Better Life Habits

How to have less stuff in your office.

It's pretty easy for an office to get out of control, stuff-wise. Things come into our space with very little effort, but it requires time and effort -- even if just a little bit of both -- to get things out of our space. I've just recently undertaken an office overhaul of my own. I have a small office in my home that was beginning to feel claustrophobic due to excess stuff. So bit by bit I'm unloading. It's quite liberating really.

An organized office (whatever that looks like to you) is more productive and goes a long way to helping us better manage our time.

Below I've broken down into categories the items that might be cluttering your office environment. Do your own assessment and see which areas stand out as ones that could stand some thinning. As far as getting down to work, some people prefer to set aside a full day to tackle the whole room but most don't have that luxury and need to fit de-cluttering into an already busy workday. If the latter describes you, then break your clean-out projects down into small tasks you can accomplish in 15 to 60 minutes at a time.

• Books - Look at each title. Have you read it? Will you read it ever, or again? Do you need to keep it for reference or have you assimilated the knowledge into your brain and no longer need the source? You can sell used books on-line or donate them to a local library or book fair. (In St. Louis you can drop off books year-round at the Macy's loading dock for the St. Louis Book Fair.)
• Binders - These can be from old projects, conferences, etc. Have you looked at them? Will you use them? Can they be thinned out and put in a paper file?
• Knick knacks/photographs - If it suits your style it's fine to have personal items around to make your office homier but it can also get out of hand. Look at each item and ask yourself if it really makes you happy to look at it or it's just been there so long you've been looking right past it. While you may not notice everything that's accumulated, you'll probably get a lift from seeing uncluttered space when some of that stuff is gone.
• Logo'd items - Who doesn't love a freebie! But first of all, only take stuff you'll use. Next do a sweep of your office occasionally and cast off items that are ratty, out-of-date, cumbersome to use, or just in the way. Again, it's like the knick knacks. These things multiply without some amount of effort to keep volume in check.
• Writing instruments - How many pens do you need? Ditch unreliable pens, half-dry markers and highlighters, pencil stubs, etc. Only keep as many writing instruments as can fit in the space where you keep them (pen cup or drawer compartment).
• Office supplies -- Only have on hand what you'll reasonably use in a short amount of time. Most people don't need 12 legal pads, 25 stacks of sticky notes, or 3 boxes of paper clips. If you're in a large office, that's what the supply closet is for. If you're in a home office, the big box office supply stores will ship free to your home if you spend $50, so you don't have to stock up for a year to save shipping costs.

One of the biggest clutter sources is paper, and I'll cover how to handle that one in a separate blog post.

It's good to get into the habit of doing an office clean-out every six months. That way it never gets too out of hand and therefore isn't a huge project to get it back to the way that works for you.

No Phone Zone

For years I've been suggesting to clients -- and anyone else who will listen -- to use time in the car to think-- and to STAY OFF OF THE PHONE.  I'm not a fan of multitasking in most cases, and talking on the phone (or worse, texting) is a multitasking habit that can have, and has had, grave consequences.

Statistics show that being on the phone is akin to driving drunk. It reduces brain activity associated with driving by 37%. For those who say talking on the phone is the same as talking to a passenger, I politely disagree.

As you may know, in January Oprah launched her No Phone Zone campaign and today is officially No Phone Zone Day. Ideally, starting today people would forever stop texting and talking on the phone in the car. Is that likely? No.

Some thoughts and steps in the right direction...

• Never text and drive. Never. Don't read texts. Don't write texts. If you've done it in the past and escaped any negative consequences, consider yourself lucky and know that luck will run out.
• Business-people are busier than ever and I hear almost every day that if time in the car isn't used to make phone calls there is no way that sufficient work can get done. So if you feel you must continue to conduct business from your car, at least vow to use voice dialing and hands-free equipment. Even that is not ideal, but it's a step.
• Consider where you are when you are on the phone. It's astounding seeing parents on the phone in the car line at school during drop-off and pick-up times. What does it say to a child that whoever is on the phone is more important than being in the moment to wish them a good day or to give them full attention greeting them at the end of the day? And, moreover, kids model parent's behavior. It's hypocritical for parents to scold or be surprised if their new teenage driver takes on the bad phone habits learned from years of watching their parents do the same.
• How important is the call? If something tragic happened and you had to tell the story about why you were on the phone at that time, how would you feel? Even if all that happened is that you wreck your own car -- no injuries -- how mad would you be at yourself?
• Almost every day I hear people lament about how busy life is. How there's barely a moment to relax on this giant hamster wheel of life. Well, the world isn't going to slow down for us so we have to proactively take back control of our own time and set boundaries. You want some quiet time? Make your car a No Phone Zone.
• Visit www.nophonezone.com to read sobering statistics, find out about resources to help you make a shift in your phone habits, and to take the No Phone Zone pledge. 

News Flash: Just complaining is not productive.

Arguably, if one is of that mindset, there is much that can be complained about. Globally, nationally (regardless of who is elected), in the office, in the home. If someone wants to complain they will most assuredly find something to complain about and just as likely collect others who will jump on the grousing bandwagon.

So the question I ask of complainers is, what are your going to DO about it? Complaining is easy, requires no training and little imagination. It also erodes productivity. It wastes time, brings everyone down and does nothing to change the situation.

I've been in a couple of negatively charged situations recently where I wanted to jump out of my chair and flee from the room. Stop with the complaining already!

Make it a habit to be a part of the solution. If you don't know what the solution should be, all the better. Engage people in thoughtful, reasonable discussion. Don't assume everyone within earshot agrees with your complaints. Learn about different ways of looking at issues and situations. Devise a plan - whether you hope to make an incidental or significant impact - to do something to change what inspires you to complain.

Whew. I feel better now.

More later.

Creating a routine

This is quite simple and can be done quickly. So simple in fact, that I may be able to hear a collective "duh" when I tell you how. But as simple as it may be people tend not to do it. One of the primary reasons for not doing so being that routine equals boring. Who wants to be boring?

But in practice, having routines that help you accomplish repetitive tasks quickly actually leaves more time for you to do things that interest you and make you more interesting to others. Save your creative impulses for tasks where the outcome can be significantly impacted by thinking of new and original ways to do it.  Make planning your day as routine as you need to in order to get it done quickly and effectively.

Here's an example of how you might go about planning your day. Drop your stuff in your office, fire up the computer and hang your coat on the back of the door on the way to get a cup of coffee or glass of water to start the day. Back at your desk, pull out of your brief bag anything you may have taken home last night (and now brought back - completed or not). Also pull together the papers that you have to, or hope to, deal with today. Open up your paper or electronic calendar so you can see what kinds of appointments and tasks you have for the day. Reviewing the information in front of you and knowing what kind of time will be taken up with appointments, meetings, etc., choose the top three things you would like to get done in order to feel that at the end of the day you've been productive. Either make a note of those tasks, or put papers that jog your memory about those tasks in a specific place on your desk so you can refer to them without hunting for them.

Pretty simple right? Note that though I said to fire up your computer when you walk in the door, that's so it can boot up and be ready when you need it. It's not so you can check email first thing in the morning. Checking email should be done after you've planned your day. If you need to scan the sender list quickly in order to see if an email you've received will create a task that may be in your top three, that's fine. The thing is, most of us get stuck responding to relatively unimportant emails while important tasks get put on the back burner. But that's another post.

You can create routines for many tasks and I recommend you do. Over time it will save you time and who doesn't want that?

A routine is easier to create than a habit.

Many of us would like to have better habits around any number of ways of being. Sleep habits, eating habits, time management habits, or exercise habits. Why is it so hard to create a new habit? Maybe it's in the very definition of the word.

"Habit: an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation; may be inherited or acquired through frequent repetition."

"Automatic" infers that this behavior simply happens without even giving it a thought. It's quite likely that you have some habits that are ingrained. Putting on a seat belt perhaps, or your work commute. You don't think about it, it just happens. In fact I'll bet you've had times when you pulled into the garage and for the life of you couldn't remember even making the drive home. Habit.

But how long did you have to do those things before they became automatic? A month? A year? Longer?

The last words of that definition "acquired through frequent repetition" provide important insight. In order to develop a habit, first focus on creating a routine. Routine is an "unvarying method or procedure" allowing you to move forward without having to make lots of decisions. Repeat the same routine everyday and at some point you may just develop a habit.

Some activities are perfect opportunities to develop a routine. Getting ready in the morning, planning your workday, shopping for groceries, etc. Tomorrow I'll lay out a simple plan for creating routines for, well, routine tasks. See you then.

Why do you Twitter?

In the last two posts I've talked about how, if you are goiing to Twitter, you need to shedule that time into your day. Today's post talks about why you might want to consider spending time on Twitter.

And, I don't have an answer for that, because it comes from you. Here, based on what I've seen are some of the reasons people use Twitter...

1. To meet interesting people they may not have known about in any other way

2. To have a place to share thoughts, ideas or information

3. To sell whatever it is they have to offer

4. To learn things from resources they may not have known about

5. To get feedback about products they may want to try

To get dates

Now, for the purposes of this blog I'm not going to spend time discussing which reasons are socially acceptable and which ones are not. (But I will say that if you don't recognize two of those as pretty much unacceptable, you could possibly be an offender.)

My point is this: If you don't know what you want to achieve with your time on Twitter, how will you know if you are getting there?

Think carefully about what you want to accomplish before you devote lots of time. Twitter time is not a waste unless you have no idea why you are doing it. Be thoughtful. Be purposeful. Be aware of how you are spending your time.

Track your time on Twitter

Yesterday's post offered a suggestion about how to handle the sheer volume of information that comes your way via Twitter. Today's post addresses how much time you spend on Twitter.

Have you ever sat down at the computer first thing in the morning, started handling e-mail and soon found yourself caught up in surfing the web? You're going along reading an e-mail and there's either a link in the e-mail or it spurs a thought that sends you out to Google or a particular site. If we're not focusing on what we're doing an hour or more can go by before we realize we should have spending time on other tasks.

Be careful of falling into the same time crunch with Twitter. Some posts are simply statements, comments on other Tweets or inspirational quotes. But many Tweets have a URL embedded in the message -- links that take you to helpful articles, funny or instructional videos, interesting or beautiful photographs. If you're interested in the Twitter-er, you stand a strong chance of being interested in the information provided in the link.

So it's important to be purposeful when you sit down to spend time on Twitter. Depending upon why you Twitter -- a subject that will be covered in tomorrow's post -- you need to plan how much time you'll be spending on it each day. Whether it's five minutes, 30 minutes or two hours, know what you have scheduled and stick to it as much as possible.

It's certainly OK to veer from your planned amount of Twitter time, the important thing is to make the choice to do so instead of getting distracted and inadvertently messing up the rest of your workday.

Twitter teaches unexpected lessons.

Twitter is a fascinating phenomenon and I'm on the bandwagon. I started once and soon quit because it seemed too overwhelming. A few months later I tried again and this time took careful notice of what was so daunting the first time.

For anyone who already feels overwhelmed by e-mail you've got to get your head in the right place before you getting into Twitter in a significant way. I don't know anyone who has every Twitter post come directly to their e-mail, so it won't increase the traffic in your regular in-box. Your Twitter homepage is essentially an entirely new, separate in-box where you see messages posted by people you follow.

Speaking of volume, think of it this way. Perhaps you're following 100 people, which is a conservative number based on what I have seen out there. Let's just say that each person you are following posts 3 Tweets a day (that's a 140-character message). Some folks post very little, but some people post a dozen or more each day, so 3 Tweets per day per person is another conservative estimate. That's 300 messages a day to read!

It's mind boggling that in this day of already being overcommitted and stressed -- and I hear almost daily that e-mail is one of the things that creates the most stress -- we would proactively take on another activity that could consume even more of our limited time. But before you throw your hands up and conclude that Twitter is not for you, there is a way to make it a very positive, worthwhile experience and not let it get out of hand. Each day this week I will post another tip here that will help you make your Twitter experience a positive one.

Tip #1

You're not going to be able to read every Tweet that is posted by the people you follow. Get over it. Do you make it habit of reading every page of every magazine or newspaper that you receive? Unlikely.

Yesterday was Father's Day so most of the day was spent with family. I checked Twitter a couple of times and read a few posts. There were some nice ones about expressing appreciation for the Dads in our lives and many unrelated to the holiday. For me, yesterday wasn't a day I wanted to spend a lot of time immersed in the internet. (Please note: I make absolutely no judgment about any folks who wanted to do so.) This means that if I wanted to read ever post I receive, I'd have 600 to read today. It's not going to happen.

Turns out today is pretty busy as well. So not only will I not read 600, I probably won't read all 300 new messages that come in. You might ask, "Why do you follow people if you're not going to read all the messages?"  Fair question.

In just a month or so I've learned about many extremely bright, interesting, funny, talented people that I never knew existed. By following them I get the opportunity to connect with them, learn about them and learn from them. And if they follow me, I have the chance to share ideas, opinions and messages with them that may bring something of value into their lives. And that's pretty cool.

So I won't be catching every interesting message but I know the ones I do catch are adding some real value to my life.

More tomorrow...

A True Tale of Multitasking

  I decided to order a book on Amazon but wanted to make certain the paperback and hardcover editions were the same. Unsure of whether the paperback edition also included the CD, I assumed checking the ISBN number might help and so went upstairs to get the book. Thinking that perhaps the CD would have it's own ISBN I decided to check and found that the CD wasn’t in the book anymore so I went back upstairs to get it. CD now in hand I tried to burn a copy of the CD in the event the paperback didn’t come with the CD. I made a couple of attempts through iTunes and it didn’t copy successfully so I tried it through Roxio. But before I could try it I had to register the Roxio software -- which I did.  That method didn’t work either so I went back to Amazon to look carefully at the information. This time I felt reasonably assured that the paperback comes with the CD so I added it to my shopping cart. I noticed that my husband had some stuff in the shopping cart and decided to ask him if he wanted me to go ahead and buy his items, too. But when I reached over to pick up my landline handset it wasn’t there. So I went into the kitchen where I had left it after a conference call. While there I nuked a cup of coffee and got an idea for an e-zine post. Motivated to get the thought down before I lost it I came back into my office with the coffee but without the phone and sat down to my computer. But having just changed e-zine software I had to look up my login. While I was looking for that login I glimpsed another login that reminded me that I needed to cancel a credit card that was attached to an automatic invoice from my domain name provider. I made a note to do so and then went through a tutorial or two for the new e-zine software. I started to create the template and realized new photos would be nice so did a Google search on where I might find good free photos. I found iStockPhoto and some good images which I downloaded to My Pictures. I then had to upload the photo to the e-zine site but realized during my photo search I had navigated away from my e-zine software url. I hit the “back” button but doing so took me not to my e-zine site but to Amazon and the photo of the book I was going to order. I realized I needed to call my husband about whether he wanted me to order the stuff he had in the shopping cart so I reached over to pick up the phone, which still wasn’t there and…

 

You can imagine how the rest of this goes. I tell this story on myself for three reasons.

 

1. Multitasking happens to everyone -- even people like me who spend a significant amount of time harping on people to stop it.
2. It's mind-bogglingly dumb to think we are getting things done more efficiently by doing them this way. That whole scenario took about 40 minutes and I finished not one thing. Not. One.
3. Multitasking is a bad habit we can stop by reminding ourselves to slow down and focus.

Here are some ways to remember to slow down, focus and work on one thing at a time.

1. Talk to yourself. Remind yourself out loud to finish one task.
2. Put a note with the word "focus" or "one thing at a time" somewhere you will see it throughout the day. Perhaps on sticky note on the the perimeter of your computer screen, or on a bright 3x5 card.
3. Pick an object, like a paperweight, stone, or small knick knack and every time you look at it think of focusing on one thing at a time.
4. Get a MotivAider, and use the vibration of it to do a self-check on whether you are focusing or multitasking.

Most of us know multitasking isn't a good thing but often we do it out of habit. The ideas above are simply cueing devices to remind ourselves of the new behavior we want to do.

The world isn't going to slow down for us so we have to get better at slowing ourselves down in the face of a million things to do.  Get comfortable with the idea that there are always going to be a million things to do and doing more than one of them at a time isn't going to shorten the list. It's just going to make us feel frantic and overwhelmed.

Now excuse me while I go place that order, or call my husband, or.....

Octomom: Bad mother or just bad planning?

All of the furor about the Octomom has recently turned to accusations that she is a bad mom. My opinion is that it was extremely bad judgment to have any more children given the number that she already had, her financial situation and her inability to care for them without extensive outside help. However, I don't know that she is a bad mother to her children.

It occurred to me that this situation is a metaphor for good businesspeople who take on too much with the misguided idea that they can do it all. Does it mean they are bad at their job? Not usually.

Ambitious people say "yes" a lot. The drive to do more and be more may be admirable, but doing more and being more takes time, and activities dumped into an already full schedule set us up for overhwhelm, stress and unmet expectations.

Make conscious decisions about what you take on. Be deliberate about how you spend your time. The Octomom is responsible for 14 children and there's no going back. Even she has admitted she wishes she had thought it through more thoroughly.

Fortunately, when it comes to managing our schedules we can rethink the choices we make and adjust accordingly. And so we should.