Archive for ‘Psychological’ Category

Organizing in Retrospect: A Confessional Look Back at 2020

Posted on: November 23rd, 2020 by Julie Bestry | 18 Comments

I can’t imagine that 2020 was anyone’s favorite year. A global pandemic, a contentious election cycle, civil upheaval undergirding fights for justice, and unpredictable macro- and micro-economies were not on anyone’s wish list. Indeed, even the idea of a wish list seems preposterous now, as Robyn Schall explains: 

The year had other dashed hopes, disappointments, and dark moments. The National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals had to cancel April’s annual conference with only a few weeks’ advanced warning. A “girls’ getaway” to Ireland vanished. My inspiration to write disappeared as well, as writer’s block was my sole visitor in 2020.

Certainly the worst of all, Paper Mommy fractured two vertebrae just a few weeks into quarantine, leading to months of agony. I miss my mom, I miss my clients, I miss seeing people’s smiles. If anyone asks, tell them Paper Doll says this year has been yucky.

I miss my mom, I miss my clients, I miss seeing people's smiles. If anyone asks, tell them Paper Doll says this year has been yucky. Share on X

IS HINDSIGHT 20/20 IN 2020?

Many of us in the productivity realm encourage our clients to pick a word or phrase for the coming year to help guide our mission. I’ll admit, I’m as guilty of magical thinking as the next person. I had feared that “Abundance” could bring an abundance of negative things. In retrospect, then, my choice of “Ample” seems almost absurd. (I’d even developed a funny social media tagline. “Ample: It’s not just for bosoms anymore!”) This year had an ample supply of absurdities.

Being a professional organizer and productivity specialist involves working from a position of positivity. Indeed, as we approach Thanksgiving, we’re all supposed to focus on gratitude, on the experiences and people who made the prior year worthwhile. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been finding it hard to reflect on this year and find positivity. Maybe it’s the same for you?

Some years seem best dealt with by offering a Viking funeral. “Set 2020 aflame and put it out to sea,” I often thought as March 243rd dragged on. However, my accountability partner and awesome colleague Dr. Melissa Gratias recently wrote a post called Taking Inventory of 2020 with Duct Tape, Henry the VIII, and Forrest Gump that put her own year in perspective. For her, this was an exercise in silencing her inner critic.

Read Melissa’s post, then come back and sing some Herman’s Hermits before you spend the next 5 weeks hearing nothing but Jingle Bells and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

We’re often quick to criticize ourselves for all that we did not get done; this is even more true in 2020. I touched on this in my favorite post that I wrote this year, The Now Normal: When the New Normal Changes Quickly. There, I said simply that “It’s OK to not be OK.” It’s OK if you’ve had eight months at home with no commute and you still haven’t written the Great American Novel or downsized your closet into a capsule wardrobe.

Similarly, Melissa reminds readers in her post that our days, our years, and our lives are not merely the lowlights and highlights, but the a rich tapestry of everything that happened. To that, Paper Mommy would add that it’s important to consider all the things that didn’t happen, but not in a “my trip got canceled” way. In response to the question, “Tell me something good that happened today,” Paper Mommy has been known to respond, “Well, nothing bad happened today.” She’s not damning with faint praise. That’s her brand of positivity.

In response to, 'Tell me something good that happened today,' @PaperMommy has been known to respond, 'Well, nothing bad happened today.' She's not damning with faint praise. That's her brand of positivity. Share on X

So, to echo Melissa’s efforts, I thought I’d share some of my activities. (That said, my inner critic cuts me a lot more slack than hers. I’m just amazed we’ve made it to Thanksgiving week!) 

TALKING (LITERALLY) ABOUT ORGANIZING AND PRODUCTIVITY

For much of this year, I’ve been unable to visit with my clients. I’ve touched base by phone and email, making sure they’re healthy and supported, and I’ve added virtual organizing and productivity services to my offerings. But the main way I’ve been able to share my thoughts has been via the internet.

Ray Sidney-Smith is a productivity/technology/management triple-threat consultant and trainer. I met him when we trained together as Evernote Certified Consultants, and he has become a bigwig in this area. In October, he asked me to be a panelist on the Anything But Idle podcast he hosts with Augusto Pinaud, bilingual productivity coach and all-around sweetie. Here’s the video, but you can listen at the episode page and subscribe via the links on the sidebar. Don’t be too surprised when I geek-out about paper planners.

Although my Halloween costume as a Work-From-Home solopreneur wasn’t quite as creative as Ray’s or Augusto’s, you won’t doubt my enthusiasm. Plus, my co-panelist was Penny Zenker, Focusologist, motivational speaker, and (Halloween) pirate. Thanks to meeting her on the Ray and Augusto’s show, I’ve now been a guest on two upcoming episodes of Penny’s Take Back Time podcast. (Watch this space for official scheduling.)

Earlier in the year, I was also guest on Maria White‘s Organize Your Stuff podcast, where Maria and I had a long talk about one of my favorite paper organizing topics, tickler files. (You do know about my ebook, Tickle Yourself Organized, right?) 

Listen to my episode on Maria’s show here, and be sure to subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your juicy podcast goodness.

WRITING ABOUT ORGANIZING AND PRODUCTIVITY

As I mentioned, I had a pretty severe case of writer’s block this year. Or, actually, multiple cases, as it tended to come and go. Thus, I did not write the second edition of my first book, or the first edition of my second book.

However, when I was asked by others to write guest posts, ghostwrite, or contribute advice, I did manage to shoo the writer’s block away. Often, what I was asked to write was about organizing things other than paper, which helped clear the cobwebs. For example:

I wrote about how to keep kitchen pantries clean and organized in Home Organization: Tips from Professional Organizers for Porch.com.

When Redfin asked me to talk about how to tame the chaos in your child’s room for How to Get Your House in Order without Buying Anything New, I wrote more than they could fit, and now I’ve got a chapter for a book I hadn’t even anticipate writing when the pandemic began.

For Realtor.com, I held forth on 4 Types of Clutter: How Many Are You Hanging Onto?, including sentimental clutter, painful clutter, “sunk cost fallacy” clutter, and all that clutter related to one’s self-image. 

And I was especially proud to have my advice appear in four different issues of Real Simple Magazine this year in pieces penned by Leslie Corona. If you’re a subscriber or picked these issues up on the newsstand, or if your public library is offering holds on magazines, you can find these articles in your print issues:

Organizing Challenge: Stow Your Purses and Totes in the February 2020 issue, pages 52-53, also appears in truncated form online as 3 Smart Ways to Keep Your Handbags and Totes Organized. Researching this topic was so much fun, it inspired me to write Organized Purses? It’s In the Bag!

For Real Simple’s big May 2020 “Get It Done” section, I contributed to Get it Done: Refresh Your Medicine Cabinet, page 58. Though the advice pre-dated COVID, it ended up being timely.

                

The most involved Real Simple piece was Your Road Map to a Tidy Garage, found on pages 58-60 in the October 2020 issue, and I was delighted to be tagged as a Real Simple “expert” along with NAPO colleagues Scott Roewer and Lisa Zaslow!

Long before the pandemic, Real Simple had asked me to weigh in on advice and products for organizing technology for travel. Travel soon became a hazily recalled habit of the past, like visiting malt shops or riding street cars, and that article never saw the light of day. Happily, a bit of the advice found new life as November 2020’s Organizing Challenge: Down to the Wires on page 50.

HELPING SOMEONE ELSE BE PRODUCTIVE

As I mentioned at the end of The Now Normal post, one of the things I did after lockdown began was edit Melissa Gratias’ book, Captain Corona and the 19 COVID Warriors. My role was small (Melissa is already a great writer) but satisfying, especially as the book took off. First local newspapers picked up the story, then People Magazine. A smile still spreads across my face when I hear Akil Jackson narrate Captain Corona.

And finally, even with writer’s block refusing to pack its bag and go, I feel really good about the blog posts I wrote this year, whether I was sharing advice for getting through a global pandemic or guidance for organizing time to read, or eliminating “tolerations” by using a shower curtain hook shaped like Marlo Thomas in That Girl. 

LEARNING A LITTLE SOMETHING

In March, nobody could have imagined how much of our time would be spent tucked away at home, but I did anticipate that client work would be delayed for at least a few months. At first, my enthusiasm for continuing education was boundless, and I took a wide variety of NAPO courses and independent classes on:

Productivity — Oh my goodness, there were so many classes on productivity systems and tools, including the Getting Things Done rubric and using Evernote. (I watched so many webinars presented by my genius colleagues Stacey Harmon and the aforementioned Ray Sidney-Smith!)

Special topics in organizing — Like most of America, I found myself locked in multiple Zoom rooms a day. I took live classes like Color and Space Planning In Organizing: Personality, Autism, and ADHD, and Making Your Memorabilia Meaningful, and watched recordings of classes I’d abandoned live when technology failures amped up my stress level. (Was any sentence used more often than “You’re on mute!” this year?)

Higher Self coursework — I watched a recording of a NAPO University class called Bringing Meditation and Mindfulness Into Organizing and Productivity. By this point, probably late May, around the time I should have been in Ireland, my patience for Zoom coursework reached a low ebb. I was failing at being at all meditative or mindful! Hence, like Melissa (and half of the people I know), I took the exceptional (and free) Yale course, The Science of Well-Being, reinvigorating a passion for learning positive psychology (if not an interest in meditation).

Personal development — Although I’ve been studying Italian through Duolingo for two and a half years, by the time the pandemic started, I’d fallen into the habit of practicing all the lessons that came before everything got really hard.

Let’s just say, it was more fun translating “Non puoi finché non finisci la cena” (i.e., “You can’t until you finish your dinner” and “La mia scimmia mangia perché ha fame” (i.e., “My monkey eats because he is hungry”) than it was to push myself into learning the present perfect and past imperfect tenses.

I realized that even though people were quoting The Now Normal back to me, my embrace of “now” didn’t have to mean I only spoke in the present tense!

I also became a little paranoid as Duolingo started feeding me sentences that hit a little too close to home:

  • Noi mangiamo molti tipi di formaggio. (We eat many types of cheese.)
  • Ho una cucina; però non cucino. (I have a kitchen; however, I don’t cook.)
  • Io mangio il formaggio fritto. (I eat fried cheese.)

When you stop interacting with actual people, it feels a little sad when your language learning app knows you so well.

GIVING CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE

There’s still a little more than a month of this year. I don’t know whether to expect sea monsters or fireworks. I still believe that “It’s OK to not be OK,” and think we all deserve credit for making it this far. If you’re having trouble remembering your accomplishments, ask a friend or two. Chances are that they’re much more observant – and less critical – than your (or Melissa’s) inner critic.

Finally, just in case Melissa’s discussion of Ghost and my clip of Herman’s Hermits wasn’t enough, no reference to “I’m Henry VIII, I am” is complete without this rendition from The Patty Duke Show, the best darn program about identical cousins ever made!

Until next time, I wish you a happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving.

Paper Doll Peeks Behind the Curtain with Superstar Coach, Author & Speaker Leslie Josel

Posted on: October 19th, 2020 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

Today, we’re talking with friend of the blog, Leslie Josel. You may already know Leslie from her business, Order Out of Chaos, and her various adventures in productivity. Her newest book was released this month. In this post, we’re going to peek behind the curtain on this multi-talented expert on ADHD, student procrastination, and getting everyone around to her to sit up and take notice of what she has to say.

Leslie, we met almost a decade ago at a NAPO conference, but we almost met at college. You and I missed each other at Cornell University by just a few months in the 1980s, the decade of big hair and oversized Firenza sweaters. Could you tell Paper Doll readers about your early life, college years, and the start of your professional life? How did they prepare you for a career as a professional organizer and ADHD productivity coach, as well as inventor, speaker, and published author?

 

I so wish we had met met at Cornell! That would have been fun. To save your readers from a long story, I’ll share this. I was a Human Development & Family Studies major. And not until I started my business did I pull all that old learning out of my brain. Trust me, it had laid dormant for many years. And I really believe it’s why I focused my business initially on the chronically disorganized, hoarding population, and of course, ADHD families.

For me, I was less about organizing and more about the human dynamics of it all. And if I’m being completely honest, I never really liked “organizing” and if I’m being really honest, I wasn’t that good at it. I was much better at helping individuals understand the root of their pain and things like that. Which in hindsight makes sense of why I stopped “organizing” years ago and went the way of coaching. And when I was a sophomore, I was required to take a public speaking class. It was like the mother ship calling me home. I LOVED it! I liked engaging on that level. And I guess I was pretty good at it since the professor asked me to TA the class the following semester.

And one other fun fact. My mom died when I was very young — ok, that’s not the fun fact. But my dad really raised me as a single dad. And he used to say to me ALL the time, “If you can write and you can speak in front of a group of people, then you can do anything.” Probably that was more true back then, but it definitely focused me. I always wrote in every job I ever had, now that I think about it. I was a speech writer for the head of an entertainment company. I was a publicist right out of school and I was ALWAYS the one given the writing assignments. It was just a natural outlet for me.

 

What would you say was the turning point that helped you identify your true calling and fine-tune what you do?

So, organizing is not really my true calling. But it helped me get to where I am today. Organizing was a way to have calm in a life growing up that was anything but. My mom was terminally ill my whole life so things in my life and home were out of control. Systems and lists spoke to me. It was always what did best. Give me the big project and I loved it. Keeping on top of all the moving parts was like a big puzzle for me.

But it wasn’t until my son was 5 that my true calling was presented. He was diagnosed with ADHD, and you need to remember there wasn’t anything out there like there is now. There was no “internet,” no magazines or conferences, things like that. I had to rely on my own instincts and gut to figure out how to untangle his world.

You can read my whole story on my site, but I redid my whole house top to bottom so he could function and thrive at his best. A friend saw what I did, sent me to a patient of hers, and two weeks later I got four calls asking me to come do what I did in their homes. I turned to my hubby and said, I don’t do this for a living and he said, “You do now!” And that’s how I got started. Going house to house by myself working with families to set up systems and structures to help their children with ADHD. Remember, organizing wasn’t a whole thing yet — this was 2004 — and organizing ADHD even less so.

© 2020 Order Out of Chaos

Now 17 years later, I’m an academic/life coach for teens and college students with ADHD and LD [learning disabilities]. And my son is 22. So you might say Order Out Out of Chaos and Eli have grown up together. But becoming a coach for both kids and parents was the missing piece to my “journey.” It allowed me to make my business virtual, serve a global audience with a wide range of products and programs, and connect with those that need the most help.

So if I were to say what the turning point was for me — it would be two things. Becoming a coach and turning my business into a virtual one. Life changing. 

 

Until recently, you were probably best-known for inventing the multi-award-winning Academic Planner: A Tool for Time Management. Congratulations on winning the 2020 Family Choice Award, honoring the best products for children and families, by the way. How did your stardom as an inventor come to fruition?

Seriously, Julie? There is no stardom when it comes to inventing planners! Trust me when I say I don’t have a superpower when it comes to this. In fact, fun fact #2, I’m actually very conservative when it comes to my business. So inventing the planner was born out of a frustration and a need. And I think most of you can understand that. How many times have you said, “I wish there was a…” to solve whatever problem you had?

Leslie Josel tells Paper Doll, 'There is nothing sexy about inventing a planner!' Share on X

So there is nothing sexy about inventing a planner! I couldn’t find what I needed to teach kids “how” to see their time. And that’s a biggie when working with kids. So I ordered every planner that was on the market back then and put them all in my basement! I should have taken a picture! And the sad thing was they were all pretty sh***y when it came to giving students what they needed. So I started cutting from one, pasting to another. You get the drift. Then I had my assistant at the time (who had a graphic design background) make a prototype, then ran some off at the local copy shop and gave them to my local clients. And friends started calling…and then friends of friends. So I went back, made some tweaks and made some more. And it kept going!

 

The one very smart thing I did at the very beginning — OK, here’s Fun Fact #3 — is send them to everyone who was in my NAPO Student SIG [Special Interest Group] to get their feedback and to offer them free copies if they wanted them. That was huge. The reaction was extremely positive. And that’s when I realized I was on to something. So I got smart. And that means to know you know NOTHING about bringing a product to market, pricing it, etc. So I hired someone to help me firm up some of that stuff, get it patented it, price it. The rest I figured out on my own. And seven years later we sell over 100,000 planners all over the world to schools, students and stores.

What is really depressing about all this is nothing has really changed in the academic planner market. The category is still pretty sh***y when it comes to companies focusing on what a student truly needs. Slapping a new cover on an old style does not make a new planner intuitive to students. We say about ours: No Filler. No Fluff. No word of the day. A planner that does what it says it does. Plan Time.

And I’m REALLY proud of that, since I came up with it! OK. Time for FUN FACT #4. The use of planners, paper products and academic ones rises each year approximately 10 to 15%. And the biggest group that uses planners? College students!

A few answers to questions I always get asked:

  • NO to an app!
  • NO to an adult planner! (Lots of adults use our small size since it is really customized.)
  • Yes, I’ve been approached by a major company to sell, but the deal fell through.
  • And yes, another company tried to rip my design off. We sued and won! Being married to an attorney has its benefits! 🙂

But all kidding aside, the biggest OMG moment for me was the first year we hired a fulfillment service to pack and mail. The first two years, we packed planners in our basement. And at the end of that second year, my family held an intervention. Seeing pallets after pallets being moved into a warehouse for filling orders was the most “Are You Freakin’ Kidding Me?” moment. I was exhilarated and nauseous all at the same time.

 
© 2020 Order Out of Chaos

Your new book, How To Do It Now…Because It’s Not Going Away is not your first rodeo in publishing. You’re the author of What’s the Deal with Teens and Time Management?, and before that, you partnered with Susan Weiner on The Complete Diabetes Organizer. How did you come to write How To Do It Now…Because It’s Not Going Away, and was there anything different about this writing or publishing experience from what you’ve had before?

So you know that how this came to be was all you! And I will forever be grateful for your generosity. Fun Fact #??? Julie introduced me to my book developer. [Editor’s note: I’m blushing. But it was obvious from the first conversation with that publisher that Leslie was the ideal writer for the project.]

So here’s the Reader’s Digest version of the story. The last book I had written was in 2015 and it was geared to parents. I liked that book, but to be very honest I didn’t love it. I was held to a certain number of pages, format, etc. In 2018, I knew it was really time to write another book and the book I so wanted to write was for students. I spend all day every day with them. I know this population really well. I wanted to cut out the middle man, which in this case would be their parents, and talk directly to them. To represent them respectfully. To let them know that someone was truly listening and understood. To speak to them the way they would want to be spoken to. So this whole writing experience was super different from what I was used to.

My last book was geared to parents. My Dear ADHD Family Coach columns are geared to parents. Even the articles I wrote for Family Circle were geared to parents. Being able to write for students was very freeing. I knew I had to speak their language. I knew I had to bring in all my student stories so anyone reading the book could identify. I knew it had to be real. NOT judgmental. And funny! So in some ways, this book was super easy to write. The greatest compliment I get after someone who knows me reads this book is that they feel like I am speaking directly at them.

And working with a publisher that knew the YA [Young Adult] space really well was beyond a dream. They let me do my “thing.” They didn’t edit my natural voice. They let me get creative with the chapter titles, the classroom confessionals, and all the funny stuff in the book. In other words, they trusted me. And in turn I trusted them.

The writing experience is different for every author. In the lingo of NaNoWriMo, there are plotters (people who outline) and pantsers (those who write by the seat of their pants). What are you? Do you think you apply the anti-procrastination advice you give in the book to how you actually wrote the book? 

I had no choice but to be an outliner. My publisher demanded it. And that was hugely helpful. It helped me craft the narrative and be very deliberate in my writing. So—and sit down for this one—I only had two months to write the book and during THE busiest season of my business. I wrote the time management chapter over Memorial Day weekend of 2019. I was given notes and approval to keep going two days later with a deadline for my first draft for August 1st. NO ONE should ever write a book like that.

I wrote the book out of order, literally. Made deadlines for myself along the way. But it wasn’t just the chapters I had to write. I had to have all the apps, all the resources, all the student stories, all the classroom confessionals, everything. It was insane. I hired my son to manage the classroom confessional portion. He wrote up 20 interview questions, reached out to all my students on my behalf, followed up with everyone to get all the answers back, and then picked the best answers for the book. My daughter helped by taking every app and every resource I wanted to include to make sure they were current, etc. My husband proofread every chapter, giving me edits and notes when something didn’t make sense or needed more context. I would never have gotten through by the deadline if I hadn’t had their help. I did not involve my Order Out of Chaos team, since we were also in the middle of back-to-school season and they had to literally hold down the fort. Procrastinate? Not on this! Who had the time?!!

But I will say that I let myself use the advice I give to my students. I wrote the book completely out of order. Meaning, I wrote chapter 2, then 7, then 4, then 8. That type of thing. And I wrote the first chapter last. This helped me stay unstuck.

In your column Dear ADHD Family Coach for Attitude Magazine and in your previous longtime gig as a contributing parenting writer for Family Circle Magazine, you wrote for adults. In How To Do It Now…Because It’s Not Going Away, you’re talking to teens and college-age young adults. Which do you find easier? Why?

I think I answered this in the question above. But I will say this. Kids can smell bullsh*t. So you have to balance being overly nice and supportive with being fair but calling them out on their bullsh*t. And I think that is my super power after all these years.

What have readers been telling you is their favorite advice or anecdote from the book? What is YOUR favorite part of the book?

On a macro level, what’s resonating with people are the student stories. Everything from the student who works under the kitchen table to the college student who writes his assignments on paper towels. Parents are identifying with these stories as they are seeing their own kids in them and students are seeing themselves in these scenarios, too. How can you make up a story about a kid who writes on paper towels! Seriously?

Leslie Josel tells Paper Doll, 'You can procrastinate and that doesn’t make you a procrastinator.' Share on X

On a micro level, it’s the concept that you can procrastinate and that doesn’t make you a procrastinator. So to get serious for a minute, most of these kids have been told horrible things about themselves or they think them on their own. They have been told they’re lazy or stupid or worthless. And right at the beginning of the book, I address this and squash this. Huge reaction to that.

And my favorite part of the book? God, Julie that’s like picking my favorite child. I would say the personal stuff — like Eli and Maddie’s own stories, and especially Eli’s quote right at the beginning. It sets up the whole book just like that. [Author’s Note: Eli’s quote is at the beginning of the introduction. You’ll have to read the book to hear what Eli has to say, but it’s a doozy of a change in mindset!]

 

Leslie, you’re a Renaissance woman—you work with clients, write, do public speaking and webinars—but when you aren’t busy being Leslie the Expert, what’s going on in your life?

My business takes an enormous amount of my time. So if you had asked me this question back in February, I would have said travel. My husband and I have a lot of wanderlust in us. We both travel a lot for our respective businesses and then on our own, with friends and with our adult children whenever we can. We are very fortunate that we can do what we do to some degree no matter where we are. Remind me to tell you the story of when I gave a webinar sitting on the bathroom floor in my hotel in Dublin. [Author’s Note: Please let us know in the comments if that’s a story you need to hear!] I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, traveling was all consuming until March. It is seriously a hobby and a passion. Before the pandemic hit, if I was “home,” you would find me at a concert or broadway show. (My hubby is in the music business.) The perks of living outside of NYC. Two adult children that like hanging with their parents and I wouldn’t have it any other way. A hubby who I not only love but really really like. He’s my true partner in every way. And a posse of girl friends who are always up for a walk, yoga class, a cocktail, frozen yogurt, or a GNO. And if I need a true escape I swim, read entertainment magazines, and watch some fun television.

 

 

To get a sneak peak of the first chapter of How to Do It Now…Because It’s Not Going Away, access Leslie’s Spotify study playlists, and read reviews of the new book (available on Amazon and Leslie’s site), visit the book page at Order Out of Chaos. You can also find Leslie on YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can read my review of the book on Amazon, Goodreads, and the Book Resources page here on my site.

 

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Organize Away Frustration: Practice The Only Good Kind of “Intolerance”

Posted on: July 20th, 2020 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

tol · er · ate –– /ˈtäləˌrāt/; verb

  • allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference.
  • accept or endure (someone or something unpleasant or disliked) with forbearance.

What Are You Tolerating?

Years ago, before I became a professional organizer, I was in the habit of reading books about life coaching. They all noted that the first step to creating the kind of life you want was 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. 

Professionally, I get to use my role as an outside observer to help spot, and eliminate, what clients are tolerating. Too often, people can’t see the forest for the trees. They know they’re frustrated, but they often can’t pinpoint the origin of the pain.

I often assign homework to new clients, asking them to keep a small notebook or pad and write down every instance of when and where they’ve been annoyed by something in their spaces or schedules.

It’s easier to create an effective filing system if you eliminate the papers and documents that are out-of-date or unnecessary, and you’re not going to want to do it if your hanging file rail jiggles or squeaks every time you open a drawer. You can’t organize your closet if it’s full of clothes that don’t fit or flatter your body (or is piled with things that don’t belong in your clothes closet in the first place!), and you won’t work on it at all if the closet’s overhead lightbulb is burned out. 

Once you identify a problem, you can begin to fix it.

Forgotten and Hidden Obstacles

Stated that way, it’s obvious. You can’t solve a problem that you don’t know exists.

But even knowing you have a problem doesn’t mean you’ll be inclined to fix it right away. We humans are procrastinators! If a light bulb burns out, but you don’t replace it immediately, the first few times you flip on the switch, you get frustrated anew – you’re alert to the annoyance and it’s acute.

But after a while, you get accustomed to less illumination over your bathroom mirror or dining table, and this problem becomes a low-level hum of almost-forgotten annoyance. You knew you had a problem, but as you learned to live with it, it became chronic, and consciously, you ignored it. Often, a second, or even a third light has to burn out before you can be bothered to make a change. We “put up” with things, tolerating them because we assume the physical energy to fix it will be greater than the mental energy of putting up with it. It’s not. 

Professional organizers are not immune to ongoing tolerations. In the vein of “the shoemaker’s children go barefoot,” I’ve been known to let my small frustrations simmer into a stew of crankiness. But if you’re not in a mindset to actively take note of the problem in order to solve it, you’re likely to suffer in silence (or crankiness) without a sense of urgency or agency.

The Shower Curtain Liner Example

I’m short. I’m not exactly built in miniature, but I’m only 5’3″ and a few microns. A standard shower curtain/liner is typically 72 inches long, and to prevent the shower curtain from touching the floor or curving onto the floor of the tub, curtain rods should usually be installed around 75-to-77 inches from the floor. I have a lovely, gossamer shower curtain that hangs outside the tub, and an ordinary vinyl curtain liner hanging inside.

Cleaning vinyl shower curtain liners is a pain, and they’re cheap, so it’s easier to just replace them after a while.

The problem? With most shower curtain rings, even if you don’t need to launder the curtain, you still need to remove the curtain and the liner from the ring to access the liner. Because the ring itself is hanging from (or wrapped around) the rod, you have to be able to manually twist a plastic or metal portion of the ring to open it, releasing both the curtain and the liner.

Then you have to line up the button-hole style openings of the new liner to the ones in the curtain, and, one-by-one, insert the curtain rings and get the clasp to close. Depending on the kind of curtain hooks, you may have to twist the ring into place or pinch your skin on the metal hooks to get everything attached, like getting a new key onto an old keyring.

And if you’re petite, you have to do all of this while standing – balancing, teetering – on the edge of the bathtub. 

First world problem, right? I mean, how many times a year do you replace your shower curtain liner? But every time I thought about doing it, I’d waste the powerful mental energy of my shower time grousing about this when I could have been finding a cure for the common cold or having an imaginary conversation with Alexander Hamilton. 

But one day, I decided to do the exercise I recommend to my clients. I went room by room, listing each thing I’d been tolerating, each annoyance that was small on its own, but together conspired to frustrate my organized, joyous life.

At first, I only tackled the teeny tasks. I made decisions on clutter, moving things to the laundry, the dry-cleaning bag, the closet, the trash, and so on. Because I’m already fairly organized, this didn’t take long, and it honestly didn’t put much of a dent in my life. But then I kept coming back to that shower curtain toleration.

Instead of just hunkering down and changing the liner, I wondered, “How could this be less of a problem?” and, as I do with clients, brainstormed a list of possible solutions, no matter how silly.

  • I could wish really hard that a genie would appear to do the task for me.
  • I could move somewhere with a glass shower door.
  • I could hire a cleaning person occasionally, timed to when I’d need the liner changed. 
  • I could buy a higher step-stool to make the height issue less drastic (if still risky).
  • I could research shower curtains to see if there were alternatives to the norm.

Wait, what was that last one?

Who actually brainstorms, 'Is there a different or better way to do this?' People who eliminate their frustrations, that's who! Share on X

Finding a Solution

I’m sometimes shocked by how often a client or friend will state a problem and then sigh, as if it’s just something they have to suffer. Occasionally, they’ll say, “Well, I looked at doing X” or “But I tried Y” as if a powerful force field had kept them from going further. But let’s look at some quick, easy options. When facing an problem, you can:

  1. Google (or use your favorite search engine), tweaking your search terms to find what you need. There are tricks to improve your searches.
  2. Search on YouTube (which is ideal for solving “how to” problems, whether for plumbing repair, tying a tie, or fixing a stuck spacebar). Last year, 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.
  3. Search in an online forum like (the less dodgy parts of) Reddit, Facebook business or community groups, or neighborhood groups.
  4. Ask for suggestions on your social media pages.
  5. 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?)
  6. 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!

Back to the Shower Curtain Liner

I didn’t know what I was seeking – yet – but I’d identified the problem. So, I Googled (and Googled and Googled). I found washable shower curtain liners that never need to be thrown away. That was good for the environment, but didn’t help me with my twisty/pinchy fingers or my balancing on the tub’s edge. Then I moved on to looking at all of the different kinds of shower curtain hooks and rings. I’d seen different colors and styles all my life, but they all functioned basically the same – you must twist, snap, or (at best) slide both the curtain and the liner onto/off of one hook. 

Eventually, I found the term that would lead me to my solution: double shower curtain rings! The genius of a double shower curtain ring is that it separates the hanging of the shower curtain liner and the shower curtain itself; they hang independently, each on its own hook.

Vaguely reminiscent of tie hangers, the Amazer stainless-steel double shower curtain rings fit the bill!

I could now remove the shower curtain liner and replace it without messing with the in-place shower curtain, and it was as simple as sliding the hook through the button-hole. My fingers were saved! Because the there’s nothing to un-hook or un-twist, there’s no need to stand on the edge of the tub – I could easily reach up and hang the new liner in under a minute.

Since finding (and delighting) in this simple solution, I’ve found other kinds of double shower curtain rings.

Moen DoubleSided Shower Curtain Ring

The Moen Double Shower Curtain Rings remind me of Marlo Thomas’ hairstyle on That Girl.

That Girl Graphic

Orb’s Stainless Steel Double-Glide Hooks have an interior (shower-side) hook that hangs lower than the exterior hook. It’s a nifty design, but Paper Doll wonders whether the shower curtain liner may fall too low in the shower, creating a fall hazard.

Maybe this is to hide the top of the liner from view outside of the shower, but the Mr. Monk in me would not appreciate the uneven nature.

Digging Deeply to Solve Your Problem

Almost all of the things we tolerate can be solved by one of the following:

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

But first, we have to dig deeply to figure out what the real problem is. Let’s go back to what we discussed at the beginning. (And then read the classic Paper Doll post, 5 “Real Simple” Reasons We Don’t Get the Laundry (or Paperwork) Done.)

Is your family dressing out of the laundry basket? You may complain that nobody helps you put away the laundry, or that you find putting away laundry to be a chore. But perhaps it’s really that your closets and drawers are overstuffed, which makes the prospect of even thinking about putting laundry away too frustrating to consider. So, you tolerate the initial problem (overstuffed closets and drawers), which leads you to tolerate a further annoyance (wearing, washing, and rewearing the same outfits over and over, and dressing out of the laundry basket).

Let’s say you’re not filing your papers. Your instinct may be to dismiss yourself as lazy. But looking deeper, you may realize that a change in attitude or behavior could help, and decide to talk to a therapist or coach. Is it that you don’t have the time or willingness to do your own filing? If so, a professional organizer or assistant may be the way to go.

Perhaps on your own (or with a professional organizer’s guidance), you might realize that it’s not you – maybe it’s not even your system! Perhaps you’re avoiding filing because you’re chronically annoyed by a terrible, squeaky, unbalanced aftermarket file rail?

Over the past 13 years, the Paper Doll blog has covered a wide variety of products that offer solutions to organizing problems, most related to paper and information management. In fact, the most popular post in the history of this blog was the one where I told you about the Smead Heavy-Duty Adjustable Frame. 

No matter how many times we get annoyed at a problem, we have to call it a problem so that we can start looking for a solution instead of just accepting the annoyance.

Then, if we are confident that a solution can be found, we are much more likely to explore all of the options.

Whether it’s your pantry or your filing cabinet, your to-do list or your darned shower curtain, there are always solutions, and between search engines and experts – like your friendly, neighborhood professional organizer – your life can be better.

Moving forward, I’d like to open up the blog to readers and ask you to submit your organizing problems, Dear Abby-style. (Be assured, your privacy will be protected.) If there’s a product that can solve it, I’ll try to find it for you. If there’s a behavioral approach, we’ll tackle it. And if we need an outside expert, then we’ll talk to a rocket scientist who can find the solution.

What are you tolerating?

The Truth About Celebrity Organizers, Magic Wands, and the Reality of Professional Organizing

Posted on: June 12th, 2020 by Julie Bestry | 22 Comments

Yesterday, it happened again.

“It” is when someone (this time, on an international discussion-based web site I frequent) complains about needing organizational help but doesn’t know where to turn. Unfortunately, they don’t know that professional organizers even exist, or the only thing about organizing they’ve ever seen in the media is Marie Kondo’s show on Netflix.

The Kondo Thing and Celebrity Organizers

Many, many of my colleagues have written about the pros and cons of Kondo, her books, and her television show. However, I have always held off because while I think Kondo is an interesting character study in expert-as-celebrity, the profession of skilled, educated, non-judgmental, and empathetic professional organizers existed for many decades before Marie Kondo came along.

I think the big difference between Kondo and professional organizers in NAPO, ICD, POC, APDO-UK, and the like, is that we believe that systems need to be customized to the individual and hold that one system imposed onto everyone is a recipe for making people feel like failures.

For more than 18 years, I have been telling clients that “tidying” or “cleaning up” is about the stuff, but professional organizing is about the person who owns the stuff.

For more than 18 years, I have been telling clients that tidying or cleaning up is about the stuff, but professional organizing is about the person who owns the stuff. Share on X

Kondo presents some intriguing approaches in her books and on her Netflix show. I’ve often noted that about 70% of what she discusses is the same advice all professional organizers offer; about 25% focuses on her very precise rubric of organizing methods; and about 5% is culturally specific to her background. Rather than writing about her, per se, I’d point you to some posts by my colleagues, who are better able succinctly share their thoughts:

Marie Kondo isn’t going to be the last famous organizing expert. She’s certainly not the first. When I started my professional organizing business, Julie Morgenstern was starting her meteoric publishing ascent. She won a national award at the NAPO conference in 2002, the first I attended, and her Professional Organizing from the Inside Out was already becoming a classic. I devoured her books, as I had done with Bonnie McCullough’s Totally Organized and Barbara Hemphill’s Taming the Paper Tiger books in the 1980s. A bit later, Oprah Winfrey, who helped make Julie Morgenstern a household name, brought Peter Walsh from Clean Sweep stalwart to media stardom

Good for them. Good for us (the professional organizers). Good for you (the readers who want to get organized)!

Concert Pianists and Magic Wands

I often tell a story about my mother, known to many of you readers as Paper Mommy. When I was little, I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She smiled and said “A concert pianist.” Having just started piano lessons, I encouraged my mother to take lessons with me, and launched into a fantasy of her stellar career in music. I will never forget my mother’s incredible self-awareness and honesty when she explained that she didn’t want to become a concert pianist, she wanted to be one. She wanted the magic wand.

I will never forget my mother's incredible self-awareness and honesty when she explained that she didn't want to become a concert pianist, she wanted to be one. She wanted the magic wand. Share on X

Celebrity professionals in all fields, including my own, offer the magic wand: the idea that there is one method, one Holy Grail of organizing that will work for all! It’s pretty compelling.

Superstar professional organizers do one great thing. They let people know (or remind those who have forgotten) that life does not have to be a series of frustrations and overwhelms. Help is available, whether that’s from a book, or a professional organizer, or the guidance of a more experienced friend or relative.

I’ve got news for you. I don’t care whose advice you follow. I mean, sure, I’m delighted that you’re on my blog and come here for advice on organizing. And I love my clients and wish I could clone myself and work with all of the clients who want and need my help, especially now, when so many people have been stuck at home and ostensibly have the time to focus on such projects. (On the plus side, I am now offering virtual services, which means that I can help more people in shorter bursts of time to kickstart their advancement toward organizing and productivity goals.)

But it’s not about me. Or Marie. Or Peter. Or Margareta Magnusson, the lovely lady who wrote The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. (For what it’s worth, I find the Magnusson’s gentle, homespun psychological approach to downsizing to be far more applicable to my clients’ lives than most other “star” advice.)

No, it’s not about any of the celebrity organizers, or even my less-famous but fabulous colleagues in NAPO, ICD, POC, and the various organizations within the International Federation of Professional Organizing Associations.

It’s about the client. It’s about you. It’s about being ready and willing to make changes. 

The No. 7 Moisturizer

Sometimes, people just want advice on buying storage containers – without ever having given thought as to whether they should hold onto everything they’re going to put in those bins. They believe the right container will solve all of their problems. And sometimes (a lot of the time), people look at celebrity organizers as the magic wands, or in this case, the magic storage bins.

Speaking of Marie Kondo, she’s back in the news lately because she’s hawking her (rather pricey) products appealing to the same human instincts to which we’re all subject. I’m a good example. Years ago, the posh-sounding UK brand No. 7 started selling products in the United States. They came out with a Protect and Perfect, a product designed to smooth the skin and given the just-starting-to-age face a nice boost. The product wasn’t that expensive, and I wasn’t looking particularly decrepit, but the ads in the glossy magazines were compelling, and I plunked down my $20 at Target.

Then two things happened.

First, after the initial few times I used the product, I slacked off. I’m not much of a beauty product person. I don’t watch the influencers on Instagram and YouTube to learn how to make a perfect smokey eye. (Though, six weeks into the pandemic quarantine, I did watch my stylist’s video on how to style my overly long bangs. Twice.)

Second, as time went by, even though I had only used the product in a lackluster fashion and hadn’t seen much effect when I did use it, every single time I saw an ad for the No. 7 product in the beauty magazines, I had a little blip of “I want that.” I had it. I’d used it. I’d blown it off. But I STILL WANTED IT. Advertising is insidious that way.

We want what the product or service promises, even if I’m not willing to do the work. Even if it’s not the right product for me. It’s the fantasy, not the reality.

Kondo’s first magic wand was her method; her second selling a series of “joy-sparking” products  – including a $58 brass cookbook stand, a single shelf for $135, and a $69 set of three cardboard boxes for inserting in your drawers.

Celebrity organizers offer the fantasy. Some offer good advice. Most offer advice that will work if you follow it, as long as you:

  • are able to follow it to the letter
  • have the time, money, and physical dexterity to follow it to the letter
  • don’t have clinical depression, an anxiety disorder, ADHD, a traumatic brain injury, a family member who has any of these complicating issues, a toddler who likes to touch things rather than sit pristinely and quietly in the middle of the room, pets, or spouses who act like toddlers or pets…
  • possess the unerring ability to confidently make decisions without the support of others, have the resources to know what should be donated vs. consigned vs. sent to live on a farm upstate, and
  • are incredibly self-motivated to start, continue, and finish a product without any guidance, support, or accountability

Is that you? Yay! But if it’s not you, and you’ve ever felt like a failure because the organizing advice in a book or on a TV show wasn’t enough to deliver the solutions you were seeking, you’re a member of a pretty big club.

For the same reason people who work with fitness coaches achieve more than those who buy exercise videos but never take them out of the plastic (or if they do, feel so awkward that they never make it through the first viewing), not everything works well as a solo endeavor.

Just as not everything is one-size-fits-all.

Just as not every organizer is for every client.

The Reality of Professional Organizing

Professional organizers have different specialities. Some organizers are generalists. Others specialize in types of clients (students, seniors citizens, new parents) or in locations (kitchens, closets, law offices, warehouses). I think of myself as a generalist who specializes in paper management and productivity.

In 2007, under the auspices of NAPO, the Board of Certification for Professional Organizers created a certification program requiring 1500 client-collaborative hours in order to sit for a comprehensive exam. This exam spans content related to client assessments, project plan development, implementation, and maintenance, and ethics. Recertification is dependent upon continuing education.

The Institute for Challenging Disorganization has certificate and specialist credentialing programs programs for organizing practitioners who work with clients with special needs relating ADHD, chronic disorganization, hoarding disorders, and aging.

There are other formal specialities. NAPO members can earn specialist certificates in residential organizing, household management, life transitions, workplace productivity, and team productivity. In addition to being a CPO, I’m an Evernote Certified Constultant. Affiliate with our professional are Senior Move Managers and Daily Money Managers (financial organizers). And yes, Marie Kondo even has training for practitioners who want to organize according to her methods.

The thing I’d love everyone to know is that your professional organizer can have the best training, be the most compassionate provider, and excel in delivery of services and breadth of expertise. But you, the client, are the key to everything.

You have to want more than a changed result. It’s essential to change the behavior that got you to this place of dissatisfaction in the first place. You may have to set boundaries with your child or your pet or your spouse. You may have to develop skills to figure out why you keep buying your own equivalent of No. 7 miracle youth-making skin care products, whether they are blank notebooks you never use, cute outfits you never wear, or healthy produce you never eat.

(Hey, I get it. Professional organizers do aspirational shopping, too. I’ve thrown out a lot of fuzzy vegetables in my time. ShoppingJulie has more confidence in my cooking skills than DiningJulie ever will.)

So What Should You Do?

I’m not advising you stop reading organizing and productivity books or magazines. (I love a good Real Simple multi-page spread on decluttering your entryway as much as the next person!) I’m not saying to stop watching home-improvement TV shows. They can be very entertaining, and these days, darned comforting. I certainly don’t even want you to stop decluttering or creating systems.

I just want you to know that just like the airbrushed bodies in magazines don’t really look like that, the gorgeous rooms in the IKEA and Container Store catalogs and Houzz and House Beautiful don’t look like that in real life, or 92 days into quarantine, or three days after Christmas, or in the middle of summer vacation, or after the whole family has been down with the flu.

Reality TV makes things look tidy, but reality is messy. Professional organizers can help. But none of us, not even (or especially not) the celebrities, have magic wands. You have to want more than the end result; you have to be willing to do the hard work (with us at your side) to gain the mental muscles to confidently make decisions and real behavioral changes.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation

Posted on: May 4th, 2020 by Julie Bestry | 22 Comments

Does anybody really know what time it is? (I don’t)
Does anybody really care? (care about time)
If so I can’t imagine why (no, no)

Chicago, Chicago Transit Authority, 1969
©Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Spirit Music Group
 

This is not a post about time management. 

In full disclosure, I started writing this post in February for Time Management Month. Paper Doll strongly believes that we cannot manage time; we can only manage ourselves. But we do need to better understand time, to have a sense of how it passes. And for most of us nowadays, it’s passing…well…weirdly.

We don’t know what time it is. We don’t know what day it is.

In case you were worried that it was just you, even the news media has been talking about it.

Once we settled into sheltering-in-place, many of us, especially those working from home, found it speeding by as we added work-from-home tasks, family tasks, and self-education tasks. We sought anything we could to stop April from feeling like the sluggish month of March. And what does May hold?

Why We’re Losing Track of Time

It’s not that strange that we’ve lost our sense of time. Think about the week between Christmas and New Year’s, where every day feels vaguely like Sunday. We’re not working, or if we are, there’s a strange hum of quietude. Is Grey’s Anatomy on tonight? Is it Trash Day? 

Vacation days are like this, too. For the first day or so, we’re on “real” time, not only hyper-aware of what day it is, but when it’s 10:30a, even if we’re on a beach or in a museum, our internal clocks tell us that our colleagues are stepping away to the break room or the coffee truck. Vacationing parents may be dressing for a late romantic dinner out but be subtly aware that normally, they’d be corralling the tiny humans for bath-time.

But by a few days into the vacation? All of that gets swept away. When I went to Italy in 2018, I realized that by the time we left Rome, it was no longer Friday, but merely “Day 7.” My real life was a hazy memory.

We’ve Lost Our Sense of Routine.

There are no daily markers. We’re not going to work on weekdays or having our Monday stand-up meetings. We’re not attending religious services on weekends, and we’re not driving our kids to piano lessons on Wednesday or soccer practice on Thursdays. We’re not going to yoga. We’re not going anywhere!

We are used to marking time by space – weekdays mean work or school; weekends mean stores or attending religious services or restaurants with friends. Now, our dining rooms are schoolrooms; our kitchens are offices. Our living rooms become gyms. We’re in the same few rooms doing everything. Our surroundings aren’t changing even when our activities do, so even if we’re substituting virtual activities for the “real” ones, everything has an otherworldly, dreamy quality.

Further, we’re not doing any of the little things that mark the time advancing in smaller increments (minutes, hours) toward the bigger events. If we’re not getting up to go to work or school in the morning, there’s no reason not to read until the wee hours. If the kids aren’t going to school, there’s no rush to finish dinner and clean up the kitchen we can pack their lunches for the next day.

There’s a sameness to our days. There’s no ebb and flow to our hours. We’re moving through molasses and then we’re our own time-lapse videos.

We’re Busy, But We’re Not Being Satisfied

As a professional organizer, I split my time between working in clients’ homes and offices, usually in four-hour blocks, helping them achieve their organizing and productivity goals, and working in my office on the administrivia of small business: researching and writing blogs, providing organizing advice to media outlets (speaking of which, check out page 58 of the May 2020 issue of Real Simple), talking to prospective clients, marketing, bookkeeping, and so on.

Although some clients are opting to avail themselves of my services virtually, my workdays are now spent primarily in the 8-foot square box of my office. I’ve done enough webinars and classes, including Yale’s The Science of Well-Being, that I’m probably only a few webinars away from getting a pandemic diploma. I’m busy, but I don’t feel productive.

If you’re doing the work-from-home thing, you still have emails and phone calls and Zoom meetings to replace your “real” life, but deadlines are more amorphous. You may be actually getting more work done because you’re not getting distracted by Katie’s birthday cake in the break room or back-to-back meetings or getting cornered by Doug, who wants to talk about the cute thing his cat did.

But even if you’re busier (heck, even if you’re more productive), nothing has the same sense of immediacy, and sometimes that means we lose that sense of satisfaction what we’d otherwise get from having made it through Hump Day or having finally reached the weekend.


via GIPHY

When There’s No Difference Between Tuesday and Saturday, Why Do Anything Now?

The Dowager Countess of Grantham has a point. What is a weekend anymore?

Why scramble to finish a project by Thursday afternoon if nobody will see it until Friday morning? Or Monday? Or May 73rd? Why focus your time and energy to complete your work by 5 o’clock if there’s nothing to separate from 2 o’clock in the afternoon from 9 o’clock at night?

Why? You know the answer…from the before-times. You know that it takes until about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to feel like you’re back in the rhythm after a winter holiday break. Most of us have been sheltering-in-place six or more weeks. We need to have an accurate sense of time to be productive (whatever that means to you) both now, and later, when life returns to normalcy. We need to keep ourselves and our kids from becoming temporally feral, wildly eating and sleeping (or not sleeping), starting projects without finishing them, and generally feeling unmoored.

Allostatic Load and Lack of Novelty, or What the Heck Happened to Our Brains?

Our brains are getting mushy. In ‘Allostatic Load’ Is the Psychological Reason for Our Pandemic Brain Fog, the research indicates that our body’s physiological reactions to emotional stress can be powerful. Even though we’re sitting around not doing much of anything, our stress hormones are building up, exhausting our bodies. But we need physical energy to do mental labor, which (in addition to the emotional stress we’re already carrying) means that our brains are slowing down while we shelter-in-place.

Additionally, our brains are hungry for novelty. Every day looks and feels very much like every other, so when we’re not seeing new people, visiting new locations, or engaging in novel activities, our brains go on autopilot. We stop noticing details, so we stop making new or vivid memories, so everything blends together. Tuesday is Saturday is Everyday.

Our Body Clocks Are Borked

This isn’t all just psychological. There are physical reasons why we’re not sensing the passage of time the way we ought.

  • We’re not sleeping normally. The weirdness of our schedules makes it tempting to stay up reading, or binge-watching, or gaming, and also makes it more acceptable to sleep later, getting us out of our normal habits. When we’re not going to bed or getting up at our normal times, it messes up our circadian rhythms and it distorts how short or long (or interminably long) any given day feels. If you sleep until lunchtime, it feels like it got dark awfully early. If stress-monsters woke you at 5 a.m., then by mid-afternoon, it feels like bedtime should be approaching. And because sheltering-in-place while we’re not getting a lot of new stimuli coincides with anxiety, we’re having weird dreams.
  • We’re not sleeping, period. It would be weird to not be anxious right now. We’re worried about our health, and the health of our loved ones. We’re worried about our personal finances—Will unemployment benefits will ever kick in? Or if we’re still working, will our companies survive with everyone intact? — and the global economy. (Whatever you do, don’t check your 401k or IRA statements!) 
  • We’re not eating normally. OK, some of you are cooking Alison Roman recipes and making sourdough, and still setting the table, but most of us are grazing and not eating normal foods (or amounts) at what could only charitably be called “mealtimes.” 
  • We’re not getting fresh air. One of my colleagues lives in New York City and hasn’t been out of her apartment – not her building, but her actual apartment – in more than 45 days. She has no balcony, no roof access, and she’s avoiding her beloved, coughing doorman. Those of us with porches or backyards may be getting out more, but the weather around the country has been unpredictable. There were snowstorms in April. We’ve had tornados in Tennessee. And there’s pollen. So Much Pollen!
  • We’re not getting sunlight. If we’re not getting outside, unless we have skylights or floor-to-ceiling windows, we’re just not getting a lot of the goodness provided by that big, yellow ball in the sky that helps us regulate our circadian rhythms and our moods.
  • We’re overexposed to blue light. We’re Zooming and WebExing, in front of our computers all day without the break-room parties and water cooler convos that get us away from our screens. We’re texting with friends and reading Coronavirus news, binge-watching Amazon Prime and Netflix and Hulu. And some of you are gaming or playing Animal Crossing. All that blue light is wreaking havoc on our circadian rhythms, along with all the other things it’s doing to our eyes, or mental health, and our hormones.

5 Tips to Reconnect to Time

1) Put structure in your life. 

Create the kinds of daily rituals that you wouldn’t bother with if this were a staycation. Have mealtimes at set hours. Living like we did before, where lunch came at 12:30 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. makes it less likely that we will graze our way to the Pandemic 15, but it will also put some definition in each day. 

Develop buffer habits. If you can safely go for a walk before dinner, knowing you’ll do that between work and cooking gives you a “commute” of sorts. Listen to the podcast you’d normally dial up, or get back in the habit of calling your mom “on the way home” from work.

Time block to create boundaries in your day. I know I said this wasn’t a time management post, but time-blocking is a key strategy from the world of productivity. Block off specific times in your schedule for overarching categories: passive work projects, creative/active work projects, self-care, self-education, entertainment. A place for everything – in a schedule where everything has a place. 

Even if your life doesn’t have any natural boundaries, you can create them to work as transition periods. Have one or two things on your schedule every day where you are honoring obligations to others so that you’ll wind up one task so you can show up for the next. Meet a colleague for a Zoom lunch. Hold an accountability call with a friend to help you both manage to shower and dress well before the day is half over!

Consider creating daily time blocks in which you work on a particular project most weekdays:

  • 45 minutes of housework (laundry, cleaning, organizing, etc.) early in the day for a sense of accomplishment
  • an hour and a half of working on your taxes (because the delayed due date of July 15th will be here faster than we expect)
  • two hours of researching blog posts or sourcing graphics or planning meals
  • a one-hour block, daily, of calling or video-chatting with someone

Micro-block your time with the Pomodoro Technique to conquer your tasks list. In case you’re not familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, it’s a time management system designed to battle procrastination and increase productivity. The very basic concepts? Identify what you want to work on, set aside 25 minutes to do so, and then do it – and that time in inviolable. If you let yourself get interrupted, you have to start over. Every 25 minutes, you get a five-minute break. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We’ve talked about doing pomodoros on the blog before, but for a more robust look at this incredibly effective method, my colleague Stacey Harmon has created a How to Focus in Uncertain Times Using the Pomodoro Technique® training, which she has made available at no charge.

Theme your days. Handle financial tasks on Monday Mondays. Solve problems on Weirdness Wednesday. It doesn’t just have to be activities. Celebrate Taco Tuesdays and have a meal you’re looking forward to eating…and even making. 

2) Enhance novelty.

Go through your address book, your contact list, and our LinkedIn contacts. When you’re bored, or weary, instead of texting your BFF or your mother, with whom you’ve already spoken 43 gazillion times, pick two new people to contact each day.

Touch base with a professional contact and you never know what brainstorms may occur. Chat with an old friend just to find out what’s happening. Novelty can make each day more vivid and distinct from the day before.

Use different spaces. Do you have a guest room you hardly ever use for anything except piling up things that don’t have a home? Consider pushing the bed to the side to create floor space and do your workout routine there.

Is the idea of a guest room laughable?

Search your home for an underused space, maybe with the help of a tiny human. (They have a natural gift for such treasure hunts). As a toddler, I used to like to sit on the small steps from the kitchen down to our side to wait for my sister to return from school. In my current home, I’ve found that sitting and reading at the landing at the top of my stairs gives me good light and a feeling that my reading nook is a special place. Find a new space for an old task. Play cards in the laundry room. Picnic in the backyard.

3) Create vivid sensory clues for the passing of time!

The timer on my Fitbit buzzes at fifty minutes past the hour, reminding me to take 250 steps. Use that as your cue not only to walk, but to take your eyes off the screen. Fitbit’s reminder to move is built into the app, and most fitness trackers have a similar function. You can also try a movement reminder app like StandUp! to prompt you to take a break at a predictable time.

Whether you are bored or absorbed in an activity, a vibrating reminder that another hour has passed can help you acclimate. Similarly, you can set chimes or alerts on your phone to play hourly at 17 minutes past the hour, or set auditory alarms for every three hours, to remind you to take meal and longer activity breaks.

Go Analog. Digital clocks don’t give you the same sense of the passage of time as old-school watches and clocks. Start by looking to see which of your digital clocks you can change to an analog appearance. Android phones allow you to change your lock screen from digital to analog easily. On the iPhone, the clock app icon is a working analog clock, but the lock screen stays digital. There are apps like FaceClock Analogue to give you a working clock, but they can’t be added to the lock screen.

If you have a digital screen (like the kind for a rear-facing camera), your car will also probably let you change from a digital to analog clock.

Put a clock in places where you tend to lose track of time. Do you dawdle in the shower or while putting on makeup? Attach a small waterproof clock to your bathroom mirror with a suction cup to keep tabs on how long you’ve been debating cutting your own bangs. (Don’t do it. Just. Don’t.)

 

Embrace Time Timer – One of the favorite time management tools of professional organizers is Time Timer. I’ve written about many updates to Time Timer over the years, but the key thing to know is that the sweep of red helps your brain recognize time as it passes.

Please note, per Heather Rogers, the Co-President of Time Timer, “Until this crisis is over, the Time Timer apps for iOS and Android (available on the App Store and Google Play) will be free for everyone to help create some comforting structure wherever you are.

Also, all products at timetimer.com are 20% off with code HOME2020 and all US shipping is free while schools are closed.” 

Of course, if analog isn’t retro enough for you, you could always take the sands-through-the-hourglass route.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. Share on X

You won’t know what time it is, but if you take a few breaks to watch the time pass through a beautiful hourglass, you (and your kids) will have a stronger sense of how long five minutes or five hours really lasts.

 

4) Get what you know you need! The first month or six weeks of sheltering-in-place, we could be excused from letting everything devolve into an extended summer vacation, but now it’s time to get serious.

Get daylight. If you can get out and walk in nature (or your neighborhood) without encountering another unmasked human being within six feet, go for it. If you’re using the Pomodoro Technique, use your five-minute breaks to go outside. Jump rope or play hopscotch in the driveway. Run around the backyard. Dance to Lizzo on your balcony.

Get sleep. Close friends know that it’s ironic for me to give this advice, as sleep and I have a bitter and lifelong enmity. But the internet is chockfull of advice for getting enough sleep, even (and especially) if pandemic anxiety is keeping you awake.

Get exercise. Jumping to conclusions and stress-pacing aren’t enough. There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of online workout options, from free to OMG-I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-Paying-Peleton. The standard go-to these days is Yoga With Adriene, but there are dozens of free live-streaming exercise classes (as well as recorded videos) to help you keep in shape. Or just run around with your kids or your dog.

Get dressed. Seriously. I know the jammies are comfy, but even having day-PJs and night-PJs isn’t enough. You don’t have to put on shoes, but if you shower, groom yourself, and actually put on underwear and real clothes each morning and change for bed each night, your sense of time will improve.

5) Take a Technology Break – There are all sorts of ways to get some social distance from your devices.

Give yourself a tech timeout every time you realize you’ve lost an hour to social media or cable news. (That’s where the fitness tracker reminders come in!) Leave the devices in a separate room during mealtimes. Talk to the people in lockdown with you, or if you’re alone (or just don’t like your peeps all that much after six weeks in the same house), read a book.

Put yourself and your family on a tech curfew. There’s nothing that happens after 8 p.m. (or 11 p.m., or whenever you’ve set the curfew) that you can’t catch up on the next morning. Give you eyes a break from the blue light.

Consider taking a Tech Shabbat. In 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week, Tiffany Schlain makes an excellent case for the physical, mental, and social benefits of stepping away from the technology for a whole day.

Does anybody really know what time it is? Paper Doll really cares.

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