006 - The Lisa Glossary Part 6: Redefining How We Look at Time

Thanks for listening to this special playlist of the Organized 365 Podcast. The Organized 365 Podcast started in 2014. With over 500 episodes and 15 million downloads, we know there is a lot of content to sift through. This taste of the Organized 365 Podcast is just a taste of what you can find in the full podcast and is easy to share with your family and friends who want to join you on your quest to learn the skill of organizing and grow your mindset of what is possible as you move into a proactive and purposeful life. Enjoy this podcast curation of the Organized 365 Podcast that will take you through all the big ideas we have uncovered in the last 7+ years of podcasting. Along the way, I, Lisa Woodruff, have created a whole new glossary of terms for us to use to define and understand the invisible work and belief systems we have from our childhoods and how and why homes function the way they do. Happy New Year. Oh my goodness. The number one question I get from people who listen to the podcast is, how do I introduce a new person to Organize 365? Lisa says so many things, like where would you even start? So 18 months ago, I recorded 8 podcasts that were called the Lisa Glossary. Basically all these words that I just kind of made up and have turned into what Organized 365 is today.

And guess what?

This week we are turning 10 years old. Oh my goodness. Organized 365 is 10 years old, and for the first 8 days, of January, I am going to re-air these glossary podcasts that we recorded in the summer of 2020 that will tell you how Organized 365 got to be what it is today and our philosophy, our outlook, our methodology on organization. And in the 18 months since we recorded these podcasts, there have been a lot more terms and things that I have created. So for the rest of January on the Fridays, the last 3 Fridays in January, I will be recording a new glossary podcast, number 9, 10, and 11. We'll be talking about the Paper Solution, the binders, and the research that Organize 365 is doing now. So sit back and listen and get motivated to take back your house this year and finally get organized.

This week's mailbag comes to us from Maryanne. Hi, Lisa. "The podcast with Tara is fabulous. Listening for the third time and going back through the other recent podcasts to listen again. Congratulations on your great achievement." So how does your achievement affect me, one of your podcast listeners, Instagram followers, Facebook followers, 3 Sunday Basket owners, and an All Access member? First, it gives me the relief I needed and hoped for. I know for sure you aren't going anywhere. You are growing and doing what it takes to grow your business, so you and your systems will be available going forward. This is a big anxiety reliever. I am sure all of your followers feel the same way. I am glad you went to the warehouse and we now have visited there virtually, so we will be able to also see when the new space is filled. Second, it validates my own achievement in building and selling an entity that was and still is highly successful after coming out of retirement to do so. While in the midst of it all, I never gave myself credit for pulling it off, but the numbers for growth in all aspects far exceeded the goals we set and reset. During this period of intense work time, I also became a grandmother several times. Besides being a good wife and mother, this is the most important role of my life. At some point while trying to do it all, I discovered I had lost the organizational skills I once had. It was frustrating, and as you described so well, ended up with piles of paper, spending too much time finding things, and forgetting things I didn't calendar. I also discovered early on why I devour everything you put out. It is that you are so positive. I am attracted and transformed by that each and every day since I have found you by accident while looking for a podcast to listen to while I walked. I stumbled into you, literally. Thank you, Lisa Woodruff. Until today, I didn't know exactly how to express my gratitude. That I am allowed to give myself grace while I change my mindset and my thinking is an unexplainable gift I feel in my soul. I am truly grateful. Do you have an Organize 365 success story? If so, we would love to hear about it. Please send us an email at customerservice@organize365.com and tell us how you have taken back your home, your paper, and your life with Organize 365.

Welcome to the Organize 365 Podcast. I'm your host, professional organizer, productivity expert, and motivational speaker Lisa Woodruff. This podcast will help you embrace progress over perfection and create lasting functional organizing in your home. I have so much to share with you, so let's get started. Do you remember your favorite teacher and your favorite class growing up in school? I'm sure there are a lot of qualities that that teacher had, but you just were hungry for the knowledge that was in that class. You did better, you tried harder, you showed up early, you stayed later. You loved learning from this specific teacher. Here at Organize 365, we are an education company. I'm a teacher by trade, and I want to teach you to love and be really great at the skill of organizing and increase productivity. And along the way, as your teacher, I've created my own systems, methodologies, and a lot of terms. I mean, a lot of terms. There are a lot of things that I say that nobody else says, and you're like, what is a golden window? What is functional organizing? These are the things that I'm going to unpack for you in the next 8 episodes. Now don't worry, it isn't going to be just a list of vocabulary with definitions. I have organized the next 8 episodes in order so that you kind of go from how Organized 365 started and has grown over the last 8 years, and how you find organizing and learn and grow and get organized as well. So sit back, relax, and let's get started organizing. Welcome back. Are you ready to redefine how you look at time? This is the most abstract, um, concept I will teach you, but potentially one that will have the longest impact on the rest of your life, like how you spend the rest of your life. Some of the concepts here I mentioned here and there in amongst the podcasts. This reframing of the abstractness of time will reorder your prioritization and how much you believe is truly possible to be accomplished in a day or a week or a year. Now, I have to say, the first person that ever gave me this perspective shift is Laura Vanderkam. I love Laura Vanderkam. If you've listened for like half a second, you know that. And I love her book 167 or 174? 160, 168 hours. We Have More Time Than We Think. I don't remember how many hours there are in a week. 24 times 7, however many that must be, 168 hours. We Have More Time Than We Think. She also wrote another book called I Know How They Do It, and it was a study of women who make six figures and how they spend their time. I loved both of these books and many of Laura Vanderkam's books because she helped me think differently about time. I mean, 168 hours a week, if you take away sleeping time, which is 8 times 7 is 56 hours, that still gives you 100 and— 112 hours per week. You give 112 wake hours per week. Well, if you work 40 hours a week plus an hour commute, each way. That's 50 hours. We still have 100 and— I'm gonna do math wrong— 154 with 50. I don't know, we have a lot of time left. I was like, oh, this is why people could have two jobs. You know, back in the day you heard like my dad had two jobs, and I was like, how would they do that? Like, if you were— if you drive to work and you get home at 5, like, how do you go to the next job? I couldn't figure out how people would have two jobs, or people would work 80 hours a week, like Mentally, I didn't understand that math until I read Laura Vanderkam's book. And when I read Laura's book, I realized, oh wow, like, if you wake up at 7 AM and you go to bed at 11 PM, that's 16 hours. That's a lot of hours. So if you work 8 of those hours and you still have 8 hours, and that made me realize, what the heck am I doing with my other 8 hours? Like, Where are they all going? Like, that's a lot of TV, bathing, and, um, social media time, if you ask me. And as I started to really look at how I was spending my time, it made me have a higher endurance for the ability to make decisions and use my time to my advantage. It's kind of like, you've heard the story about how everybody said you couldn't break a 4-minute mile until somebody did. And then all of a sudden, all kinds of people could run a mile in less than 4 minutes because somebody showed it was possible. That's what that book did for me. Like when Laura showed me how much time I have in a week and that you could have 2 full-time jobs in a week and all this, I was like, she didn't say it that way, but that's what I thought. I thought, wow, if I'm awake for 16 hours a day and I work 8 of them, and even if I watch TV for 2 hours with Greg, I still have 6 hours. How do I want to spend those 6 hours? So let's say I do bathing and cooking, and that's another 2. I still have 4 hours. Okay, let's say I take a walk. That's another 3 hours. And I realized that I love personal development and learning and growth. I realized, wow, that's like 3 hours I could listen to podcasts, read books, watch documentaries, work on a project. Like, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. So in addition to what I learned from Laura Vanderkam, I have some of my own unique thoughts on time, and I want to share those with you now. The first one is, and the one that I probably say the most and is probably the oldest that I've ever said, is to get your machines and people working for you. So we're going to go back in time, all the way back to 2002 again, when Joey and Abby are little, and I created the Sunday Basket and the Work Box, and I then got a babysitter, and then I got an assistant, and I really started to realize how just starting that Sunday basket and then adding a workday and then adding an assistant and a work box, that every time I added one of these organizational structures that I was creating for myself, I would get more time. And this is a big one, you guys. Organization always, always gives you more time. What you do with it is up to you, but organization, the act of planning and organizing, always gives you more time. So if you're like, I want more time, you have to get organized. You can't say I'll get organized when I have more time because it doesn't work that way. Organization is the thing that gives you time. So I did the Sunday Basket and all of a sudden I had 5 extra hours in the week. I hired a babysitter, then I got those hours and I started doing my Friday Work Box in order to spend that time. As soon as I started using the Friday Work Box to get more done during my babysitter day on Wednesday, Then I was able to take that and hire an assistant, and then I got her time. And then as soon as I got that, and you see that it just cascaded through. Then I started thinking about, then and in 2012, okay, so I can get more time, you can get more time through organization, people, and machines. And the order in which you do things matter. Remember in the last episode I said the order of the 100-day program will get your house organized.. And it is because we start in the kitchen and I grow your organizing muscles and you end up in your hot mess room in the garage. Okay, so it gets harder as you go, but your skill set has grown and the rest of your house is organized, so you have that behind you where you're like, oh, I've, I've seen success, this has worked, even though this is harder, I will be able to do it. So the order in which you do things matters. And I was realizing that even though I had a babysitter on Wednesday and I had an assistant on Thursday and I had these different Sunday Basket, and Work Boxes. I'm a productivity nut. As a matter of fact, if there was an Olympics for productivity, I would apply. I would try to qualify because I can, I can multiply time like nobody. I can figure out how to order tasks. So if you make a list of everything you need to do today, and I used to do this as a virtual organizer, I would reorder your day for maximum productivity and you'd be able to get more done in less time. And there are two things that will make the most difference in getting the most out of your day. And that is getting your machines and getting your people working for you. And I started this all the way back in 2002. Now before, honestly, I could have done this before I had children. Having children makes you up your productivity game. They just do. You just, because they're unpredictable and their time sucks. So you just have to get better and better and better. And so I would realize that if I did what most people say, which is to do your hardest task first, get your biggest rock done first thing in the morning, every time I did that, my to-do list would not be done by the end of the day. And so I started to figure out, like, why is it if I do my hardest task first, like, like all productivity experts say to do, why is it my laundry and my dishes and everything don't get done? Now, I do not think that you should do laundry and dishes first thing in the morning, but I think you should get your machines and your people working for you. So if I would get up and I would start on my hardest task of the day, and then at noon I would start doing my laundry and I would touch base with my team, which at that time was a virtual assistant, to give her her tasks or answer her questions, I had wasted her morning. Not for her, for me. I had wasted it for me. So most productivity experts will tell you to not check your email first thing in the morning. Do you know what I do? I check my email first thing in the morning, and I check it every time I go to the bathroom, and I check it at every meal. Do you know why? Because while maybe they're thinking the things that come in your email are other people's to-do lists and they're other people's ways they want you to spend your time, that, that may be well and good, but if you're paying those people and, and/or their family members, or it's your school, or it's your job, like It could be that they're not necessarily telling you how to spend your time. It could be that they need clarification from you so that they can help you do the job. And so don't just take productivity tips from people as in like, okay, we do our biggest, biggest task first and we never check email until noon. Maybe. I do the opposite. I check my email the first thing before I even get out of bed. Does anybody on my team need me? Is there any contractor I'm working with that needs something in my project? They need access to something in order to fix something for Organize 365. Is there one of you who are having trouble logging in, or you want to change your address for a shipment we're mailing out today? This is all important information. Now, do I reply back to people's, like, newsletters, or do I stop and read, like, I don't know, like, bank statements that came in? No. But if an email comes in from a human who is interacting with me in my business or my family, I at least read those in the morning. I don't necessarily take action on them, but I read them. And if anybody needs something from me in order to keep working on my behalf, I give it to them first thing in the morning. Like, I may not do it while I'm in bed, but within the first hour I will go in, I will go through my email, and I will make sure our shipping department knows that, um, an address has been changed, answer a team member's question, give access to something online that a contractor needs that is working with us, because as soon as I reply back to them, it puts it back in their email address, which means it is more likely to be done sooner rather than later. If I checked my email at noon and did that, then they would not get their answers till noon, which may mean it may or may not get done today at all. So number 1, I get people working for me first. Number 2, I get machines working for me. So if I am going to do laundry, I will get up and I will start a load of laundry first thing in the morning. Starting a load of laundry takes like 4 minutes. And then sometime during the day, I will move it from the washer to the dryer so that when I am done with my day and I'm ready to do laundry— and for me, I don't know about you, but for me, the hardest part about doing laundry is folding laundry and putting it away, right? It's not collecting laundry, starting laundry, or moving laundry. It's doing laundry and putting it away. If I start my laundry after work, then I have to remember after dinner to move it to the dryer, and then the laundry is ready to be done, aka folded and put away, at like 8 o'clock at night. I don't do anything at 8 o'clock at night except take a hot bath. That's pretty much all I can do. Like, I am spent by 8 o'clock at night. But if I get my washing machine working at 8 AM, and then I change it at lunch, which takes like another 3 minutes, then when I'm done with my workday at 4:30, I can walk into the laundry room, fold it, and put it away by 5. I have the energy and I have the bandwidth to do that. Do you see how the order of how you do things makes a difference? So get your machines and your people working first. If you've seen that on Facebook, you're like, what are people talking about? That's what they're talking about. The order in which you do things matter. The next thing I want to talk about is multitasking. I'm sure you've heard that multitasking is not a thing and it doesn't work. I, of course, disagree. Okay, so I do agree that you can't, like, reply to emails and write a book at the same time, or you can't do your math homework and talk on the phone at the same time. Like, I do agree that that kind of multitasking does not work. However, I'm gonna replace it with two words that I have coined, and those are task batching and task stacking. So task batching and task stacking are my versions of multitasking. Task batching is what you do in the Sunday basket. That's where you put all your bill pay stuff in one slash pocket, and all of your forms to fill out in another, and all of your coupons in another, and all of your— Like you, you group the tasks that you need to do in the same slash pocket, and then when you pull out that slash pocket, everything inside of that slash pocket is similar. Phone calls that you need to make, or, you know, reports that you need to do. Like, so when you get in that mind frame of like, okay, I've got the money folder out, I'm paying bills, I'm reconciling my checkbook, I'm looking at our budget— those are 3 different tasks, but they are batched together because they're all related to money. The work boxes each are task batching. So I have a homeschool work box. There are multiple slash pockets in there, but when I go into that work box, I am task batching because everything in there is related to Homeschooling Abby. That's task batching, and I will block that out on my calendar. I'll say, you know, Woodruff finances, homeschool planning, and I batch that way. Task stacking is a little bit different. Now, task stacking is kind of like making a new habit. So you can relate to this. You wake up in the morning, you do things in a certain order. So here's my order. I wake up in the morning, I check my phone. Then I get up, I go to the bathroom, I take a shower, I brush my teeth, I get dressed, I do my makeup, I do my hair, I go outside and I do my Instagram story, I come inside and I make a coffee, I come upstairs and I give Hunter a bone, and then I log into my email. Now, I didn't write that down. I was able to go through that that fast because I do it the same way every single day. If I were to get up and go to the bathroom and then brush my teeth and then take my shower and then do my hair and then do my makeup, I mixed a few of those around, and every time I do that, I forget to put my jewelry on. 'Cause I put my jewelry on after I do my makeup, before I do my hair. So if I do my hair first and then my makeup, I forget to put my jewelry on because it's so rote. Like, I just do it naturally, and I'm sure you do the same thing. So task stacking is creating more of those kinds of routines inside of your day, or taking a bunch of piddly little tasks that you have left to do and purposely saying, okay, I'm gonna task stack in this 30 minutes. So you've gone through your Sunday basket and you've got a bunch of little piddly tasks that all take like 1 to 5 minutes and are just really, uh, just need to get done. And you put those on an index card and you say, okay, I'm going to task stack this for Monday at 4. And so after work on Monday, you get that task stack card out and it says, um, refill prescriptions, make vet appointment, give the dog his flea and tick medicine, wash the washing machine with that washing machine, you know how you have to wash the washer? Like, so wash the washer, call and make a haircut appointment, and I don't know, one other thing. So all those things are task stacked, and when I have a task stacking card like that, that's all nonsensical little things that need to be done that don't require any thinking, I put on an awesome podcast and then I just keep going over to the card and then just doing the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, but I I've time blocked that on my calendar. So multitasking may not exist, but task batching and task stacking do. The next thing I want to talk to you about, which is time related, is planned neglect. I heard about planned neglect again probably in 2004, 2005 when I was in Creative Memories is when I originally heard about it, and I Oh, I was like, oh, that word. I'm never going to forget planned neglect. I'm going to teach people planned neglect for the rest of my life. It is heavenly. This— if you've never heard of planned neglect and you don't know what it is, sit back, take a deep breath. You're gonna love this. Planned neglect is the acknowledgment that something should happen and is scheduled to happen, and you're not going to do it. So for example, when my kids were younger and I would take like a week to organize and redo their bedrooms in the summer, I would say, okay, this week I am redoing Abby's room, and so here is what I'm going to planned neglect. I'm going to planned neglect cooking and cleaning, meaning that I am not going to clean anything in this house and I'm not going to cook any food while I am completely redoing Abby's bedroom. We are going to eat out our meals. I'm going to go to the store and buy extra snacks. I'm not going to worry about the fact that the house is going to be a mess because the kids are playing downstairs because I'm doing something upstairs. Like, the house is probably going to be horrible Monday through Friday, and then Friday at 4, I am going to clean the house. We're going to go out to dinner, and then Saturday I'll go to the grocery store and I'll cook again next week. That is planned neglect. There are so many things on your daily and weekly to-do list that if you keep trying to do them all the time, you're never going to get a big bucket of time to do a project that's not related to work, right? And so plan neglect acknowledges that, and I publicly will tell the family I am not doing this. Now here's a couple of examples of how this went even further. When I started Organize 365, I maintained our house and I got it organized, and I did my professional organization job, and I did Organize 365. And then about Uh, and during that time I said to Greg, I don't make lunches anymore. And our kids went to schools that didn't have cafeterias. So Greg took over making the lunches for the kids. So I planned neglected my old role of doing, making lunches, which, whatever, that's how we did that. Then a couple of years later, about 5 years ago now, at least 5 years ago now, I said to Greg, I said, look, I cannot be in charge of food for the family and do Organized 365 and do the mothering and do the household stuff and all of that. So I delegated doing all of the grocery shopping to Greg 5 years ago, and then about a year later, pretty much all the cooking. Yes, I'm going to say it. For the last 4 years, I've like— if I cook something, the Pope might be coming over. I don't know what to tell you. Like, I don't I don't cook. I feel guilty about it, but I don't cook. And that is a delegation. Like I did delegate it. I had Eve Rodsky on the podcast who did the book "Fair Play." You could say that's a dealing of the cards for fair play and Greg took over the food cards. That's true as well. But I, my point of view is I'm a stay-at-home mom. I'm CEO of corporation. I'm a stay-at-home mom. So everything that happens inside of the house is under my domain. So yes, I delegated it. But really in my mind to make it work in my head, planned neglect. I was like, I cannot be the mom I wanna be and the homeowner I wanna be and the CEO I wanna be and the business owner I wanna be and the wife I wanna be and also be in charge of nourishing this family's food. And so I did delegate the responsibility. Frankly, we eat out more than 50% of our meals are fast food. It's, it's not great, but it is a fact of life. And I planned that neglect. I, I have neglected my family's nutrition. There's no doubt about it. I delegated it, but I didn't delegate it with expectations that we would eat healthy meals and we would have this amount of greens. And we— no, we all weigh a little bit more than we should. We're all a little bit less healthy than we should be because I neglected, and I continue to neglect, our family's food consumption for the last 5 years on purpose. And I feel a little bit bad saying that, but I also feel like for some of you, that's probably a relief. There is no physical way you can do all the roles and responsibilities inside of a house all to A+. You just, you can't. So there are roles and responsibilities inside of every single house that are being neglected that are not meeting a status quo, that are falling short. I'm just calling it out and I'm saying I'm aware of it. I know that I have not made a good example for my kids. I know that our health could be better. It's not terrible, but it could be better. Um, and I chose to neglect that area of our family anyway. Now, there are other areas in our family that I've gotten an A+ in. Our healthcare, A+. My kids' education, above A+, if that's even possible. It's been completely individualized. It is. They've gone to different schools. I've homeschooled. They've gotten tutors. They're in perfect colleges. They're set up for their careers. Like, as far as their future career, A+++. Nutrition, F. I got an F. You just can't. You can't get an A+ in everything, and that is called planned neglect. Picking what is most important to you and your family and then communicating to everyone, "I realize I'm not gonna get an A in this area. Here are some ways that can help you. I'm gonna get an A in these other areas." I've gotten an A in entrepreneurship. I've gotten an A in employing other people and creating programs for you to take part of. This podcast is clearly an A+ with 7 million downloads. Cooking, I'm just going to give it a big old fat F. I, I got an F, and I am okay with it. Honestly, I'm okay with it. Okay, I touched on this one a couple of podcasts back. Let me think which one it was. I think it was in episode 3 when I talked about the Sunday basket. It might Uh, yeah, I think it was in episode 3 where I talked about errand day. So having an errand day in today's day and age and in my phase of life isn't as important for me anymore because again, I order almost everything online before the pandemic even. I can't even tell you the last time I went in a store. I do like to go to White House Black Market just because I love trying on clothes and it's my new passion project, but for the most part I don't go to any stores. And since my husband does all the grocery shopping, I really don't go to any stores. And when I buy what I want, I buy it from Walmart online and I pick up and I drive over there and picked it up and I've been doing that for the last 2 years. So it's not a new pandemic thing for me, that's how I've always done it. But when my kids were younger, before ordering online, and for those of you that like to go into the stores, you could save a ton of time by having an errand day instead of running errands here, there, and everywhere. And many of us have probably changed this behavior just because of the pandemic. Now that so many stores were closed and it's such— so arduous to go out and get things and make sure you're healthy coming back. I don't— I'm going to tell you, I'm recording this on April 21st, so if something terrible has happened between then and when you're listening to this, I don't know about it yet because I'm recording this in the past and sending it to you in the future. But errand day— and an errand day doesn't have to be just physical errand day of like ordering your spaces, but let me tell you a physical and then I'll tell you the digital. So the physical organizing your errand day is to make a list of all the places you have to go and then to create a circle of those places. So starting at your house, going from one to the next to the next to the next to the next and doing them in a certain order so that you don't backtrack at all. Kind of like the UPS. Did you know that UPS drivers only make right-hand turns? It's true, you can look it up. They, they make as few left-hand turns as possible because they realize that if they made their routes all based on right-hand turns, their routes would be done faster and with less gasoline than if they had them go right, left, right, left. So something that UPS learned as a productivity hack. Same with your errand day. If you go in a certain route to do your errands versus back and forth and back and forth, you will save a lot of time. Also, the second thing I will tell you if you do errand day is do it early in the day, and if at all possible, do it during the week, but it still works on the weekend as well. Go to the stores as soon as they open. I was always in line. I did my errand day on Tuesdays and I started at 8:00 AM and I would go to stores as they opened. Home Depot was already open, Walmart was already open, Meijer was already open, but then other stores would open at 8:00 and 9:00, and pretty much if the store didn't open until 10:00, I found a new store that would open at 8:00 or 9:00 so I would be home with all of my stuff between 10 and 11. Going to store when it's open will give you better selection, fewer crowds, friendlier cashiers as you're checking out, and you can get in and out in sometimes half the time of going into the same store at a different time of day. Now, I told you back in my 24-hour rule about how I started to save money and get my projects done by only buying things as I needed them when I needed them. But before I did that, I started a digital errand day. When I started using Amazon as my primary store, which I did probably about 7 years ago, instead of shopping on Amazon every day, what I would do is I made all of my Amazon purchases on Sunday night. So anytime I thought I needed something, I would write it down on an index card and put it in my Sunday basket because some of us maybe can overspend when we shop online. I'm one of those people. So by putting all of those purchases that could wait until Sunday in my Sunday basket, I would go through my financial, uh, slash pocket. I would do my budget, I would pay my bills, I would reconcile my checkbook, and then I would make my purchases on Amazon knowing how much money I had left over. And when I did it this way, I ended up buying less, I ended up getting better deals, and I ended up not ever spending. And when I just buy things every time I think of it in the Amazon app or in the Walmart app for where I'm going to pick up, I tend to overspend. So those are the two ways you can do an errand day. Two more concepts that I want to talk to you about with time. One is dividing your week in half, and the other one is Lisa's 3 years. So I'm going to start with Lisa's 3 years. So for Lisa's 3 years, this one I've been talking about for a long time. You can go back to podcast episode 134, is the first time I shared that in a podcast episode. This kind of touches on what I talked back in part Um, too, about how there's this seasonal energy and there are 3 times a year where you naturally want to get organized: January 1st, spring going into summer, and then Labor Day. Those are the highest energy golden windows for getting organized. And as I realized those were the golden windows for getting organized, I also realized that I naturally organize and declutter 3 times a year. The easiest way to see that this is totally true is in your closet. You probably, even if you don't organize your closet, you think about it in the fall. You think about it after Christmas, and you think about it as we're going into summer, even if you don't physically organize it, because it's just natural. We're going from summer clothes into fall clothes after Hanukkah or Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate in December. Going into January 1st, you've got some new clothes. They're great deals the last week of the year. You might buy a couple new things and you freshen up your wardrobe going into January, February, March. And then of course, you know, even if you're not going to put on a bathing suit and going to a swimming pool, when we're getting into summer, we're looking at our closet like, yay, we're getting out of these winter clothes. How are my shorts doing? Do I need a new pair of sandals or flip-flops or whatever? And we naturally start to look at our clothes. Well, what I have observed over time is that our kitchens, while we don't change out our kitchens We should. We in our house eat different foods from September to December than we do January to April and May, June, July, and August. So we have grilling season, and then we have like soups and stew season, and then we have winter season, which we just would rather not have as far as food. Grilling season is my favorite. It gets earlier and earlier every year, and we try to push it later and later as much as we can. We all loved grilled food. These 3 years also have some other similarities to them. So if you divide your year into thirds, most— those of us that went to school in the United States, we would start school around Labor Day, before or after Labor Day, and that until the end of the winter break, so January 1st. That whole first part is like your first semester, your first half of the school year, and it has a very productive, organized energy to it. Then after winter break is over and we start work again in January— January until the beginning of May is again another productive time. It has a different energy to it though, doesn't it, already when you're thinking about it? Like September, October, November organizing energy is like new, I'm a new grade, I'm gonna do new things, I have these goals. Actually, it's the most productive of all of the energies. The January energy, even though it is a new year, You're going back to the second half of your school year. You are going into the colder days of the year, even though they're not darker actually, uh, but it does feel like they're darker just because it's colder during January and February if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. You buckle down, you get done what you need to get done in order to finish out this year strong, and then as you get those nice spring days starting into summer days, your mindset and your projects and your thoughts go to summer. It doesn't matter if you work a corporate 9-to-5, 365-day-a-year job. Your, your body naturally responds to these seasons of this productive fall, this hunker down and get it done winter, and then this new life, let's kind of have some later days, some more casual, some more family-focused summer days. We just, we just naturally have these energies that add on to whatever our work is. So in these 3 divisions of the year, they start super organized and focused, and they end very harried and chaotic. Again, I'm going to start with September. So September energy is very focused, goal-oriented. Like, you're going to see a majority of business conferences are usually in October, early November. It's not an accident. People are finishing their year strong. They're starting to plan for their next calendar year. Like, We are all in on planners. Like, I always bought my planners in August. I did not buy my planners in January because I wanted that— I wanted to plan out my full year. I love 18-month planners more than a 12-month planner. So that fall energy of focus and organization in September and October leads you into memory-making chaos of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, you know, pretty much from the second week in November through the end of December, we're running, we're running the race, right? We're trying to get the work done, the end of the year things done, and the family memory-making. So much going on. Then we get back to work in January, and now we're very focused again. We've got New Year's goals, we've got a new routine, we've gotten through the, the weight we've gained over the holidays, and We're gonna pay off that debt, we're gonna lose this weight, and we are gonna get organized. Those are the top 3 organize— the top 3 New Year's resolutions. And January, we start on those goals, and then, uh, it's harder to make progress on your goals in the winter just because of the energy of winter. And usually by February, we're hunkered down. Uh, if you're organizing, you're organizing photos and craft rooms. We're doing puzzles, we're doing things by the fire, uh, we're getting We're doing a lot of Netflixing in February. All I have to say. Then sometimes around the end of March, early April, you're going to get a couple of nice spring days, and then you're, oh yeah, we have a yard. Oh, I think I need to clean out the garage. We need to declutter. And you're going to start to get that organizing energy. Now, not this year, but usually, usually the end of April and May is baby showers and weddings and graduations and all of those things. Like, your calendar is super, super jam-packed with family events, memory-making events, preparing to have family over, and all of those chaotic fun memory-making. June, especially for teachers or anybody that works on a school schedule, your June and July is your sweet spot. This is your time where you can take back your your home that you have neglected for those 9 months that you were working in the school and focus on your family. I always did the majority of my parenting in June and July, both because I had that teacher mindset and sometimes I was a teacher, but also because this is the best time to pour into your kids. During the school year, they've got all their athletic events and they've got their school to do and they've got their extracurriculars, and they just don't have a lot of extra time for your expectations of a parent of what you want to teach them. And so I always use the month of June and the beginning of July for any life skills that my kids needed going into the next grade level and anything to help them become a better independent adult. So June and July is very focused, and then the end of July, pretty much the whole month of July— I call July the Bermuda Triangle of months. And if you really think about it, can you mention anything you've ever done in any July ever? No, I know it is the Bermuda Triangle of months. And here's why. When you start out your July, you're like, that's it, I'm gonna get the house organized, I'm going to redo this, that, or the other thing. But it is so hot in the United States, and you know, we're also thinking, oh, but the school year is about to start and fall is going to be here, and I'm just gonna have one more barbecue and go on one more picnic and go on one more family vacation and hang out with my girlfriends. And we're outside and we're socializing, but there isn't a lot of substantive productive things that happen to July. And that's fine, it's totally fine. And every year I think that, that's true, but I'm gonna overcome that. I'm productive. I can, I could be stronger than the Bermuda Triangle and I'm not. So July is just pretty much a wash, and then, you know, August is crazy pants. I mean, it's— there's so much stuff going on in August every year. I think, how can there be so much stuff going on in August? Getting kids ready to go back to school used to be just shopping on a supply list. No more. I mean, we've got to get glasses, they got to get a new inhaler, and then you have to have the physical, and then we've got to get a haircut, and then we need the supplies. It costs a fortune, and it's a million things that you need to do in order to get ready to go back to school. So these 3 years, these 3 mini— M-I-N-I— mini years that I talk about have different organizational energies to them. They all start out purposeful and organized. They all end up chaotic and in memory-making experiences. And I just love to plan my life now just in 4-month sprints, these 120-day segments. And we have the 100-Day Home Organization program inside of each of those. After creating my 3 mini years and that the 100-day program was going to go 3 times per year, there was research that came out that I learned that we actually cannot think further than 90 to 100 days in the future. Like, it's really, really hard for us to plan and think about specific how we're going to spend our weeks more than 100 days in the future. And so now that I know that that is a scientific truth, I don't pressure myself anymore. In our 100-day planner, we plan out 18 months, but we only plan out big things like anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, vacations— all non-happy pandemic things. Those things we plan out 18 months in advance, but how we're going to spend our days specifically what we're gonna do in those days, that we plan out at the beginning of our 100-day cycle. And then the last thing that I wanna talk to you about is dividing your week in half, and this is gonna go back to Laura Vanderkam, and when she talked about having 168 hours, you have more time than you think, she said that if you take Monday at 8:00 AM until Thursday at 8:00 PM, that is half of your week. Thursday at 8 PM until Monday at 8 AM is another half of your week. And even as I'm still saying this, and I've said it a million times, it blows my mind that that is true, but it is true. That is the— that is when the hours divide in half in your week, 84 hours. And when I think about that, we often think of work as Monday morning until Friday night, and we just have Saturday and Sunday to ourselves on the weekend. And so I had been striving for a while— I never got to it— where I was going to work Monday at 8 AM until Thursday at 8 PM, and then I would have Thursday night, all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday for the family, all the way through Monday at 8. I, I have not achieved that, although I am usually done with my work around noon on Friday, and I don't ever schedule anything in the afternoon. I'll do my Corporate Work Box on Friday afternoon, or a lot of times I won't, and I'll take Friday afternoon off and do more household-related things, and I'll do my Corporate Work Box on Sunday. It tends to be a good cadence that's working for me. And while I haven't been able to divide my year truly in half yet and stop work at 8 o'clock on Thursday— I basically work 7 days a week because I love it, because I love my job and it's my passion project— it does help me to see that how I divide time is not correct. Like, oh, we work Monday through Friday and that's like the majority of the work week, but yet we're only off on Saturday and Sunday and that's only 2 days. Mm, not really true. Even if you stop work Friday at 5, 5 o'clock on Friday all the way until you start work at 8 or 9 o'clock on Monday morning is a lot more time than you give credence to. You could do a whole part-time job in there. You could start a side hustle. You could start a whole new business. And so now that I look at my time that way, I look at what am I going to get done this weekend? How many books am I going to read? How many steps am I going to walk? What big projects am I going to get done? And then how much rest and relaxation time do I need? So that is how I view time. I talked to you today about getting your machines and your people working first. The order in which you do your to-do list will change the amount that you can get done in a day. Then I talked to you about— true, there is no such thing as multitasking, but we can do task batching and we can do task stacking. I talked to you about planned neglect. We're not going to get an A in everything we're doing inside of our households, so instead of just hoping we will and then feeling like we failed, let's just purposefully neglect some areas and let the family know that we're neglecting those areas because we can't do them all anyway. So let's be purposeful about the ones that are not hitting the mark. I talked a little bit about how you can organize your errand day either physically or digitally. And then about my 3 mini years, how I divide the year into 3 120-day segments and how we fit the 100-day program inside of there and why and how that helps with your organizing energy. And then I ended by talking to you about how we can start to divide our week differently than the work week and the weekend. There is a way to divide our week evenly in half or start to realize how much time that weekend actually is. Yes, it's a lot of sleeping hours, but that we need that rest and relaxation. There is a lot we can do with that Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. I hope that you enjoyed this. I will be back next, and I'll be talking about work. What is work according to Organize 365? Thanks for listening to this Organize 365 playlist. You can find more information about these podcast episodes at organize365.com. Organize365.com/glossary. I invite you to dive deeper into your organization journey by choosing another topic-specific playlist or listening to our latest revelations on the Organize 365 podcast.