your hairline (without causing any tangles or mess). I’ve used it several times to great effect at client locations where the combination of the kind of work we we’re doing and the actual temperature made the heat intolerable for me.

It’s battery operated and rechargeable via the included USB-C charging cable. The manufacturer notes that the 4000mAh large capacity batteries provide anywhere from 4-16 working hours of service, depending on which speed levels you use.

There are a number of brands with similar styles, but this one ranges from $32-37 and comes in dark blue, dark green, grey, and pink.

They Say Nothing Can Live in a Vacuum

Recently, my longtime hair stylist (hey, this continues a theme!) left the salon where I’ve been going for years and moved to her own location. In this new place, several providers (offering a wide variety of beauty services) have one collaborative location. All of them have their own private pods or units, about the size of a single or double dorm room. As I’m still wearing a mask whenever I’m inside anywhere, and trying to avoid being in close contact with strangers, I love this bright and cheery, but private space.

Terri Hart of RoseMary Beauty Company in a photo at her old salon

My fabulous stylist (shoutout, Terri!) has decorated her salon space to make it inviting. At my first visit, I applied my professional organizer curiosity (with her permission, of course) and marveled at all of the scaled-down storage and gadgets. There’s a cozy snack bar with a lovely little fridge and coffee maker, cabinets and cupboards, a tiny towel warmer, and all sorts of appealing products.

At one point, I looked toward the floor and saw what I jokingly guessed was a Doctor Who Dalek-adjacent gadget. OK, I assumed was either a Bluetooth speaker, humidifier, or some kind of air cleaner. But nope.

It’s an EyeVac Home Touchless Vacuum. The prior salon had been designed with one of those in-wall central vacuum systems. When homes have central vacuum systems, you can usually plug a hose into the wall in any of a variety of spots and attach the appropriate devices. In the salon, it was a matter of sweeping hair clippings up to the edge of baseboard and shwooooop it would get sucked in and away to some mysterious central location. But that was a big salon specially built for the purpose.

Terri found her EyeVac Home Touchless Vacuum through a site for salon products. She simply sweeps clippings up to the front of this little robot-looking dude, and motion detectors sense the schmutz! (There are buttons on the top for manual control when you want it.) Debris is stored inside an environmentally-safe canister until you’re ready to empty it, at which point it’s much like emptying a shredder.

It comes in six colors (Designer White, Tuxedo Black, Matte Black, Silver, Rose Gold, and Sea Glass), measures 8″ long x 13″ wide by 18″ high, comes with a six-foot electrical cord, and uses dual HEPA filters. It’s available for $129 from EyeVac and Amazon, which is currently offering a $10 clickable coupon.

Had Terri not found this nifty tool, I’m sure she would have figured out a sweeping/vacuuming, but by acquiring this up-front, she avoided having a frustrating, untenable “toleration.” She also never has to bend down or deal with a dustpan! The company doesn’t have a YouTube channel, but the late, lamented (and slightly resurrected) gadget site The Grommet shows it off to nice effect here:

Cooler still, in the days after seeing this EyeVac Home Touchless Vacuum in action, I’d been mentioning it (as well as the bladeless neck cooler) to clients. And with this, we have solved so many frustrations in household with babies and toddlers who drop food from their high chairs, cats who swoop bits of kitty litter all over the room, and crafters who drop bits of cuttings, sequins, and yarn-y bits, etc.

Instead of schlepping out a full-size or handheld vacuum or having to bend or lug, a quick and simple swoop of a broom right up to the bottom edge of this little Dalek cousin and all of your schmutzy clutter will be exterminated!

HOW TO STOP TOLERATING THE INTOLERABLE

Nobody’s house or office or computer gets cluttered overnight. Ignoring or avoiding frustrations for weeks or months or years just allows those frustrations to be build. So, I leave you with an update of the advice I offered a little over two years ago:

Google (or use your favorite search engine) to see who has created content about your problem, tweaking your search terms to find what you need. There are tricks to improve your searches on Google, on DuckDuckGo, and on Bing.
Search on YouTube (which is ideal for solving “how to” problems, whether for plumbing repair, tying a tie, or fixing a stuck spacebar). A few years ago, someone stole my driver’s side mirror, yanking it from the electrical connections. (Who does that?!) A clear, concise YouTube video allowed me to purchase just the mirror and replace it myself, rather than having to take it to mechanic and pay for service.
Search in an online forum like (the less dodgy parts of) Reddit, Facebook or community groups, or neighborhood groups. I’ve seen people ask for everything from how to get a car out of locked garage to how to get teenagers to respond to texts.
Ask for suggestions on your social media pages. (I learned from TikTok that you’re not supposed to roll/fold modern sleeping bags before putting them in compression carrying bags; you’re supposed to smoosh them in. Who knew?)
Visit or call your local public library. Librarians are experts at finding information. (Let’s say your problem requires a tool, and you don’t want to buy a specialized tool. Did you know many cities have tool libraries?) You can also use the Library of Congress’ Ask A Librarian for general and specialized help solving those intolerable problems.
Ask a professional organizer. We know stuff. (We professional organizers get asked all sorts of things. “How do I fold a fitted sheet?” “What’s the best label-maker?” “How do I pay off my mortgage faster?” “Where can I donate this random item that’s of no use to me but might make someone else’s life magical?” Ask your PO!

And, if we’ve learned anything this week, consider asking your hair stylist!

Toxic Productivity In the Workplace and What Comes Next

Posted on: June 13th, 2022 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

WHAT IS TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY?

Productivity is a good thing, right? You’re hitting the goals you (or your team, or your boss) set, you’re working effectively (on the right things) and efficiently (zooming steadily toward your accomplishments). What could be bad?

Toxic productivity is when that drive to be productive is taken to unhealthy extremes. In a toxic work environment, employees lose motivation and self-esteem due to the external forces created by employer policies and/or management, as immediately recognizable in the now-classic Office Space.

However, toxic productivity can also stem from unhealthy expectations for what personal productivity should look like, and this can be driven by the workplace, by parental and educational influences since childhood, and even by genetic makeup.

Self-generated toxic productivity reads as workaholism, a drive not only to be productive at all times (and sometimes at all costs), but to appear productive at all times. In the past year, it has been called productivity dysmorphia, an expression which if not coined, was certainly popularized by Anna Codrea-Rado. (We’ll dig deeper into her article next time!)

Because it is the impulse for productivity as a process, rather than the achievement of the end result, that characterizes a sense of success, for someone suffering toxic productivity, there’s no sense of satisfaction. For the workaholic, there’s always an aching pit in the stomach that the end result could have been better or that they could have accomplished more. There’s no joy in crossing the finish line, because there’s always another finish line.

Those dealing with workplace-driven toxic productivity may fear losing seniority status or career security if productivity decreases. But for those whose identities are tied to what they have accomplished, self-esteem is often derived from getting stuff done, so it can be hard to find a personal off-switch. Work/life balance — a dubious concept in the first place — is hard to achieve when you identify your value in life by what you achieve at work.

For those whose identities are tied to what they have accomplished, self-esteem is often derived from getting stuff done, so it can be hard to find a personal off-switch. Share on X

Are you asking, “What’s the problem?” Focusing on productivity means high achievement, and if your sense of self is measured by what you achieve, how will you ever get off that roller coaster? How will you ever stop chasing the high of “having done the thing” you set out to do? When do you get to breathe?

If you always feel that you should be getting more done, you may feel guilty when you’re not producing — and this can include needing that sense of accomplishment through housework, hobbies, or any competitive impulse where the drive eclipses the enjoyment.

If you feel more and more worn out rather than energized by whatever you do, that’s toxic. And like any poison, it will drain you of your vitality.

An obsession with productivity can not only lead to a lack of productivity, but can eventually cause leisure sickness, where during your downtime, with family, or while on vacation, you’re unable to relax and enjoy the moment, as you may become disconnected from the idea of existing without working toward a productive end.

Today’s post is going to focus on toxic productivity in the workplace, and what’s being done to countermand it. Next week, we’re going to dig deeper and look at how we can target toxic productivity and productivity dysmorphia at the individual and societal levels to be productivite in a more healthy way.

TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY AROUND THE WORLD

Have you ever heard of 996? China made the news last year because many workers were on a 996 schedule, working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week!

Meanwhile, in Japan, there’s a corporate culture that leads to workers performing up to 80 hours of overtime, often unpaid, each month. It’s called Karōshi, “death by overwork,” and it’s marked by an extreme performance of company loyalty, both on and off the clock. Employees, legally granted twenty vacation days per year, regularly fail to take half of them.

For what it’s worth, this overwork doesn’t help Japan’s productivity, which falls behind the United States, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Canada.

Lest you think that this is only a problem in the Far East, be assured that this kind of toxic productivity is alive and not-so-well right here in the United States. For example, according to Project Time Off, in 2016, 55% of Americans did not use all of their paid time off. That’s 658 million unused vacation days, one-third of which did not roll over to the next calendar year or get reimbursed financially. Poof. That time off just disappeared, and the dollar value of that time went into company coffers.

In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year on record, 768 million vacation days went unused — and less than a quarter of Americans used all of their available paid vacation! Oddly, a 2019 study showed that one in three Americans would be willing to take a cut in pay in order to get unlimited vacation days. This is pretty puzzling. Workers want more vacation, but they’re unwilling or unable to take all of the paid days they have!

Why might this be? A recent TikTok (sigh, yes, I’ve become one of those people) showed an imagined conversation. A representative of Human Resources was cheerleading the advent of summer work hours, where staff would be allowed to leave at 3 p.m. on Fridays. Dubious, the worker asked if workload expectations would be scaled back accordingly.

The “boss” character noted that staff would be encouraged to work late on Thursday evenings to make up the workload. After the employee pointed out the irony, the boss character noted that, simply put, they wanted both the same level of productivity and credit for offering work/life balance.

The grim humor aside, this is the reality for most workers, and it’s not just about vacation hours. More and more, I’m seeing articles about “sad desk salads,” popularized by the Jessica Grosse novel of the same name.

From Life Is Too Short for Work Salad to The “Sad Desk Lunch” is Now Even More Depressing as Employees Return to the Pandemic-Era Office to this older (not-entirely-comedic) video, Sad Desk Lunch: Is This How You Want to Die?, the toxic drive for productivity (or to appear productive) is dangerous.

The problem isn’t salad, but dining at one’s desk while continuing to work through lunch. We know the continued sitting is bad for physical health. The lack of socializing (even for introverts) and inability to take cognitive breaks from labor (and physical breaks from the workplace to get fresh air) are bad for mental health.

None of this is new. Workers’ fears of being replaceable and the corporate message of being a “company man” or “company woman” have been around for a long while. And now, there’s an overwhelming uncertainty as we struggle through a third summer of COVID and into inflation and a prospective recession. (Sorry, this isn’t the usual chirpy Paper Doll topic!)

Of course, if there’s been one positive of the these past 2 1/2 years, it’s that workers are no longer willing to be taken advantage of. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are fewer cashier lanes open in stores, and most restaurants have signs on the front door, warning patrons that they are short-staffed. While I don’t want to get political, I completely agree with this tweet:

Periodic reminder: there is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of jobs that treat workers with dignity and an excess of corporate greed.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 10, 2022

CONQUERING TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY FROM THE TOP DOWN

The tweet’s point is apt, but the question becomes, how can we maintain healthy productivity in the face of corporate greed?

In the middle of the 20th century, that was a role filled by unions. Now, productivity will be controlled in three ways: by governments setting policies for the betterment of society, by companies recognizing their long-term self-interest in treating employees better, and by individuals either working from within to change company culture or leaving for different workplaces or starting their own businesses.

(Full disclosure: A little more than twenty years ago, I left a toxic industry, and a particularly toxic workplace, and became a professional organizer. The impact on my physical and mental health was an absolute net positive. But, of course, becoming self-employed is not a panacea for everyone, as we’ll discuss in greater detail in next week’s post.)

Japanese efforts to counter Karōshi were iffy at best; they mandated that employees took their vacation days and set corporate office lights on timers to go off at 10 p.m. And, like the TikTok example, they shortened work hours on the last Friday of some months, but it turns out this was more of a marketing effort to get workers to use their off hours to shop!

So what might actually work?

Curtailed Office Hours and Remote Work

You may have seen on the news last week that 70 companies of varying sizes, from mom-and-pop restaurants to corporate entities, in the United Kingdom are testing 4-day workweeks this summer. Like the TikTok example with a token carving away of two hours, these blue-collar and white-collar workers will be paid for their usual (generally, 40) hours per week, but will only have to show up for 80% (so, generally 32 hours); in most cases, the same level of productivity will be expected.

On the one hand, this will give parents the opportunity spend more time with their children, and all workers the chance to make medical appointments and attend to other life necessities. On the other hand, if workers are on-site (whether in offices, restaurants, or stores), they’ll lack the appealing flexibility of work-from-home jobs that became so popular during the earlier stages of the pandemic.

And the research does overwhelmingly show that WFH office workers did not need micromanaging and were as, or more, productive than when they were in the office. Indeed, an Owl Labs study found that, “On average, those who work from home spend 10 minutes less a day being unproductive, work one more day a week, and are 47% more productive.”

That said, there are people who missed the camaraderie of the office and the transitional headspace of commutes. Remote work is one way to improve working satisfaction and defuse the toxic productivity bomb, but it isn’t a solution for everyone.

Better Work/Life Boundary Expectations

In 2016, France took a different approach. Recognizing that the digital, always-on era means that office employees can’t achieve “work/life balance” if there’s increasingly little daylight between their “work obligations” and their actual lives. So, France amended its labor laws such that in any company of 50 employees or more, you cannot email an employee after official work hours.

BOOM!

French Café Photo by Stephanie LeBlanc on Unsplash

Imagine leaving work, going to a café, and not having to be bothered about work until the next workday!

This “right to disconnect” rule isn’t the only thing France has done to improve quality of life. All workers get 30 paid vacation days a year and 16 weeks of fully paid family leave. For comparison, the United States has no nationally guaranteed paid vacation policy and no national policy guaranteeing any paid family leave. Just saying.

Oh, and in case you didn’t make it to 1:48 into the video at the top of this post, France is second only to the US in terms of productivity (GDP per hour worked).

A year after France created this right to disconnect, Italy did the same, and then Spain! In 2018, Belgium followed suit, announcing that 65,000 federal civil servants would no longer have to answer calls or emails from their bosses outside of working hours. Portugal passed a labor code banning employers from pestering employees during their “rest period” except for emergencies, and this applies to both office workers and remote workers. Managers who breach the policy can be fined!

Oh, and last year? Ireland instituted a right to disconnect rule applying to all employees. Your boss can’t contact you by email, phone, or text during your off hours.

Does your workplace (or nation) have any policies that ameliorate the tendency toward toxicity? Please share in the comments, below.

Next week, we’re going to continue this series by delving more deeply into what we, individually, can do to shut down personal tendencies toward toxic productivity and reverse productivity dysmorphia. We will examine:

Healthy productivity strategies
Ways to unplug from work and from a sense of obligation to do rather than just be
Beneficial habits and routines
A reading list for seeing yourself, and what you accomplish, in a more wholesome way.

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Archive for ‘Motivation’ Category

How to Use Cathedral Thinking and Intentional Words to Organize Your Year

WHY DON’T NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS WORK (FOR MOST PEOPLE)?

Unrealistic Expectations

Black-and-White Thinking

Shame-based Motivation

Lack of Strategic Planning

Instead, Make Real Change Through Intentions and Habits

GO LONG; MAKE A CHANGE

Cathedral Thinking

Make a Change

USE YOUR WORDS TO ORGANIZE THE LIFE YOU WANT

Find Your Inspiration

Paper Doll’s Words of Intention

Paper Doll Post:

Like this:

24 Smart Ways to Get More Organized and Productive in 2024

Happy New Year! Happy GO Month!

PUT LAST YEAR AWAY

1) Make many happy returns!

2) Purge your holiday cards.

3) Update your contacts.

BOX UP YOUR INBOXES

4) Delete (most of) your old voicemails.

5) Clear Your Email Inboxes

6) Purge all of your other tangible and digital inboxes.

HIT THE PAPER TRAIL

7) Embrace being a VIP about your VIPs.

8) Create your tax prep folder now so you’ll be ready for April 15th.

SANITIZE WHAT YOU DIGITIZE

9) Delete the apps you never use.

10) Unsubscribe to all of those emails trying to sell you stuff.

11) Close the browser tabs.

PERK UP YOUR PLANNING

12) Pick a planning system that works for you.

13) Update every detail in your planner for the entire year.

14) Refresh your commitment to your planning system…daily.

CONTROL YOUR MONEY, HONEY!

15) Wall off your wallet from clutter.

16) Cash in your coins.

17) Get the big picture.

PRESERVE YOUR LEGACY

18) Preserve and secure preserve your photos.

19) Secure your digital assets and your digital legacy.

20) Declare bankruptcy on clutter debt.

21) Invite support and accountability.

22) Take care of yourself.

23) Figure out what you want to do once you feel more organized and productive.

24) Let go of the need to be perfect.

Paper Doll Post:

Like this:

Paper Doll’s 23 Ideas for a More Organized & Productive 2023

CREATE A FRESH MINDSET

1) Learn last year’s lessons to build next year’s success.

2) Don’t take my word for it. Listen to James Clear.

3) Make strides towards delight, too!

4) Collect good days — literally!

5) Remember that tiny tasks count toward a more productive life.

START PLANNING YOUR YEAR

6) Select your planning system.

7) Move into your new planner now.

8) Don’t forget to plan time for your activities.

9) Nurture your commitment to your planning system…every day.

10) Know where your time is going — before it gets away from you!

BECOME YOUR OWN MONEY HONEY

11) Make a TAX PREP folder. Actually, make two.

12) Stop hiding from your financial truths.

13) Get a financial accountability partner!

BECOME A VIP WITH YOUR VIPs

14) Get your vital documents in order.

15) Put your foot on the brake before automatically renewing your car insurance.

16) Clean out your wallet and make an inventory.

EMBRACE PAPER DOLL‘S CLASSIC PRINCIPLES ABOUT ORGANIZING

17) Follow the Ice Cream Rule.

18) Everything should have a home, but not everything has to live with you.