497 - Housework: The Hot Mess Theory Part 1 with Jacqui Ioli

Oh my goodness, Jackie, I am so excited to have you back on the podcast. We are actually going to re-air Jackie's story the Wednesday before this Friday podcast goes live, just so you remember who Jackie is and what her story is, how she found Organized 365. But I am super excited to be recording this podcast for a couple of reasons. One, I love when you create something and someone else explains to you why it's even better than you realize it was when you actually created it. And 2, I invite other people who have PhDs and expertise that are different than mine and have applied the ideas that we have inside of Organized 365 in different situations to also come on the Organized 365 podcast and talk about how— What my layperson examples have been and how they translate into professional services, academic industries, other— how do we make this language I've created on Organized 365 translate into other languages out there? Because I think that's the biggest thing that we are lacking right now in society in general. We all now understand that we have different points of view, we have different perspectives. But what I have figured out this last 6 months, and what I've really started diving into, is there are things we are excellent at as teachers in schools. There are things that we're excellent at at home. There are things that we're excellent at at work. How can we start moving these things to where we take all the excellent things and bring them into one? Like at home, we have a morning, afternoon, evening routine. But at work, I didn't have a get started, a break, and an after-work routine. But now I'm putting that into planning days. How do we take all those things that really create systems in one location and move them to others? So Jackie, I'm excited to have you back on the podcast. Can you just take a couple of minutes and explain your point of view? Like, how did you come to Organize 365? And then what is the expertise that you lend that I personally don't have in how I am sharing my information?

So thank you. I feel like I owe you a debt of gratitude for all the time you've given me. So it's really not a problem. And I enjoy talking with you. So my perspective is that I've been a registered nurse for, I guess now it's 40 years. And a nurse practitioner for 25. And somewhere around when I was 50, I decided that I ran out of information and I went back to school and I got a PhD in nursing education and research. And I finished when I was around 55. And you kind of have to put this part together with the previous podcast. And that's when I became the meat in the sandwich generation. So to answer your question, you know, I had caring for my own child who was late high school getting into college and caring for both of my aging parents. And there were a variety of medical misadventures that I won't get into, but I was really, uh, I was really crammed at that point. One of the ways I got through that— there were, there were 2 ways I got through it. One was that I didn't need to sleep anymore because I got a disease called Graves' disease, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition. So I slept 2 or 3 hours a week from the time I was about 54 till I was about 50, maybe 53 till 56. And then it just was like, really, I only need 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I'm tired, but I'm not sleepy. And then I found out I had Graves' disease, and now I'm fine. It's not— this is not such a big revelation, but you know, when you have 2 parents who were sick in the hospital at the same time, it's stressful. So anyway, I had a lot of time. That's how I finished my PhD. But I found you because I had an hour commute. So it's like, how'd you do an hour commute, care for all these people? I didn't sleep, didn't need to. So that's the good news. You know, the good side of having a medical condition that doesn't make you need to sleep is that you can finish a PhD. So when I got into my research, because I wanted to figure out, um, why the nurses that I was supervising in an outpatient setting why it was just a mess for them, just a mess. Every day was a bigger mess, you know, than the next day. And so I did what's called grounded theory research. So grounded theory is you find out the basic way people solve day-to-day problems in a particular setting. And that's— so this is— so when I heard your story, and again, I'm listening to all your podcasts on the Schuylkill Expressway in Philadelphia, back and forth to work into Center City. Right, so I have plenty of time to listen and then re-listen. Remember all those podcasts you used to have on multiple times? To answer your question about learning, I'm mainly visual, partly audio. And that was something that you've been posting recently, and it's like, but if I kind of know it, I can do it with audio. So, but I'm slower audio if I'm only audio only. I'm a slower learner. So I'll try to explain things as I go along, but I am showing some slides. So one of the things, one of my many alma maters is the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the Dean Emeritus Afaf Melis has a whole book about theory. And you're like, theory? And everybody's eyes are glazing over. Why theory? Theory explains, describes, and predicts. And when you don't have data, because like it takes a while to get data, we've all found that out, right? Like 6 months of data is probably not enough to explain, describe, or predict. So we have— so you go back to theory because it gives you a general— some general guidance. And in my opinion, theory tells you where to look for data. This last line is mine, but what Dr. Malice says is theory explains, describes, and predicts. So actually, Lisa, you created a theory of home organization. So when you think about a theory, like a grounded theory, it's what is the process for solving a problem? And the answer is the basic process of home organization is first you declutter, then you organize, then you increase productivity, and you must do it in that order. And the context is in all homes of all women everywhere. And so knowing the context is important. So just as an aside, I think we all sort of figured this out every time we each individually go to the doctor or a healthcare provider that the nurses and all healthcare providers really are—

Mm-hmm.

Battling time. That's the context of healthcare. Makes sense, right? And they're working the EMR. Everything else happens within that context in healthcare. But in terms of Lisa's, your theory, everything happens in the context of the home. Now you're about to expand that into the workplace, but I haven't really— I, and while I'm a member of the Workbox community, I'm not as well-developed a Workbox user as I am a Sunday Basket user. I'm pretty well-developed with that.

Okay, so let's stop there. Let's stop there. Stay on that other slide. So if you are a visual learner, you can find it with this podcast on Organized 365. There are slides. I am just now getting into slides. I can't make them, but I can present from them. So what is interesting, Jackie, I want you to talk a little bit more about your research and how you understand theory, and specifically in the healthcare industry, because I am very good at explaining things as a former stay-at-home mom or as a teacher or as an entrepreneur who has become a small business owner. But we have so many people in the community that are doctors, nurses, paraprofessionals in the medical community, and they're like, no, no, no, go back to how I understand. How can I plug in Lisa to my point of view, which is in the healthcare industry? EMR, it took me a while to figure out what EMR is, which is basically the job that you are doing. And just go ahead and take, take some time. We have plenty of time. Take 5 or 10 minutes and explain what is it like for a nurse, because they need to understand the overwork, underwork, all that, in order for the rest of this presentation to make sense. Barriers.

Got it.

Yeah.

So what I found out in terms of working with nurses— pardon me— is that this is how a nurse— I'm going to say a a provider, because I'm a nurse practitioner, so I have a foot in both worlds, the nurse world and the doctor or physician world.

Mm-hmm.

So the first thing the nurse does is the nurse has deep knowledge. Well, we know that nurses have deep knowledge, right? But they have knowledge in 2 ways. They have knowledge of individual patients, but also deep knowledge of the community and community resources. And I think most healthcare providers can relate to this, that You have to get to know the kinds of patients you're taking care of in general and also specifically, but also the community around them. And then full disclosure, my master's is in public health nursing, and what you'll hear many people say is a PhD is really about yourself. So that's— I just wanted to bring that aspect of it in. So at any rate, so the first— the way the nurse does their pro— does the process in an outpatient setting, and I worked in primary care. My participants were all in primary care, and then what the nurse does is work on the team, and the team throws work to the nurse. So there's an arrow that goes towards the nurse and an arrow that goes towards the team. It's bidirectional. I don't know if you see my arms going up and down, like I throw nurse to the team, the team throws nurse to the work to the nurse, and that's appropriate. It's just part of the how the nurse works. And then 2 things happen as a result of the nurse's work. One thing that happens is that the nurse gets the patient on the path, and the other thing that the nurse is doing is keeping the flow going for the whole area. And so the way you can think about— so getting patients on the path is like, what does that mean? The provider makes a diagnosis, meaning the nurse practitioner, the physician, the physician assistant, we make the diagnosis, but then we give a treatment plan and the patient maybe does it, maybe doesn't do it. Well, when the patient's not on the path, changing the treatment plan doesn't help. If you were prescribed— I'm just going to say something simple— asthma medicine, if you're not taking the asthma medicine, either because you're not taking it correctly, couldn't get access to it, the nurse goes in the room, uses nursing knowledge of the community and the team, and does whatever it takes to get the patient on the path. So that's one aspect of the nurse's role. And then the other aspect is keeping the flow going. So what does that mean? That turns out to be important in a busy medical practice because, oh, you're an— you're a newborn. Oh, Dr. X doesn't do newborns. Dr. X starts at age 12. Oh, now you've been waiting for Dr. X because somebody put you on the wrong schedule. The nurse recognizes that and gets the schedule rebalanced. Or, you know, Jackie saw a patient who was who took extra long because they had to go to the hospital. Let me move somebody off of her schedule. So that's the subtleties.

Mm-hmm.

But something gets in the way because it's like, of course nurses can do all this. Well, what's getting in the nurse's way of doing these important functions? Because everybody knows somebody who's a nurse and knows that it's like, oh my God, if not but for that knowledge, my life wouldn't be as good. So what was getting in the way? And this is what I found when I did my research. So I asked simple questions. And again, this is part of Um, a research project where you do grounded theory, what makes your job easier? What makes your job harder? What gets in the way of you doing your job? And so if you talk to 10 people, and that doesn't sound like enough people, right? Yeah, except I had the whole thing transcribed and I used all those little bits of text and put them into categories and then put those categories into categories, and finally I came up with What the barriers were to the nurse's work.

Okay, so I'll stop you right there. So that is a good picture of like, um, a job description for a nurse. There is the actual care of the patient, there is the translation from the prescriber to the patient so that they can be successful in whatever has been prescribed, there is the, the gut knowledge and the institutional knowledge of not only the skill of medicine, but also the community you're in, the resources. Like, let's say they're prescribed an asthma drug that is not on their plan and they don't have money to get that. You go, okay, well, this would be similar. Let's get that rewritten for the doctor for the one that falls on your plan. Or there are actually community resources where you can get free inhalers. Or like, I know for my kids, exactly, when we kept getting diagnoses, then it was the support staff and the nurses that then would say, oh, did you know that there is this grant? Or there is this person in the community that will pay for that because that's actually a medical device that you can reuse. And so there's this special little $400, and, and they know all of those things.

Exactly.

Um, so that, that is like the job description. So when we're doing that in, um, education, that is the planning of the lesson plan, the teaching of the lesson, and the students that are in the classroom. And then the Education Friday Workbox solves the problem of these 4 works that you're about to talk about that get in the way of the nursing profession, because we just take all the administrative and important but not urgent Exactly. And we put them in a work box and we have you create that in the summer during teacher camp so that when you are in the classroom doing the work, you don't have as many of these 4 interruptive kind of works. And we all have them. Like every single business has all of these interruption kind of works. I did talk about this 2 years ago on the podcast. It was the 4 kinds of works. I had read The Phoenix Project and they described the 4 kinds of work that were in an operational plant. that it's a business book that, um, Putting Out Fires, Rework, you know, kind of what you have described as well. But it's helpful to know that, okay, so that is what an edu— that is what a nurse's job description is. A teacher's job description is to plan the lesson, teach the lessons, make sure the students learn the plan. Like, your job, what you do, is only a portion of the work, but it's the only part of the work that they tell you they're going to do or pay you for. And then there's all this additional work at home, at work, in your personal life that goes on, that, that is where we tend to get frustrated. And, and in every profession, you look back at the work at hand. So in housework, you look back at, well, is the house clean? Is the laundry done? Are people being fed? And you're like, okay, well, I'm doing the job description. I don't understand why I'm so overwhelmed. And it's because there's all these invisible works everywhere. It's not just at home between men and women. There is invisible work everywhere. And making the invisible work visible allows you then to reduce it. and systematize it so at least you can communicate about it. So, all right, so that is the context of your history. And for, uh, nurses are finally feeling seen and heard a little bit more, and man, are they in the trenches like teachers right now. So the, the Organized 365 theory is that in order to have home organization, and the context is in homes of women everywhere, we need to start with decluttering. And then do organizing, and that leads to increased productivity. If you miss one of those steps, then you don't have complete organization. And if you do them out of order, then it just doesn't work. So great. All right. So that's your theory.

Okay, so that's your theory. So you have some propositions in your theory. It really is a theory. And I think it's important to just say that you've developed this over time. One of the propositions is if it can wait until Sunday, it must wait until next Sunday. And I find myself using that proposition all the time in my administrative work. Just saying that it's a learnable skill. Organization is a learnable skill. And from my personal life standpoint, but also I'm beginning to see this professionally, that I need to act like I'm a CEO. Because actually, after my dad— my dad was the CEO of our family, and then he passed away and I had to take care of mom. And it's like, well, maybe she was the CEO, but really I was the chief operating officer because she wasn't able to get things done because of her age and her injury that she suffered. So separate, separate podcast. Anyway, so these are very important propositions with your theory. Um, but now let me get to the Hot Mess Theory, the part that these different kinds of works that you alluded to. So these barriers—

Just for people who are listening on the podcast, so there's Hot Mess House, which is TV show by, um, uh, Clutterbug, which is great. I have the From Hot Mess to Organized Storage course. We're talking right now about Hot Mess Theory. This is actually the theory that you researched and wrote your dissertation on. So we're actually talking right now about your Hot Mess Theory, just to make sure everybody's on the same page, because, you know, hot mess, we've got a lot of hot messes that we associate with.

And I probably should come up with a more professional name for this, but I haven't been able to think of it.

Oh, you got muted again.

Different members of my— sorry about that. I should come up with a better name for it, I feel like, but I just haven't been able to Think of anything other than this, and there is a professional nursing theory that says theory should have fit and grab, and hot mess really describes when you have all 4 of these things happening simultaneously. So let me explain each one and then we'll explain how they interact. So there's overwork, which is too much work and too many steps. There's underwork, where you don't have to be you to do it. Meaning your level of skill and training. There's rework— it wasn't done right, so you have to do it over. And there's workarounds, which— workarounds is a very important thing. Workarounds is not following the process because it's not working, either deliberately or it just doesn't achieve the goal. Or the most important thing is no correct path. Let me repeat that: no correct path is a type of workaround. So when you don't know the correct path, that is a significant contributor. From a nurse standpoint, if you're in outpatient, many— so much of care has moved from inpatient to outpatient that the outpatient world has had growing pains and just doesn't have processes in place to manage the different things that people come in with. And so it falls to the nurse to figure out what to do. However, in a home, if you haven't created the correct path, or if you're a teacher and you've got a bunch of IEPs that I heard Angela Watson talk about, you've heard about a bunch of IEPs and you don't have a correct path for them, this also contributes to it. So let me go to my next slide and explain, deep dive into each one. So overwork is too much work, too many steps. So Lisa's talked about you can dust daily. One thing that I've seen as a manager since I finished my dissertation is providers and nurses overwork themselves by creating unrealistic expectations. The way we were taught to do things in school, and I'm speaking to teachers, nurses, other health professionals. I am here as a PhD person to tell you, PhD in nursing education, you were told to do things in this detailed way to create your nursing care plans, your medical care plans, your teaching plans with this unbelievable detail. Because your faculty needed you to develop professional judgment. You grow it once you've graduated and you've passed the certification exam. That detail is something you can let go of and you can focus in on what's important. But I see people all the time doing at work, why did you write this in the note twice? Now you just wrote 2 notes. Why are you writing 2 notes? You're seeing 20 patients.

Let's stop there. I remember in college we had to find the state standard for every single lesson we were teaching in our lesson plan. And if you could do more than one, it was great. Like, it was, it was so much work. And then when I was a new teacher, I had to do that as well. And I think that your first 3 years of teaching, your first 3 years in any profession, yes, you are still learning and you're developing, and there is benefit to doing that amount of cognitive work related to the lesson plan. However, I think sometimes rework— overwork is put on ourselves, as you alluded to. But also, I think overwork personally comes from poor managers, people who are elevated to management that do not know how to manage. So the only way they know how to manage is if you do overwork so that they can have something to compare. So my example to that would be By the time I was a 4th-year teacher and I had taught these lessons over and over and over again, if I did not have every single state standard in this lesson plan book, then I got written up in my annual review. It didn't matter that none of the kids in my class failed and I individualized my instruction for the teacher.

Exactly.

Because my manager was so focused on— and this was not my internal principal, it was a different manager in the district. We're so focused on the detailed rules, and to write your lesson plans that way would take 5 hours to 7 hours a week. And I would do it 80% of the time, and she would find the one week where I didn't do that.

Exactly.

And then write me up for that. It's, it's ridiculous. So if you are in that situation, or if you are a manager and you are managing that way, why are we still Why are we still doing this? And really, I think it's a failure on, on managing the person and the process versus like, like the CYA. You're just like, well, I checked and their lesson plans are done. So—

If you look up the line, who's managing that manager?

Right?

Because that leadership comes from the top. And I'll tell you, speaking as a working manager, that kind of stuff isn't flying anymore. Everybody, including the teachers and the healthcare workers. We all have a lot more. So if you're, if you're managing this way, you need to stop or you're going to be held accountable for the fact that you have no staff. And now you're going to be managing and trying to do the line work, which would create your own cycle of overwork and underwork. Right. And so some of what you're talking about is underwork, getting back to underwork. You don't have to be you to do it. So some of this applying of the standards, Like, can you make a form and have people just put it in there? Like, you're going to have to find a way to streamline things. So for example, like you say, in the home, you can delegate house cleaning or laundry. I've heard Angela Watson in her podcast allude to having the students do some of their own grading. Um, um, healthcare providers, you know, we tend not to want to involve families, but, you know, families are where people come from. Just saying, they do. Families, and families come from communities. And where can you, where can you find these ways of handing off stuff? So underwork is very important. And when you're feeling overloaded, asking yourself, where am I doing too much? And where can I delegate? Are 2 very important questions. The next question is rework.

Okay. Before we go to rework, let's stay with overwork and underwork. So I think, because I really am, toying with the idea of how I step more into the small business world and really support entrepreneurs that are going to become small business owners. Where do I see the overwork and the underwork? And what I am noticing is there is so much mental that has to happen in order to go from being a doer to being a manager. And by manager, I mean, When I look at managing my team or how I've developed teams over the last 30 years, like, I just love to develop teams. I love to develop people. And then I love to develop unique people to work in teams and then develop people to lead teams. This kind of work of developing individuals and then creating teams that are a force to be reckoned with takes so much mental work, so much mental thinking, processing. testing and allowing time for the learning to occur. Learning is not a check-the-box activity. Like, if you really want to invest in people and develop yourself personally, and then develop other people on your team and develop a whole company from an idea in your head to a company that has a culture, it is— I mean, I would say 50% of my work is me thinking. Driving to get onion rings is actually major work that I do. Thinking from 4 to 6 AM in bed while I'm laying awake about How to verbally share something with a team member. And then, oh, I always put it back on myself like I did as a teacher. I think like, okay, I'm not seeing the performance or the outcome that I am desiring. How have I not communicated correctly? Is there a resource I have not provided? Is there a knowledge that I have that I have not given to the team so they don't even have a full understanding of what we're doing? It's almost always me. Because when I went to a therapist for my kids and the kids were misbehaving, that's why we were with the therapist. And the therapist said, children do not desire to have teachers and parents disapprove of them.

Mm-hmm.

If a child is not behaving in the manner in which you expect, there is something else going on. And so you have to kind of be the detective. Kind of like dog— all dog breeds are trainable. If there is an untrained dog, Frank and Hunter are on the list. It is the owner, not the dog's fault. So I'm not saying people are dogs, do not go that far, but I am saying that everything comes back down to you. Like, if you're in a situation where there's overwork and underwork, the only way to get out of overwork and underwork— no one's coming to rescue you— is for you to really think about, okay, where are these bottlenecks for me? Where am I doing work that is unnecessary? And how do I communicate that? And where am I doing work that someone else could do if I could figure out how to communicate it enough for somebody else to do it? And for those of you that are solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, I heard, I think it was Eleanor Beaton on her podcast, she said that only the CEO can reduce the complexity in the company. Only the, you know, superintendent can reduce the complexity in a school system. Only the head of the hospital can reduce the complexity in a healthcare organization. You, as the nurse, the teacher, the employee in a larger company, you cannot reduce the overwork and the underwork. You can bring it to the attention of your manager, but you are not the decision maker. So this is really kind of like Who is the highest level manager, whatever your personal and the team that is under you, this is your responsibility to figure out where your team is doing work that they don't need to do that is just busywork. And where are they doing work that someone else on the team or an outsourced component, or we don't even need to do it at all? Like, my favorite answer is, do we even need to do this thing anymore at all? And that is all a continual 1% improvement. It's not like you go in and you totally overhaul your whole house or your whole job or your whole company. It's you look at every department, every person, every role, and you say, okay, how can I take 1% of what we're doing too much of and eliminate that, and 1% of what people are overqualified to be doing and either eliminate or outsource that? And just that little 1% in both process improvement, you would be amazed. how fast this happens. But all of this, everything we talked about in Organized 365, everything Jackie's talking about, all these theories that you hear about in books, it's because people have thought about these real-life situations for decades. And they're like, you know what, if you were to step back and really research and think about this, here's what you would eliminate. Here's what you would delegate. And here's what you would let go of. And we are, we are definitely moving into a different way of thinking and managing That is much more trusting the employee. Here's the thing, you guys, you guys, every employee desires to be a valuable contributor to the organization that they are a part of. They want to be affirmed and recognized for their achievements. They do not want to like stick it to the man and only work 38 out of their 40 hours. People don't go into work— I mean, some people do, but very, very Very few people are doing that. Most people are grateful for the paycheck that they're getting that is consistent. That's why they're an employee and not an entrepreneur, and that they are contributing member to a group that is doing something bigger than they can do on their own. And you're there to partner and develop that person, not to micromanage and make sure you get every minute out of them. So I think it's, it's a framework mentally that you come to it as And an inquisitive questioning than a constant performance review situation. So Jackie's taking notes and nodding. So it's your turn. What do you want to say about overwork and underwork before we go to rework and work around?

So they all stay in interaction with each other. So that's the key. Overwork and underwork, they kind of go bidirectionally. So if you're overworking, you're often also often underworking. And that's really important. And you let— the manager can overwork you and you can overwork yourself.

Yeah.

And sometimes it takes a while, like you were saying, in terms of employee development, to develop an employee to the extent— it actually can be more— I heard this a lot. It's easier for me to just do it myself. You do that enough, now you're overworking. And Then what you also have is maybe you have an assistant, a nursing assistant, a medical assistant, a unit secretary, some support staff member who is now underworking because they're going to step back and get out of the way when the more qualified person goes, oh, I'll take out the laundry, I'll take out the trash, I'll do it, because, you know, you're the higher trained person. So it's very important to see how they interact with each other, and you really do have to reflect on some of this. Some of it's from the manager and some of it's from within. Okay, if I go to—

Some of that is that— don't you think some of that from within is lack of confidence or feeling like you have to prove your worth and overdeliver? That idea that you just need to constantly overdeliver? Like, okay, so this is a really silly example, but, uh, when we hired the office manager last year, on the job description I said that they need to make me my coffee. I have since cut down to 1 cup of coffee. So this is kind of not important anymore. But the reason why I put it on the job description was so that when the person was hired, and I said, okay, you know, I'm going to go into this meeting, if you could make a cup of coffee, I wouldn't feel like I was putting on them something that I should do myself. But I am out of hours, I go from meeting to meeting to meeting, I usually don't even eat because all I have are meetings all day long, because that's my highest use and value in the company. But I still feel guilty that Some other human makes my coffee, like la-dee-da, you don't even make your own coffee. But now they take out my trash and put 3 water bottles in my room too, because it is of the highest benefit of the company that I don't have to go find a water bottle in the middle of my day. I could take another 15-minute call. I could do something else to move the company forward. And they love it. Often what we used to do in our job that now we no longer do because we've moved on to something else in the company, We feel guilty because other people are doing it when we used to do that task. And maybe it shouldn't be done for us. If you instead look at, would you do that for your boss? Would you do that for someone you admire and is leading you and personally and professionally developing you? Everyone takes pride in their work. It doesn't matter what level work you do in society's view, as long as you put your heart and effort into what your purpose is. It takes everyone on the team for the company or the institution to be successful. And so it's okay to let go of underwork because for someone else, it is their beginning steps into what is your current job, or it is, it is what they are uniquely created to do and they just love doing it. Like it is their unique gifting. Like mine is not cooking. But there was a time when I loved cooking for my family. And so I think, I think that's, again, so much of this is mental inside of our heads.

Exactly. Exactly. And also, I think from a nurse standpoint, it's this feeling that because a provider said this needs to be done, that I alone can do it, as opposed to, oh, I'm going to re-delegate that out. It's very peculiar to nurses. And I think it may be peculiar to moms also.

I think women in general.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's a woman issue.

And then there's rework. Okay, nothing done right, so you got to do it over. So at home, it's, you know, you can't find something, and that's where the Sunday basket comes in, is because where is it? It's in the Sunday basket. Where in the Sunday basket is it? Probably in my house, it's in the blue pending or waiting for pocket. Just saying, um, if it's not in the very front, that's probably where it is. But this idea of the vital signs weren't correctly performed— this often happened to nurses because the medical assistants needed some mentoring. You know, they, they get a limited amount of training and they often need to be mentored. Like, okay, the blood— the patient's temperature isn't 75. You probably fat-fingered that, meaning typed a 9 instead of a 7. It was probably 90. 9. It was— it probably wasn't 75. You probably fat-fingered the whole thing. So this rework thing turns out to be a thing, and that's a very important thing to identify for your home and at work. Where are you doing something again? Another example could be where you're, you're in a paper-based system and you got to put a name and a birthday, or a name and a medical record number. You have to put identifiers on a paper. You could probably automate that rather than the staff continually typing or writing things in. So rework turns out to be a thing, and you can see how it interrelates to underwork. Like, you don't have to be a medical assistant. A computer can write the name and number on a piece of paper. So we're not even using our medical assistants or our support staff to their highest level of training and ability because we have them busy writing names on things. So I often look to that as a manager. What am I doing again and again? You can automate bill payment. There's a lot of things you can automate, but you're going to have to have a way to think about it. And that's where the Sunday basket system comes in, because you keep iterating on it. You keep going back to and thinking about it. Any questions about rework before I go to workarounds?

Oh, you have down that that's finding lost things at home. I think the only other thing I would say at home, which When my full-time profession was being the stay-at-home mom is I would do rework and like I would refold clothes, I would reload the dishwasher the way I wanted it loaded. Like, it's going to clean the same, people. Like, if you think the order in which you put the dishes in the dishwasher is how they get clean, then why are you even putting it in the dishwasher? Like, the dishwasher cleans all of the dishes in there. So sometimes we tend to—

Exactly.

Do things just right, or, you know, adding the little bit of extra when it was already done good enough for that week. And then we just do this little bit more and add this little rework on that we don't really need to do.

And you can see how it can create overwork and also underwork. All these things kind of— and they go around in a circle where it's like, now you're overworking it because you reloaded the dishwasher, or you can't find your keys again because you haven't established a landing zone and your keys always go there. And so, or if you need it like me, I actually have one of those little finder things. This is not to advertise, but you know, a finder thing. There's a number of brands that do that, um, just in case. So rework is a thing. And then there's workarounds, which at the time I did my research, I looked up the definitions and it's like a workaround is deliberately going around an established system so you can get your job done. What I wrote here was the process doesn't work, so I reinvent the wheel each day, but I remember being a faculty member with pediatric nursing students going to a hospital that was in an old building, and somebody brought in a new medication cart, didn't measure the rooms in pediatrics, and this underlying assumption is the med cart goes in the room with the nurse. The nurse can't get the cart through the door, and the cart is like 400 pounds, right? So it's like the nurses would then make extra bracelets for the patient, which is like— anybody who's in healthcare listening to that is like going, that's terrible. It's really like a safety problem. But nobody measured the doorway, so they had to find a workaround. These children weren't going to get their meds. They're hospitalized to get meds. So anyway, back to workarounds. But the other one is no correct path, and that's where I think the Sunday basket system Really helps. And this idea of iterating with the Workbox, because it takes some time to establish a correct path. Where is your landing zone? What is your process going to be for your morning, afternoon, and evening routines? You don't have time to think about that when you're dealing with overwork, underwork, rework, and workarounds, and they're all happening at the same time and everything's on fire.

Yes.

And it's a hot mess theory all the time. So there's no correct pathway thing. turns out to be a thing. And it's probably, as a manager— and you were talking about managers who micromanage— probably the, the smartest thing that I do is remove administrative barriers by creating a correct path. And sometimes the correct path is we're doing less. We're not doing that old way anymore.

Yeah.

Because it doesn't need to be done. That's probably the smartest thing I can do is to just go, what bucket does this fall in? Is it overwork, underwork, rework, workarounds? It's not any of the above, then it's a workaround because there's not a correct path.

And I think that means there's not a system. So that's kind of what I identified in my, my research is like, we don't have a definition of what housework is. So how do you even know when it's done? You don't. So you just keep working because there's no finish line. Okay, well, great. Well, what is organization? Well, it's these 4 different areas. How do you get to the end? Like, if you don't know when you got to the end, then you just keep going indefinitely because you don't know where the end is. Or what does the finish line look like? Or, okay, so we're going to use binders instead of file cabinets. Okay, now I know where paper goes. I don't have to find like, oh, did I put that in a pile? Did I put that in a file? Is that in a binder? Is that in a different house? No, it's all either in the Sunday basket or it's in binders. And so it creates these systems— like, we're missing systems at home because there's so much flexibility that you can't Finish it.

But what you're also saying is that as part of your research, you're further developing your theory by putting definitions in. What does done mean? Just saying. And everybody's going to have to define that a little bit for themselves. Like, when is your house dusted? When is the floor swept?

Right.

Those are things that people decide. But then now you have a place to kind of go, oh, okay, well, I like it when my floor— like, I don't— I, I— it doesn't matter to me, but I like it when my house is dusted every 4 weeks. You like it every 6 weeks. No, I really like 4 at least. Well, it's my house. I can dust it as often as I want to dust it, but I'm not going to be any happier dusting it every day or every week or every other week. So it's very interesting. And by having the system that you created, that what you're seeing on this screen is this whole idea. You're, you're reducing the amount of overwork and underwork and rework and workarounds, and incrementally by continuing to do this a little at a time over time, iteratively and also recursively, meaning you do it again and again, but you're making forward progress is the best way I can explain it. You're making progress in reducing your workload and just increasing your quality of life at work and at home. So applying your process, by applying your process, you're automatically solving for these different kinds of work. And by me telling you about these 4 barriers, it's like now you went— it's like, this is just a hot mess. I can't explain it.

Right.

I can also tell you at the end of my research, when you do a grounded theory, they make you call your participants back a year later and you say, this is what I found. This is the process. This is the background. We talked about that, working the EMR and battling time. And then you use your knowledge to work on a team, and then you get patients on the path and keep the flow going. And the barriers to your work are overwork, underwork, rework, and workarounds. And everybody sits there and goes, Yes, you got it. The people I got in touch with, I talked to 10 people. I was able to get back in touch with 8, but I can tell you this, the participants who were experiencing all 4 of these barriers consistently were not in that position a year later. And you gotta remember that as a manager, you don't have to solve any of this, but then you will be rehiring. And then what you're doing to yourself, Yeah. You're, you're actually reducing your intellectual capital in your company. That's another theory, meaning People who know how to get the job done in your context. Turns out that's an expensive thing to replace.

Yes.

Uh, costs a lot of money to hire because now you're not producing while you're hiring and train, and you're not producing while you train and so forth. So that's the 4 barriers.

This is where time comes from. This is the process of getting organized. This is the invisible work that Yes. That people are like, I don't know why, but I'm always doing all these things and I can't explain to you what I'm doing, but I am always busy. I'm always working. No one's saying you're not working at home and at work. You are always busy. You're not just like sitting around watching TV, but the work that we're doing is inefficient and emotionally draining because it's not the work that we want to be doing, which is the productive work that we signed up for. And so, when you get organized, you reduce and eliminate all 4 of these, which is why I say that organizational time today, time spent organizing today—

Yes.

Gives you exponential time in the future because this invisible work mentally becomes visible so that you can get rid of 80% of it. And then all of a sudden, you're much more efficient in your role as a homekeeper, in your role in work, In your marriage. And this is why, as you age, you're like, yeah, I've created systems for that over time. You create systems for things over time. And once you go through them, if you think about it, you could start to eliminate this work. This is, this is so good, Jackie. This is so good. Okay, go on.

So hot messes create barriers. So what you're seeing on the screen, and if you're listening in the car the way I used to, if you're at home, If you have this hot mess, then in other words, you don't have systems. You're overworking, underworking, reworking, and have work all the, all the time. You can't even get decluttered. And then if those barriers will also interfere with getting organized, the same barriers will interfere with increasing productivity. That's why it's important to work on the barriers to the process. Keep going.

Yep. Keep going.

Okay, so the Sunday Basket solves for this hot mess barrier to organization. And we said this already, because iteratively and recursively, it's a dedicated place and space to manage your home documents and processes. Meaning iterative, meaning cyclical, and recursive, meaning you apply it repeatedly. Meaning in this 90— like, I'm just telling you, that Sunday Basket session, if I can't always log in live, I really do do the rewatch because just that 90 minutes, even if I can't do the whole 90 minutes, solves a lot of problems in my personal life. That 90 minutes, it's like the whole week is set up. So again, overwork— Sunday Basket reduces overwork because you keep saying, can it wait till Sunday? If it can, you just put it in the basket, don't even deal with it. Underwork— wait, before I put it in the basket, can I delegate it? My husband's retired now. I have somebody to delegate to now. It's the greatest thing. Rework. It eliminates searching for things. So we went to a concert this week, outdoors. Went to a concert. Where was the tickets? It was in the blue slash pocket where the tickets go. So I have a spot for it. Like, where are the tickets? Everybody knows where the tickets are. And workarounds. It creates a correct path for family members so they know where to go. Mom, this needs to get done. Okay. I'm putting in your Sunday basket. Okay, and they know, like, you know, that you'll deal with it. So it turns out that the Sunday basket just solves the problem.

Wow.

In my house. And I think it's why it solves the problem, as I am in— participate in the Organized 365 community. It's why it solves the problem, because then you just don't— it's not that it takes it away, it gives you a way to— not totally, but it Gives you a way to manage it so that when you encounter a new challenge, you're able to have the— you have the tools. So I have a pink slash pocket right now because I was really feeling tired. Why would I feel tired? I'm a healthcare worker. I haven't taken very much vacation. I got a gajillion hours of vacation time. And then I realized, you know what, I should really track my sleep before I start nagging my primary that I'm so tired all the time. And guess what I found out? I'm sleeping short. Well, I kind of got used to that with the Graves' disease, right? And I really need to very consciously, now that everything's normal and I'm all healed up, I gotta like, I gotta go to bed on time. Well, who knew? And by— I had a pink slash pocket. I just very quickly delegated finding a log. Oh, the National Sleep Foundation has that. Okay. I could create my own Jackie Perfect log. Just saying, I'm really good at creating these things. But you know what, let me just print it out and modify it. So I delegated it. And after a week, it's like, yep, now I know why I'm so tired. Okay. All right. I, I need my morning, afternoon, and evening routines. So I was able to figure this out for myself. And remember, I don't, I don't do people over 21, but it was just anybody would do it if they had this headspace. Why am I so tired all the time? So anyway, next slide.

Yep.

Okay. Um, so used together, the Sunday basket enhances home organization because you're able to engage in the process because it decreases the process of home organization, meaning decluttering, organizing, increasing productivity, because you have decreased the barriers to your own work.