I was talking to a friend about this particular transformation, and realized it had never made it to the blog, so here you go. For those of you who work at home, you can have a super-functional and pretty office, in just about 30″ of space (deep).
Before:
After:
Remember tech month back in 2011? That was when I took on the challenge of posting about some of your everyday tech challenges, and started using the NeatDesk scanner.
With my NeatDesk, I scan cards, make needed notes, correct any info not scanned properly, keep the image in the pc database, and then sync with outlook and then my iPad so I always have all of my contacts. I also sync with ACT so I can queue clients and vendors into different schedules and follow up actions. 
The NeatDesk scans receipts for export to accounting programs and scans other docs to PDFs for storage. I’m looking forward to scanning magazine pages for design ideas, industry articles, and maybe even recipes.
So how much have I gone paperless with? From left to right in the photo above:
1. The box of cards has been completely scanned, but I’m still keeping the paper for now.
2. The stack of receipts was scanned, but I haven’t done anything else with them just yet.
3. The stack of bank deposits in the middle? I chucked those. I mean shredded. You know.
4. The stack of design ideas is still on my desk.
5. The NAPONEWS issues were recycled. Really. I didn’t have time to do more than brief through them when they were published years ago. I do not have the time to rip them apart and scan them today!
6. And that little mystery stack next to my phone? Most of that has been eliminated by turning them into to-dos on my Evernote to do list. But we’ll see if I ever completely get rid of it. I know you are smiling about that, but it’s the truth. 😉
Neat started publicizing an update to their software, which is an integrated part of their scanner, late last year. I was able to download the version 5 update and am THRILLED with it. After the software upgrade, we saw about a 600% increase in scanning productivity. Almost all of my business cards are now entered, which was my original goal for this whole project. I’ve been able to get the Neat database to sync with Outlook 2010 and feed through to ACT. This is all important for my business, and makes and future trade shows, conferences, and seminars where I am picking up business cards so much more fruitful.
I’ve been involved in “cloud” computing for decades, first at my former employer, then as a professional organizer constantly answering the question, “When can I take my home/office paperless?” The hype was always bigger than the capabilities. Up until this year, I considered all but a few clients who were trying to go paperless just plain reckless. The input was clunky, the OCR was awful, and backup solutions were usually completely absent.
Neat is starting to solve the first problem, and input is no longer clunky.
The OCR improvement that I saw with the last release is remarkable. Is it still not perfect, especially when there are tricky fonts and logos involved, but it was really much improved.
The one piece that is still feeling like the Wild West to me is the backup solution. Yes, backup is a HUGE part of the paperless office. In fact, just this week there was a discussion amongst professional organizers nationwide about how a cloud backup solution can go wrong. Many small business and home office users are not technology experts, and I know that not enough of them have a solid backup and recovery solution in place. I would love for Neat to buy or partner with a backup company to make the backend of home computing a non-issue for clients who really want to rely on a scanning solution. I simply don’t believe that our home PC systems are sturdy enough to hold all of our data. In fact, I experienced a catastrophic failure three years ago, and a huge risk point just this last year when I upgraded my system.
It’s not a matter of if, but when your computer will crash. So I recommend on site AND offline backups for homeowners, and off-site, monitored backups for business owners.
There is a lot of chatter about the latest tech, like smartphone apps to snap business card pictures and Evernote’s awesome OCR and storage capabilities. The smart phone apps let you take pictures of cards and try to do the same thing, but this is pretty sophisticated stuff, and I have a hard time believing the apps are as accurate or robust. I did have a chance to try the CardMunch app this week with a client, and it worked well for light duty (one card at a time) scanning from a smart phone. Pitted against these free products, it’s tough to justify the price tag for Neat for the casual user. But for a home office and a home based business user, I believe that the support and commitment to upgrades at Neat justify the cost. I would love to see Neat address their solution compared to the free apps, and I would LOVE to see tighter integration with Evernote.
Neat’s strong competitor is the Fujitsu Scansnap. Both manufacturers have Mac options. I don’t own this product, but can report that many of my professional organizer peers have had positive reviews, and especially love the tight integration with Evernote.
This is the first time ever I now feel confident enough about the tools, because they’ve improved that much, to recommend a small business really moving toward paperless records. Converting to a paperless office is neither painless nor automagic, but it is an improvement over paper piles.
Other cloud applications to watch or use if you are moving to a paperless life:
Google contacts
Google docs
Salesforce.com
Apple cloud
I’m right in the middle of an office redesign- for myself this time! I had to decide whether I was going to give the Neat Desk scanner precious real estate on my desk top. You’ll see it for yourself in an upcoming post, but I did decide that the Neat Desk gets to stay on my desk, just within arm’s reach. I’m starting to be very fond of this little gadget. I may not be paperless, but I’m getting to less paper, for sure.
There are three questions everyone wants to know about my projects:
It’s the New Year, and everyone wants a fresh start, so I thought you would just love to see this little project that a client and I completed between Christmas and the New Year. His goal was to clear out the space so he could do something with it, maybe create a much needed home office office down the road.
Knowing that paper takes the longest to organize, we contracted to go through the paper and purge unwanted furniture and items.
This is a third floor bedroom/dormer space that was already finished, but being used to store tubs of paper and household cast-offs. This picture shows just half of it.
Here’s the other half.
So how long did it take to get this organized? Remember, there are five steps to getting organized (as always, with a nod to Julie Morgenstern’s great book, Organizing From the Inside Out):
We planned on spending about 8 hours, and we spent about two hours longer than that. And that is only because we went shopping, bought a new desk and file cabinet, and put them together. The client got way more than he bargained for! Here they are, on day 2, the final day of the project.
And the other side of the room. You can see the new file cabinet hiding back in the corner. Yes, the client went through all the paper that you see in the before photos, and what didn’t get shredded or recycled got divvied up into the three small but sturdy drawers. There was a lot of recycling out at the curb the next day.
And to help with containerizing, we added two bookcases,
and we reset the bookcase that was already there.
Now this office really works. And we did all of this, just the two of us, in just a few hours over two days. So that answers the first question.
Will he keep it fabulous and organized now? Probably. He now has places to put household papers, his own personal paper retention guidelines, and a real desire to use this space for work instead of storage. Most of all, he has systems with the file cabinet, the bookcases that store books, and the one bookcase that holds his office and teaching supplies.
And how much did it cost? Well, in round numbers, it was around a thousand bucks for the services and the new furniture. My organizing projects themselves start at $350. This guy will probably deduct all of this as a business expense. Smart move.
He said to me, “We got more done in 4 hours than I have gotten done up here in the last 5 years.”
Aw, shucks, that’s what I love to hear!
I hope this gives you some real inspiration for your winter organizing project.
And, by the way, forget the resolutions. Who ever thought up that idea, anyway?
But here is one thing you can do in three minutes or less that can make a real difference for you this year. Not kidding. Right now. Read this, and then run to find your nearest file folder, oversized envelope, or empty box. Yes, you can even repurpose a gift box if you need to.
Set this folder, envelope, or box aside in your home office, or near where you process your mail. If you share your home, let your spouse know where this is and what it is for. Start filling it with items you might need to file your taxes this year. You’ll start gettting these items in mid-January, possibly through February. You might already have a few receipts or pages to add right now. But if not, you’ll find them over the next few weeks. When you find stuff that is or might be tax related, just pop it in here without worrying about organizing it. Get something in email that you might need? Save your sanity today by actually printing it out and popping it in the safe spot you just created. Do you run a small, disorganized business from home? Start pulling all of your records together now, and you’ll have what you need come crunch time.
Important tax records include W2’s, 1099’s, receipts for charitable gifts and donations, 529 records (contributions or expenses), end of year banking statements, refinance records, energy-saving home improvement records from the past year, and, of course, any unreimbursed work expenses. If you aren’t sure whether it might be tax-related, pull out last year’s (2010) tax return and use that as a guide.
Don’t organize this stuff until you get ready to prepare your taxes; you are weeks away from that. Right now, you are just trying to corral the little buggers that you’ll need for your 1040.
There. Done. You’re all organized, and it’s only day 2 of the new year. Good for you!
Copyright (c) <a href=’http://www.123rf.com’>123RF Stock Photos</a>
If you are about to recycle or donate a desktop or laptop computer, watch this video first and learn how to remove your hard drive.
Even if you want to donate your computer to a refurbishing organization, remove and destroy the hard drive, because sensitive personal data CAN be retrieved from a hard drive that has been erased by a magnet or a software program.
Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos
If you want to stick with traditional, use on hand materials to customize office decorations.
Decorating an office for the holidays can put co-workers, employees and customers in festive spirits without feeling commercialized. You can use these same tricks to make your home decorating beautiful and personal. I like to keep it as green as possible, as affordable as possible, customized, and classic. Click here for the full article on how to decorate your office this year, or use these same easy principles to decorate for any holiday.
You can step outside traditional red and green to create custom decorating themes for an office.
Whatever you do to decorate your office, enjoy this opportunity to share a bit of your own style for the holidays.
This post originally published in About One.
Holidays are upon us. For most people I’ve talked to, things are crazier than ever. It’s easy to get caught up in the craziness, or to feel overwhelmed by it. I was having drinks with some gal pals last night, all extraordinary models of moms in action. These are the kinds of women who keep the world running quietly in the background for the rest of us. It got me thinking about why we all, especially moms, take on so many roles and activities.
Last year at this time, I was working on the finishing touches for my first book. The Pregnant Entrepreneur was published this year, and has been a great way for me to offer even more assistance to women and families. If you wonder about how and why it came about, please read the Pregnant Entrepreneur book review by Nicolette Milholland, Book Bound columnist. This book isn’t about me, but rather it’s for the next woman who needs to know how to get through nine months with her businesses, finances and dignity intact.
I’m very proud that the book was well received by professional reviewers, including Midwest Book Review, who said this about it. “Pregnancy doesn’t mean you stop being a businesswoman. “The Pregnant Entrepreneur” is an advisory guide for the recently expecting businesswoman who realizes her endeavors aren’t going to stop for nine months while she deals with the newest entry into her life. From making it so your business runs well when you need to take your leave, to coming back after this tough endeavor, “The Pregnant Entrepreneur” is a strongly recommended business preparation guide for those expectant mothers.”
And the national parenting magazine Pregnancy and Newborn mentioned it in their October issue. 
So it turns out that one of the biggest criticisms of my book is that it is marketed too narrowly. Women who have read it say it provides a lot of good information about staying organized and running a business, even if you aren’t pregnant. Thankfully, that’s the kind of criticism I can take more of. If you feel like you just need more entrepreneur stuff and less pregnant, please go right to www.PregnantEntrepreneur.com and look at the Downloads section. I’ve published all of the appendixes in the book for everyone to grab, for free. Yes, even the guys can use some of these tools.
One of the best pieces of organizing advice ever given is to start with a goal in mind. Even my hardest case ADD/ADHD clients are excellent at something. They, and all of us, tend to excel where we feel most motivated and energized. I LOVE LOVE LOVE to help people get organized because they can accomplish so much more when they aren’t spinning in an overwhelmed state. I LOVE to help people beautify their homes and offices, because life truly is better when you have a safe, beautiful place to unwind and be with friends. And I love to help other women figure out how to be successful in business. Because I truly love all these things, I love to spend my time on them, and I get a lot done.
Pay attention to when you are most energized, most animated, and most satisfied. Chances are, if you can line up your interest, talents and energies, you have a winning combination.
Why do you do what you do? What would you do if you didn’t have obstacles? Or if I’ve helped you in some way, what were you able to accomplish when you stopped the “spinning”?
By the way, if there is a woman in your life you are trying to encourage, this might be a good resource for her. There is still time to order autographed copies as a gift. Just visit www.PregnantEntrepreneur.com today to place your order (or visit Amazon).
This week I received this gem in an email from a client, who said, “I’m concerned because I actually may have more work coming in than is possible to deal with in a 40 hour work week; when I’m out for a day, things quickly spiral out of control and that’s frustrating.”
Ever feel like this is your story? I’ve seen statistics stating the average worker has about 40 hours of work on their desk. And we know you aren’t average.
If this is your situation, when you run up against a few days of disaster (and you will) when you are sick, must travel, have a major deadline project placed on your desk, or (gasp!) take vacation, then you can feel even more out of control. Any time you get behind, you are likely to get really behind because you are already carrying a heavy workload.
So how do organized people cope? They develop systems to help manage daily work so when overwhelm happens, they can rely on their systems to take care of the regular stuff, while they can focus on the extraordinary for a while. Good systems include a good planner that incorporates a highly functional calendar, 80/20-based to do list, contact list, and projects.
This is where a diet metaphor comes in handy. Even if you don’t diet, it’s a good metaphor. Just because I’m going to eat
more than a healthy share of sweets on, say, my birthday doesn’t mean I can’t also eat the good stuff…well rounded meals and plenty of veggies and fruits. In other words, I’m not going to blow my entire day by ONLY eating junk. I’m going to eat well and pack a few extra calories with the goodies. In other words, organized people keep doing the good stuff. But at the first sign of anxiety and overwhelm, instead of reaching for chocolate (or in our work owrld, facebook, IM and other distractions), they do one more thing on the top of their prioritized to do list instead. Keep doing the good, even if you do a little bit of the not so good.
If you get behind for any reason, it can start to feel really out of control, but it’s really not. Usually, a day or so of focused work, and possibly even some overtime, will allow you to get back in control. I don’t mean to say just work harder and things will be OK, but if you’ve got extra work for a short period of time, you may have to just buckle down and plow through it.
If you absolutely can’t dig yourself out and your workload is unsustainable, it’s making you sick, and you can’t find time for the things that make you happy in life beyond your paycheck, then you need to start building your case to delegate some work or bring in reinforcements (an assistant, someone to split your job with, or a professional organizer to improve your workflow and highlight inefficiencies). If you are working at capacity and the department or company is suffering, the professional thing to do is to discuss the workload with your boss. Acting like there isn’t a problem – if you are working at capacity – won’t make it go away,
and will ultimately reflect badly on him or her. Bosses hate that. The worst case is he ignores you, and the best case is that he does something to help you (like telling you some things you think are high priority are really low priority, yippee!). This is sort of like asking for a raise, but usually has a MUCH higher probability of a better outcome.
So if your overwhelming situation at work is a new, short term experience, be sure you have good systems in place to stay organized, even when chaos hits. If you are living in a constant state of overwhelm, start thinking about strategies to discuss the situation with your boss or bring in additional resources to your small business if you are self-employed. Clearing your desk and calling your job done at the end of the day just doesn’t happen anymore.
Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos
I call my iPad my third child because it requires so much of my attention. But like a child, I have moments of frustration and moments of utter adoration. In case you are considering investing in one, I hope my top five reasons to love it or hate it will help you.
As of June 11, there were 25M iPads sold. I was shocked to learn that about 5% of the US population owns one. They are still the dominant player in the tablet market.
1. I’ve only had the thing for about a year, and I’ve had all of my data and settings deleted by the first software update, had to have the unit replaced twice completely, and have to reload all settings each time. Good Lord!
2. I am really getting tired of cleaning this glass all the time! I found a non-glare film at The Five Below store for, get this, $5, when they typically sell between $20 and $40.
3 The audio isn’t anything to write home about. It is not audible in the car without exterior speakers or a headset, which isn’t ideal for young kiddos.
4. I’ll admit it, I am a PC. I am slowly learning entirely new ways to interact with the software, and all of the Excel look-alike programs that I’ve tried so far just don’t allow me to do what I need to do.
5. No Flash??? C’mon, Apple, get this fixed. Still at least once a day, usually with a client, I end up at a site that says, “you must download flash to view this site,” as if it is just taunting me. C’mon, I can’t view the DISNEY site, for Pete’s sake????? (That’s been fixed, now, as companies have been forced to redesign their sites to allow mobile and iPad users unfettered access. Looks like Flash is on its way out.)
Did I say five? Uh, oh.
6. The new iPad2??? The one with the camera, rather two cameras? This would seriously make my life easier, but not for another $800. I’m stuck with the stinky old iPad original. Now I understand why Apple stock is still considered a buy.
7. This thing is seriously addictive. With a push of a button, it’s awake and working. Unfortunately, humans are not designed as well, and having this thing in the house makes it hard to get a good night’s sleep, hence the 3rd child analogy.
8. I imagine that future generations of humans will evolve to have tiny hands, like the T-Rex, to be able to manipulate our increasingly miniature and sensitive keyboards. When you get a heavily typo-laden post or email from me, please assume it was written on my iPad.
1. OOOh, seriously sexy. Light. Portable. Long battery life. Beautiful photo gallery. Wait, is that one point or four? It’s all part of the Apple experience, so I’m not sure. But I did gain a couple of cool points when I started using it for my business.
2. There’s an app for that. I only have a relative few number of apps, and I have to admit that none have been life changing just yet. But it will happen. I’m hoping to learn to play the piano on this baby. But I have used it as a flashlight/nightlight while wandering a dark house looking for snacks while my family sleeps.
3. I only own one movie, but there have been times when The Aristocats have saved my bacon. Even though my kiddos are not allowed to touch, or even breath on, my iPad, I do use the movie and certain podcasts to my advantage.
4. Since I refused to pay the monthly $30 surcharge, I never did get a smart phone. This data plan is much better at only $14/ mo, and I am much more comfortable reading my mail and everything else on a big screen.
5. The main reason I wanted the iPad was to be able to carry my professional photo portfolio with me. At nearly 10,000 photos, it’s definitely the way to go. I do miss the ability to quickly click on the individual file, since you have to scroll through all the albums and their images to arrive at particular shots. But wait, this is the love-it list. I do love it, but I’m looking forward to the iPad3, which I hope will fix the downside of these user problems.
Are you ready to shell out for an iPad? If you already have one, could you ever learn to live without it?
Professional organizers call it digital hoarding. Just because we can keep more data doesn’t mean we should. Here are tips to make your digital life more manageable:
Make it a goal to have a file structure, desktop,
electronic notepad, or whatever you use fit on just one screen. Use your preferred device’s own structure to create folders or grouped icons so that you can see your inventory/main headings without having to scroll or tap. Incredibly complex data may require a second screen, but decide if it is worth it. The more visual stimuli your brain has to process, the slower you will be. Think of your screens as a container (like a box) for an amount of data that you can comfortably manage, not a blank slate for all available cool apps. It’s the same principle as keeping only the amount of files in your office that you can fit in your filing cabinet; left unchecked, chaos reduces productivity.
Yeah, it’s cool, but what will that really cost you? Early adopters spend more in money, time and frustration working out the bugs for the rest of us. The first iPhone in 2007 sold for $599; today the much improved iPhone 4 sells for $199.
Approximately 5% of the mobile handsets are Apple iPhones, which means that 95% of the world saved about $400 plus hours, days or weeks of learning time.
Be weird. If you always respond to email, texts, Facebook and Twitter, then people will expect you to respond to them. You train your network. Inc. Magazine wrote about David Karp, founder of Tumblr, in June 2011 and his method of handling email. Two things are interesting. First, he reverse filters, meaning everything goes into a folder that he doesn’t read, and the folder he looks at only has emails from his
employees and girlfriend. Second, he’s right on that if you condition people to
expect that you don’t read email, they’ll get to you another way.
If you have an addictive personality, knowing this may save your life. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows; What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, describes what the research tells us about the immense pleasure and gratification that our limbic brain gets from
electronic activity, including twitter, texting, and blogs. People today may need to create physical or other barriers to access this stimuli. Texting while driving is a well-known danger, and yet the problem persists. Nationwide’s survey showed that 80% of drivers favor a ban on mobile use while driving, despite the fact that up to 60% of people admit to texting behind the wheel. Or do as I say, not as I do? Curbing or eliminating addictive behavior such as texting and emailing on the road may literally save a life.
Here’s a novel idea. Instead of keeping thousands of poorly labeled digital pics, create a special family photo album once a year using commercial services like Shutterfly, Snapfish, and hundreds of others locally and on the internet who will print and bind your treasures. Then you can delete all the photos of marginal quality, re-label any that have incomprehensible computer-assigned labels using a single year or topic file name, and set those aside on your hard drive. These make great gifts, but you already knew that.
What makes your digital life more simple? We’d all love to hear.
Quick, do you know the best way to save passwords? How to store passwords? How to remember passwords? Here are some of my favorites for offline, online, or on your computer.
If you want to save passwords offline, I like the On Line Organizer. It is about the size of the Hallmark calendars that many people still carry in their purse, and inside it has tabs A-Z. On each page you can store a company or URL, User name, and Password. The size and the A-Z indexing make it very easy to use at your desk or carry it with you. I use and sell these lovely babies for $10. They come in a two pack, so you can carry one and keep one at your desk, or give one to your honey or best friend. Click here to order and make saving passwords easier.
The Best Way To Save Passwords
Save Passwords from A to Z
Online, there are many programs and apps that allow you to save passwords to an encrypted site. LastPass is the one I’ve been trying out for the past few weeks, but since it has limitations when using iPad, I’m not able to recommend it for iPad users just yet. I want something that works as seamlessly as Evernote. But at my PC, LastPass does a great job of capturing login and passwords from every site I visit, and then auto-populating it when I return. You don’t need to remember passwords, you just need to remember one password. Because the data is encrypted, it truly is about as secure as anything gets on the internet. Oh, and it’s free. You can look into other password manager programs here.
I recently learned that some of the newer browsers are able to store passwords, too. I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of letting Microsoft hold all my passwords, even with encryption. I’m pretty sure Bill Gates isn’t going to try to hack my PayPal account, but it gives me the shivers nonetheless.
The last option to store passwords is on your computer. Before you go this route, be sure that your system has the latest version of a strong security/antivirus program and that the program is doing auto-updates often. This would be McAfee, Norton, AVG (which has both free and paid anti-virus software), or similar. If this works for you, then just type up a simple document or spreadsheet to remember passwords, and then encrypt the file. You can find encryption programs like EncryptFiles, which is another free program. My thanks to Jim at HelpDotNow for passing this along. I do not personally use this approach or software, but it would be pretty simple.
If any of these options helps you, I hope you’ll let me know. And remember that you can order your own 2-pack password keeper for $10 right now. Ten bucks is a pretty small price to pay for your sanity. (They also make great teacher’s gifts.)
**Please remember to always consider your business and personal needs and consult with an advisor before making business decisions. HeartWork Organizing accepts no responsibility from any actions you may incur from this or other advice.
It seems that absolutely everything, on and off the web, requires a password these days. When creating passwords, stay away from obvious personal information like your birthdate, kids birth dates, anniversary,address and pets names. Use multiple words and non-words, things that can’t be found in the dictionary. Jim, my tech expert from HelpDotNow tells me that run on sentences like ILIKETREES are good because a hacking program will have a harder time as this is a “word” not found in the dictionary and hacking programs are not generally stopping to parse the phrase into words. Changing some elements of the word with capitals, numbers, or special characters, like ILIketr33s, is even better, but still relatively easy for you to remember. If you can remember passwords, or at least the few that you use most often, that will save you time.
Computer experts would not recommend this, but in real life, consider having three different types or categories of passwords. The first type would be for high stakes sites like a bank account, PayPal, email account, or an encryption program. They should be pretty complex but still something that you can memorize. The second level would be for useful sites, perhaps those like computer support sites and other shopping sites you frequent. The third type of password could be almost a throw-away, something that you might use for a site you’ll never intend to visit again. Decide how much effort you want to put into each type of password, and design them as secure as you can for each level.
Now that you have your passwords, how do you organize them and where do you store them? Hint: a sticky note is not the best answer. Stay tuned for the next rivetting post.
Someone once asked me, “Are you organized inside your head, too?” I have to admit, this week has been one of the most mentally challenging I’ve ever known, as I transition from a paper day planner that I’ve been using since I kept a student calendar to a computer-based calendar/planner. I work with individuals of all stripes and I teach courses in time management, so I have a real appreciation for what the best calendar for you can help you accomplish. Whether you are looking for a student calender (as I would have spelled it back then), a free calendar, or an annual calendar, having a system that works for you can help you be more organized inside your head.
Monthly Calendar Page
If I was supposed to return your call this week, I’m working on it.
Loyal followers might know that I’ve just upgraded from my six year old computer to a new desktop and MS Office 2010. Let’s just say things are not going smoothly. But I have gone ahead and loaded all of my appointment and commitments into the calendar and begun syncing it to my iPad. After six hours of heads down conversion time, my Outlook program where my mail lives was operating unreliably. It was randomly deleting messages and data. EEEK! After 12 hours of tech support, we think it’s working correctly, but there was one heart-stopping moment when my calendar info disappeared. We were able to retrieve it and massage it back to behaving.
Using the free calendar on your phone isn’t revolutionary, but having it sync properly and having business-level reliability is important and harder than it sounds. Keep reading for a good tip.
One of the major tenets that has made my best calendar systems work so well over the years is that the paper calendar, to do calendar list, and a subset of often-used contacts always always always travel together. As of now, my calendar is online, my contacts are still in the process of getting migrated and synced, but the to do calendar feature in Outlook leaves much to be desired. I’ll update you later this month with how I’m addressing that. Generally I believe a to do list separate from your actual calendar works best for most people.
The best calendar, bar none, is one that you have with you all the time. A paper calendar will work if you carry it, but an electronic calendar will work, too, if you always have your phone along. One cool little tech tip…if you do use an Outlook calendar, you apparently can sync it with your mobile device over the air automatically either using Google or one of the apps made for this purpose. It looks like Google Sync is for single users and Google Apps Sync is for companies who need to link up calendar and email systems for employees. Here’s a video that explains how this works. I’ll be setting this up before the month is out.
There are also other apps available to handle different platforms and vendors, so do a search for “sync calendar with xxx” where xxx is your device. I’d love to hear what works for you. Please comment below and share it with our readers.
One last thing…you absolutely have my permission to stick with a paper day planner if you chose, but DO have a calender/calendar/planner of some type if you want to be organized inside your head.
I’m up late working, I’m a little hungry, and I’ve been fighting with my email program all day. I also just finished reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. I started reading expecting the news to be all bad, but the book shows a fairly balanced view of the benefits and pitfalls of the information age.
It turns out that the demands that modern technology places on us and our bodies (for that is where cognition and memory lives) is complex, but not unique. Our ancestors were also changed profoundly by the introduction of technologies like – brace yourself here – the wristwatch and the map. What is cool is that we now have the technology, through MRIs and modern science, to understand that changes are being made to the way our brains operate biologically as we shift our information consumption habits.
Carr makes the case that:
There is a reason many of us spend the day muttering, “Now what was I just doing?”
Many of my clients are ADD or are concerned they might be. In fact, I believe that many of us are situationally ADD, unable to focus on important aspects of our lives and relationships to a level that brings us satisfaction. Carr makes the case that we are approaching a time when those who make time for reflection and mental downtime will be considered the “Reading Class” and societal elite.
Carr neither diagnoses society’s infatuation with instant everything, nor does he prescribe a cure for our rapidly decreasing attention spans. What he does is provide some perspective that while change is inevitable, we can chose the level of interaction we allow. We can make our own space for quiet reflection. And by paying attention, we can make time to think about how we think, strengthening our thought processes.
Carr’s book builds on the premise of another book I read recently, called How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Both books can be summarized into a credo: thinking about thinking matters. What do you think about that?
If you are a person who does not feel like you’ve got too many unopened, unread, or unattended emails, would you please give me a call? I’m a Certified Professional Organizer®, and I’ve still going too much going on in my in-box. I can’t solve all the problems, but here’s a good place to start:
1. Learn how to filter spam. If you get spam in your inbox, check with your provider or program and tighten up the spam criteria. Sure, you may lose one or two legitimate emails every now and again, but it’s totally worth it.
2. Learn how to use folders. Every major email program that I know of offers some way to filter your legitimate emails into something other than your inbox. Especially if you have newsletters, store notices, blog posts, or other recurring email types that are not critical to your day, get those into their own little spot without you having to click and drag.
3. Stop reading your email quickly. Yeah, I know, this one is tricky. Just like physical mail, try your best to open something, attend to it, and then move on to the next email or task. When you open an email and read it, your mind has this funny (by that I mean bad) habit of checking off the item, even if it isn’t complete. So slow down, and get quick tasks and replies done right away if you can.
4. Use those folders again. Once read, place items into folders if you have them set up.
5. Waiting on something? Set up a “Waiting For” folder where you can park items that you are waiting for someone to respond. This is also a good place to park notices of upcoming meetings. But make things easy on yourself. Modify the subject header with the due date (or presentation date) so you can sort this folder by date, meaning you can always be on top of upcoming events and commitments.
There is an interesting article in the June 2011 Inc. Magazine about David Karp, founder of Tumblr, which includes his method of handling email. Two things are interesting. First, he reverse filters, meaning everything goes into a folder that he doesn’t read, and the folder he looks at only has emails from his employees and girlfriend. Second, he’s right on that if you condition people to expect that you don’t read email, they’ll get to you another way.
I’d write more and add images to this post, but I’m trying to clear out a bit of my inbox…
This content is taken directly from Freedom Filer, a product that I adore. I have used this system to help people reclaim days in their month and entire rooms in their home…and this is not an exageration. You can order it here, and contact me about upcoming in-person and teleconference classes, including one on implementing this system in your home.
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Happy Holidays!
FreedomFilers across the globe are now switching to the December month file. The next time you’re about to drop papers into your month folder, simply move your clip to the “December EVEN YEAR” file and discard automatically the documents left over from two years ago.*
Where do I file car registration papers?
SUMMARY: Keep the proof of registration in the CAR, the paid registration renewal notice in your TAX files, and the title in your PERMANENT file. (Any extraneous registration renewal paperwork can be filed MONTHLY after completed).
Most importantly, your current proof of vehicle registration should be kept inside the glove compartment of your vehicle (along with proof of auto insurance coverage and emergency contact information). You will receive a renewal notice from your state department of motor vehicles.
An unanswered/unpaid registration renewal notice belongs in an action file, typically on your desktop to be paid immediately or before the registration deadline (use “ACTIVE” labels if necessary – e.g. “Bills To Pay”).
A completed/paid registration renewal notice is a tax deductible transaction (if you itemize deductions**), so file it in the light-blue TAX section, e.g. “Tax Documents”, “Tax Paid (Property/Sales)”, or “Other Deductions” depending on how detailed your tax categories are. (You may also be filing business or tax deductible receipts by month or vendor A-Z, if you use accounting software or a spreadsheet to categorize expenses).
The vehicle proof of registration and renewal notices should not be confused with the vehicle title transfer or closing paperwork from the time you purchased the car, filed in PERMANENT “Auto Records”. A title transfer document is especially needed if you purchase a used car, but may not be provided by a new car dealer in certain situations (i.e. when leasing a new car). When purchasing a new car from a dealer the title transfer and initial registration is handled by the dealer. For subsequent registration renewal, you will automatically receive notices in the mail.
**motor vehicle registration fees are considered personal property taxes on IRS Schedule A for itemized tax deductions.
Happy FreedomFiling!
I am a PC. But last week I became the proud new owner of an iPad. I love everything about it. It’s sleek, it’s powerful, it confounds me, and it seems to me like it is perpetually on. (Coming from the world of endless boot-ups and reboots, a tap of a button to turn on the machine seems impossible.) Now, I don’t think I’m going to cross the line to being an exclusive Mac user anytime soon, but this little juncture is an interesting experiment for me in the juncture of efficiency (accomplishing a job with minimum time and effort, or doing things right) and effectiveness (producing the desired result, or doing the right things).
Of course, I’m hoping over time that my iPad will help me do both. But right now, I know without a doubt that acquiring this piece of technology has slowed everything down in my life. My learning curve is straight up. I’m in the age group where I have to actually spend time learning how to use technology. We’re called Digital Immigrants according to Gina Schreck, a noted communications and tech expert. Younger folks than me grew up with this stuff and spend less time assimilating how to use today’s technology, and she calls them Digital Natives. But no matter which group you are in, one thing is for sure. These machines have way more computing capacity than our brains and our finite 24 hours.
Remember those old Bugs Bunny cartoons with the Good Angel on one shoulder and the Bad Angel (or Devil) on the other shoulder? I feel like I’ve got this pair watching over me right now. Should I spend time learning a new program on my wireless device, or should I just grab a pen and paper? Should I research something I’ve been meaning to take care of in the 2 minutes my daughter is on the potty, or should I give her my full attention? Should I research news “apps” to see which one might work best, or should I always chose or buy the one that has the highest ratings, because other people have already made a judgement?
This isn’t a new problem, of course. Since the boom of the PC Age, about 20 years ago, people have been trying to find the appropriate new rules and norms for how we use technology. Here are just a few of the rules that I’ve made for myself. The rules themselves aren’t necessarily important. What may be more important is that you find a way to make your Good Angel happy and your Bad Angel pipe down.
1. Don’t be an early adopter. You’ll spend more time figuring stuff out, more money on buggy gear, and more energy that you could be using on real relationships with real, live people.
2. Ask for help. Tech help is offered for free in many cases, especially for new purchases. But even if not, paying for help might be worth it. In my experience, service contracts on household appliances, cars, and other mechanical devices are not a good investment; in fact most times they don’t offer positive ROI, which is why the companies offering them can make money. However, if you are a Digital Immigrant (read: over 40), paying for a direct line or excellent service for someone to help you over the learning curve is a good investment in many (not all) cases.
3. You gotta sleep. I commented last night that I feel like my iPad is our household’s new “kitten”. I check it constantly. I research it. I wonder if I’m loading it with the right stuff . I wonder how best to socialize it. And I’m dreading those first trips to the doctor and how much they might cost. But whether it is a new kitten or iPad, you need to take care of you. Sleep, and try again tomorrow.
4. People over things. Sometimes it is easy to get sidetracked by this one. For instance, last week when I was loading a patient into the ambulance (I volunteer as an EMT), she was on the phone to her parents. I had to ask her to hang up so we could treat her. This has almost become the normal course that we see. Just because you have the technology to call home right that minute doesn’t mean that you should. When I taught customer service classes years ago, I instructed customer service reps to take care of people who walk in the door first, before they handle people on the phone. Why? Because the person in your store is THERE, and they made the effort to be there. The person who is on the phone can do something else while they are waiting. So chose people over things/technology, and chose real people (or people who are physically with you) over virtual people (or people who you can connect with later). It will usually get you the best results in life.
There, my Good Angel is smiling.
Digital Natives, are you listening?
If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? File this one under “real life”. People think that just because I’m a certified professional organizer (R), I don’t have the same challenges as everyone else.
Just this afternoon I thought to myself, “…and that’s how people lose things, just that quickly!” I was on the phone, rummaging in the fridge when I found I needed a third hand. About that time I hung up with my caller, so I temporarily laid the phone down to grab the things I needed out of the fridge. Turning back to the counter, I was already thinking of what I needed to get done in my office. This is such a simplified case of multitasking, it’s not even funny. Routinely as I work at my desk, I might have between 6 and 10 things in front of me, as I wait for someone to return a call, a website to come up on my computer, or set aside a note that reminds me to finish something vaguely related to my current task.
Phones Don't Belong in the Refrigerator
So, none of us is perfect. And despite what you see in magazines, none of us is perfectly organized. So here’s to doing one thing at a time, doing it really well, and not losing track of the phone in the process.
One of the great things about living in the Northeast is that we are close to a lot of the action. Stuff gets made here. Factory tours give you a chance to see some of that stuff being made. I love seeing this type of thing, I suppose because it is the “other end” of what I do so often as a professional organizer, which is help people get rid of excess, unwanted, and toxic stuff. This is where stuff is born.
I didn’t realize until recently that one of my favorite products, the Sun & Earth line of cleaning products, is made right here in King of Prussia, PA. I heard they have a factory tour suitable for kids ages 4 and up, so I told my three and a half year old daughter to act four and signed us up.
Sun and Earth products
If you aren’t familiar with the product, it is a natural product line of household cleaners that is environmentally friendly because it is mostly derived from orange oils. This caused a little problem for my tot because she thought the display oranges were snacks. But the entire office and plant smelled like oranges. Not the artificial orange smell that you get from, well, artificial frangrances made to smell like oranges, but an honest to goodness orange smell. Knowing that many things, including gnats and mosquitoes, don’t like citrus, I’ve used their all purpose cleaner on my counter tops for a while now.
But I was really impressed with the plant. Their office is small but tidy. In fact, it was hard to imagine such a small operation responsible for a product that goes all over the country.
I was also impressed with the lack of what we in the firefighting world call PPE: personal protective equipment. We were walking on the actual floor where the product is produced, and niether us nor the workers had to wear masks or suits. I knew that we were relatively safe as long as we stayed out of the big vats. If you have to work in a factory environment, I’m guessing this is the one you want to be in. I’ve worked on certain organizing jobs where I needed more protective equipment.
Assembly line
And of course, you know I was impressed with the organization of the assembly lines. You can see a part of the assembly line above, with our host Jay. The only part that made me a little itchy, so to speak, was the bin where the empty bottles were stored to be filled, but they are practicing the principle that I espouse, which is: organize where it matters, and don’t where it doesn’t.
This company uses eco-friendly products when possible, like packing peanuts made from corn and potato starch. They are modeling responsible purchasing and conscious consuming.
Since their various products are safe and all share common chemical properties, their shipping containers don’t have to be decontaminated or even rinsed in between uses. That cuts down on storage and cleaning of empty containers. They just don’t have a lot of clutter sitting around.
They donate their empty barrels to community groups for them to repurpose in to rain barrels. I didn’t want to point out that rain barrels sell for $$$$$ online. Unlike some of my clients, they know that the best use of their discards is to send them to someone else who can use them more.
Probably the thing that our tour attendees got the most excited about was…ready for this…new packaging. Sun and Earth are now offering “fill stations” at some Whole Foods and other retailers. When you bring back your empty containers and refill them yourself, you save over 40% of the price of a new bottle. And their newest bottle of laundry detergent isn’t a bottle at all. It’s a box. Made just like a wine box, the entire thing is lighter to ship, perfectly storable and attractive on your laundry shelf, and completely recyclable, even the interior bladder. C’mon, I know how many of you wish you could stack your big Cosco purchases on your laundry room shelf. There’s innovation for you!
As an aside, I’ve been on a bit of a journey lately for the perfect laundry detergent since we switched to cloth diapers. I think I found it with Sun & Earth 2X concentrated, and it gets great ratings at http://www.diaperjungle.com/detergent-chart.html. Here’s another tip: if you see lots of bubbles in your front loading washing machine, you are using too much detergent. Cut back until suds are nearly gone. The machine will perform better, since the bubbles mean the aggitation can’t work correctly, you’ll save money, and you’ll send less product in to the water supply.
Shredding and filing are two things that people hate to do with paper. Learn how to do both better or for free with a free shredding event on March 13 and an upcoming Clear Path Strategies clutter support group focused on just paper. http://www.free-press-release.com/news-get-ready-to-spring-forward-with-2-great-ways-to-put-paper-in-its-place-1268339396.html
HeartWork Organizing 