Category: Life Hacks

“What’s The Plan?” (I just need to know there is one.)

What’s your plan for 2023?

In my Time Management and Productivity Presentations, I talk A LOT about planning. Two quotes I share in those presentations are:

  • “By failing to plan, you are preparing to fail”.  (Ben Franklin)

    And
  • “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

In this quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower, he uses “plan” and “planning” as both nouns and verbs. For today’s purposes, “a plan”, the noun, is “a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something” (per google) or “a set of actions that are intended to achieve a specific aim” (per Cambridge Dictionary).

Considering who I am, it is no surprise that I love a good plan.

Why do I love a good plan?

A good plan orders our steps. It calms our fears, knowing that there is a plan. It motivates us and keeps us on track. A good plan is not a perfect plan. A good plan is flexible and should be able to – sometimes expected to – change and evolve. And even if a plan may be subject to change, it’s still vitally important to go through the planning process.

For example:

When I text my clients to confirm our appointments, I often ask “What on the agenda?”

Here’s the thing – I ask this question many times a week. I ask my clients about the plan, but… I don’t actually need to know the plan until I arrive for our appointment.

This question is not for me, or for my benefit, it’s for my client. In organizing, I am the expert about organizing but my client is the expert about themselves and their situation.

If you’re my client and you have a plan, I can make some assumptions.

  • Awareness: I can assume you have have the necessary list of possible projects or life situations you would like to improve or accomplish.
  • Prioritizing: I can also assume that you have thought about the priority for these projects and situations.
  • Ownership and Agency: I can assume you have reviewed the list and the priorities and decided on what task or project or objective we should work on that will help you the most today.
  • Flexibility: We can always add to or subtract from the plan, and I can also help you with any of these steps as we work together, but the assumptions remain.

I was chatting with my son in the kitchen yesterday. I take him back to college for his second semester this coming weekend and I asked him if there was a plan for moving back in.

And then I leaned over to him and whispered “I don’t actually need to know the plan right now.” And he knew that, too.

Why?

Because this process, this moving-back-in event, is not my process or my event. It is his process. I will always help, of course. I can help him craft the plan, I will support his plan and implementation, I will do whatever he needs me to do. BUT, the plan is not my plan. It’s his plan. He is super smart, he is excellent at problem solving and HE knows his needs at college far better than I do. Essentially, a week before we hit the road, I only want to know that he is thinking about the process. I don’t need to know the plan, and it’s likely to change in the next few days anyway. I just need to know that there is a plan.

Awareness. Priorities. Ownership and Agency. Flexibility.

So, what’s your plan for 2023? I don’t need to know what the plan is, but for your sake, I really – for you – want to know that you have a plan.

And if you would like to craft that plan, and would like a listening ear and partner in the process, drop me an email at colleen@peaceofmindpo.com and let’s talk about organizational and productivity coaching in 2023.

Recombobulate With Routines and To-Do Lists

Recombobulate. Is that even a word?

Ever feel discombobulated? A little off, a bit scattered? Me, too. For example, just today.

We run a humidifier all winter. It’s great for our health, and the added bonus is the white noise it makes that helps me sleep better. I woke up long before my alarm to the sound of silence. And not just the lack of white noise, I mean SILENCE.

According to the electric company service text I received at 3-ish am, we had a power outage due to a damaged line in our area. So… SILENCE. No white noise, no furnace. I’m unclear whether it was the chill or the silence that woke me, but something surely did.

And we still needed to get ready for work, take candlelight showers (hooray, new large hot water tank!), make instant coffee (thank you gas stove and Starbuck’s Via packets), and get the cars out of the garage together since the opener won’t open without power.

First world problems, I know. Truly, no major crisis. Sounds like an adventure, I suppose, but I was also wondering how I was going to coach today with no wi-fi and a slowly draining laptop battery. Thankfully – hooray! – the power returned just before my first virtual meeting so I was back in business and didn’t have to set up camp at a local coffee shop. But the whole experience just made the rest of the day feel… off. Weird. Unsettled.

Which makes me more grateful than ever for my Routines and To-Do lists.

When the power came back and as I worked to gather my thoughts and get back on track with such a strange start to my day, I made the conscious decision to check in on my routine tasks (that apparently require electricity!) and make sure that, even though the day had started bumpy, I had completed all of the routine tasks that keep my day and week running smoothly:

  • Made my healthy smoothie;
  • started laundry;
  • checked the charge on all my tech items; and
  • put my car back in the garage, cleaned it out and repacked my work gear for the work week.

The routine tasks were completed at NOT routine times, but I was grateful to know exactly what I needed to do to keep my day and week on track.

Then, after the routine tasks that keep life moving were completed, I returned to my To-Do list for the day.

My consistent, reliable and drama-free To-Do list, always available and waiting patiently for me to act. And since yesterday’s Colleen had put it together and her day had not started out so bizarre, the plan and paths were clear. And all day long, when I was feeling discombobulated and found my focus and energy wandering, I turned again to my To-Do list to get back on track.

The moral of the story? Spend some time today and this week, hopefully in times that you are NOT already feeling discombobulated or a little scattered, looking at how your current routines and to-do lists can help you stress less, get back on track when you veer off course and stay on track to get things done with more ease.

Find Your Focus Areas!

(Want to watch me share this article? Click here for a FB live: https://www.facebook.com/MColleenKlimczakCPO/videos/812165770032446)

It always delights me when someone quotes me back to me! At a recent meeting, a friend mentioned that her brother had attended one of my Stress Management presentations. Of course, she also mentioned that she asked him to do something and he said “No, that isn’t in my Focus Areas”! (No names are mentioned, for anonymity!)

In my Stress Management Presentations, I recommend identifying and then sticking with your Focus Areas.

The idea is to identify what is important to you, and subsequently, what is NOT important to you. And once you know what is important to you – what is a high priority for you – intentionally spend your time and energy and resources on the high priority areas of your life.

Being intentional on how we spend our resources is important when it comes to getting things done, decreasing stress and increasing feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Reviewing my notes, I realize that Focus Areas come up a lot for me. For example:

  • When writing an agenda for a board meeting – “What is important? What do we have to make sure to talk about?”
  • EVERY WEEK when I check in with my 2 accountability partners, I report using my Focus Areas as writing prompts.
  • In a recent conversation about the lingering effects of lock down and the pandemic, as in, “even when in lockdown for months in my home, I still didn’t want to work on jigsaw puzzles or knit a blanket.”
  • Even in casual conversations with my son. As in “Mom, you should watch this entire YouTube series on conspiracy theories.”
    • “Um, no. No, I should not.” Binge watching anything, especially something on conspiracy theories, is NOT in my Focus Areas.

What is important to you? What are your Focus Areas? If you’re unclear on what your Focus Areas are, start by checking three places: Your bank account, your calendar and your texting history. “What is important to you” is what you spend your resources on. Resources like time, money and energy.

Here’s the other side of that statement, though. Are you spending your resources on the areas of your life that you WANT to be important to you? Meaning, do you feel like building your business is important to you, but upon review of your resources, you aren’t spending a lot of energy on that endeavor? Or family or relationships or faith, etc.? As I plan my work today, I use my focus areas to determine what I DO and DO NOT want to spend my time on.

OK, so my Focus Areas are:

  • Service and Faith: School Board Work, Community Work, Ministries at church including Choir, Cantoring and Baptismal Prep
  • Home / Family: First thing first, my husband and sons. Then family and friends. And “Home” is the care and nurturing of home, cleaning, cooking, projects, holidays, etc.
  • Personal / Wellness
  • Educate Me: educational pursuits, learning new skills, reading non-fiction, learning new music.
  • My Company. I have subcategories, or business specific focus areas, too. They are Coaching, Clients, Presentations, Marketing and Business Specific.

What might your Focus Areas be? Career, Family, Health, Hobbies or a specific interest, Adventures, Friends, Money, Spiritual Needs, Personal Growth, Physical Fitness, etc..

A caveat: Our Focus Areas are an internal choice. A quick way to identify what might NOT be one of your Focus Areas is any time the idea comes from outside of you and is accompanied by a Should. As in almost ALL ADVERTISING! or “Wow, you should totally get a tattoo and run off to South America if you want to live a fulfilled life like me.” Huh? Um, no, thanks.

Additionally, our Focus Areas can change and evolve over time, just like we do as humans.

Knowing what our Focus Areas are helps us to make good decisions on how to spend our resources. They also give us a rubric for deciding on how to NOT spend our resources. Even if it means we respond to a request with “No, I am not willing to do that, it is not important to me, or part of my Focus Areas”!

take a breath and prepare

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Take a breath.

Take a breath to recover AND also to prepare.

September is National Preparedness Month, www.Ready.gov.

Daily, it seems, I encourage others (and remind myself) to take a breath. To recover from an upset, to make space for peace, or perhaps to ground or center ourselves. Maybe to simply take a moment to relax.

Just last evening, I walked a class of students through square breathing during a Stress Management class at the local community college. Deep breaths won’t eliminate our stressors, of course, but they can certainly help us manage better whatever the day may send our way.

Fun fact, in addition to professional organizing and coaching, I am also a professional liturgical musician as a cantor and a flutist.

A recent Sunday, I was reminded that, in addition to taking a breath to recover from an exhale, we also take a breath to prepare for what is coming.

In music, phrasing is important. A misplaced breath can cut short a note, make a sentence awkward or leave a whole phrase weak and unsupported. In liturgical music, the songs are often sloooooowwwww and the phrasing is looooonnnnnggggg. So the trick becomes finding opportunities to take extra breaths unnoticed to prepare for those long notes.

WE tend to be more impressed when someone can hold those big crescendos at the end of a song for a splashy and impressive finish. But I tend to listen for and appreciate the long and sustained and supported phrasing throughout the song.

Another fun fact, I sing at 8 am Mass. I need to warm up first thing in the morning to hit the high notes that early, sure, but the more important thing at 7 am is actually warming up my deep breathing and lung expansion to support and sustain my phrasing. That is less natural for me than hitting the high notes.

So, let’s bring this into organizing. We organize to clean up or recover from day-to-day life. But I would challenge us all to also look at what simple steps we can take this week and month to prepare for day-to-day life.

Using my own analogy, for example, I knew days ago that today was going to be a day with LONG PHRASING, so I did what I could to “take a breath to prepare” with planning my clothes and meals ahead of time and taking care of some work a day early. I am also making sure to provide a steady and firm breath (use of energy and focus) but NOT too strong so as to spend all the breath or energy or focus all at once.

So, take a breath with me and think about what we can do to better prepare for our days.

The Basics: What MUST Be In Your Pocket?

When I started writing this article yesterday, I planned to write it from the going-off-to-college perspective. But, this morning, a 4 year old changed my plan.

Can we start with the basics? 5 things, maybe 6. BASIC. But so very important.

Let’s call them our Pocket Essentials. The items that you consider essential to leaving the house. Your Pocket Essentials are personal and change with age or stage in life. So, my Pocket Essentials for leaving the house – the bare minimum without which I cannot leave – car and house keys on one ring, phone, wallet and sunglasses. Truly, I can get pretty far with just these few things. But without them, I can’t even leave the garage.

From the 4 year old (a client’s daughter), she needed her dollar bill – HERS, not her sister’s, because HERS is smooth and her sister’s is crinkly – and a pink formal long glove. Just one. And very bright pink. And please, don’t question her choice. (She and her siblings were delightful.)

This summer, my son’s pocket essentials for work are his phone, house keys and electronic time card. If he leaves without any of those things, he has to come back for them. When he goes off to college in just a few weeks, he will need to establish A PLACE and JUST ONE PLACE for his college Pocket Essentials – phone, college ID and room key.

The point:

Identify your essentials, whether you are 4, 18 or 50 something.

Establish A PLACE for the essentials to live.

Then, cultivate the habit around making sure your essentials live in that ONE PLACE when you get home so they are ready again for you when you leave.

I have a theory when it comes to organizing and time management: How we manage transition times in our day can make or break our schedule and success.

Transition times are the many instances in our day when we switch from one task to another, one focus to another, one location to another, etc. They include: getting out of bed, leaving for and arriving at school or work, heading to lunch or getting back from lunch, leaving from school or work, arriving home, making dinner or going to bed.

If you live with at least one other human or pet, you also have to factor in their transition times. And when we look at how many instances in a day we are shifting gears, it’s easy to see how many instances there are also to stumble!

So, to Recap:

Establish what your Pocket Essentials are. A short list, not too much to keep track of, but Essential nonetheless.

Then, establish ONE PLACE. By the front or back door? We have a little basket mounted on the wall by the back door where my husband keeps his Pocket Essentials. Mine are all contained in my backpack, also near the exit. Perhaps on your dresser or the kitchen counter? Pick ONE PLACE. Let others in the house know where the place is. Put a nice dish or basket there just for the Pocket Essentials. maybe a charger for your phone, etc.

Finally, establish the habit of keeping your Pocket Essentials in your ONE PLACE while you’re home so it’s waiting for you when it comes time to leave.

My habit is to take off my shoes by the back door and then take everything out of my pockets onto my desk (right next to the back door.) Keys get clipped to my bag, sunglasses go in my bag, phone gets charged on the desk if necessary. Same goes for my family members, dropping their Pocket Essentials by the door or on their dresser. If any of us find those essentials elsewhere in the house, we return them to their ONE PLACE.

And if I happen to walk by my bag and the keys are not clipped to my bag, or my phone is not where I expected it to be, I had better go track it down! Before missing my Pocket Essentials messes up my next Transition time!!

Got Paint?

I just shared this information in my weekly newsletter, and I wanted to park it out here for future use!

Let’s also talk… paint! As I wrote a newsletter about garages, my friend Jen asked “Where  Can I Dump Paint?”  Excellent question, friend, and here are some answers:

  • Paint should be stored inside your home away the extreme temperatures found in a garage.  Paint should never freeze.
  • Check out this non-profit organization, Earth Paint in Wood Dale, IL to recycle your household paint:  http://earthpaint.org/.  
  • Check with your local Habitat for Humanity regarding donating still-usable paint.
  • In the Spring and Fall, check your metropolitan area for paint and hazardous material recycling events.
  • If you live in Evergreen Park, contact Waste Management At Your Door to schedule a pick-up of paint, hazardous materials or e-waste, https://wmatyourdoor.com/
  • If you have to purge paint:
  • Paint should never be poured in the ground or down the drain.
  • If you have water-based or latex paint and can be patient about its disposal, pry the lid off and leave it to dry out in your garage out of reach of children or pets. Once dry, the can should be disposed of in your regular weekly garbage collection.
  • To expedite the drying process or if you have oil-based paint, you can purchase paint hardener (like this) to add to the old paint, wait 20 minutes until it is hard as a rock, then dispose of the can in your regular garbage collection. 

Small Bag of Chargers ALL THE TIME!

In last week’s newsletter, I shared two of my favorite travel tips, my packing cubes and an always-packed toiletry kit.

I was reminded of another favorite travel tip as I packed to travel this past weekend. And I can’t believe I haven’t written about it before now!

I have a small plastic pouch that makes my life better. It lives in my daily go-bag and contains the chargers I might need to charge my stuff.  ALL THE TIME. Plus the cubes to go in the wall or car outlet that hold multiple cords.

For most items, I am pretty tough on the question of duplicates. But this is one instance – tech accessories – when duplicates are OK and even encouraged! It is frustrating and un-safe to be caught without charged tech items.

I travel a lot and even if I didn’t, I’m still on the go ALL THE TIME. This handy little pouch goes almost every where with me. It lives in my go-bag every day for work and gets tossed in my luggage when we travel.


What’s in the bag right now?


We have cords in the cars, too, that STAY IN THE CAR.

Remembering to pack the items is easy. And since I have duplicates, it is also not a crisis if I leave one behind or more likely, share one with a family member that forgot theirs.


The other habit is that I always keep an extra new cord in the tech drawer next to my desk.  Then, if I need to give a cord to my sons (or my mom, like I did a couple of weeks ago) or I need to replace an old cord (like I did over the weekend), I use the back-up one from the drawer and add a new cord to my weekly Office Max order.  So we’re always covered!

Give a little thought this week to what chargers and tech accessories would go into your charger bag to give you peace of mind on the go!

Clutter Hot Spot: Your Tech Accessories

The challenge with this hot spot is that there isn’t always just one spot.

Sometimes the tech pieces

are

all

over

the

place!

The original inspiration for the Clutter Hot Spot series was client interactions in January. And in one week, I had 3 clients who had tech accessories stirred up into every space we were organizing!

IF we ever hope to find them again, we need to assign JUST ONE HOME for our less-often used tech accessories.

In my office, our ONE tech accessory home is a desk drawer. Right next to me as I write this article. It’s not exciting or big or complicated. It holds tech items that we might need again. In preparation for writing this article, I looked in there earlier today. The boxes for my Apple watch and airpods are in there (new-ish). Extra lightning charging cables (we buy these a few at a time), charging cubes, earphone covers, users manuals, the extra cord that came with my new monitor in its labeled bag. Also, mesh bags for corralling tech accessories when we travel. A few items I came across are now obsolete, like my last two Fitbits and their very specialized chargers, and those are all now in the basket in the garage waiting for a E-Waste collection event.

Let’s review the important parts of the story above:

  • One and ONLY ONE home for tech accessories you might need again.
  • The habit of putting tech accessories in that ONE home when we get them, and putting them back in there after we use them!
  • Labeling the accessory and what it belongs with to eliminate future questions.
  • Everyone in the house knowing where the extra tech accessories live.
  • The habit around reviewing the technology at least once in a while, to determine what tech accessories we need to keep and which ones need to move along to E-Waste recycling.
  • Making sure your E-Waste actually gets recycled. Check your local recycling resources for E-Waste recycling near you. If you’re near me, check out my recycling page for resources. (https://peaceofmindpo.com/2019/06/26/organizing-resources-to-reduce-repurpose-and-recycle/)

Look around your home and establish that ONE SPOT for your extra tech accessories, and commit to moving your tech clutter there as you find it!

ADHD Awareness Month, for Yourself and For Others

October is ADHD Awareness Month, and I want to help us all be more aware!

ADHD (Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder) is a
“neurodevelopmental disorder affecting both children and adults around the globe.” (from adhdawarenessmonth.org)

In my roles as a certified professional organizer, organizing coach and
fellow human being, I interact with many people with ADHD.

And, So Do You.

My next few blog articles will help you get to know ADHD.  I hope to delve deeper, but for now, let’s work on the “Awareness” of ADHD Awareness Month.

Did you know?

·    At least 10% of the population have ADHD, and probably a much higher percentage go undiagnosed or unnoticed. In a classroom
of 20 students, at least 2 have ADHD. 

·   ADHD can run in families, but not always.

  • If you have 10 friends with ADHD, each of the 10 will show their ADHD in a different way. There is no one way that a person with ADHD will act.

  • “ADHD”, at least the “H” part, may be a misnomer as not everyone who has ADHD also has hyperactivity.  ADHD can also show up as inattention, poor focus, poor planning, and poor impulse control and emotional regulation, to list just a few symptoms.

     

  •  ADHD is diagnosed from 2.5 to 4 times more often in boys than it is in girls (https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-symptoms-in-girls-and-boys).  HOWEVER, ADHD is spread evenly between genders.  The difference is the rate of diagnosis.  ADHD shows up differently in different people, and characteristics like being “emotional”, “daydreamy” or “flighty” can wrongly be attributed to girls just because they’re girls and not because they may have an underlying condition.

     

  • ADHD can be diagnosed at any age. ADHD is diagnosed for  children of school age, but also with the transition to high school or to college, when parental supports and involvement changes and no longer compensates for the student with ADHD.

     

     

  • In addition, ADHD was not understood when most of today’s adults were children and many adults will continue to live life undiagnosed.

     

     

  • Folks with ADHD don’t need to “just try harder”, or “apply themselves”, or have better discipline.  ADHD is caused by a chemical deficit in the brain and not by some character flaw.  Often individuals with ADHD work very hard to overcome the challenges that come with ADHD and have spent their life coming up with coping strategies.

     

     

  • Some of the challenges of ADHD can also be considered benefits. For example, a characteristic of ADHD is the ability to hyper-focus on topics that are interesting to the individual. Of course, the ability to hyper-focus is also what sometimes leads to a misdiagnosis.

     

     

  • There are tools to help individuals manage their ADHD.  There is hope. 

And I think HOPE is the most important awareness of all.  

Being Organized is Good For Your Health!

I didn’t want to scare any readers with a dramatic headline, but the opposite is true, too – clutter and disorganization can be bad for our health!

This week, in preparation for upcoming health and wellness events, I’ve been seeking statistics on the correlation between health and wellness and clutter and disorganization. And, let me tell you, they are all connected.

I have been asked many times before – Which comes first? Health problems that lead to disorganization and clutter? Or clutter and disorganization that lead to health problems? And truthfully, I don’t know the answer. OR, the answer is “It depends”, which isn’t helpful.

More important than the answer to “Which came first?” is to recognize they are related! And clearing clutter and getting more organized can help us to feel better in lots of ways, too!

Most of my articles are how-to articles, but this week, I also want to remind us all of the “Why?” as in “Why do we organize and clear clutter?”

So, first the bad news (the good is coming, I promise!): Disorganization and Clutter in our physical spaces can be dangerous to our health and well-being. Consider:

  • Did you know? Household clutter can harbor bugs, rodents, moisture, mold and dust. Being around these environmental hazards can make us all feel poorly, but especially if we have allergies or breathing issues.
  • Did you know? Clutter can make it dangerous to move around our homes and workspaces. Hazards might include narrowed pathways, teetering piles of stuff and items left on the floor for us to trip over.
  • Did you know? There is a physical weight to clutter. Overpacked purses, briefcases, backpacks and luggage take a toll on our shoulders, necks and backs.
  • Imagine a cluttered car. Now imagine having to stomp on the breaks in that car to avoid an accident. Anything in a car that is not strapped down becomes a projectile in extreme braking or the event of an accident.
  • There are physiological and psychological effects of clutter and disorganization, too. Clutter and Disorganization can exacerbate the symptoms of health challenges such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, to name just a few.

Fear not, though, because there is good news, too! Getting a handle on your clutter and disorganization can help improve your health and over well-being in MANY ways! Imagine with me:

  • Clear countertops and healthy food on hand in your kitchen helping you eat the way you feel you should for good health. A study from Cornell University found that the more cluttered a person’s kitchen counter is, the less likely they are to make healthy food choices.
  • Individuals living in clean homes are generally healthier than their counterparts living in clutter, according to research conducted at Indiana University.
  • Moving easily around your home if you can clear clutter and reduce risk of tripping or falling.
  • Being greeted by comfortable and inviting spaces in your home, which reduces stress and improves mood and immunity. According to The Anxiety and Depression Association of America, depression can cause clutter, and clutter can cause people to feel tired and more depressed!
  • Getting a better night’s sleep in an un-cluttered and peaceful bedroom. The National Sleep Foundation states that people who make their beds daily are more likely to sleep well every night, and 71 percent of us sleep better in a clean, fresh-smelling bedroom.
  • Feeling better when you can consistently take your prescription medications when you can find them when you need them, get them refilled on time and remember to take them because your routines support this habit.

So, as we decide to spend time on organizing and clearing clutter this week, let’s remember all the benefits that can we can reap!