Archive for ‘Review’ Category
Toss Old Socks, Pack Away 2023, and Adjust Your Attitude for 2024
I don’t know about you, beloved readers, but 2023 has been a rollercoaster.
In January, someone rang my doorbell late at night to tell me they’d hit my car in the parking lot; in August, my car was stolen. And in November, just ten days before she was set to join us for Thanksgiving, Paper Mommy fell and fractured her pelvis in two places, and then developed pneumonia 48 hours later, and complications after that! (As of this weekend, she’s finally home and recovering.)
I’m a positive person, but when the TV ads promote stage productions of Annie and the music swells for “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow,” I’ve been struck by a powerful urge to throw the remote through the screen.
Professionally, 2023 was a mixed bag. I’ve maintained and added wonderful clients to my roster, and had a dazzling variety of in-person and virtual speaking engagements. But I was also saddened when a cherished elderly client passed away, and I must confess to not having made any headway on a passion project I’d wanted to write.
This is the traditional time to look back and pack away the prior year and set the tone for the one to come.
Letting go of what’s awful or unnecessary comes as second nature to professional organizers; it’s almost therapy to us. For example, I’m not much for Black Friday, but I used the opportunity to replace almost all of my socks with snazzy new ones and jettisoned the old, sad ones. I’m ready for a new foundation, literally and figuratively.
Evaluating and state of a hosiery drawer and replacing all of hole-y socks is easier than doing a deep dive into how we’ve lived our lives over the past year and designing change for the coming one, but they are similarly life-affirming and necessary.
Editor’s Note: if you want to feel doubly-good about getting new socks, consider Bombas, which donates a pair to unhoused individuals for every pair you buy, or John and Hank Green’s Awesome Sock Club, where 100% of the profits go to a charitable organization working to decrease maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone.
LOOK BACKWARD AND EMBRACE THE PERSONAL ANNUAL REVIEW
There are myriad ways to reflect on your past year, with multiple purposes. The main categories you might want to consider are:
- Health — Please don’t focus merely on weight, but consider stamina and strength, lab results, mental health, and health-related habits (both positive and unsavory).
If you don’t know how you’re doing in these areas, calling to make appointments with specialists and getting a handle on your numbers and benchmarks is a good place to start in the new year.
Don’t have a primary care provider or dentist or OB/GYN? Behind on your immunizations or age-appropriate health screenings like mammograms or colonoscopies? Make 2024 the year to catch up on your adulting! (In 2022, I finally got my overdue tetanus booster, an important one for professional organizers. We never know when something sharp is going to jump out and bite us!)
- Finances — Your bank balance doesn’t tell the whole story.
Did you stay within your budget? (Do you actually have a budget?) Are you comfortable with your rate of savings over the past year? Did you make good or bad investments (or avoid signing up for that 401K at work because you didn’t understand how it worked)?
Is your credit score trending up or down? Are there mistakes on your credit reports, or have you not even checked AnnualCreditReport.com since before the pandemic…or ever?
Dollars Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
- Professional Development — If you work for someone else, prepare for your company‘s annual review (likely done on your work anniversary) by asking:
- What were the top projects I worked on this year in terms of financial return or impact? Am I happy with my contributions? Did I meet expectations? Exceed them?
- What achievement am I most proud of? Where did I fail to hit the mark of expectations, either my own or the company’s?
- What do I wish I had known or done earlier in the year to have improved my performance? What training, skills, knowledge, resources, or support do I need to make my performance next year better?
- Business — If you own your own company, business development means all of the professional development category, plus a much more detailed analysis. Look at all of your goals, not only to see if you achieved them, but to understand how you can improve their specificity, measurability or relevance the next time around.
Do you know where your clients or customers came from? Do you know how satisfied they are with your service or products? What are your metrics for sales, followers on your social media platforms (and interactions with those followers), newsletter subscribers, and your standing in the community?
Competition doesn’t matter as much as client satisfaction, but neither matter if you have no idea how your company (of one employee or one thousand) is trending.
- Relationships — Nobody can tell you what your relationships should be, but if you’re not feeling loved and supported most of the time in your interactions with your partner, family, and friends, it probably won’t get better on its own. Organizing relationships matters!
Identify areas of improvement, like better communication or ways to nurture one another and connect. Maybe you just need to cook and eat meals together, which a recent study has found leads to well-being.
Perhaps you need to consider whether this relationship has outworn its welcome. Just as with clutter, people buy into the sunk-cost fallacy; instead of throwing good money (or time) after bad — whether it’s an outgrown/defective car, gadget, or relationship — sometimes the best thing we can do is break free of inertia and let it go! (Cue Frozen!)
- Intellect and Education — What did you learn in 2023? What did you read or listen to that made you better at what you do or in terms of who you are? Students get report cards; as adults, it’s harder to evaluate our intellectual growth.
Try writing reviews of the books you read or tracking them in a notebook, or online in an app like Goodreads. (With only two weeks to go, I doubt I will hit my Goodreads Challenge goal of 39 books this year; I’m at 28 and will probably only finish two or three more. But that’s probably more than I’d finish if I didn’t keep track.)
- Personal Growth — What’s different about you now versus last January? Have you grown in any way that’s discernible to your others or yourself? Did you embrace any new hobbies or skills?
If you’re happy with your life, huzzah! But if you feel like there was something missing in 2023, or if you participated in activities that no longer float your boat, now’s the time to explore and set some goals with actionable benchmarks for enriching your life. Make time for hobbies and passionate pursuits, and make room in your schedule for serendipity to offer you surprises!
- Community — Do you have a community outside of your work? Whether it’s social, political, charitable, spiritual, or otherwise, do you feel like you were involved in something bigger than yourself this year? How (and with whom) do you want to move forward next year?
WHAT TO DO WITH WHAT YOU LEARN FROM YOUR ANNUAL REVIEW
Knowing how you did is only the first step. Next, focus on three activities: Celebrate, Acknowledge, and Grow!
Celebrate
When I worked in television, I had a wonderful general manager who used to say, “One ‘Aw, <bleep>!’ wipes out ten ‘Atta-boys!'”
While his salty statement was designed to address public perception, it also calls to mind that even if we celebrate our successes in the moment, when we sit down to evaluate how we’ve done, we tend to focus on our failures and our shortcomings. With the perspective of weeks and months, we can revisit the areas of our lives where we’ve done well (or at least we did better than circumstances might have otherwise allowed).
Go through your calendar, emails, and task lists and find the wins! And because we can be unreliable narrators of our own lives, ask your partner, closest friends, mastermind group, and/or colleagues. You may be delightfully surprised by the successes you’ve forgotten while focusing on the day-to-day or even the fumbles.
Acknowledge
Yes, we do fumble. At work, with our families, with our promises to ourselves. We fail to aspire by believing we cannot succeed in organizing our spaces or our time or our lives, or we aspire without realistic planning, writing checks our overwhelmed future selves can’t cash.
The point isn’t to get mired in where we’ve fallen short, but to cash in our reality checks, measure our ending points against our starting visions, giving ourselves credit and then acknowledging what we must do differently. Do we need new goals and aspirations, or do we need to seek professional help, comradeship/support, and different tools?
Grow
There is little point to looking back as a pure exercise unless we plan to sit on our laurels or self-flaggelate. Instead, we should use the knowledge of our past year to determine what we want our next year to reflect. Often misquoted or truncated, there’s an excellent quote by Dr. Maya Angelou:
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
After evaluating your year, ask yourself how you want to do better. Do you really want to lose weight to hit an arbitrary number on the scale, or do you want to feel more comfortable and more confident in your clothes? Do you want to jump on the fitness trend everyone else is trying or do you want to explore something that fits your needs and workout style?
I recently learned that our ability to get off the floor by ourselves, without using our hands, is highly correlated with longevity. So, even though I start every year wishing I were good at yoga (and not both klutzy and bored to tears by it), for 2024, I’m looking at continuing my 10+K walks, getting back into Pilates, and exploring functional workouts designed to help improve stability and strength. I’m also giving myself a benchmark date by which if I haven’t gotten into a regular routine beyond walking, I’m going to hire a coach to guide me on functional aging skills.
If you aren’t happy about (or aren’t feeling informed on) your finances, start by gathering intelligence. Your credit cards likely have a dashboard that sorts your expenditures into categories you can evaluate, like restaurant service delivery or monthly fees for apps you’re no longer using. Look for “spend analyzer” or “year-end summary” on your financial account apps to note trends. If you’ve been using Mint as an independent financial dashboard, note that Intuit is suspending it and moving some (but not all) of its functions to Credit Karma, so you may need to find an alternative.
PICK YOUR ANNUAL REVIEW STYLE
I know from experience that I flounder when trying to do a free-form annual review, so over the years, I’ve embraced Year Compass, which I learned about from Janet Barclay. Year Compass is free, downloadable and fillable, printable PDF. (It’s available in translations to dozens of languages.)
Just print the booklet version and fill it out by hand. (Be sure to set the page to US English to get North American paper measurements.) Alternatively, you can type your answers directly into the digital version. (My penmanship gets more unwieldy each year, but I think we all feel more connection to the past year’s version of ourselves if we hand-write responses.)
Explore the innovative questions to generate a thorough evaluation of how your past year turned out and how to approach the coming year. Do this on your own or with a group of friends or family after a yummy at-home brunch.
In last year’s post, Organize Your Annual Review & Mindset Blueprint for 2023, I talked about the importance of evaluating your year based on your personal values, as well quantitative and my own list of qualitative questions, which I’ll share again:
The Good
- What challenges made me feel smart, empowered, or proud of myself this year?
- What did I create?
- What positive relationships did I begin or nurture?
- Who brought delight to my life?
- Who stepped up or stepped forward for me?
- What was my biggest personal highlight or moment I’d like to relive?
- What was my biggest professional moment I’d want to appear in my bio?
- What’s a good habit I developed this year?
The Neutral
- What did I learn about myself and/or my work this year?
- What did I learn how to do this year?
- What did neglect or avoid doing out of fear or self-doubt?
- What did I take on that didn’t suit my goals or my abilities?
- What was I wrong about?
The Ugly
- What challenges made me feel weaker or less-than?
- Whom did I dread having to see or speak with this year?
- Who let me down?
- Whom did I let down?
- What did I do this year that embarrassed me (professionally or personally) or made me cringe?
- When did I hide my light under a bushel?
- What am I faking knowing how how do? — Instead of pretending you know how to do something but are choosing a different path, ask for help. Make decision about what to do from a position of strength rather than weakness.
- What’s a bad habit I regret taking up or continuing?
- Where did I spend my time wastefully or unproductively? (It’s social media. For all of us.)
- Where did I spend my money wastefully or unwisely? (Target? Let’s take a poll. Was it Target?)
WHY LOOK FORWARD?
Unless you’re a fourth grader watching the clock tick down until recess, time moves too quickly. We have little opportunity to savor the good, and before we know it, the years have flown by. If I don’t plan for how I want to live my future, time will go by without achieving what I want. To remind myself of the brevity and value of each day (without getting too maudlin), I use the simple but motivational app Life Clock.
Life Clock, available for iOS and Android, envisions a lifetime as the equivalent of a 24-hour clock. You feed it limited personal information and it extrapolates your life expectancy (though you can always adjust the number). It then identifies, for the given date, what “time” it is in your life.
Gulp!
Life Clock shares mini-facts about how to extend your lifespan (and notes what shortens it), and details historical trends and where traditional benchmarks (like graduating and moving out of your family home) fit on the clock of life. Each minute of your “life clock” equals about 20 days in real life.
We don’t need to “optimize” every bit of our lives; we deserve downtime. But we only get 1440 minutes in a real day, so let’s not waste a single one of our life clock minutes on things that aren’t good for us and don’t make us happy.
Nobody gets to decide for you what matters most. That said, it’s hard to stay focused on what matters to you when kids and world events and who Taylor Swift is dating all get in the way.
RESOLVE TO GIVE UP RESOLUTIONS
As I’ve written for many years, I don’t think resolutions work; they lead to disappointment and frustration. Why?
- People set unrealistic expectations. Resolutions are often overly ambitious and fail to account for the time and effort you need.
- Not all goals have to be SMART goals, but if your resolutions lack specificity (“get out of debt” or “get it shape,”), you have no actionable steps to take.
- Most resolutions have no real plan of action and no method for achieving accountability.
- Far too many resolutions have no intrinsic motivation. If your resolutions are designed to make someone else happy (whether that’s your mother-in-law or society) or compete (with a societal ideal or another individual), you’re bound for misery. I prefer SMARTY goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based, and most importantly, yours.
- Too many resolutions are made and evaluated with all-or-nothing thinking. Success based on perfectionism is demotivating. Give yourself grace.
Instead of resolutions, focus on changing your habits. I’ve written about this at length, including in Organize Your Life: The Truth About Resolutions, Goals, Habits, and Words of the Year back in 2019 and earlier this year in Paper Doll Helps You Find Your Ideal Analog Habit Tracker.
So read those two posts, and for real, meaningful change, read Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
and James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.
We don’t change who we are just because we decide to. We need a game plan. I will never embrace brevity in talking or writing. I will never be a morning person. But, I can change my habits. And so can you.
PROMOTE YOUR 2024 PLAN TO YOURSELF
Along with habit changes instead of resolutions, I believe in boosting your mindset so you can remind yourself, regularly, that you want to live a certain way, and why.
In the annual review/forward-looking posts I’ve linked to throughout this post, I’ve done deep dives into ways to keep the motivation and energy of your “why” alive. You can read about them in detail, but they include:
- 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
Whatever you pick, this word or phrase or song is your personal theme for the coming year. It reflects what you want to remember about your goals and your attitude. We all know that advertising works, so whatever you pick, or however you combine these ideas, use your (organized) space to keep your attention on your intention for the year.
Promote your theme word or phrase or song — to yourself — on a vision board to reflect and encompass any or all of your motivating words, phrases, and songs. Post your message to yourself on your bathroom mirror, your fridge, the inside of your front door — anywhere that it will give you a boost! Change your wakeup alarm on your phone to your song theme!
PAPER DOLL’S WORD OF THE YEAR FOR 2024
Some years, I do better than others with my word choice. In 2020, I picked “ample” and embracing the phrase “Ample: it’s not just for bosoms anymore.” I’ve carped about how the “ample” opportunities for experiencing a global health crisis weren’t appreciated, but upon years of reflection, I did grow the virtual organizing and productivity coaching side of my business.
2021’s “delighted” kept me seeking opportunities for delight, but I never managed to find a word that fit well for 2022. This year, I chose “fulfilled,” and it was a guiding principle behind work and life choices.
So far, I have two contenders for 2024.
One option came to me mid-summer in a flash, so I wrote it on the December page of my calendar so I wouldn’t forget. The word is UPGRADE.
I have a habit of overthinking a word’s unintentional implications. (Like how the year I picked “resilient,” I ended up with too many things from which to bounce back.)
Upgrade, though, has real potential. While there might be a slight implication of expense — having to replace things — I really feel the vibe of improvement. This isn’t about upgrading tangible things (socks notwithstanding) but about the quality of my experiences.
But “upgrade” has a quirky competitor: PRONOIA.
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.”
While song is about psyching oneself up after a heartbreak, there’s something in the lyrics (and Pearl’s intonations) that I find inspiring.
You ever heard the word Pronoia?
It’s the opposite of paranoia, pronoia
The belief that the world conspires in your favor
Honey, it’s a game changer
It’s a cherry lifesaver
When I feel like everything is breaking down
It’s the dip before I hit the higher ground
(©2023 Carly Pearl, Renee Hikari, and David Baron)
How do you feel about the year that’s ending? What word or phrase or song is emblematic of what you want in 2024?
Paper Doll Post:
Review & Renew for 2022: Resolutions, Goals, and Words of the Year
Snuggled in this week, tucked away between two major holidays, it’s tempting to rush to end the year with some sense of completion on those unfinished tasks. As much as we’d like to be mindfully in the present, we’re zipping along, trying to impose control in an era when there’s very little control to be had.
So today, I propose you take a breather. Bask in the quiet glow before we rush headlong into the future. Take time to do a little review of the past year so you can feel renewed, and if not in control, at least in awareness, for 2022.
TAKE A BACKWARD GLANCE
The best way to grow is to built on one’s successes. Grab a cup of cocoa (or whatever makes you feel alert but cozy) and settle in someplace comfy.
Pull out your calendar, whether it’s digital or paper bound, and start taking note of your successes, achievements, and delights. Personally, I think it’s best to keep a running list on paper (I mean, I am Paper Doll, after all), but if you prefer a spreadsheet, Word doc, or a note in Evernote, by all means, go with what feels comfy.
Look Beyond the Obvious
You can definitely list big accolades, awards, or milestones. Sure, mark down when you hit your revenue goal or finished that marathon. But look at those subtle successes, too.
What did you stick with, even when it was hard? Success isn’t always marked by what you attain, but how you persevere!
What did you try, even though it was out of your comfort zone? Succeeding at what you’re good at is worthy of pride, but stepping up to do something scary but potentially rewarding? That’s magical. (For more on that, check out my Sara Skillen’s Organizing and Big Scary Goals: Working With Discomfort and Doubt To Create Real Life Order.)
What surprisingly good things occurred that you had never even thought to imagine in the first place?
What dreams came true? Where did you decide to make new dreams when the old ones proved untenable (due to life or world circumstances)?
Janet Barclay’s excellent Set Your Compass to Reach Your Goals for the New Year introduced me to the free, downloadable YearCompass, an international marvel. Even if you get nothing else from today’s post, I encourage you to download this fillable, printable PDF and explore the questions. Examine your past year and get guidance for going forward.
I’m working my way through the digital version now, and it’s providing more insight than I’ve received from any prior annual review.
If you prefer an even deeper dive (and are willing to use up lots of Post-its®), try doing a life audit, examining the past, present, and future of your life. Or go shallower, cut to the chase, and stick to Apartment Therapy’s 6 Smart Questions to Ask Yourself at the End of the Year.
Not everyone can weave a tapestry of the past year out of the blocks of a calendar, so this is just a start. If you journal, flip through the pages to look for highlights, and recognize that bad days are actually achievements. You got through them and made it through the other side. (You’re here to read this, right?)
Surf through your social media posts. You may be surprised by what you find on LinkedIn or Facebook (or, yes, TikTok or Instagram). Look for a sense of all the big and little ways you did your thing, or helped others do their things! In particular, look at places where you were tagged for shoutouts and gratitude. There are lots of people always touting having gratitude, but sometimes it’s nice to notice and remember when you did something worthy of someone else’s gratitude or kudos.
Ah, kudos! Speaking of which, definitely check your Success Folder! Don’t have one? Create one! Actually, create two.
Have a digital success folder where you put emails that praise or thank you, or otherwise give you warm fuzzies. While you may get fewer and fewer things by mail, have a paper folder for collecting such tangible high-fives. On days where you are down on yourself, feel under-appreciated, or are disappointed, pulling out something that reminds you that “good stuff happens” and that you’re part of that chain of events is going to lift your spirits.
Engage With Your Village
Raising a child isn’t the only thing that takes a village; count on others to help lift your spirits and give you insight.
Talk to your people. We’re not always good at keeping formal records of our successes, but our friends and loved ones automatically catalog the snazzy things about us. Once, a friend was entering the workforce for the first time in decades, and was bemoaning the fact that she had no marketable skills. But because I’d known her (just about) forever, I was able to recite everything from events she’d run as a volunteer coordinator to the time she caught a PTA high muckety-muck embezzling! She sure-as-heck had marketable skills, but couldn’t immediately see them in herself, let alone recognize her own magnificence.
Want to increase the magic? Recognize your own successes, but also pay attention to your friends’ and colleagues’ achievements. Share their blog posts on your social platforms instead of just clicking “like.” Promote their professional highlights. And send them emails and even write to them the old-fashioned way so they have something to put in their own Success Folders!
MOVING FORWARD: TRIED AND TRUE FOR ’22
Armed with insight into what we achieved (and what we wish we had tried) in the prior year, we can approach the new year. First, we’ll look at the classic approaches, but we’ll also examine some exciting new ways to support our dreams as we move forward into 2022, even if it’s about to be “COVID’s junior year.”
Resolve to Evolve
In general, New Year’s resolutions come in two flavors, either positive or negative.
With positive resolutions, we say we’re going to proactively do something. Maybe we’ll do Couch-to-5K or learn a language. For negative resolutions, we plan to eliminate some aspect of our lives that we know is dragging us down, so we vow to go on a diet or stop hate-watching The Bachelorette.
Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels
Resolutions date back many, many centuries. Four thousand years ago, the Babylonians promised the gods they would return borrowed objects and repay outstanding debts. (If only the Babylonians had had professional organizers to help them declutter and locate the borrowed stuff and couch cushion money.)
The Romans promised their two-faced god Janus, who looked simultaneously backward and to the future, that they’d be good in the year to come. And for several hundred years, Christian watch night services have included traditions of reflecting on the prior year and making resolutions for the one to come.
In the United States, resolution-making continues to increase; up to 40% of the population makes a New Year’s resolution. On the up-side, these resolutions help us start the new year in a motivated, positive way – right when the weather, the amount of sunlight, our bank balances, and our moods are at an annual low-ebb. December 31st is when we feel our age and recognize the passing of another year of unfulfilled potential; resolutions rev our engines.
On the down-side, the vast majority of people abandon their resolutions before February. Resolutions fizzle for three reasons:
- our real lives get in the way (year after year after year)
- our resolutions may be things we’re supposed to do, but aren’t passionate about
- we haven’t identified working strategies for achieving our resolutions
So, if you are going to make a resolution, make sure you’re picking things that excite and challenge you, but also figure out how to eliminate the past obstacles and ease your path.
For inspiration on developing new or different resolutions, consider some of the following:
Good Housekeeping‘s 60 Achievable New Year’s Resolutions for Healthier and Happier Living 2022 has less all-encompassing, more bit-sized resolutions, like “Prioritize age-appropriate health screenings,” “eat more vegetables,” and “listen to novels while you work out.
The Pioneer Woman has 40 New Year’s Resolution Ideas to Start 2022 Right, with some fun, sociable ideas like “give more compliments,” “send more cards,” and “make time to spend with family and friends.”
And Antimaximalist’s whopping 67 New Year’s Resolutions for 2022 prioritizes hopeful notions like, “Don’t settle for less than you deserve” and “Be less afraid of making mistakes.”
You can resolve to do things that are fun, too. Gretchen Rubin made a list of 21 things she wanted to do in 2021:
Here’s my 21 for 2021 list. I got a fair number of things crossed off my list. Now I’m writing my 22 for 2022 list—and deciding what items to carry over from 2021. pic.twitter.com/KmdMXUBAPu
— Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin) December 21, 2021
and has a PDF to help you track your 22 in ’22.
Embrace Good Goals and Happy Habits
So, how can you supercharge your resolutions? Maybe stop thinking of them as big, sparkly things you resolve to do (with the unspoken societal expectation that it’ll all fall through), and consider the less flashy younger siblings of resolutions, ye old goals and habits.
Think of goals as providing the big-picture framework, the big city markers on the map; habits are the turn-by-turn directions to get you where you want to go.
SMART goals are popular because they identify where resolutions and plans often fail.
- Specific (What are you going to do? Use action verbs! Where and when are you going to put these efforts into effect? With whose help or partnership will you get there?)
- Measurable (What metrics will you use to show you’ve done what you said you’d do? How many miles per day? How many lessons per week? How many blocks of time for achieving specific tasks?)
- Achievable (Is this a practical goal? Is it realistic?)
- Relevant (Does this goal make sense for your life, family, or business?)
- Time-based (When will you start? When will you perform the action? When will you repeat it? When will you finish? Remember, “Someday” is not a day on the calendar!)
And Paper Doll readers know that I prefer SMARTY goals, where that Y reflects the idea that these are goals that are meaningful to YOU, not your mother-in-law, boss, or favorite Instagram influencer.
I prefer SMARTY goals, where that Y reflects the idea that these are goals that are meaningful to YOU, not your mother-in-law, boss, or favorite Instagram influencer. Share on XWhether you want to lose weight, pay off debt, find a significant other, or grow your business, the goal can’t just be a vague “what I want” without any guideposts. Make sure your goals spell out what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and how you’re going to measure your success.
So, if your goals set the rules and create the game plan, habits are how you get to the finish line.
If your goal is to get to work on time every day, but you often find yourself searching the house for your keys, wallet, phone, and charger, then you’ll want to develop a habit of assigning a “home” and always putting those items in the home upon returning to your house, before you even take off your shoes. If your goal is to be prepared at tax time, then your habits involve doing weekly record-keeping and filing, and not waiting until April 12th to get started.
Habits are your settled or repeated tendencies. Sure, bad habits become second nature, making them hard to break, but good habits are hard to break, too! So, if you can get in the habit of repeating positive, life-affirming tasks, you stand a much better chance of achieving your goals.
I recommend a few superior books for understanding how habits work, and how you can put them to use in your life. Both are becoming modern classics.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg walks you through the research and the practical ways you can use habits to improve the likelihood of achieving your goals. The central concept is that every habit has a cue-routine-reward loop. Modify or enhance your routine based on an environmental cue (depending on whether you want to cut out the bad stuff or do more of the good stuff), and you can inch closer to your goals.
Duhigg also talks about the halo effect of keystone habits, where starting or modifying certain habits will have a knock-on effect, improving other areas of your life. Kids whose families have a habit of eating together do better in school and have more confidence.
Yes, it’s probably true that families who eat together are less dysfunctional in the first place, and likely include parents with more flexible jobs that allow them to be home at the same time. Correlation is not causation, but on the off chance that making the effort to open your mail and file your papers helps you pay bills on time and get out of debt faster, or making your bed makes you more productive, why not try?
TAKE A DIFFERENT VIEW FOR ’22
So, resolutions are like New Year’s Eve champagne; fizzy, but they soon go flat. Goals and habits are the workhorses of achievement, but they’re not exactly sexy. Sometimes, our behaviors are less of an obstacle than our attitudes, and when we upgrade our attitudes, our actions fall in line. It’s important to know what you need, and what will inspire you.
There are three popular styles of approaching your upcoming year with a new mindset.
Words Matter
Have you heard about developing a Word of the Year?
Instead of a big, formal plan, identify a word (or phrase) that encapsulates the emotional heft of what you want your year to look and feel like, and you use the word to help you focus your efforts.
It can be a noun, verb, or adjective. I was going to joke that it probably shouldn’t be an interjection, but there are many articles that advise trying to live your life such that if it isn’t a “hell, yeah!” then it’s a no.
(That said, your word of the year probably shouldn’t be a conjunction.)
When in doubt, ask yourself “Does this event/date/person/purchase align with my word of the year?”
This word can be serious or lighthearted, as long as it focuses on what you want to do, have, or be. But the meaning of the word should resonate with you.
One year, I picked the word “resilience,” but then found that so many things happened in that year from which I had to bounce back! If my word for that year had been “energize” or “cultivate” or whatnot, I might not have felt like a cloud was hanging over me. And I started 2020 with a word I liked so much that I turned it into a mock ad campaign, “Ample: it’s not just for bosoms anymore!” But then everyone’s 2020 was amply filled in ways that did not charm or delight.
Speaking of delight, which was my 2021 word, it hit the perfect note. Yes, the world was still wackadoodle this year, but somehow I found small delights in positive actions and happenings, and when I asked myself, “Will doing this delight me (or someone I care about)?” it really helped guide my decisions!
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
To identify your word of the year, go in one of two directions.
- Look back on 2021 and ask yourself, “What do I need more of? What was I missing last year? What would have given me strength or self-confidence or a better grip on my emotional well-being?” What word keeps coming up?
- Look forward, and start with (what would normally be) your resolutions or goals in mind. By the end of 2022, what word would you like to have had resonate with you? Structure? Boundaries? Or perhaps Freedom or (Financial) Independence?
Feeling the need for a thesaurus (or, as my high school boyfriend tried to tell me it was alternatively called, a synonymograph)? See if any words or concepts from the following sources work for you:
Four Steps to Your 2022 Word of the Year from the Messy Bun Mafia
How to Pick One Word for the Year 2022 from Midlife Rambler
Tips for Choosing Your Word of the Year from MountainModernLife.com
Word of the Year Ideas for a Better 2022 from The Goal Chaser (and her How to Make Your “Word of the Year” Really Stick)
Do More Words Mean More Success?
One word isn’t always enough. Some people need a word for themselves, a word for their family, and a word for their businesses. Others need one word each for mind, body, and spirit. Who are we to judge?
Strategist Chris Brogan has been selecting three words for more than a decade. He usually posts his words on New Year’s Day, so until then, you can look at his 2021 post with links to his three words each year going back to 2006.
Your Word Doesn’t Have to Make Sense to Anyone Else
Your word of the year doesn’t have to be in English.
Recently, I was reading an article about how an independent publisher had been told she needed to come up with a name for her publishing enterprise, and she picked bramgioia, Italian for “yearning for joy.” If your goal for next year is to be less of a mouse and more of a lion, chutzpah, Yiddish for “extreme self-confidence or audacity” might be the word for you.
You could even pick a code word. Through a sequence of events and nicknames better forgotten, a high school friend and I came to refer to her crush as “Crater Lake, Oregon.” Nobody needs to know what your code word really means. The point is that you know, and every time you say it, write it, or see it, it will motivate you in the direction you choose.
Om, Om, Oh man, I need a Mantra!
Is a resolution too rigid, a goal too structured, and a single word too abstract? Maybe you need a Mantra of the Year. Mantras can be affirmations or quotes you want to embody. Mike Vardy calls it his Annual Axiom. (For 2021, he picked “Whatever it takes, no matter what.”)
A mantra, whether it’s a short quote, a repeated statement, or a slogan, has an inspirational aspect. Your mantra can help you self-soothe, motivate you, and provide an even clearer sense of the vision you want your actions to reflect.
Your mantra can be as simple as “No drama” or it can be as challenging as one that I’ve considered for myself, “I will be kind, even when the impulse is to be right.”
Your mantra can be as simple as *No drama* or it can be as challenging as one that I've considered for myself, *I will be kind, even when the impulse is to be right.* Share on XAnother format is to choose some variation on “More X, less Z” like “More extraordinary, less ordinary,” or “Move more, sit less” or “Appreciate more, complain less.”
For some inspiration, check out 10 Mantras for a More Meaningful New Year from Huffington Post. Mantras for 2022 from the UK’s Mantra Jewellery’s blog has some visually stunning options.
I’VE GOT MY WORD(S). NOW WHAT?
Keep your resolutions, your goals, your habits, your words, or your mantras in the forefront of your mind until you know them by heart. How?
Set a reminder on your phone to pop up with your mantra every three hours during the “awake” part of your day.
Post your word, Ted Lasso-style, all over your workplace or house, from signs over the office doorway to sticky notes on the bathroom mirror.
Create a vision board. From Oprah Daily to Jack Canfield advice abounds!
Recite your resolution, word or mantra every night before you go to sleep and upon waking. (If necessary, put a sticky note on your phone so you’re prompted when your alarm goes off.)
Do you make resolutions? Set annual goals? Have a word or mantra?
Dear readers, whether you choose a resolution, a goal (with habits), a word (in whatever language you choose) or a mantra, I think you’re spiffy just the way you are.
I wish you a happy, healthy, and organized 2022!
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Gets Hooked on GeckoTech and Meets a Spy: A Shoplet Review
Periodically Paper Doll reviews new and established office supplies and accessories through the Shoplet Product Review Program.
A few years ago, I wrote the post If It Quacks Like a Duck Then It Might Be a Zebra, a Shoplet review of wackily-patterned Duck®-brand tape. Today, we’re looking at a different kind of quacker, a gecko that thinks it’s a duck.
HOOKING UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS
We professional organizers like to recommend vertical storage because it makes efficient use of otherwise underutilized empty wall/door/cabinet space. For example, we’ve previously talked about vertical file storage options that let you make use of walls in office, cubicles and even hotels. But sometimes you don’t need a big, fancy organizing tool. Sometimes, to hang a backpack or a coat, car keys or a flash drive, a nice hook will do.
When we talk about hanging things on hooks, we usually consider four solutions: nails, suction cups, adhesive-backed hooks, and 3M’s Command®-brand. Each has advantages and drawbacks:
- Nails are inexpensive — you can get a pound of them for about $3. But you also have to have a stud-finder to make sure you aren’t hammering that nail into a random piece of sheet rock, and a nail is a rather permanent solution to what might be a temporary need, especially if you’re a renter (or you redo your décor with any frequency).
- Suction cups with hooks on them seem like a great idea at first. We use them to hang squeegees and soaps-on-ropes in the shower and rainbow-glass knickknacks on our windows. But we don’t use them for heavy-duty stuff because experience tells us that the minute a suction cup gets lint-y or dusty, it pops off the window or wall.
- Plastic hooks with adhesive backing are fairly easy to place — they come with the spongy adhesive tab already affixed to the hook, and you just have to figure out where to plant it, and then remove the backing from the other side and stick it! But woe onto you if you put too much weight on a plastic hook or ever want to remove it. Chances are good that your paint job will be ruined or the spongy-sticky adhesive residue will stay behind. Good luck getting your security deposit back!
- Command®-brand hooks are great! They’re relatively easy to put in place, and are easily removed without damage to whatever surface you select. And let’s face it, they’ll hold anything, for just about forever. It’s usually my go-to option. However, although the hooks themselves are reusable, after you use up the original and spare adhesive tabs, you have to buy more.
Hence, today’s products for review. I received two: one three-pound and one five-pound capacity new breed of Reusable Hook.
THE BASICS
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks are different. No nails. No gummy adhesive. No complicated directions. And while yes, they use suction, this is not your bathtub squeegee/rainbow prism-holding suction cup.
The GeckoTech Reusable Hooks come in four weight-bearing capacities and in five packaging varieties:
- Four hooks per package, each with up to 1/2-pound (.22 kg) capacity
- Two hooks per package, each with up to one pound (.45 kg) capacity
- One hook per package, each with up to three pounds (1.3 kg) capacity
- Two hooks per packages, each with up to 3 pounds (1.3 kg) capacity
- One hook, each with up to five pounds (2.3 kg) capacity
Each hook has a large, flat, smooth, transparent surface backing from which the small, plastic hook protrudes. The backing is flexible, and while the front feels smooth, the reverse, the part that is flush with the wall or other vertical surface, is covered with itty-bitty, teeny-weeny micro-suction, invisible thingies and feels kind of gummy, though it leaves no residue.
It’s also waterproof!
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks adhere to painted surfaces that can resist stains and are easy to clean — so, not textured or matte-finish surfaces. But it also works on plasterboard, glass, laminate, stainless steel and other smooth, hard, non-porous surfaces. They don’t recommend using it on wallpaper or textured surfaces — like the bumpy, stucko-like walls of Paper Doll HQ. (You should also avoid surfaces that are “dirty, uneven, peeling or coarse.” No surprises there, eh?)
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks run between $3.42 and $4.50 per package.
HOW GECKOTECH “INSTALLS”
Using the GeckoTech Reusable Hooks is pretty easy, even for the all-thumbs brigade at Paper Doll HQ:
- Clean the vertical surface with rubbing alcohol and allow to dry.
- Affix the GeckoTech to the vertical surface and use your fingers to push out any air bubbles. Wait an hour.
- Hang your stuff.
The packaging also advises to apply hooks when the surface temperature is between 40°F and 100°F, so no trying this in Buffalo garages when you’re bored at home on a snow day, OK?
GeckoTech claims to be “over-engineered” to hold more than the weight capacity listed for any given size, so the weight on the label seems like a safe limit to which you should adhere.
It’s right in the name — the product is removable. So, put it too high, or too low, or decide three months later that you’re packing up and moving to Miami to get away from harsh winters, and you can remove it with no muss, no fuss, and no damage. And then you can put it up somewhere else!
HOW GECKOTECH “UN-INSTALLS”
Peel off corner of the backing and lift it from the wall. That’s all!
OK, that’s not entirely all. If the GeckoTech hook has been up for more than 30 days, the packaging advises blowing a hair dryer at the hook to warm it for a moment before removing. That really is all.
HOW GECKOTECH “RE-INSTALLS”
Wash the hook with warm, soapy water. Let it air dry. Reuse.
GECKOTECH VS. THE OTHER GUYS
So how do the GeckoTech Reusable Hooks stack up against the other methods we’ve considered?
From the other reviews I’ve seen, as well as the promises on the packaging, the micro-suction that the backing doohickey creates means there’s no damage to the surface left behind, and no residue. So, that knocks nails and those plastic, sticky-backed hooks out of contention.
The promised weight-bearing seems accurate, so unlike the rainbow-prism colored glass suction-cup hook on the glass balcony door at Casa Paper Doll (the one that pops off the glass about once a month), this gecko stays stuck.
I only tried hanging a few household items (below), but from the looks of it on Pinterest, the GeckoTech Reusable Hooks work for corralling everything from pot lids on the inside of kitchen cabinets to holiday decorations on the mantel to the inside of a school or gym locker.
I’d say GeckoTech is pretty on-par with my beloved Command®-brand hooks for sticktoitiveness, and because GeckoTech is waterproof and lays flat against the vertical surface, it has a few added advantages — you can use these hooks in the shower without worry about soap-scum build-up.
THE VERDICT
I really did enjoy my chance to try out the GeckoTech. I liked that it was smooth and flat against any vertical surface. There’s no way for dust or schmutz to get in behind the hook, so you don’t have to worry about aerosolized oil in the kitchen (not that Paper Doll cooks) or stray yuckiness. You can remove, clean and re-apply these hooks at any time.
I also liked that because they are transparent, you don’t have to worry about color clashes in upscale rooms. Are these hooks gorgeous? No, but except for comparing them with the fanciest of Command®-brand hooks (like the brushed nickel types), this gecko is unobtrusive.
But there were some shortcomings. The maximum weight the strongest of these babies can handle is only five pounds, and that’s just not enough for a full backpack, or a workout bag with two-pound weights, or most purses. (Paper Doll‘s purse, below, is 3 pounds, shown hanging from a five-pound GeckoTech hook.)
The GeckoTech worked fine holding a curling iron by its hanging loop, but although my fancy hair dryer is under two pounds, I didn’t quite feel confident to hang it from the three-pound hook, even for a test. (User flaw rather than product flaw, perhaps?)
GeckoTech is a win, in general, but I’d like to see even bigger ones with more weight-bearing capacity. I’m not sure at what point structural integrity would hamper this simple design, but I’d be eager to see the line expand.
007 HAS NOTHING ON HP260
The other item Shoplet provided for my review was Duck®-brand HP260 High Performance Packing Tape with a built-in dispenser. As I’ve already reviewed Duck®-brand packaging tape, I wasn’t sure what could be new. It’s still clear (“crystal clear,” the packaging reports) and yes, the 3.1mm wide tape is suitable for all of “your shipping and storage needs.” But it’s packing tape — there are only two kinds, good and lousy, and Duck® makes good tape. So what else?
I read on about the tape’s aggressive acrylic adhesive being superior for wide temperature application: “HP260 features a wide temperature range performance and is resistant to ultraviolet rays which eliminates yellowing and increases shelf life.“ I only had the tape here for a little over a week, and the temperature inside Paper Doll HQ is generally fixed between 68° and 72°. As I didn’t think to have a box shipped from Boston to Bali, I’ll have to take Shoplet and Duck® at their word. But there was one more thing.
HP260 is billed as WHISPER QUIET — and it is! Have you ever noticed how packaging tape is usually pretty squeaky? I don’t know what they’ve done to make this ninja-caliber silent, but it’s completely squeak-free. And you don’t have to take my word for it:
This spy-rated tape comes in 22.2-yard single rolls for $2.77 and multi-packs.
FINAL WORDS
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks and Duck®-brand HP260 High Performance Packaging Tape are available directly from Shoplet, which also carries business promotional products and maintains a (literally and figuratively) colorful blog about cool office supplies. In addition to selling office supplies in North America, Shoplet is a purveyor of office stationery in the UK.
Disclosure: I received these products for review purposes only, and was given no monetary compensation. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Who else would claim them?)
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