Simpleology Blog

In plain sight. Keep your office supplies in their proper place so you won't waste time looking for them.

With piles of paper taking over your desk, phones ringing non-stop, and urgent emails demanding your attention, you risk being frazzled. Productivity suffers. Take a deep breath. It's not as hopeless as you think it seems.

Small steps and a change of perspective can help you make big leaps in productivity.

Getting the most out of your workspace can be a daunting task if you're not sure where to start. There are many books on how to get organized--but many of those titles are never opened and end up serving as dust protectors for bookshelves all around the world.

If you're a collector of said books, allow me to throw you a lifeline: it's OK if you haven't read them all. You may need some smaller chunks of information to get moving and get your work done.

The following tips are things I have taught my clients, and are the fundamental building blocks of long-term organizing success.

There are as many ways to get organized as there are people. Everyone brings something different to the table. Take these building blocks and apply your own creativity and style and watch your productivity soar!

1. Assign homes. It's very likely you have one, and at the end of each day you go there. Treat your supplies in your workspace in the same way. If you have a stapler, decide where it will go, and return it to its home each day. You'll know right where it is the next time you want to use it.

2. Keep in mind that not all paper is the same. There are three types of paper: Action, Projects, and Reference. Action paper needs just that, action, and usually only one step. Projects have two or more steps, and a clearly defined end date. Reference is mostly likely the majority of your paper, and is most often stored in a file cabinet. Know your paper, group them together and use big bucket categories. Use the easiest system you can think of, and then get to it!

3. Remember that you are not your neighbor. You're not your mother, your sister, or your impossibly neat best friend. It's OK, and it's not necessary to be anyone but who you are. Forcing yourself to use someone else's system is a productivity (and creativity) killer. Use what you have and build on your strengths.

4. Don't cross the lines. Boundaries are crucial to increasing productivity, whether it's a shut door, turning off distractions, or posting your hours. Guard your time fiercely and protect it from others walking all over it.

5. Don't fall into the "Look, something shiny!" trap. Take a stroll with a three-year-old, and you'll notice how easy it is to get distracted. Set up your workspace to maximize your attention on the task at hand. Also, take small breaks throughout the day to lessen the chances of yearning to chase down that shiny object just out of reach.

6. Differentiate Tasks and Projects. Task = one step, Projects = two or more tasks. Keep them separate in your mind and in your physical space. Projects are sometimes mistaken for tasks and languish on a "To Do" list. If your task list is a little stale, take a few minutes to weed out the projects.

7. Get real. Your life is not a magazine cover, so get real about what "organized" really is. "Organized" = the ability to find most anything you need in 5 minutes or less. So many of my clients started organizing efforts with good intentions. Where many of them ran into trouble was what organization "looks" like. It's not always neat--and it does not need to be perfect. Being able to find what you need is what matters, not the package it's in.

Credits: Photo from Hiresupply.com.

Brandie Kajino of The Home Office Organizer is a dynamic speaker, author, and professional organizer. Empowering clients with information, technology, productivity tools and space planning are her specialty. For more information on her services and direct links to her radio show, Sparkplugging.com Blog, as well as morefree organizing tips, visit her website at www.thehomeofficeorganizer.com or call 971-533-7735.

Suggested Resource: To keep tabs on your productivity progress, get into the habit of doing the Daily Time Praxis from Simpleology 101: The Simple Science of Getting What You Want.

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Art Start. Want to find out if you have what it takes to be an artist even if you've already got a great day job? Who's to say you can't do it?.

My mother recently called me up with the news that my cousin Robbie had quit his job as an architect and has decided to paint for a year. My mother's family is fiercely clannish so Robbie's seemingly-crazy move was spread through the grapevine in a matter of minutes. (My mother and her sisters will put CNN to shame.)

Thinking Crazy
Anyway, my aunt wanted my mom to ask me to talk some sense into Robbie because I myself had done something similar years ago: I quit med school and decided to work with words. "Maybe you could tell Robbie how hard it is to work in jobs like yours," my mom said.

Exasperated, I told her, "He's 27 for goodness' sake! He can do whatever he wants. Besides, you know better than to ask me to do that. I don't regret not being a doctor--except maybe when I get sick and wish I could prescribe medicine for myself."

In any case, it's not just my family who thinks that ditching a "grown-up job" in order to be "creative" is nutty. A lot of people actually forgo pursuing creative professions because they don't want to be "starving artists."

Despite this, there are still people like Robbie who take a chance on being creative. Hey, it's never too late to do it.

Bringing Out the Inner Artist
In fact, Julia Cameron, author of Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance, offers tips on how to awaken your inner artist at any age:

1. Name your fears. Jot down any anxieties you feel about pursuing a creative career or project. Putting your worries on paper allows you to confront them, then move past them.

2. Dial a friend. Appoint a positive pal whom you can call in times of doubt and who is also able to make you see other more practical perspectives. In my case, my med school buddy Allan was there to tell me: "Buddy, if med school isn't for you, juts leave before you turn into a lousy doctor. But be sure you can tough it out as a wordsmith."

3. Do it whenever you can. You don't have to cross over to the creative side drastically. You can have the best of both worlds by finding time for your creative pursuits. For instance, your can use your lunch hour to write down your ideas for your story or do a rough sketch of a painting you hope to do.

So what advice can I give for my cousin Robbie? All I can tell him is this: Man, do what you can to be happy at what you do. Whether it works out or not makes no difference, as long as you give it your best shot.

And for those who want to tap their inner artist without much risk of being the topic of the family grapevine, check out Simpleology's Jacque Fresco on Drawing. The guy is over 90 years old and still obviously stoked by being creative. Plus, he's certainly still making some money from it, too. Isn't that inspiration enough?

(Way to go, Robbie!)

Credits: Photo by Anna Cercova, courtesy of Public Domain Pictures.

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To multitask or not to multitask? Find out if you're more productive when you do one thing at a time.

Experts who utilize the power of focus effortlessly attract very targeted customers to themselves and their businesses.

A Case of Overload
Do you feel a sense of overwhelm every time you open up your e-mail client and see all those e-mail messages waiting for your response? Every day, there are more and more and more! All just waiting for you to take some sort of action! If you answered yes, you're not alone. Heck, we live in the information age and we work Online. Everyone, including you and me, wants everything immediately.

Do you feel stressed about it? Maybe even overwhelmed? I'm guessing that you have felt this way at least a few times--if not on a daily basis.

Multitasking Madness
More often than not, most people attempt to tackle several of their daily tasks all at once. Doing a little bit of project A, then a little bit of project B, then a little of project C and so on. Then by the end of the day, week, month or even year, they have done a little of everything but have not completed any one task in full.

As a result, nothing substantial gets accomplished, which often means no profit-generating projects were completed either!

The ability to multitask is NOT an asset. It is NOT something you want your employees to effectively do, nor is it something you want to do. Listen up... if you are multi-tasking you are wasting your time and it's eating up your profits!

The Secret to Working Less and Earning More
Work less and earn more. Yeah right. You hear that all the time but nobody ever actually shows you how it's done. Well, get ready, because I'm about to. And when you see how simple it is, you might just kick yourself!

The secret to working less and earning more is focus. With concentrated focus you'll get a great deal more accomplished in a much shorter period of time. What's the quickest way from point A to point B? A straight line, right? It's not rocket science.

So STOP multitasking. Multitasking just means meandering aimlessly without focus. Doing so gets you nowhere fast.

Charting Progress
Don't believe me? Take a look at the chart above and follow along. In the example, you'll see there are three projects at hand. Project A, Project B, and Project C.

In BOTH scenarios, each of the three projects requires a total of three weeks of time for completion.

In the first scenario, titled "Focus Equals Productivity," each of the three projects are tackled one at a time with a focused effort. As a result, Project A is completed in 3 weeks and in theory should start making you some money.

Now, while the cash flow from project A is coming in, you start project B and work on it for three weeks until completion. Now, after six weeks, you have two projects completed and cash flow coming in from both. So you start project C and complete it in three weeks.

In this scenario, all three projects were completed in full in just nine weeks. Furthermore, you began to see the results after just three weeks from project A and then after six and nine weeks for project B and C respectively.

Now let's look at the second and, unfortunately, all-too-common scenario titled, "The Multitasking Myth". In this scenario, you begin by working on project A for one week, then you move onto project B for one week, then you do a little of project C for one week.

Therefore, at the end of three weeks of "multitasking" you have done a little of each project but you have not completed any. Therefore, nothing is complete and you have no new cash flow. So you repeat this process spending one week on each project again.

Now six weeks have passed and still, none of the projects are complete, and you still have no new cash flow. So you continue on with each of the projects, spending one week at a time on each until all three projects are finally complete.

The Real Score
As you can see, when multi-tasking, it takes an entire seven weeks before just one task is completed and has the potential of earning you money. To get all three projects completed takes you twenty-one weeks. That's four weeks of lost productivity on EACH project!

But wait, it gets worse. Do you really think you can go nine entire weeks without a great new idea coming your way? Seriously, we all come up with brilliant new ideas and projects all the time that threaten to take us off course. The result? Half-finished projects get pushed to the "back burner" and never actually get completed. Before you know it, the entire year has gone by and you've accomplished very little.

TIP: Turn off your email! Email is the biggest time killer there is. Every time you look at your email you'll get side-tracked from the task at hand.

Stay focused and only check your email during set times each day. I review and respond to email for one hour each morning then I turn it off and get on with my ONE project. Then, at noon or after lunch, I'll check my email for responses to any communication that was opened in the morning. After that, I turn it off for the rest of the day and, if I get a chance, I'll take one more quick look in the late afternoon.

Anything more than that is too much. If you need more time than that, I recommend you consider hiring some support staff to help you take care of support issues, set up meetings for you, and review joint venture proposals.

If you liked this article and want to learn more, you can get a copy of Glen's 3-Day workshop for free!

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Healthy Music. Country music is good for the heart. Who knew?

The right music can give your health an instant boost.

I recently came across an article from Science Daily which talked about the groundbreaking research done at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine. They discovered that joyful tunes "have a healthy effect on blood vessel function."

I was delighted by the study but I was surprised by some of the findings. In fact, I would have never guessed what qualifies as joyful music. Then again, maybe it just isn't my kind of music.

Happy Picks
"We knew that individual people would react differently to different types of music, so in this study, we enabled participants to select music based upon their likes and dislikes," explains principal investigator Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Thus, the participants were asked to undergo extensive tests. For one, they were made to listen to their chosen tunes for 30 minutes while researchers measured their happiness by the number of dilations of the blood vessels around their hearts.

Top Tunes
As it turns out, most of the participants in the study tagged country music as their favorite mood booster. They likewise revealed that "heavy metal" music made them feel anxious.

"You can't read into this too much, although you could argue that country music is light, spirited, a lot of love songs," said Dr. Miller, who assures us that he "could have selected 10 other individuals and the favorite could have been a different type of music." He adds: "We're all wired differently, we all react differently. I enjoy country music, so I could appreciate why country music could cause that joyful response."

At the moment, researchers are still in the process of finding out if other types of music produce similar positive effects on blood vessels. So, if you're into making music, now would be a good time to put your music out there. You never know. Your tunes might literally save a lot of hearts.

Source: University of Maryland Medical Center. "Joyful Music May Promote Heart Health." ScienceDaily 12 November 2008.

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Quit the cup. Switch to plain water to get energized in the morning.

Simple habits can get your day off to a great start. They may seem obvious--but most of us fail to do simple things that can make us feel better. We don't take the time to live and be conscious, because we're too busy. But, in fact, it doesn't really take too much for us to find quality time for ourselves--as long as we have the energy for it.

Here are seven energy-boosting moves you can do in 30 minutes or less:

1. Stretch first thing in the morning. Do you wake up with aching muscles? Start stretching your legs. If it's painful, you've probably let yourself go too long, but if you start slowly and stick with it, it will improve the way you feel for the rest of the day. Take two to three minutes to do a series of moderate stretches every morning.

2. Exercise immediately after you stretch. You don't have to run five miles or do a full body workout at the gym. Start with something simple that takes a couple of minutes like 20 push-ups and 30 squats and work toward 100 push-ups and 100 squats. It only takes a few minutes--but the benefits last all day.

3. Drink two glasses of water Nighttime dehydrates us, and the first thing most of us drink is coffee, which makes it worse. A major cause of fatigue is dehydration. I've discovered that if I drink two glasses of water just before breakfast it gives me a bigger boost than coffee ever did.

4. Eat a whole foods breakfast. Never skip breakfast, but give up processed food. Put away the Froot Loops and the Eggos. Avoid doughnuts and bagels. Instead, eat a bowl of fresh strawberries or blueberries and an egg or two. Even bacon and sausage will serve you better than breakfast cereal (be sure to eat only grass-fed nitrate-free meats). You might think this is time consuming, but it isn't. If I prepare the night before, it only takes 5-10 minutes to eat a healthy breakfast. Eating a healthy breakfast, low in refined sugar and flour, can boost your IQ by 15 percent.

5. Skip the coffee. Think you'll die without your morning coffee? You won't. You'll feel better without it. Sure, it will give you a kick for a couple of hours after drinking it, but you will crash hard later and nothing will pick you back up. Your energy levels stay much higher during the day when you avoid coffee. Instead of peaks and valleys, you will have a consistent good feeling all day.

6. Do a standing meditation. Every morning, walk outside and stand silently for a few minutes. Try to observe without thought, without worry, and without judgment. Feel the the universe surrounding you. It will calm you. It will expand your conscious awareness. It will help you think clearly later.

7. Turn off the news and talk radio. This might seem a bit off subject, but it isn't. The ideas you allow into your mind, especially in the morning and just before bed, will affect your energy levels. During your commute, turn off the morning shock jocks and political talk radio. They push negative emotional buttons, a heinous crime you can't do anything about, a corrupt politician, or some horrible injustice. Sitting in a car pumping negative garbage into your mind is a lousy way to start your day. Instead, get an iPod and download some podcasts or get a good audio book on audible.com. Absorb some actionable information, information you can use, information that inspires. Start your day with something positive. I recommend the Alan Watts Podcast.

Remember that the time to energize your life is now. You never know what tomorrow may bring, so make sure that you have enough energy to seize the day.

Credits: Photo by Vojko Kalan, courtesy of Public Domain Pictures.

The author is a blogger, IT manager for Ergotron.com, and entrepreneur. He is also a technology, marketing, and personal growth enthusiast. But, his biggest passion is helping people achieve freedom in their lives. On his personal blog, For People Pursuing Freedom, he covers personal finance, entrepreneurship, education, self-improvement, business, ethics, and emotional intelligence.

Suggested Resource: To find out how to get energized the right way, sign up for Simpleology 103: The Simple Science of Personal Energy and get clued in on more energy-boosting tips and resources.

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Fruit Fix. Craving for a snack during the night shift? Reach for a fruit.

Back in September, I blogged about a schedule that would help people make the most out of their day. However, that schedule wasn't exactly designed for people on the night shift.

Since one of the most common complaints of those who get assigned to the night shift is weight gain due to their "crazy schedule," I was glad when I came across nutrition expert Lisa Drayer's stay-fit schedule for night owls.

For starters, Drayer emphasizes: "You'll be less likely to overeat if you keep your blood sugar stable. The best strategy is to eat five or six small meals over a twelve-hour period."

To make it easy for you to follow the said directive, she's come up with a food schedule that's suited for night owls:

7:30 p.m. Have your first meal of the "day." Make it your largest meal, packing 500 calories. It should consist of lean protein, vegetables, and whole grains.

10:30 p.m. Grab a 200-calorie snack such as a cup of low-fat yogurt and a fruit.

1:30 a.m. Get a 300-calorie snack that combines carbohydrates with protein and healthy fats such as a fruit and a cup of nuts.

4:30 a.m. Stick to the carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats combo by getting a chicken sandwich on wheat bread or a piece of grilled tuna and a cup of rice.

8:00 a.m. Eat a bowl of oatmeal with a boiled egg or a few slices of cheese.

To complement this schedule, get clued in on more food options. Find out which ones would give you the energy you need. Most of all, remember to stay consistent with the schedule so your metabolism won't be "sleeping on the job" during the night shift.

Credits: Photo by Petr Kratochvil, courtesy of Public Domain Pictures.

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The key to a great day. Place your keys--and other must-bring stuff--by the door so you won't waste time looking for them just as you're leaving

Are you the type of person who greets the day with enthusiasm or grouchiness? If you are like most people, you'd answer, "It depends..."

What does it depend on? The first hour of the morning.

The level of stress and activity in the morning can set the tone for the whole day. A stressful beginning can make a whole day seem frantic. On the other hand, a relaxed beginning can make a difficult day seem smoother. To wit, the key to a great morning lies in the night before.

By getting things ready the night before, you can simplify the start of your day, and even some of your tasks for the next afternoon! Here are six ways to make the morning flow:

1. Get your clothes ready the night before. By picking out your outfit in the evening, you will have time to notice if something is stained, needs repair, or needs ironing. You can also pick clothing appropriate for the weather. You will be able to bypass the staring-in-the-closet part of the morning, as well as the frantic changing of outfits when you notice the coffee stain on your pants.

2. Organize your out-the-door stuff. If you have a briefcase, get it packed. Ladies, pack your purses. Avoid the last minute scramble to assemble the client presentation notes that can mean leaving something important behind.

3. Put your keys by the door. If you spend five minutes looking for your keys each morning, you will end up spending twenty hours a year looking for keys. Keep your keys in one place--by the door--and you will avoid that last minute hassle.

4. Prepare your meals. As much as possible, automate breakfast and lunch. Skipping meals can lead to poor mental and physical performance later on. On-the-go breakfast "convenience" foods and fast food are loaded with extra calories, sugar, and fat that could lead to sluggishness. So, make your breakfast healthy: lay out a covered bowl of cereal and pull some yogurt to the front of the fridge. This way, you'll get to enjoy the food as you cut down on preparation time. Packing most of a lunch the night before can sometimes mean the difference between a healthy inexpensive lunch or a lunch of fast food. Put together some veggies and fruit or make a sandwich. You will avoid the afternoon slump of energy and save money.

5. Set up automated tasks. We live in an age of "convenience machines." If you wash a load of clothes while you are at work, bring the laundry basket to the washer the night before. If you will cook dinner in a slow cooker during the day, get the ingredients assembled and prepped, so all you have to do is plug and go. Having machines work for us is a wonderful convenience, but only we can make the most out of what they can do.

6. Help your children get ready. Help children pick out their clothes, assemble school work, and pack lunches the night before. This will eliminate the added calls of "Mom, have you seen my...?" or "Dad, I need these papers signed and a check for today..." This alone will take a great deal of frantic energy out of the out-the-door time.

You have more time to think and double-check when you prepare in the evening. None of the tips suggested above will take very long--you just have to invest about half an hour each night to get them done, and you will reap the benefits by a smooth, stress-free morning.

Credits: Photo by Anna Cercova, courtesy of Public Domain Pictures.

The author writes for the Simple Productivity Blog.

Suggested Resource: Simpleology 101: The Simple Science of Getting What You Want. (Use the Daily Time Praxis to help make your days even more productive.)

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