Category: professional development

Life Lessons From My High School Typing Teacher

Leave a comment

Recently, my high school typing teacher passed away at the age of 93 in my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

I hadn’t thought about Mr. Frank Caro in a while until my dad, who still lives in my hometown, called me with the news on a Sunday, surely after reading the local Sunday paper. My dad called while I was in the car driving with my husband as we headed downstate to visit my youngest son at college. And I spent a few minutes explaining to Greg the phenomenon that was Mr. Caro.

I explained, probably with a smile on my face, that he was my typing teacher sophomore year of high school. I still remember him so vividly! He was, now that I can look at him with wisdom that comes from growing up and life experiences, brilliant. I learned about far more than typing from Mr. Frank Caro.

He seemed eccentric, quirky even. It was the 80s, but he wore clothes from the 70s and maybe even 60s. He provided one of those glimpses in life, when you see a teacher outside of school and realize that the quirkiness, dated dressing and slightly snarky persona was an act they put on as a teacher. And that the persona was not the same as, or not all there was to, the actual person, the normal looking family man, husband and father, in slacks and a sweater that you saw at Mass on the weekends. And you have to take a moment and broaden your perspective and understanding that teachers are people. Not just people or just teachers, but both.

And he taught this by example, as well. My siblings and I had a lovely back and forth about Mr. Caro, and it also turns out that he was definitely paying attention in class and out of class, as a couple of my comments and my brothers’ comments showed the awareness he had of them as people outside of the classroom, too. So, one lesson I learned from Mr. Caro is understanding all the facets of a person.

It may be difficult to imagine now, but in the 80s, every student was required to take typing at some point in their high school career, and yes, I am totally dating myself right now. But we were required to take typing, and since mine was not a big high school, we all had him as a teacher. And we all have our memories of him and mine are quite fond. I won’t say that at 15, I was a very good typist. He would walk among our desks and comment if we were looking at our fingers on the keyboard or checking our accuracy, and he commented often to me. But even though he was stern and kind of quirky, I don’t remember disliking or feeling frustrated or having a problem with his occasional nasally admonishments. (My brother said in the text thread, “The magic of Frank Caro was the delivery. How to convey that thin, obnoxious French waiter voice with perfect drops of sarcasm and superiority?”) That’s just what you signed up for, when you had Mr. Caro as a teacher.

As is often the case, my dad called me to tell me of Mr. Caro, and it was my job then to share this nugget of news with my siblings. My siblings, my brothers, were 2 and 4 years ahead of me at the same school and they also had Frank Caro for typing. When I finally remembered two days later to text my siblings early on a Tuesday, my oldest brother Sean commented immediately with “Breathe with continuity. Type with continuity. Live with continuity.”

Those were the words to live by that he remembered from the mid-80s and his experience with Frank Caro. Isn’t that funny? That this man obviously impacted all three of us, and others of course, at different times 30 some years ago, and the messages still remain.

“Type with continuity. Breathe with continuity. Live with continuity.”

My brother Patrick had kind words as well, remembering that he “shouldn’t have gotten along as well with Mr. Caro as he did”. But Mr. Caro, one on one, was also vastly different than Mr. Caro in the classroom, and it turns out my brother and his friend used to stop by Mr. Caro’s room daily to grab a piece of candy from the candy jar and visit.

Patrick’s Frank Caro quote was “Never Lose Track Of Your Home Row.”

How amazing.

Breathe with continuity. Type with continuity. Live with continuity.

And

Never Lose Track Of Your Home Row.

I guess there was a lot of truth or merit or value, or all of the above, to whatever mysticism our typing teacher was weaving and working in his classroom, for all three of us to have vastly different experiences in life, but we, to a person, also had fond and powerful memories of typing class. And it’s not that it was typing class, it’s that it was Mr. Caro. We know that now. Breathe with continuity. Type with continuity. Live with continuity. And, Never Lose Your Home Row.

A lesson I carry with me from Frank Caro is that “Faster Is Not Better”. Meaning, work on accuracy, and with practice, the speed will come. I am a musician. I was a musician then, a budding one, and still am today. And the lesson still holds true. Work on doing things right, and then practice A LOT, and the speed will come. In flute music, we don’t learn 1/16th note runs in music by playing them fast immediately. In typing class, it was more important that we be accurate first and then gain speed next. True then in typing, true now in life. Lessons to live by.

I didn’t know this would be an ode to my high school typing teacher, but as it turns out, it is. I was inspired to share the Life Lessons that I learned at the age of 15 and that have obviously stuck with me this long, and I’m grateful for the experiences and the knowledge gained, and the shared experience with my siblings. I love knowing they had similar clear and fond memories of this man that I did.

To review:

  • We are all made up of many facets.
  • “Breathe with continuity. Type with continuity. Live with continuity.”
  • “Never Lose Your Home Row.” And
  • “Faster Isn’t Better.”

In addition, I have a couple other challenges for you this week inspired by Frank Caro.

I’ve taken you all with me on a walk through time recently, with Psychology 101 from freshman year of at the University of Dayton, to Production and Operations Management from college junior year, and now a dip back to high school at Hackett Catholic Central, as I recall topics and teachers who have influenced my life. That’s big.

First challenge: What do you want people to remember about you in 40 years? What do you want to be remembered for? And when you can answer that question, make sure that is the life you are living now. We don’t understand the impact that we can have, but we can have an impact. So determine what that impact is, that you want to have.

And, second challenge: Who was that teacher for you? If those special teachers or mentors are still around to be appreciated, appreciate them. Reach out to an impactful teacher or mentor that you’ve had in your life and say thank you. They would love to hear from you and to know how they touched your life, and you will be a better person for being able to say thank you and being grateful for them.

For example, a few years ago, I reached out in a letter to my best boss ever (and I am self employed!), Helen, to thank her for her support during my time at the University of Illinois, and for being generally gracious and amazing and someone I should aspire to be like. Humbly, of course, she said she didn’t see that, but that a co-worker of mine from the same time had said the same thing. I am better for having known her, and she needed to know that.

I didn’t have a chance to say thank you to Mr. Caro. However, since Mr. Caro was a faithful Catholic like me, I have faith he is able to hear my gratitude in heaven.

May we keep remembering that:

We are all made up of many facets.

To “Breathe with continuity. Type with continuity. Live with continuity.”

To “Never Lose Your Home Row.” And

That “Faster Isn’t Better.”

Thanks, Mr. Caro.

Finding, Keeping and Returning to Focus

Leave a comment

Last week, I mentioned that I am creating an upcoming professional development presentation around making the best use of our time, and helping us stay on task and focuses. To review, in last week’s podcast episode and article, the first part of that process needs to be identifying what is important for us to do, and what the best use of our time will be. And then we need to get to work! And, sometimes we need to get back to work, after distractions try to take us off course!

So this week, now that we know WHAT to do, we are looking at how to help a team and ourselves remain on task and stay focused, or return to focus throughout our day.

Today is about tools in that Focus Tool Box. I will mention many strategies. Some will resonate with you and some will not. And that’s ok. Perhaps one works with today’s schedule and workload but you need to try something else tomorrow with its schedule and workload. So it is good to have options!

A highlight of the tools we will touch on today, in no particular order:

  • Getting Ready and Self Regulation
  • Deep Breathing and Nature Breaks
  • Start with A Short List of 3
  • Block Time and Batch Work
  • Specificity
  • Recipes, for repeated work / duplicative processes
  • Phone calls are meetings. Schedule them, work with an agenda and keep them brief.
  • Factor in Rest
  • Routines for household tasks so they aren’t distracting us if we work from home

Getting Ready and Self Regulation:

I am a success coach for a cohort of students working through a 13 week Teacher’s Aide readiness program. And we were just working through the lesson on Student and Classroom Behavior. The Lesson talked a lot about self-regulation, and helping a student to be ready for and open to learning. And we, as adults, need to be the same, ready for and open to work. Some days, we may start our work day energized and focused and ready to do the work! And sometimes we are not. But even on the days we aren’t ready, the work still needs to get done.

So, how do we become ready for and open to learning or working? Perhaps we do a short meditation, read motivation words, do some deep breathing, phone a friend for a brief pep talk, take a walk around our work space and get the blood pumping. Maybe you have a “first few things” ritual, like grabbing a cup of tea or coffee or water, turning on your work lamp, putting your phone on silent, opening up the blinds. I have worked remotely for the 21 year life span of my business, but I will close my eyes and imagine the turning a Closed Sign on my door to Open as a signal to myself that it is work time!

Deep Breathing and Nature Breaks

Transitions are tough some days, and are often where we can lose focus the fastest! So as we shift from one batch of of work to another, or one block of time to the next, or start of finish a meeting, or drop the kids off at school and come home – whatever those look like to you – it helps to acknowledge that there is a transition, and also take a few minutes for self care. A hiking guide many years ago called them nature breaks, when we respect our biology and do those survival tasks we must! A new beverage, bathroom break, a few minutes of deep breathing to oxygenate our brain and refocus on the important stuff.

Start with a short and vital list of 3:

Every day needs a few of those needle movers that we talked about last week. Three, or maybe 4, tops. A short list, but a vital one. Every work day morning, or ideally, the night before as you close up for the day, identify the important tasks that MUST get done, in the midst of the rest of your work day. Those Best Use Of Our Time items that we identified last week. What is important, what is something only I can do, what are other projects waiting on me to complete, what work are other people on the team waiting for? For me, today that is write this article for podcast recording, publish this week’s newsletter and a coaching special, and pack my bag for the next two days of presentations. Those are the things that must get done, to deliver work to others and keep me moving towards my goals, in addition to the many meetings I have today. And, I have blocks of time today dedicated to those tasks, which brings me to Time Blocking and Batch Work.

Time Blocking and Batch Work

These are two related strategies, so I am lumping them together.

Per the Todoist.com website, Time Blocking “is a time management method where you divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to a specific task or group of tasks. For example, you might block out 9 am to 10 am for checking and responding to emails, 10 am to 12 pm for working on a specific project, and 1 pm to 2 pm to have lunch at that new Thai restaurant.”

And Batch Work is related because it collects tasks of similar categories or themes, so we can complete them together and realize economies and synergy. For example, during an assigned time block, taking care of client communications. Like collecting and completing a batch of client care texts and emails with a copy and paste message and my schedule open as well for setting next client appointments.

In terms of Finding, Keeping and Returning to Focus, Time Blocking and Batch Work ensure that the work that we have decided is important today, that is the Best Use of Our Time, gets done!

Another example, during an assigned time block, typically on a Thursday, I tackle my accounts receivables and payable tasks when I have my calendar, and my bookkeeping and invoicing software open. I pay my bills, make deposits, send out invoices, check in on and send reminders on unpaid invoices owed to me. Because I like money. Money is important. I think all the income and banking and bill paying thoughts at the same time, which gets those tasks done more swiftly and well. (In recent podcast terms, both efficiently AND effectively!)

For yourself, take out the word money and fill in the blank. Maybe it’s an operations type of task. Maybe it’s new client focused for this hour and current client focused for the next hour. Or creating a new website and writing content for a few hours. What are your important things, and where is there a block of uninterrupted time to do them?

Block and Batch for the Knowns, and Leave Space for the unknowns.

We can start with our 3 or 4 things that we have to do today, but we also know that most days, new stuff also comes in. We start the day with our own intention, with our own plan, but we also need to leave space and flexibility for emails, calls, issues that come up outside of the plan. One strategy could be to plan for 30 minutes or an hour of intentional planned work, and then a 30 minute block of today’s emails / texts / phone calls / new concerns. Balancing planned work and new work ensures both get accomplished today.

Get Very Specific

We need to recognize that often our projects and work for today and this week are actually a group of tasks. We see this in Time Blocking and Batch Work, when we assign a “Bookkeeping and Money Tasks” Block, and identify the Batch work for that block.

When we get really specific with the tasks, it is also easier to prioritize the tasks, choose an easy and quick one to gain momentum, choose a tougher one when time and energy allows, etc.

I can add a block for client care, but some days, I need to list each client that I need to contact that day and what I need to contact them about. So when I sit down for that Time Block to do the work, I can more easily focus on tasks and not on the planning or thinking or ruminating about the task. Which leads us to, in some ways:

Recipes, for repeated work / duplicative processes

So I talk about recipes a lot, and that is a great way to stay on track and focused with recurring or repeated work. For example, one day last week, a Time Block was dedicated to February Presentations and the batch work was to confirm the 6 presentations I have coming up. And I have spoken in recent articles and episodes that I created a recipe for that repeated work. It is important work, presenting is an income stream for my business, it definitely moves me towards my goals. And confirming the presentations has become both efficient and effective with these Recipes.

So what did that look like? Let’s look at one specifically: A stress management class in the middle of February for the career readiness training program that I teach at south Suburban College. My recipe says: Presentation: What? (Stress Management) When? (Start and stop time, February 18, all day) Update Handouts; Update Invoice, Email invoice and handouts (I have a list of the handouts I need for each of my presentations) Pack Bag, etc.

And I can use this over and over again, each presentation (6 in February), every month, etc. And the recipe helps me to stay focused, and also to refocus if I get distracted. And that’s important because sometimes we are taken away from the task in front of us. And it’s a way for us to kind of bookmark our work and so we can get back to it when time allows and we can pick back up again where we left off. Right? So we leave ourselves these notes, these hints, these recipes, these, you know, love notes for later, whatever you want to call them, so that we can get back to business.

Manage Phone Calls Like Meetings

Manage your conversations, at least during work hours. What’s the purpose, agenda, desired outcomes, and realistic time estimate for a call. And run it like a meeting, with specific start and end times.

Factor in Rest:

The fact is, we can’t maintain focus if we don’t rest sometimes. I know today I have been talking all about how to maintain focus, and how to get back on track if we lose focus, etc. And sometimes the best way to do that is to step a way for a few minutes. No, sometimes the best use of my time is to lay on the couch and read a book. Because sometimes we just need to relax, right? So that can be the best use of our time as well. And we need to remember that, like, rest sometimes can be just as important as everything else. And I’m saying that out loud because I need to remember that for myself. Totally true.

Routines for Personal and Household Tasks

A tool for maintaining focus during our work day is having those routines I have been talking about, too, around personal and household tasks so that you don’t get distracted by those items when you need to be focusing on work.

Ok, whew! Let’s review the Focus tools in our Focus tool box!

  • Getting Ready and Self Regulation
  • Deep Breathing and Nature Breaks
  • Start with A Short List of 3
  • Block Time and Batch Work
  • Specificity
  • Recipes, for repeated work / duplicative processes
  • Phone calls are meetings. Schedule them, work with an agenda and keep them brief.
  • Factor in Rest
  • Routines for household tasks so they aren’t distracting us if we work from home

I mentioned we would review a lot of tools today! Which ideas resonate with you the most? What is one tool or strategy that you can see would help you this week? Give it a try!

The Best Use Of Time: Not Just Efficient But Effective

Leave a comment

I feel like there’s something about, Focus February. And I have to explain:

In Finish Line Friday, my free virtual productivity session every Friday, with my community that we’ve created in Finish Line Friday – I love my community that we’ve created – one of my participants, a fellow organizer here in the Chicago area, always uses alliteration when she states her intentions for how she plans to use Finish Line Friday. For example, It’s Finance Friday (bookkeeping and bill paying) and Fashion Friday (putting away laundry and packing for a trip).

So as I was thinking as I wrote today’s content, perhaps it is Focus February. Or not. It’s a little corny. But we’ll see where my writing and content calendar take me. The current plan is two upcoming episodes about focus, another about finances and one about medical follow up, so perhaps the Fs will work!

And now to today’s topic:

A company asked me to present a professional development session in February. When I asked about the topic they were looking for, the questions the coordinators asked were all about focus.

I know the participants and their industry, too, so I can write about focus and in the context of working remotely as they are all remote workers. Specifically, the topics are:

  • Make the best use of their time;
  • Helping the team remain on task, and
  • How to Stay Focused.

Excellent, yes, I can write a presentation for that, sounds great! And, then I thought those ideas also sound like great podcast episodes and articles, like for today and next week!

“How To Make The Best Use Of Their Time”.

Stepping to the side here, last week, I took you to college with me with a revisit from Intro to Psychology. This week, you’re going back in time with me to Productions and Operations Management, Junior year of college. It may not sound exciting, but it was one of my favorite Management classes and the content has certainly stuck with me.

This is a great question. An important question. A really big picture question, in business. But we need to lay a foundation before we can answer this question. First, we need to define “Best”, as in “of the most excellent, effective, or desirable type or quality” (thank you, Google!).

In Productions and Operations Management, we talked about the difference between an efficient use of resources and an effective use of resources.

Efficiency is the LEAST outlay of resources like time, money, manpower and materials. Here, cheapest and quickest win the day. But that may not yield good results.

Effectiveness, on the other hand, is the BEST outlay of resources like time, money, manpower or materials. By using more resources, we can achieve the “the most excellent, effective, or desirable type or quality”.

In class, we looked at “efficient” versus “effective” in the auto industry. Cars could be cheaply and quickly made but they might not have been very good or reliable cars. Spending more time and money and labor yielded higher quality, more reliable and more desirable cars. That is where we’re coming from today.

As we determine the “Best” use of the participant’s time, we are going to look at effectiveness. How to choose the best combination of our resources. And in the workplace, and specifically for this company’s professional development, we want to encourage the Best. The Best use of our time means maybe we use a few more resources, like time and manpower, but choosing the Best use will have the biggest impact, the most positive impact on what we’re trying to achieve.

And to further define “Best”, we need to know what is important to those participants and the company. Because, here’s the thing, “Best” is a subjective statement. Meaning, it is very personal and individual to each participant, and to each of us, by extension. The “Best” use of my time will look different from everyone else.

Recalling that this is for a business specific professional development, “Best” in this case probably means productive, but also being productive with the right things, the best things. A coaching client in a recent session called them the Needle Movers – imagine your speedometer in your car. A lot of car references today! If you had a progress meter on your project task list, the Needle movers would move you closer to DONE! The needle movers, the change makers.

For all of us, then, to make the Best use of our time in the work place, we need to know what is important to move us towards our goals and desired outcomes, and get those important and needle-moving tasks done.

Which brings me to Focus Areas. As we determine our “Best”, we need to know our Focus Areas. What are yours? In your whole like, but also in your work life?

I’ve talked about Focus Areas in past podcast episodes and articles. But I would like to re-visit them for today’s article and podcast. Because we have to know our Focus areas to know we’re making the “Best” use of our time.

And I will use me as an example, because then I don’t have to ask for permission. In Life, my focus areas are Business, Home / Personal, Wellness, and Service like Board of Education Work and Ministry.

In my business, my Focus Areas are: Speaking and Teaching; Coaching Clients; Organizing Clients; Content like my podcast, newsletter, articles, website and social media; Education, like attending webinars and conferences for my Continuing Education Units; and the business of my business like bookkeeping, scheduling, etc.

So, as I decide how to spend my days, I keep those focus areas in mind. When tasks come up, or requests for my time, I filter those requests through that list of focus areas and decide where the request belongs or if I just need to say, No, Thank You.

My To-Do List is quite lengthy. Daily routine tasks, weekly tasks. And those aren’t even the actual work that I go and do with clients or students or with Board of Education work or with Ministry. The To-Do List is longer than I can ever accomplish in a day, so I have to narrow my options, zoom in and focus on what needs to happen just today to move that needle.

Because another challenge of course, in determining the “Best Use of Our Time” is that time is a limited resource. We only have so many hours in a day dedicated to work. And that is as it should be. We are more than just drones. But with time as a limited resource, we must use it wisely. We have to be a little choosy.

How do we do that? How do we choose? How do we choose the best use of our time today?

  • (If needed) What are my goals? Intentions?
  • What Focus Areas are we focusing on today?
  • What hours are available to me today?
  • When are my peak productive hours? Early in the day, mid day, evening, late evening?
  • What tasks or projects on today’s list are time-sensitive?
  • What tasks are other people relying on you to complete, so they can complete their work?
  • What can only I do? And subsequently, what can I delegate to others?

All of these are effectiveness questions. Not once did I ask, how do I do this the quickest, the easiest, the cheapest, etc.

Most days, I choose 3 or 4 Must Do tasks for today, from the lengthy to-do list. Truly, I try to choose my 3 or 4 the night before, for the next day. Some may be routine or urgent, and time specific, but almost every day I spend a little time on a longer, bigger, more strategic project, too. That is the BEST use of my time, working on the needle movers, the change makers.

For example, I was working on a project today and… well… I really didn’t want to do it. It was rather tedious, my attention was pulled in many different directions. I could easily have abandoned that project for something, well – anything else, really. But, looking at that list of questions:

Today’s project is attached to the larger project of relaunching my website, which is a goal. We have a time sensitive deadline. I have already delegated most of the work to my assistant who is awesome, but this project required me to make decisions that only I could make about content that needs to move from the old website to the new one. And we can’t relaunch until I complete this project. And while it was tedious, it didn’t actually take that long to complete. So I did it. It was the Best use of my time. It required time and attention and energy as resources, but it was a Needle Moving activity and now it’s complete.

As I wrap this up, because writing a longer article is not the Best use of my time today, and reading or listening to a longer article isn’t the Best use of yours, either, I want to share three caveats to making The Best Use Of Our Time, and they are:

  1. There can be more than one Best Use of our time. So we don’t have to get stuck on finding the perfect use of our time, just the Best. A Best.
  2. Some days we just need to act. We will talk about Focus next week, but there are some things we have to do that, going back to last week’s article, are just about survival and maintenance. But once those are accomplished, we can look to making progress, at the BEST use.
  3. Not everything can be your favorite. We can talk about Effectiveness and Focus Areas, etc., but we cannot feasibly focus on all the things every day, because then, really, we aren’t focusing on anything.

So on days when there are far too many tasks on the to-do list and far too many demands on our time, take a few minutes to ask yourselves the questions. When we seek the Best Use of our time, let’s look at the workday and determine “what is the most important thing that I get done today to continue to move forward?” I think that’s the most powerful question. Um, what are the two or three things. What are the two or three things that I can feasibly expect to accomplish, um, that will continue to move me forward?

To ensure we make the best use of our time, let’s focus on what is important to us and the tasks that we need to complete to tend to and achieve those important things!

Survival Needs Come First, Then Maintenance

Leave a comment

I promised on my last podcast episode to talk more about routines and what I call “Survival” and “Maintenance” level habits or tasks.

Let’s talk about those as our year progresses and we look to add in or even subtract habits to our schedule and routines, making sure that the ones we have support us. And, I would hope that if we can look at our survival and maintenance routines in a more objective way, we can design routines and habits that support the fundamentals efficiently and consistently, so we can get on with whatever else it is we want to accomplish today, this week and this year!

A class participant last year asked me to help them stay motivated to complete their daily survival and maintenance habits and routines, and this is for them, too. Survival and maintenance tasks aren’t optional, so the the question isn’t IF we complete them, but HOW.

I am going to dip into psychology with you here. I have a BS in Management, and a double minor in Psychology and music performance. I often think in terms of psychology, how our brains and minds work, and why people do what they do!

As we talk about survival and maintenance level tasks, though, let’s start with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is a theory in developmental psychology. If you want to know more, you can google it. There is a lot of information out there! Go to a library, or take an Intro to Psych course! That is where I started!

The hierarchy of needs is represented as a pyramid, with 5 levels. Physiological needs are the very bottom, then safety needs, then love and belonging, then esteem and then self actualization.

The theory is, we all start motivated to first meet physical needs as in air, food, clothing, shelter and sleep. The reason the theory is represented in a pyramid form is that the physical or physiological needs are the foundation of all other needs.

We have to start at the bottom, and make sure that physical needs are met, as in the things we need to do to survive until tomorrow morning. And, we need to ensure those survival needs are met consistently, before we can move up the pyramid.

I say “met consistently” because, for example in terms of food – first we need to eat food to survive. And then we need to make sure we can eat again, to continue to survive. And that moves us up the pyramid into Safety needs.

In real life, that looks like eating breakfast and also packing a lunch for later, and having a plan for dinner. And having the means to buy and store more food when we use up what we have, to continue to meet those survival needs.

Since you have the technology and time to read this article and listen to the podcast, I am going to assume you have your physical needs for survival met. And if not, go take care of those! Because… and here is a really important part of understanding the Hierarchy of Needs – we can’t succeed at the next level until we’ve taken care of the level below.

In real life, as you know, I work on our local Board of Education. And in education, we understand that a student who is hungry or freezing is going to have a hard time learning. A student who doesn’t feel safe or who is homeless is going to have a hard time learning. So, almost every school district has free and reduced meals available to students if they don’t necessarily have the means at home to eat. No judgement, just planning ahead. Acknowledging that their physiological needs must be met for our students to succeed.

We, too, as adults, cannot expect to achieve Esteem and Self-Actualization if we are consistently hungry, cold, unsafe, etc. That is the theory, the hierarchy. And that is where we need to start with our routines as well.

Whew, that was a very long winded Lead Up.

But we need to start with survival when it comes to our routines as well.

Globally, we need to wake up (sleep and shelter are level 1), eat breakfast (level 1), get dressed (level 1), take a shower (level 2 for health). Then we need to look at safety needs, in terms of going to work to ensure personal security, continued physiological needs being met, continuing to have a safe and healthy place to live, etc.

We have higher aspirations most days as well! The need for belonging and love and community, the need to be respected and to excel, the need ultimately do and be what we desire to become. But it’s difficult if not impossible for us to get to that pinnacle, to that top level if we haven’t done the other things first.

Which is why I talk so often about Routines and Habits.

We know we must meet our physiological needs. Must. And at least daily, if not more than once a day. So the question isn’t if, but how? And how to do that really well? As easy, as quickly, as efficiently, as well as possible. We identify the needs, decide how to meet them, take time-wasting decision making out the mix, and meet them every day. To survive. And also to do so consistently, so we can move up the hierarchy to safety.

Our physiological needs are met most days. We have clothes (level 1). And we need to make sure they’re clean (level 2). So we can feel good and feel good about ourselves (levels 3 and 4).

Because we can’t move up the pyramid if those first things have not been met, if we are naked and starving. It’s really hard to write a novel or create a great work of art or whatever it is that you are meant to do to be actualized if your survival needs aren’t met.

Now maintenance is less often, but it is eternal. And maintenance is what comes next when it comes to habits and routines once we ensure our survival. Maintenance ensures we CONTINUE to survive consistently. The systems we need to continue to flourish.

Maintenance is next level, it is asking how do we do survival better? How do we do more than just survive? How do we actually maintain. Consistently meeting and maintaining survival habits takes us to the Maintenance level where the need of personal safety and taking care of our homes and taking care of our health.

And, once we have firmed up those two first levels, we can move up the pyramid. And unfortunately, we can’t always move up the pyramid WITHOUT doing the survival and maintenance tasks. At least not for long.

Let’s good at maintenance, then, too, and that is DEFINITELY where habits and routines come in! So maintenance around our survival habits are doing laundry, taking our supplements and medications, cooking and grocery shopping, keeping ourselves and our environment clean and healthy.

I propose that these steps are also not optional if we desire to move to the next levels of the pyramid. Let’s get good at those things, and then we can move on to progress in love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization! And it all starts with habits and routines, survival and maintenance.

How to Make Habits Stick

I had a conversation with one of my sons the other day about Routines and Habits.

And, for context, my sons are currently 20, 24 and 27. I was recently reviewing one of my first blog articles published in 2010 when they were 5, 10 and 12. A lot has changed since then, trust me! One is in college, and two are professionals out in the working world.

But I digress.

We were talking about routines and habits, and he mentioned that his habits and routines around his professional life are vastly different from his personal life. And hey, that is most of us. No judgement there. Truly, many people find this to be the case. I recall a client early on in my career who created and managed his company’s document retention policies and he hired me to help him with his out of control personal papers.

Sometimes, we are organized in some parts of our lives but not all parts of our lives!

Similarly, I have been reflecting on my routines around home maintenance and business practices, and how I am SO SPOT ON in those areas but… I never get around to working out. What is that about, right? I am highly capable, I know how to do this, and yet… well, you know.

When I journaled about where I stumble, I realized that some of the reasons my habits fail are:

  • Neglecting my habits and routines isn’t outwardly visible. No one but me will know if I worked out or ate healthy or meditated today.
  • And taking care of home and work and liturgy and clients impacts others and is visible, so that keeps me on track.
  • No one is paying me to maintain my personal routines and habits, unlike the business, meaning it is not unprofessional if I neglect them.
  • Neglecting my personal habits doesn’t negatively impact others, at least not directly.
  • And, getting back on track with these neglected habits and routines also doesn’t have quick results, and it turns out, seeing results for my efforts keeps me motivated. (Of course.)

And, I can use this knowledge to devise strategies for making my habits stick, like exercise and healthier eating. And I use myself as an example because I don’t have to ask permission. But enough about me.

In last week’s article and podcast, I said it would be easy to say that “Change is Hard!”. And that unfortunately, change in the, let’s say, negative direction, is deceptively easy! That no, change isn’t hard, but sometimes making positive change is!

And, last week, I challenged you and myself to return to normal, to look at what has worked before and get back to it, instead of trying to re-invent the wheel or make huge sweeping changes.

But how? This week is about the how! How to establish or re-establish good habits and routines, and how to help them stick!

Recognize where and how we ARE organized, and determine if we can use the skills from one area in other areas.

For example, I wrote in October about Recipes and how I have always used them for managing my bookkeeping and backing processes, but only more recently applied the same strategy to planning and writing my content or setting up my choir’s liturgy planning.

I mentioned the long ago client with his paper management challenges. The first thing we talked about was how to use what he knows about document retention policies professionally for his own personal papers, like categories, naming conventions, expiration dates, scheduled maintenance, etc.

If you are a teacher and you’re amazing at creating and sticking with lesson plans, does that translate to planning and implementation in your personal life? And can it?

Note your “Why”.

I find this is especially helpful for habits or routines that won’t yield immediate results. If your habit or routine isn’t fun or instantaneous or easy, well, you might struggle to stay motivated. Keeping a reminder of your “Why” helps us to stay motivated. And since a habit takes at least 3 weeks to establish, we need to keep up the motivation until a habit becomes routine.

And we will talk about learning styles in a minute, so note your “Why” in a way that works for you. Perhaps it’s a few words or an image on your phone’s lock screen. Perhaps it’s a song you listen to every morning in the shower. Perhaps its a short and simple mantra you repeat to yourself while doing some square breathing through out your day. I just sent an affirming text to a friend, for doing the hard things and was reminded to put on my bracelet that says the same (www.Mantraband.com).

Take decision-making out of the action plan.

Decision making is not the same as action.

Decision making is one of our biggest time wasters. And, if decisions are still to be made when it comes to acting on our habits and routines, the decision can always be “No, not today”. So, what can we do to remove decision making from the action plan?

For example, I have 4 wake up times set as alarms in my phone. (Don’t judge, there’s a plan here!) I only use one a day, but I have them preset. 5, 5:31, 6, and 6:33 am. My wise husband suggested I just set one and adjust it every day. However, I find that the already-made decisions, with those times as suggestions for every day, breaks down the decision to which one? instead of what time? I don’t have to re-do the math, depending on how early I need to leave the house or what time my first zoom meeting is? Instead, I look at the 4 options and pick a pre-set.

I’ll use a work-out as example again, set up the clothes and any special equipment you’ll need the night before, know which activity you will partake in the next day (outdoor walk, bike, elliptical, etc.). Decide ahead of time, and be ready to just act.

Stack Your Habits

Author James Clear uses a term called “Habit Stacking”. “Habit stacking is a method to create new habits by linking them to existing ones.” (From https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking) I heard it from James Clear first, perhaps the credit goes to someone else, I will apologize now if I have given credit incorrectly.

We all have many habits that are very well established. A different son of mine calls it his Default. I wake up at close to the same time every morning, often before an alarm. I make coffee EVERY DAY. I shower EVERY DAY. I check my phone and email EVERY DAY, multiple times mostly. I often get hungry at the same times each day so I am in the kitchen at consistent times.

What do you do EVERY DAY, and sometimes many times a day? Without thinking about it or planning it? Identify those EVERY DAY or EVERY WEEK items in your routines, and attach new habits or routines to those already ingrained habits and routines. In my presentations, I offer the example of my morning supplements. When we remodeled our kitchen in 2017, I made sure that the cabinet where I keep my supplements is also where we keep the coffee. Because while I was not always consistent with my supplements, I’m very consistent with my morning coffee. And as I stand and wait for my first cup to brew, I can take my supplements. Stacking that new habit to the well-established habit made the new habit stick.

Or, what if, every time I walk through the kitchen or stop to make a meal or snack, I drink a glass of water? That would go a long way towards keeping me hydrated (another habit I want to re-establish).

Another example, I have a deeply ingrained habit of sitting down at my laptop to check my email in the morning. I have been working in square breathing and tapping sessions into my day, plus I have these great mindfulness cards that I received last year as a gift and want to start using. At first, I wanted dedicated meditation space to do these things and then… they never happened. So instead, I am working with the deeply ingrained morning habit and attaching a few zen moments to the existing habit and location. I’ll let you know how it works!

Gamify Anything You Can

Per Google, “Gamify means ‘to apply typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to (an activity), typically as a … technique to encourage engagement…'”.

A strategy to help our habits stick is to make the habit fun, competitive, novel, reward centered, and / or social or community based. There is nothing wrong with fun and games! Let’s use them to help our habit stick! Track your metrics, create rewards for yourself, create competition with friends, set your habit to music, phone a friend – the options are endless!

I often share the example of a long-time client and friend, a retired educator, who used a star chart just like a student might, to track her new habits and keep herself motivated to keep up the good work. A star for each day a certain task is completed, and a full week of stars on the chart earns a prize for the weekend (Special outing with a friend, fresh flowers for her home, perhaps a special snack or prize?). This tried and true motivator works for kids AND adults!

A part of gamifying your new habits and routines could also be to set micro-goals, short-term and easy to achieve goals, to keep the bursts of success flowing which keeps us motivated.

Use reminders that play to your strengths.

If you are visual learner, leave yourself lists, post-its, highlighters or REALLY BIG CLOCKS, or have your technology send you text messages. A reminder pops up on my Apple Watch if I haven’t stood up and walked around in the last 50 minutes. Yes, that reminder helps me.

Are you an auditory learner? I am. I learn well by hearing things. Use alarms on your phone, set timers, create a favorite playlist to help you rock your new habits and routines.

Do you learn by doing / touching / moving things around (kinesthetic)? For you (or your family member), the physical act of writing and then checking off habits and steps to your routines may be useful, or using chore cards or magnets or other things that you can move around may help.

Some of us learn by saying things out loud, too. If this describes you or a family member, try describing your habits to others, or creating a mantra or single sentence to repeat to yourself to help you focus on your good habits.

Good Habits may take time and energy to create, but having them and sticking with them will serve you well for years to come.

You know more than you think. You are highly capable in so many ways. If you are looking to create new habits and routines to support a better day, whatever that looks like for you, consider these strategies for helping your new habits stick!

Ask Yourself: 2024 and 2025, Do? Learn? Grow?

I just sat down in my office to write this content, and the first quote I see says
“Be an encourager. The world has enough critics already.”

Truth! And I love that because I’m always trying to be an encourager, but especially today. This article and episode will drop at the very end of 2024. This is an excellent opportunity to reflect on 2024 and set intentions as we look ahead to 2025, to look forward and step confidently into the new year.

As we review and preview, I suggest asking yourself a couple of questions. They woke me up this morning around 2 am, and I liked them, so I am sharing them!

Here they are:

  • What did you DO this year?
  • What did you LEARN this year? And,
  • How did you GROW this year?

Here is how this process looked for me, consider how it will look for you.

Looking back at what I did this year, I found it helpful to start with my calendar. That gave me, at least in broad strokes, what I accomplished in 2024.

  • In January, I gave 9 presentations, the most I have ever given in one month. I started the year strong, and met and shared organization with many great people! I helped them to take care of their projects in 2024 and beyond.
  • Also in January, I started working on a project with my national association, NAPO (NAPO.net), as a Subject Matter Expert to create the Certified Professional Organizer Exam Prep Course. This was a great experience that continued until June, and it helped me get more involved in NAPO.
  • In February, I continued to teach and also had the first of 2 basal cell carcinomas removed. The surgery was more extensive than anyone expected so I hibernated for a few weeks to heal!
  • In March, a loved one had an emergent health issue that consumed a lot of time and energy. It is well managed now. My middle son started his third season with his theatre, and I attended the first of many shows for him this year.
  • In April, nothing specific stands out. I worked, I taught, I served my community through ministry and my service on my local Board of Education.
  • In May, my youngest son finished his second year of college and moved home. We traveled to Baltimore with the grandparents and attended my niece’s wedding, and I arrived home in time to deliver the commencement speech for the 8th Grade Graduation in my role as Board of Education President.
  • In June, the NAPO SME work completed – woot woot!! Some health issues for loved ones kept us occupied. I attended a conference for Board of Education Presidents.
  • In July, we spent a week in Michigan. We visited people and people visited us.
  • In August, we moved son #3 back to college to his first apartment. I had the second basal cell carcinoma removed. We flew to Massachusetts and New Hampshire to what has become our favorite music event of the year. I pursued testing for an ADHD diagnosis.
  • In September, I continued to heal from my surgery. I presented at a conference, and also attended my first conference with the Institute for Challenging Disorganization in Minnesota.
  • In October, I celebrated my birthday. Fall is my favorite. I received my ADHD diagnosis, and also dealt with a GI infection that laid me flat for a few weeks.
  • In November, I attended my annual Illinois Association of School Boards conference and then we celebrated Thanksgiving with family.
  • And here we are in December! Advent, the holidays, service in my community, so much music, so much family time.

Thanks for listening to my re-cap, I was glad to work through that as I wrote.

More importantly, what does YOUR DONE list look like? It is easy to wonder where on earth the time went. And some days, when we might be feeling down or being hard on ourself, it would be easy to say that you didn’t accomplish anything or at least not much this year, and this is where I will gently challenge you. If you need to compile your own list of accomplishments, start with your calendar. Or your email “Sent” folder! I was proud of myself as I wrote down my accomplishments this morning. I did more than I thought I did, and that shift to a clearer perspective was helpful for me.

What does YOUR DONE list look like? We start with What Did We DO? Then we move on to What did we LEARN? What did you learn in 2024?

For me, in the midst of the milestones, I learned a lot, too. I met new people. I worked with new and existing clients on in-person organizing and also coaching. I learned more about coaching to be a better coach.

I attended concerts. LOTS of concerts, and immersed myself in the music of independent artists that we follow. I learned new music myself, for performance sake. I always appreciate that professional challenge.

I prioritized my professional learning. I read books, attended conferences and earned dozens of continuing education hours to increase my skills and knowledge in organizing, productivity and coaching.

I certainly learned more about myself, through my own medical procedures, the medical challenges of loved ones, and pursuing my ADHD diagnosis. I learned even more patience, resilience and compassion.

There are specific topics that I learned about because I sought them out. Learning is seeking new information and incorporating it. Doing something with the learning, making it a part of us and our lives, making it meaningful.

What was that for you this year? What did you learn?

And all the doing and the learning leads to growth. I have grown this year. I have met awesome people and have helped others in big and small ways. I have expanded my knowledge, I have gained new skills and perspectives. I am better than I was one year ago.

So, we re-cap 2024. And then, we look to 2025. And we ask the same questions.

  • What do you want to DO this year?
  • What do you want to LEARN this year? And,
  • How do you want to GROW this year?

Let’s set those intentions for ourselves now! The looking-back at 2024 helps us to see more clearly as we set a course for 2025.

What do you want to DO in 2025? Do you want to travel? Get a new job or advance in your current role? Spend more time with family? Spend more time alone? Get fit? Relax? Write a novel? Read a novel?! What does that look like for you?

Personally, I already have some events on the calendar for 2025. We hope to head to Florida in February with family, I will attend a professional conference in March. May brings the graduation for both a niece and nephew in Michigan. May also brings the end of my elected term with the Board of Education, so I am imagining how I can continue to serve my community after that. I have presentations booked until November, 2025. And I am anxiously awaiting the touring schedules for the bands we follow, to put their local shows on my calendar!

What to you want to LEARN? Are there subject matters that you want to learn about? Other people you want to learn about? Do you want to learn more about yourself?

There are books I want to read. I own them already, I just need a habit and routine around reading them. I read voraciously, but I read fiction. I will make progress on my non-fiction reading list in 2025! That will help me learn and therefore grow. We do things, we learn new things and incorporate the new knowledge, and we grow. We can’t help but grow.

I google searched for a quote this morning, and I found two.

“You are the same today that you are going to be five years from now except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read.”
― Charles Jones

“You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single second of every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colors fill your mind until there is nothing left to do but explode. There are no wrong answers. Inspiration is everything. Sit back, relax, and take it all in. Now, go out and create something.” —Jac Vanek

Of course you’re going to grow. You’re going to incorporate those new things and do things in new ways that are uniquely your own. This week, look back and re-cap 2024, and look ahead with me to 2025. Let’s set our intentions. What do you want to DO in 2025? What do you want to LEARN? And how do you want to GROW?

On December 31, 2025, what do you want to be able to tell me about? A couple weeks ago when I talked about stress management, I asked you to consider what you want to do more of, and do it.

Do, Learn and Grow in 2025, and let’s work through it together. Feel free to drop me an email or private message me in my socials with your intentions. And I will hold space for you and your intentions for 2025. Maybe I’ll even check in in a few months, and see how you’re doing. I am wishing you the happiest and most joyful 2025. I can’t wait to interact more with you in 2025, that is definitely one of my intentions!

He Said “I Think This Is A Change I Can Make”

I recently attended the Joint Annual Conference for the Illinois Associations of School Boards, School Business Officials and School Administrators. This was my 8th time attending, for my 8th year as an elected Board of Education Member and more recently Board President. And I always learn so much. I could write for days and days about all the things that I’ve learned. All of the learning applies to Education, obviously. And much of it applies to the rest of life, too.

At one of the keynote sessions, we heard from David Horsager. He’s an author, public speaker, researcher, and all around amazing person. He was phenomenal. I had the opportunity to work through his Trust Edge workshop a few years ago at the same conference, and this time we learned from him live!

And yes, I now have an autographed copy of his newest book, “Trust Matters More Than Ever”. But I digress.

I am NOT going to distill all that he talked about in his 70 minute presentation in today’s article or podcast. I will read the book, though, and share out more specifically soon.

He shared an anecdote when he was talking about Consistency in Leadership, though, and it really resonated with me in terms of habits and routines.

He mentioned that this time last year his doctor told him that if he wanted to be around to see his children grow up, he needed to make some changes. He shared that information at one of his presentations at the time, and after the presentation while he was chatting with 2 attendees, they mentioned that they chose to not drink their calories. That was a simple strategy this couple used to eat and drink healthier. And David shared that as he reflected on that idea, he said to himself “I think this is a change I can make.”

“I think this is a change I can make.“

“I think this is a change I can make.”

This is not an article or episode about calories. It’s an article or episode about making positive change.

Let me make a few assertions, as we get started:

  • There are areas where you and I could use some improvement.
  • Change needs to happen.
  • Change CAN happen.
  • You and I are capable of making positive change.

David shared that he realized he didn’t have to take big actions to make change, that he could do it in small pieces instead. And, so can we.

“I think this is a change I can make.”

Exploring and finding those changes we can make to make positive improvement seems more doable, manageable, applicable.

So, what does that look like for you and me?

  • We reflect on our life and situation.
  • We identify areas for improvement.
  • We set our goals.
  • And we determine the steps we need to take, to move us from where we are today to where we want to be.
  • And then we take those steps.

“I think this is a change I can make.”

David shared this example: As an international professional speaker, he takes hundreds of flights a year. His simple change to make was to switch from full sugar soda on the flights to diet sodas. He didn’t give up every beverage every day, he changed his choices just on airplanes. That felt like a simple switch, a change he could make. He identified the situation where he could employ this, and he started making small changes, which he reported, yielded big results over time.

Asking again, what does that look like for us?

It looks like a “Do This” instead of “Do That.”

Not changing the habit in general, just tweaking it. If you and I need to make a change, an example could be “No red meat” (and actually that is a change I have been advised to make). I’m not going to stop eating, or stop eating out, or stop cooking, I will just not choose red meat.

Or, we could walk instead of driving a few blocks to a destination.

Or, I can go to bed at the same time, but add in 10 minutes of meditation and reading a good book instead of doom scrolling so I fall asleep sooner and get better rest.

“I think this is a change I can make.”

If you’re reading this instead of listening, it sounds like “Hmm, I could do that. That’s something I could do.” As in, it doesn’t have to be hard. Doable, specific. We have looked at SMART Goals, right? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time Specific.

“I think this is a change I can make.”

Doesn’t that feel positive and hopeful and reasonable and empowering? It keeps coming back to me in my mind. We can identify something small we can do to make progress, and then we do it.

My priest was talking about this in Mass, too. That the Kingdom of God is many things. And it is also in the small and consistent actions every day. Yes, it may be big and sweeping actions, but it’s also showing small kindnesses every day, or making time for prayer every day. Making positive change looks like doing little things consistently.

And here is my last point,

When I started writing this article, it seemed like a New Year’s or January article and message. I was very passionate about it so I wanted to write it all down, but I almost didn’t share it this week. However, the message also needs to be – We don’t have to wait. When we figure out that we need to make a change, and then also figure out what that change is that we can make, we don’t have to wait. And, I decided I didn’t want to wait to share this because any day, any moment is a good time to make a positive change.

We don’t have to wait. You don’t have to wait for January, or when you get home from that trip, or for the perfect situation to arrive, or until the planets align. We can choose small, simple changes and start right now, making positive change. I wanted to share this with you and start thinking about it for myself, because I’m never going to ask you guys to do something that I haven’t also thought of or tried, because that is the way this works.

We reflect, identify areas of improvement, determine where we want to go and how to get there, and then we make the changes we can make that move us toward that goal.

I think that is a change I can make.

Recipes For Life, Not For Stew or Cookies!

If you have followed me for any time at all, you know I love to cook. I don’t cook as often as I used to because there aren’t as many people in my house these days. But I love to cook. And though some of my articles and episodes and social media content are about cooking (those are some of my most popular videos, it’s funny), this week’s topic, despite the name, is not one of those.

This is not a cooking topic, even though it’s about recipes.

But let’s use a food recipe as a launching point for the topic. When I cook, sometimes I make something that I have made so many times, the recipe is in my head and I don’t need to read an an actual recipe anymore.

Chocolate chip cookies or pretty much, you know, your basic cookie base, right? Two sticks of softened butter, three quarters of a cup each of white and brown sugars. Far too much vanilla. Oh, wait, maybe that’s just me. Whip that until it looks right, add two eggs, and then add whatever else that you want to add. For most types of cookies we make, next we add two and a quarter cups flour with a teaspoon each of soda and salt. For oatmeal cookies, it’s more oats and less flour. For peanut butter cookies, it’s more flour. I just wrote that in one sitting. I could have done it my sleep, and perhaps somewhere along the way I have.

How about beef stew? Cut your stew beef into small cubes, then sear them in your pot with some flour, salt and pepper. Dice your carrots, celery, onions and potatoes also into small cubes – we like a little bit of everything in each bite. Then add water, bullion, A1 Steak Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce. Mmm, delish. And that one is in my head, too. I don’t need to write it down and I wouldn’t need to look at it.

These two examples are of foods that are almost a routine, but not quite. Through starting with a recipe long ago and then through repetition of the recipe, I can make these items without referencing a physical recipe. But it’s in my head.

I talk a lot about routines because I really do believe that they are the building blocks for, oh, I don’t know everything, but there are some things we do that are not routine tasks.

Routine tasks, in my mind, are things that we do multiple times a day, or every day, or maybe a couple times a week, or once a week. And the repetition over time cements the process or task in our heads. Repetition and practice, we’ve talked about those, too. Repetition cements the practice.

The practice. I think that’s the other part, too, is the sequencing that comes in a recipe. So it’s not just the list of ingredients in a recipe, it’s also the, “what do you do with them”? If it’s a cooking recipe, ingredients are listed in the order that you use them. So if there’s something in the recipe that needs to be “chilled for 2 hours”, for example, that block of ingredients is probably going to be listed first.

Now, Let’s look at this in terms of time management.

Because some tasks and projects need to be done the same way every time. You do those steps first, and then 2 hours later, you do the other steps. That is how a recipe works, at least in terms of food.

We can use recipes in our day to day life as well, even if they don’t have food attached to them.

In my time management and productivity presentations, I talk about recipes, also known as shortcuts or checklists, because they help us. We determine the right ingredients for a task or project, and then the best sequence to complete the task or project efficiently and effectively and consistently. Like a recipe. Then we make note of the recipe and refer back to it every time we need to complete that task or project or similar, at least until we have the process or practice remembered or cemented.

And we do this to get the expected and preferred outcome. We figure out what we need and how to fit it together to get what we want from the process, and we document the ingredients and steps to an refer to them again and again.

I was at a conference, reviewing some notes between sessions, and a table of techie people near me were talking about recipes. And I quickly realized they were not discussing food. They were talking about recipes for non routine tasks. Like CODE! Yes, they were talking about coding. They were talking about leaving themselves notes about steps and sequences to ensure a positive outcome next time. And we all can benefit from that idea, right?

Let’s think about how we can incorporate the idea of recipes, of notes about steps and sequences, in our own lives.

Recently, I was reminded about the importance of recipes for non-routine tasks by a phone call from a family member asking about how to do something on their phone. Reasonable question.

I’m not familiar with their phone, but I’m familiar with some phones, and have a good idea of how things work. I asked if they had done before what they wanted to do now (send photos in a text to a friend), and they said yes, but it has been a while and they didn’t remember how. Fair enough, we all have moments like that, I know I do.

But, they were out of practice and we needed to re-determine the steps and sequence. We needed to determine the recipe, and also remember to refer back to it next time.

Truth is, I have recipes for different processes myself. I recently documented a recipe for my weekly content process and I have found it very helpful. Let me explain:

I have a topic per week for my newsletter and podcast episode and social media content. I set those up on my editorial content calendar 2 and 3 and sometimes wonderfully, like 4 weeks in advance. I get the idea from something I have learned or current events or from a reader question, and I realize discussing the topic would be beneficial for all of you. I start to think about what it is I want to talk about. For the topic every week,

  • I determine the topic;
  • I verbally record me talking about the topic on a voice memo;
  • I name the voice memo, email it to myself and upload it to a transcription website;
  • I copy the transcribed text into my blog platform and start writing the article;
  • I record the podcast episode about the topic based on the article;
  • I finish and edit the article, add photos and links;
  • I publish the blog article;
  • I write the newsletter for this week’s topic with the link to this week’s article;
  • hopefully, I also record a short video to be shared on my social media channels and you-tube; and
  • the podcast episode and newsletter come out on a Tuesday together.

Now that I have determined the ingredients and sequence to this process, I have written it down. And it almost a routine task, but here is another complication that necessitated the writing of the recipe. I do this every week. And the process is longer than week.

What complicates the process is that I initially recorded, for example, this article content about recipes about four weeks ago. My content calendar is complex but I like it. I have these recipes per topic all loaded into my master to-do list, and each week’s content is in varying stages of completion.

As I write this article on a Monday for next week, also today I am publishing this week’s completed article and sending the newsletter out tomorrow regarding this week’s topic. This Recipes article I am writing and content is scheduled for next week, and I have articles started for other upcoming topics, as well.

Each week and topic have a nice clear publication day, but I am also mid-process at any given moment on two or three other topics.

Yeesh.

Do you see why I need recipes and check lists?! I needed to schedule the ingredients and sequencing for each week’s topic. I wanted to simplify, to automate, to give my brain a break. There is just too much to track with all of those processes running, and I needed my brain capacity to also be used for a million other things in my life so it was time to document and then repeat regularly the recipe.

Now it’s all documented, and when I complete a step, I delete the step because I can. For example, on my master to-do list and the recipe for the Recipes article and podcast,: Recording, check!

It is the ingredients, sure, but also the sequencing. Sequencing is super important to understand. For example, there’s no way I can publish my article if I didn’t have it written yet! Seems so obvious. I know, but sometimes we need obvious.

Where in your day, your week, your month, your year would recipes help you?

In a recent article and podcast episode about quarterly planning, I mentioned activating my October 1 holiday planning list. Yes, I have one of those. Because we do these things over and over. Why not figure out the right way to do it, the best way to do it, the quickest way to do it, the easiest way to do it, the right ingredients and proper sequencing of steps? And once we have done it and we’re paying attention and we’ve figured out that wow, that idea really saved me time and stress, and everybody was really happy about it, Oh – let me write that down! So that awareness of what we’re doing and documenting that process, super helpful.

Leave yourself some love notes for later in the form of recipes. Through your experiences and triumphs, you have gained the knowledge and earned the wisdom. So let Wise You leave Future You some notes from later, the recipe, the ingredients and proper sequencing, and make your life so much easier going forward.

Yes, I helped my family member with the tech question. And later, when I sit sit down to work on my content calendar, I am going to appreciate the recipe that I wrote for myself and future me as I edit one article and publish another and do the things I need to do with ease, without having to scratch my head and wonder what my next steps or worry if I have forgotten something! I hope you found this helpful!

Getting Specific With Quarterly Planning

A client asked recently:

“I’ve been thinking about your recommendation to do quarterly planning. I’m consolidating my to-do lists and thinking about how to restructure my categories. And I like the concept of quarterly planning. If you haven’t written a blog yet about your process, I’d really like to learn the specifics of how YOU go about planning quarterly.”

I just love this. Thank you, dear client, for asking the question. You know who you are.

I wrote about quarterly planning back in January, check out the article here. I have other articles on planning, as well, if you’d like to know more, head over to PeaceofMindpo.com, click on the Blog tab and add Planning in the search bar.

I don’t always get too specific about me in my articles and podcast episodes, but this is one topic that probably should be specific! And a reminder, as in all things, I am sharing what I do as AN example, of one way of doing something. It is not a requirement or demand – EVER. Just an example, and perhaps a suggestion!

I like setting quarterly goals because, for me, setting a yearly goal sometimes seems too big or too long, and anything less than a month seems too short. Let me rephrase – I do set annual goals, but I like to break those broad goals down into more manageable pieces, and an every three month planning cycle with 6 week to three month goals works for me.

Conveniently, this client asked this question as I plan my fourth quarter of 2024, my Q4. For me personally, at least, planning in Q4 is a great illustration of the importance of quarterly planning.

Q4 starts with October and ends in December. I am in shorts and a t-shirt as I write this. My window is open, the breeze is blowing in. My birthday is at the beginning of Q4, and the next holiday on my horizon is Halloween. (note to self, put up Autumn decorations)

But, as a certified professional organizer, board of education member, planner of family functions and Catholic liturgical musician and human being, I know that the calendar for the next three months is going to fill up FAST, and the to-do list will as well! Soon and very soon (a song reference!), the focus will shift to Autumn, to Thanksgiving, to Advent and to Christmas. Just this morning at Mass, my music director mentioned that she would like to put together an Advent Concert the first week of December. And I, of course, said “Sure!”

All things seem possible when you start planning them months in advance!

Back to the original question: How do I actually quarterly plan? Let’s do this.

Grab your calendar, digital or paper.

  • Me personally, I am sitting here at my laptop as I use Google calendar, and I have my bullet journal, my phone, my to-do list and a cold beverage.

Check out what is already on your calendar for the next three months, personally and professionally.

  • For Q4, I already have many recurring events on my calendar in my many Focus areas, and I bet you do, too.
  • I have regular client appointments, meetings and coaching calls.
  • My choir has our rehearsal and Mass schedule set.
  • The Board of Education has monthly meetings and committee work on the calendar.
  • I also have non-recurring events in my calendar already like presentations, concerts, doctor appointments, etc.

Reflect on your Focus Areas:

I talked recently about Focus Areas, and we need to have them in mind as we do our quarterly planning, or any planning, for that matter. As reported, mine are my business and my different income streams, my family, my home and wellness, Board of Education work and church ministry.

What are yours? Make sure you keep them in mind as you plan!

The next step is to weave in the set plans.

And this step is why I said Q4 is a great illustration of quarterly planning.

Because, as an example, every year in Q4, we have many set plans around our holidays with our families.

I have a planning list that I pull out and activate on October 1 regarding the holidays. According to the list, in the next week, I will check in with my side of the family regarding when we want to celebrate our Christmas together. I will check in, too, with my sister-in-law for dates for my young niece and nephew’s Christmas concert for school. (Typically a Thursday evening in early December). I will check in with my college student around when he wants to come home for Thanksgiving and what day in December he will likely be done with finals and need a ride home from college. All of those tasks are already on my to-do list as I fill in those big flexible events and make sure they are on the calendar.

You may not personally be thinking December thoughts right now, but a whole lot of people are! For example, here in Chicago, in late September I received the email from a local news agency that reservations are now open for The Walnut Room, a holiday tradition for many! Yes, it is time to plan!

Work in some flexibility and grace.

I am getting better at weaving in prep time ahead of and re-entry after the big events. For example, my husband’s company throws quite the holiday event every year. And, every year, I seem to scramble to get ready and downtown in a timely manner. This year, I blocked the afternoon before the event from client appointments so I don’t have to rush. Similarly, I have my annual Illinois Association of School Boards conference mid November. It is already on my calendar for November 21-24. AND, there are a lot of other things that go into that conference, before and after. So I just blocked time the day before and the day after for some flexibility and rest.

Now, let’s talk Goal Setting. Any incomplete goals to roll forward from last quarter? Now is the time!

Check in around your Goals from the last quarter, how did they work out? If you need to roll something forward, now is the time! A reminder, way back in January when I talked about quarterly planning, I recommended that you dole out your achievements over the whole year. So you may have goals for 2024 that you haven’t completed yet, and that is ok. We can still get a lot done while also respecting the fun and festivities of the holidays – we just need to plan ahead and that is why we set quarterly goals!

Planning and Goal Setting go no further if we don’t attach the necessary actions.

As you work on your plan for your fourth quarter, plan the actions and steps associated to your quarterly goals.

I will use Thanksgiving as an example. We know Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 28. (action) My family and I will figure out the menu and who is bringing what dishes via text over the next few weeks. And then, as other examples of actions, I will start adding shelf-stable grocery items to my weekly shopping list for the foods I am assigned to bring, I will start a bag of things to take with me and I will block some time on the calendar that week for shopping / packing / prep.

What if, in addition to work and life, you are also a crafty person and want to make holiday gifts this year by hand? Commendable, and I love it. AND you have to put all of those tasks and time and actions on the calendar and to-do list NOW so you aren’t caught unprepared in a few months.

Make sure to leave time and energy for the actions attached to your Q4 plan! And put them on the calendar and to-do list now!

Honor your own season and cycles.

Be reasonable, and adjust your expectations.

Yes, Q4 is here. Fall, holidays, travel, school events, yes – I get it. AND, that means different things to different people. In transparency, my birthday is in early October. So this time of year, in addition to Q4 planning, I am always thinking big strategic planning ideas for MY next year, MY next 12 months towards my next birthday. I think in cycles like that and I find it helpful.

I love Fall. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you struggle with less and less daylight this time of year, and you need to factor in more rest or adjust your to-do list expectations down a bit. Honor your own season.

A final note – you may be listening to this in October of 2024, or maybe you’re listening some other time in the future. You are not late to the party. ANY day is a good day to plan. And then ACT, of course, but first plan. Let this day be whatever you need it to be, but be intentional and do your day on your terms!

Learn New Things Then Make Them Your Own

I am a member of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, and I attended their annual conference last weekend. It was amazing, and I will share more soon.

In an activity with a fellow participant, we worked through a new time management tool that I CANNOT wait to introduce to all of you! But I digress.

The tool walks us through a project, helps us identify potential roadblocks and how to deal with them, and lets us imagine our reasons for and how we will feel when we achieve our goal and / or complete the project. For the activity to learn to use the tool, we chose a goal or project to focus on, and mine was “how to ensure I worked through my conference notes this week” And my answer to my table partner was, “Because otherwise, WHY DID I BOTHER TO GO?!”

Going to the conference was not simple. The conference was in Minnesota, a beautiful state from the little bit that I got to explore when not in sessions. It was a 7 hour drive to get Bloomington, MN right next to Minneapolis-St.Paul, and the same to get back, though that was in the dark and in the rain. (My husband is a rockstar). It required money and planning and research and packing and a million other little tasks. It required that I take time off from paying clients to instead pay money. It required that I attend a conference I have never attended, that I step into rooms where I knew no-one. It required many leaps of faith, to just jump into a situation and do my best. And it was absolutely worth it.

I visited new places and saw new things. I learned so much. So much that will help me in my business, in my work with my clients and also me personally. I hugged in-person people who I had only met in virtual programs before now, I met amazing new people and made new friends.

Similarly, I presented at a conference the week before. And, I would hope for all of those attendees that they took some time to review and internalize and revel and relish what they learned at their conference and then started to put that new knowledge into practice, too.

As part of my working through the content this week from the conference, I want to write about it and then I will do it! It’s time to process what I learned, follow up with many people and incorporate what I learned into my real life. Because, again, otherwise, WHY DID I BOTHER TO GO?!

If you, too, have the opportunity to learn new things, here are some things to think about!

Be open to learning because there are always things to learn.

First, can we just appreciate how awesome it is to have the opportunity to learn new things? There is always more to learn, either expanding on things we already know or learning new topics and ideas entirely.

When we get back from learning, Unpack, and I mean physically unpack.

I have worked with dozens of clients who have bags still packed with logos on them from conferences or workshops they attended 1 and 5 and 20 years ago. In addition to the knowledge learned going no further than that bag on a shelf or under the desk, logistically speaking – what about the half-eaten granola bar or dirty tissues – ew!

Please, unpack your bag and delete or recycle the easy and the obvious. When it comes to storage, bags are almost never our friends. Liberate the stuff and the learning, bring it back to the daylight!

As an aside, when you attend a conference with other professional organizers, some of us admit to emptying the swag bag immediately, getting rid of what we don’t want and sharing it the next day with fellow participants, and clearing out the excess before we even pack to go home!

Also as an aside, at a conference for professional organizers, programs start on time and sometimes even early!

Next, and very importantly: Act on the new knowledge while it is still fresh!

One of my accountability partners asked a great question the last time we spoke. She asked if I had a plan, or what was my plan, to work through all of my notes and follow-up from conference.

I want to review my notes this week because I can easily recall exactly what I was feeling and thinking when I heard the content. I can remember what time of day it was, I can remember who was sitting at my table with me. Reviewing the content just a few days out means that as I reflect on the content, I can fill in my note with even more ideas, I can recall thoughts I had then that I might not have had time to capture at that moment, I can start to move the knowledge from short term memory into long term memory, and I can make plans for changing my behaviors around what I learned.

If I waited weeks or months or years, that reflection piece would take me nowhere fast. And I would miss the opportunity to make the knowledge my own and incorporate it into my own best practices.

Relatedly, as I review my notes, if I want to reach out to someone I spoke with, they will also be more likely to remember me now than in a few weeks or months from now.

In addition to knowledge becoming un-refreshable to us, remember that Knowledge Expires. If you have a backlog of content or binders or books from long ago professional development, please consider that Knowledge Expires. Yes, knowledge expires.

Here’s an example: Years ago, a friend said how proud they were of the medical journals on the shelf above their desk. They liked to see the journals, the journals felt like visual proof of how good a doctor this friend is. And this friend is a good doctor. AND, I reminded them that I would not want to see a 20 year old medical journal above my doctor’s desk, I would rather see recent certificates and updates and achievements. Because, in some industries, like the medical profession, some knowledge expires.

I would not want to see reference books for outdated software on my IT department’s shelf. I do not want to see educational theory books from the 1950’s on a teacher’s shelf.

Looking ahead, Make A Plan for Yourself to Learn New Things

As I reflected on presenting at a conference and then, a week later, attending a conference, I am reminded that, as I stated earlier, there is always more to learn. My suggestion to you and to myself is to come up with our own education plans.

Once we are out of the academic environment, it would be easy to stop learning. But in the first line of my content for my recent presentation, I stated that “If we aren’t growing, we’re either standing still or we’re wilting and withering”. Those are our options.

We can choose to grow, we can stand still or we can wilt and wither. Of course there are some days I am not striving and growing and reading and pursuing. But those days of rest are part of the plan, too. An educational plan guides our steps.

I don’t know what that educational plan looks like for you. I don’t know what lights you up or what you’re interested in. But maybe you know.

There’s so much information available to us these days. There has never, never in the history of the world, been so much information and so readily at our fingertips. Never before. Of course, we need to make sure we are critical thinkers and are consuming actual knowledge from trusted sources.

But there’s so much out there to learn and know about. So much. And it’s all available to us.

For me, personally, I am going to work through my notes from my conference. I am also going to review my non-fiction “reading pile”. I put that in quotations because while I call it my reading pile, it is not a pile. It is a part of a shelf full of books I own but have not read yet, and also a back log on my kindle app on my Ipad. There were books and authors mentioned at conference and I know I own some of those books but I have not read them yet. Establishing a more consistent non-fiction reading habit sounds like a positive step in that Education Plan!

At writing time, I completed some easy first steps yesterday afternoon.

  • I unpacked my conference bag, recycled any papers I won’t need again, put things away in my office that have a home.
  • I entered into my phone contacts all of the business card information from fellow attendees who shared with me.
  • I submitted for and received certificates for all the Continuing Education Unit that I earned by participating this weekend.
  • I processed my bullet journal notes from the last 4 days. I still need to prioritize the notes and action steps, but they are in Evernote so that now, when I have a few moments, I can start assigning the ideas and tasks to the appropriate list – ideas like blog topics, client follow up, etc., or schedule time to complete tasks like the errands I will run tomorrow.

On my agenda for this afternoon and tomorrow morning are to review the handouts from each of the presentations. I will reach out via email and thank the speakers for their presentations. I will subscribe to newsletter and follow on Facebook or Instagram.

I will read the articles that were recommended for further reading, I will email follow up to my fellow participants. For example, a fellow participant asked a question during one session regarding working with a client in a hoarding situation who is struggling emotionally, and I offered to share information regarding Mental Health First Aid Training.

I will continue to share out the new knowledge gained in the coming months, as I internalize it and make it my own!

More about Learning new things:

In October, I will begin hosting webinars on topics such as quarterly planning, menu planning, clearing clutter (that was a specific ask, Sandy I heard you!). Some will be free, and some will have a small fee attached. I look forward to you and I learning more together!