Housework: The Hot Mess Theory Part 2 with Jacqui Ioli - #497

Okay, my turn, my turn. So you guys, you guys, you guys, I'm just gonna give myself my own PhD. I've decided I'm gonna start getting certifications. I'm gonna create my own PhD. Although, Jackie, listening to your story, I'm like, Lisa, would you like to have a PhD by the time you're 55? I'm like, yeah, maybe I should get one. But anyway, that's a side note.

It's a lot of courses. The PhD is a lot of work.

The problem isn't the courses, is that I already need to look up some of these words you're even using in these slides. And I've read these dissertations and, um, I don't I think I use pretty advanced vocabulary, but not academic vocabulary. Anyway, so I have often said that the best course of action is to start with the Sunday basket and then do the Productive Home Solution, because you want to do the Productive Home Solution because you want to get your house organized. And you think you don't need a Sunday basket, and maybe you don't, but you think you don't need a Sunday basket because You have a digital system, you don't have that many things on the kitchen counter, you aren't a paper person, you don't understand how the Sunny Basket is going to help you. Um, but everybody who's in Sunny Basket is like, oh my gosh, this is so much more like Lisa, you should explain. This is like where I put things that need to be reordered, this is where I put notes to myself. Like, this isn't really a paper solution, this is all of the active things that are in my brain and on my to-do list in a box that I then get to go to each week. And pull out what I want to do next. But the reason why I say that you start with the Sunday basket before the Productive Home Solution is because of the hot mess and all of these 4 kinds of works. As a human, whenever I want to do anything in my home, in my company, in my personal life, anything— getting started— while people say they don't know how to get started, that's not actually true. Everybody knows how to get started. You start in your head, like you go and you walk the first day. It's the second day that you have to walk that's the hardest, not the getting started day. It's the second day. And it's because life gets in the way and life gets in the way so fast through those 4 kinds of work, overwork, underwork, rework, and—

Workarounds.

Workarounds. And so I have professionally organized women and I've helped people get professionally organized 10 years ago. And here's what would happen. You do the Marie Kondo thing and you empty out your entire closet instead of just doing your shoes, and now your entire closet is on your bed that you sleep in, and a kid walks in the room and pukes on the floor. So now you have a sick kid that you're taking care of, you have no bed to sleep in, and no hope in sight. Now all of a sudden your, your life is so much more chaotic. I love Marie Kondo, she's great. A lot of people have organized their house that way. But if you don't have a big block of time, you set yourself up for, for failure because you've created this bigger problem. Whereas when you do it the Organized 365 way and you take a 15-minute block, which you gratefully turn into a 30-minute block or an hour long because you have not been interrupted, you're in the groove and you want to go a little bit farther, that is a totally different energy than I've taken on more than I can chew. I now am needed in my home or my household or my work elsewhere, and now I've created more stress on myself. So the Sunday basket, because it does eliminate these 4 kinds of work, gives you the mental bandwidth and the actual physical time to then tackle these bigger household projects, but in a more bite-sized way that works better for you and your whole family, and it'll You're still going to have the hot mess in between each one of these stages, but it is not as catastrophic to yourself personally and your whole life. And you're just muscling through it to get through your organization. It becomes more of a joyful self-development journey and experience. I, I know I sound like Pollyanna.

But it's true. What you're saying is absolutely true. Like, even just something as simple as I replaced my pants. There's a brand of pants. I won't go into it, but they have pockets and the pockets fit my cell phone. Share it.

Share it.

I can. I— oh, Beta brand. Yes. Oh my God. There's 6 pockets. Went to that concert. You know, they, they want you to have a special purse. I don't have a clear purse. I'm not buying new purses and cluttering my house up. All my stuff went into my pockets. Now I don't really wear it every day like that, but boy.

Did you say data brand? What's the brand?

No, Beta, like B-E-T-A, Beta.

Okay. Are they at the nurse's store? Where do we get these?

No, you get them on the Beta Brand website.

Okay. All right.

Well, Beta Brand website.

I just bought a fanny pack because when we're like—

You can get a fanny pack.

I don't have the diaper bag and I'm not carrying a purse. So, I mean—

It's, you know, you get what works for you. But because I had the band, like I already had an established routine in my closet. Wait.

Yeah.

I got one of those pair of pants. I like them because my cell phone fits. When I go into clinic, I can put my wallet in there. Turns out in 1980, that was the first time I had a wallet stolen in a hospital. Just explaining it happened in 1980. Don't say it happened— don't say it's a problem today and it's new. It's been at least around since 1980. So now I have a— again, I have a correct path because I found what works for me. Well then, now why do I need to keep all those other pants? I'm not reaching for them. So they went to my giveaway area, and my giveaway area, when I do a particular errand, that's when it goes into my car, and then I give it away. And it's like I have a correct path because I designated it. Now, did I go through the whole 100, you know, the 100-day organization program this time? No, there's too many other things that I'm working on right now. But my closet's fine.

Because—

And I replaced all my pants. All of them, because I found pants I like better. So it's— this is something very simple, but it just gives you an idea that it will stick with you, the routine. The Sunday basket, I will not give up. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And I think when you, when you find something like these pants that work for you and you're like, you know, like, okay, so when I go out on a hot date or whatever, I'm gonna wear different pants, but every other day of the week, like, this is my uniform. This is what works for me.

Exactly.

You don't have to create that workaround anymore. Can you create your own Sunday basket? Probably. Can you create your own curriculum for organizing your house? Of course you can, but it's gonna be a lot faster and easier if you buy one Sunday basket in the Productive Home Solution course and then just modify it to your specifications versus creating a whole course and curriculum for yourself.

Well, what you'll also do is rework it a lot. It, you did a lot of rework when you were doing it. And I was, it was so difficult for me at the time to have a child who needed care, parents who needed care. Be, I had made the commitment to the PhD. I had to find something else and I didn't have time to rework it and reinvent the wheel. And this, it's very frustrating when you reinvent the wheel every day at a job. And that's actually a very powerful thing to say to your manager, because what you're saying is we've got to find better paths and we've got to get rid of things that we don't need to do anymore. And if your manager's not saying that, you probably need a new manager. Because my manager says that at every meeting I go to. What can we give up? What can we stop doing?

Start, stop, eliminate.

Because we can't do anymore. So, so anyway, next slide.

Yep.

Okay, so this is a book people might want to read, although it's very dense, and I admittedly have read parts of it but not the whole thing. There's— but I want to just explain what this is and why this is important, because theory is informed by other theory. But again, why do we need theory? Like, everybody, oh, it's so theoretical, you don't need all that. What do you do when you don't have data? You have theory. And if you have good buckets, like she's— like you just heard Lisa say, these buckets: overwork, underwork, rework, workarounds. If you have good buckets, you'll be able to figure out a correct path. So Daniel Kahneman is a sociologist and psychologist, and he says that there's 2 systems for thinking in your head.

And the book she's referencing is Thinking Fast and Slow. Thinking Fast and Slow.

And it's a great book. You can get it on Audible. So if you have one of those long rides, but at any rate, the thing you want to know is there's System 1 thinking and System 2 thinking. What is System 1? Fast, unconscious. So what is that like? Start CPR. You know, no pulse, start CPR if you're a healthcare worker. The kid's vomiting. Okay, let's get them over to the— and clean it. Like, it's— you're just thinking, you're just acting. You know, oh, there's a dog running in front of my car, I'm going to hit the brake, and you train for that. System 2 thinking is rational thinking, so it takes effort, and it can be slow and lazy, and it can be indecisive. So there's advantages and disadvantages. But let's go apply it to this, this, to this. The reason why— another reason why the Sunday basket works is Because it is slow and deliberative. So for me as a nurse, start CPR. I've trained for that like a gajillion times since 1980. Like every year I get the training, right? Every 2 years I think it is now. It used to be every year. Where are my keys? You know, I always have a pocket that I put my medication keys in if I'm a nurse, or my car keys if I'm just— I have it. You have a landing zone for it. You've decided it. Uh, you have to re— the problem with fast reactive thinking is that you're always getting these adrenaline and cortisol rushes, and they can be very unpleasant, um, to experience. Um, but the Sunday basket is system 2. So is my CPR card up to date? Because if you're a nurse, you don't want to show up at the hospital and it's like your license isn't renewed, your CPR is not up to date, patients need you, and we can't put you on the floor because we don't have your license and your CPR card. Like— So you put that on your calendar and you schedule that license renewal. Is like, you have to— I have to schedule it at a time that I'm in the right mental frame of mind for that kind of work. Because it's hard. And if you make a mistake, the state board is very unforgiving. If you say, no, I didn't do my continuing ed, well, you made them— you clicked wrong. The state is very unforgiving. They're there to protect the people of the of your state at any rate, and they should do that. I'm not disrespecting it, but have you— the Sunday basket lets you pay bills regularly, so you're not like, oh my God, the electricity is going to be shut off. What if you can't afford it? Well, now you have some time to— maybe you can get your doctor to sign a form, maybe you can participate in a program that helps people with electric bills, but if you wait until the electricity shut off Nobody— like, now your refrigerator's out, you know, now all the food in your fridge is going to go bad. So the reason that this relates to it is because the slow deliberative thinking of the Sunday basket, that's what allows you to stop reacting and start being proactive. Did that make sense?

That's what I was exactly just gonna say, that that is proactive versus I think of fast as reactive. And as you were going through the fast and slow, I was like, oh, it's only like 1% or 5% are slow thinkers. I'm like, oh, I'm a slow thinker, but I don't think that means what I think, because I am always thinking about how do we make this better? How do we make this so it doesn't need to be done again?

You're not a slow thinker.

That's just me.

You are a slow thinker, but you react because you act. Do you know what I mean?

Like, everybody does both.

Everybody does both. Now, if you're only reacting and you're not being deliberative—

You're exhausted.

Well, yeah, you're exhausted. It's also not necessarily very helpful because you want to make sure you diagnose the situation correctly. Now, I'm speaking as a provider, like I have to make the right diagnosis, but you want to diagnose your problem. Like, I'm feeling tired all the time. I could go down the whole rabbit trail, System 1 thinking, maybe I have bone marrow cancer. Wait a minute, let's just dial back. Am I sleeping enough? Like, that's what I say to my patients. When do you put your phone down at night? Oh, I don't want to answer that question.

Right.

Because I'm being recorded. So it's like, okay, maybe I need a little of my own medicine. Right. And that's the slow deliberative thinking. Wait.

Yes.

React. Where can I get— where can I delegate this? I really am going to have to track it. Maybe I'll get an app. Oh, they're all too hard. Wait, maybe I just want a piece of paper and a pink slash pocket. Perfect. Found a PDF and downloaded it literally within 10 minutes. No, it was 20 because I spent too much time looking for an app. But within 20 minutes, I had solved the problem and I did it during Sunday basket time. So maybe I left a few other things like I haven't gone through my receipts, are a little backed up. They're not backed up for months. They're backed up for a month because I was trying to figure this out. So you balance this back and forth, but this is just another theory that supports using the Sunday basket. And I'm saying Sunday basket, but are you sitting down and going through your personal— the business side of your life systematically once a week? Are you getting your bills paid? Are you solving your personal problems? Are you reaching out to friends and scheduling time to get together with them? I mean, that's another thing I do during Sunday basket time. How do you think, like, Like, can we go out to dinner? Like, people often respond on Sunday evenings when I say, hey, you know, what are you doing on Friday? They're ready to think about Friday on Sunday. You know, the world's changed. Next slide.

Yep.

Okay, so this was just me playing around a little bit thinking about the different activities of daily living and housework, and I was trying to learn from you. I know what the ADLs are, but It's, uh, just something that I've been thinking about more.

And so when I created the definition of housework of cleaning, maintenance, organization, and tasks of daily living, I created tasks of daily living so that we could separate out and give different language to the primary things we do every single week inside of the housework, which are cleaning and tasks of daily living. And my definition of The difference between the two was, is this housework related to the dwelling that you're in, or is this housework related to the person? And as a middle-aged woman, my fellow middle-aged women friends, I mean, a lot of them are getting divorced. And I'm like, what is going on? I mean, like, you make it through the parenting years, but then you get divorced. Like, I don't understand. I mean, I do understand it, but I don't understand it. And what I realized was Um, for reasons of convenience and productivity, in many families where there are 2 adults, the decision is made that one person will take on the housework responsibilities. And along the way, as you get a little bit older, you can have— sometimes your kids will help with cleaning, or you will outsource cleaning to a cleaning company, which is pretty easy to do. It costs money, but it's not a lot of money. But there's still this other housework, and I think that once you hire a housekeeper In your 40s and 50s, the assumption is for the adults in the house is that the housework should be gone, especially if the children are of adult age and are no longer living in the home. So just like, just through observation, 2 people are cohabitating for their life. They raise children and they get it. They're both active in their jobs now, so they have a little bit more disposable income. They decide to have someone help with the housework, so the house is actually cleaned each week. What are you talking about? There's still work to do. And this work that is left to do is the tasks of daily living, which follow you on vacation or through your entire life, whether you own the dwelling you're in or not, which is your laundry, the meal planning, all of the meals that you make. And the other distinction I was making on this was, is this something like if the government were to step in and support this family because These needs were not being met, it's 2 different departments that would help you. If your house is not clean enough to be inhabited in, then literally the state will take your children away because the house is not clean, and that is something that cleaning company can do. But if you personally are a person who is not able to care for yourself in your laundry and your finances, you know, understanding of money, And in your, um, doing your cooking and feeding yourself, then that is a Social Security disability definition. And I know of this because I have friends who have kids who have special needs that qualify for adult services. So that was my understanding of how I came up with this. As soon as I said it, Jackie, you and all your fellow medical friends said ADLs. And I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about. I called it tasks of daily living because I was looking at the problem As a middle-aged woman who's watching all of her friends get divorced because they basically said, my husband is now a kid and they want me to do all of the things that are not even related to cleaning. And I was trying to articulate that and trying to give voice to that. Apparently, this ADL thing is well known in the whole medical community and all the supportive community of your tasks, your activities of daily living, tasks of daily living, activities of daily living. So, you've got a little chart here. And I find this interesting how you've divided this out. You have activities of daily living that we learned before kindergarten, and then activities of daily living that we learn as a teenager. And having a lot of Organized 365 employees in their early 20s who've gone through the Launch program and have a Launch binder, they have all said to me, oh my gosh, this is everything that I need to know about hashtag adulting that I didn't know to ask my parents. And they didn't know to teach me. So we both knew there was a gap, but we had no idea what the gap was. So if you want to read your chart.

So just to explain, so activities, the things you learn how to do before kindergarten, one of them is walking. Turns out that that's a really good vital sign. Once you've learned how to walk, 12 months, 15 months, somewhere around there, for the rest of your life, it's a good vital sign. Like how people are doing. Can you feed yourself? Can you get yourself dressed? Can you take yourself to the bathroom? Can you clean yourself and transfer? It's very useful to have these concepts if you're managing an older person. And this is why I created this slide. It tangentially relates to the rest of the presentation if you're watching, but I was just like taking, you know, when you're caring for someone who's elderly or her, for whatever reason, has had a medical event and they're no longer as independent as they were. Knowing how to say these words like, I don't think mom is bathing well enough. That actually, like, that rings the bells of the people who are taking care of your elderly parent. But the instrumental activities of daily living, and these don't relate to each other. Again, this was my way of trying to learn the term, just organize the terms. So maybe there's a better way to put this, but managing finances. I didn't even realize that I was taking that over from my parents. And that was huge. That was when I became the CEO of the, like, the chief operating officer of the family, managing my mom's transportation. And so that's where you can get into the overwork and underwork. Turns out you can hire people to do transportation for the elder— for the elderly. Just saying you can. And, you know, even if you don't want to do Uber because you're sort of like, I don't know about my mom in an Uber, so I'll just do it myself. There's other transportation, shopping and meal preparation. I think many of us have gone to companies and outsourced that. I certainly do. I have somebody bring the groceries. It saves— that's where I get my Sunday basket time, so that whatever fee I pay for that, I more than make it back with the Sunday basket. House cleaning and home maintenance. You can hire a janitor or a handyman. Or you do it yourself, but somebody's going to have to manage that whole process. Oh, this is broken. Okay, it's broken. Who do we call to fix it? And then managing your communication, like, can you answer the phone? Can you answer the answering machine if you still have one? Mail, regular mail, email. I got to a situation where my mom really couldn't manage her mail anymore. Picking that up for someone else and being able to describe what you're doing really helps. Because if you're going to hire help for a situation like that, you either have to give yourself credit for it or hire it out. That's the only way I can. And managing meds, you know, there, you can actually talk to pharmacists about this. There's all kinds of pharmacists are really smart, just saying they're like, I would say the most outside of the hospital, the most undervalued member of the health profession, because they know so much about meds.

Yeah.

Back to that asthma analogy, and change pharmacies if you're having a problem. Sometimes the pharmacist, like, you'll get a pharmacist who's like, they know everything. Like, I don't know, when I get a new med, I talk to the pharmacist. You're like, you're a nurse, you're supposed to know. I don't know nothing. The pharmacists know everything. So anyway, back to all these activities. And I, you know, now that I'm looking back on taking this on for aging parents, who had diminishing capacity. Boy, I was doing a lot of this.

Yes.

And did I give myself credit for any of that? No. It's really hard to do this for an adult. For a kid, really easy to do. You're the boss. I wasn't the boss.

Well, and I like that you, you pulled it out as your role as it grew, as you took on more and more responsibility of your parents. When I look at these activities of daily living for children, walking, eating, dressing, grooming, toileting, like You can't get your kid in all-day kindergarten until they can go to the bathroom. So parents are really motivated to potty train their kids. I mean, for more reasons than one.

Oh, I guess so.

But you know, if you wanna get 'em into that program and you're going to a pediatrician on a regular basis for your checkups and all these things, like we do this really well for our kids and they're noticing like, oh, we're a little behind on this. Here are some supports in the community that will help you get these activities of daily living that you basically need in order to start kindergarten. What I see on this slide is that all of these tasks of daily living that we learn in our teenage years, we don't all learn them, Jackie. And this is why these hashtag adulting skills, especially— I'm a helicopter parent. Come on, I'm a helicopter parent. I do. I am still teaching these skills to my kids very purposefully. Where is the curriculum? The parents are given of the tasks that their kids need to know when they finally leave the nest. And also, when the kids need to learn these skills, they are so interested in their own lives and moving on to their next thing. They don't want to spend like extra hours with their parents in school. And also, those same parents are usually dual income or moving on to what their unique life purpose is. Because they've spent these years investing in their family and their kids are starting to be more independent and the parents are starting to enjoy some of this independence for themselves. So they're not going to arbitrarily pull their kids back and start to put them in school when everybody's kind of leaving the nest. Really, these things that you learn as teenagers, if we can learn them at 14, 15, 16, is the ideal learning time. They aren't mobile enough because they can't drive and you're driving them everywhere anyway. So, why don't you have some of these conversations while you're in the car and when they're receptive to learning them? But if they are not purposely taught, they are not always caught. If you do not purposely teach—

That's exactly right.

And they're not always caught, and they impact your entire life, your entire life.

That's exactly right. And also too, many times what you see happening in elderly people is they start losing these. If they— my mother never managed finances. I'm not dissing my mom, God knows, but my father was a CPA for 50 years. He was really better at everything. Just saying he was better, smarter, faster, more efficient. And if he was your husband, you would've let him do it too, because he was better at it. Right. I mean, he had a CPA who— and he kind of had a knack for personal finance, which is a little different than tax preparation. Like, he was interested in it. So, you might not do that in terms of managing your transportation. It's very hard if you go from being able to drive, then you're injured or you suffer an illness. Now you can't do it. Like, that's really hard. So when you're coming in, it, it's just very helpful for me. And the reason I developed this slide for those who are watching is I really needed to see it, see the information and manipulate it. This is how I learn. Because it was like, that's why I was struggling. Yeah.

Yeah.

Managing this. It was like, it was all these things all at once on me because They had both been in the ICU at the same time. That was the stress that probably triggered an autoimmune disease. There's, there's a theory about that too. It's not proven, but there's a theory about that too. But at any rate, managing all this stuff is very difficult. And I think it helps, like you said, to have names for things and have definitions.

Mm-hmm.

Because if you go to the doctor and you go, she can't do stuff, it's like, wait, wait, wait, what can't she do? Well, she was never able to manage finance. She's having trouble managing transportation 'cause she thinks it's the 31st of the month when it's the 1st.

Oh.

Now the shopping and meal preparation, we've automated that. The house cleaning, we've managed that. But the problem with the mail is that she's putting it in little plastic bags. So it's difficult for me to find live checks because they're in trash bags. So I have her like, and then managing her medication. So I'm finding her pill bottle. Then you can go and talk to the pharmacist about that. So you're able to kind of go down down the list because it's emotional. It sounds like it's really calm when we're talking now. We're in system 2 thinking. We're calm, we're logical, we're organized. But when it's your mom and it's like, I'm telling you what to do, like it's really uncomfortable.

Like, and I think you mentioned her putting paper in little plastic bags. I am telling you, in almost every situation when I was an in-home professional organizer and we were dealing with someone who was coming to the end of their life, The mail just starts piling up and it doesn't get opened and it becomes very overwhelming. It's not a sign that people normally look to or think about, and usually find it either towards the end or after the fact. You're like, oh my gosh, there's 6 months worth of mail here that is unopened. It is another sign that there needs to be more support for that person.

Exactly. And you know, this is where Organized 365 came in because I found my mom a red basket. This is before As you were developing the Sunday Basket program, I found it at one of the big craft stores, and it took months of saying, Mom, put it in the basket. She finally put the thing in the basket. And then what I was able to do a little at a time was turn off some of the mail, the junk mail, because the junk mail was getting mixed in with the important mail.

Yes.

And I was able to do that again through the application of the Sunday Basket system for my mom.

Yes.

Decreasing the amount of junk that came in. You know, there's something she liked seeing, but you know, all these companies that want you to donate to them, like, oh my God, right? Stop it, stop it. We donate who we donate to, and like, just the extra mail just is crazy. So it's very useful to kind of have some— how do I say it— didactic content, meaning this is what we're doing. It's like we, we've explained a system, we've explained names and definitions. That's didactic. You got a little class. That's what this is, a little class. And now, you know, when you take care of somebody who's elderly, these are the kinds of things that you're taking on. And like the medication management thing, that turns out the pharmacists are all over that. Like, I wouldn't even try to take that on. I was trying to do that. Oh, in retrospect, that was like dumb. I should have delegated that.

I'll give you, um, we use the Hero. It's H-E-R-O. It's like this machine. It looks like a little space-age machine. It's like this, a little bit bigger than a Keurig. It's pretty big. And you can put 10 pills in there, 10 different pills, and then it automatically dispenses that at the right time into a cup. And you just take the pills and put the little cup back, and it will text the person who is supposed to take the pills if there's anything missed. But it will also text you as the—

Wow.

Caretaker if you need. And it's, it is, there's, there's an expense to it. It's an HSA fee. But it is a way to— it works for teenagers becoming independent and in charge of their own medication. And it also works for adults. Yeah, it's great. I've really liked it. Hero, H-E-R-O.

And so, and then when you come to a— if you take it upon yourself to learn about organization like you have, and like I have come to, then you have a forum like in the Organized 365 community, To say, okay, tell me how I'm going to do this, because now I have this. Other than without this information, you feel like you're in a hot mess, and it becomes very difficult to get past the adrenaline and cortisol, like, because you're just flooded. You're just flooded all the time.

Yes.

And there's not no perfect way to manage it, but if I had realized that I needed to do the Sunday basket sooner, That would have helped me some. So implementing a Sunday basket can be— and a binder. Oh, and that empowered mom. I had a binder for her, like one household operations binder, and I kept a mirror copy at home. And you're like, why did you do that? Because she wanted to be involved in everything. Well, she's a grown-up, it's her stuff.

Yeah.

And then that way I'm like, mom, it's in the red tab, the 3rd page, let's look at that. And then—

You had an exact duplicate at home?

I did.

I mean, that is brilliant.

I made a duplicate because the problem was she lived 25 minutes with no traffic, 30 minutes with traffic away. Yeah, which isn't so far away, right? It's probably, I don't know, 7 miles. But you know, if you're in a suburb of Philadelphia, it can take a while.

Yeah.

And like, I just didn't have the time to do what I needed to do at my own house and go to her house and open the binder and go to the 3rd page. So it was easier. Because again, she knew she wanted to do stuff. So it promoted her independence. And it just helped me— like, again, I was the COO, she was the CEO, she was the boss. Like, I couldn't take over even though I didn't agree with a lot of this stuff.

It's like— So if you want to see this happening in real time, Tracy Baker is on Instagram. She has Sunday Basket, she got Sunday Basket for her mom. She's just now starting The Productive Home Solution. She shares in her Instagram stories going through the Sunday basket with her mom every week. I share it often into my feed because she tags me and Tracy does such a great example, a great demonstration of what you do in the Sunday basket. But she, if you've been watching me on Instagram, then you have seen her mom from being very resistant and very negative about the Sunday basket to now almost joking with her as she's getting older. And it is a way that Tracy is able to keep up with what is going on and is important, but her mom does all of the work and her mom is still in control of her own life with Tracy just playing a support role and Tracy also knowing where to be able to find things. I think it's just a beautiful example of, you know, roles starting to reverse, and it is going to happen to all of us. And the second point I want to make is people always say, when are you gonna make this digital? How do I make it digital? You know, digitize it all you want, like pick whatever program you like, find some person. I don't— paper is so powerful and eases communication. I love that you duplicated the binder because I don't care what kind of digital system you had, I'm sure your mom was not going to be Like Greg already is like, why do I have to have a smartphone? He's only 55. Like, he doesn't want me to digitize anything. He wants to go to a binder, find the paper, pull it out, put it back. Digital systems are great for personal organization or personal portability, or if you're a digitally minded person. But when you're dealing with people younger or older or professional people, they much prefer to receive the inner information in paper for the conversation. They may want you to submit it digitally later so it can go into a digital file, fine. But when you're having a conversation and you're trying to make an impact, or you're trying to make a decision, or you're trying to get something done, paper trumps digital every time and twice on Sunday. Like, I will just keep saying it for those that have heard me in the back. Can I give you an example of that? Yes.

So I went to the doctor and my blood pressure is imperfect but not treatable. So the instruction was take your blood pressure. Well, I have reminders and I have it on my calendar of when to do it. So at any rate, I'm digital. I know how to do this. I, you know, have an app on my phone. I keep notes. I put it in the notes. I can email it to myself and it prints it and I can get a printout, upload it to the electronic health record of my doctor's office, send him a message 2 days ahead. Why did I do that? Because it's part of my Sunday basket routine. Oh, seeing the doctor this week. He's going to want to know my blood pressure. So I show up with a printout of the same thing. And let me just explain something. It changes the conversation.

Yes.

From me being sort of like an annoying nurse.

You go, Jackie.

It changed the conversation. I am now treated with professional respect. And he goes, oh, it turns out I don't need this because you sent it to me. Let me just tell you what happened to the doctor over this last year. He learned how to use his EMR better because I did the same thing last year. And he couldn't figure out how to pull it from where my message was to into where he needed to see it. He figured it out this year, or somebody else did. But at any rate, I took my little piece of paper back. Now I know doctor can do it himself. But because I had that paper, it just— I'm just explaining, it changes the conversation. Go into— if you do this whole All Access and you have your medical binder, there is Like a piece of paper in there. Now I changed it to me because this is part of my OCD. All right. I have to have my own little form, but I literally do a form for every visit. And I think about it during Sunday basket time. What are my questions? What refills do I need? All the things that way I can tell the assistant who's prepping me and I get everything done. I walk out with everything I need. My visits are short. They're sweet. What do I need to bring? What does doctor need from me? I can't just go, oh, my blood pressure must be fine.

We all want that form now, so you're gonna have to send it to me.

I'll send you my form, but you have one that's like it. It just— this one works better for me because I have a lot of questions, and I don't really care— forgive me, I don't care as much about the background information as I do about the diagnosis, the treatment plan, and the rationale for it. So I'll mail it to you.

Okay, so I, I just need to clarify for everyone. So you are a medical professional who, who has a lot more knowledge than laypeople. In the medical binder, we have you write out your medical history. The reason why we have you write out your medical history is because every new doctor is going to want to know it, and if you can write it out comprehensively once, then you can use it over and over again. You don't have to keep rewriting it. Also, your adult children do not know their medical history. You need to write it for them or explain it to them so that they can write it out. So that, that's really important, but that's— That's almost a one and done unless you have a lot of, uh, life events happen and then you update it. But I love your idea of— we have a place where you can write down when you visited the doctor. But you're right, I did create a form when my kids were going to so many doctors where I would write out all the questions I had, and then I literally sat there, wrote the answers as they had it, and I had a list of the prescriptions that I wanted to refill. That would be a great addition for us.

I'll be glad to send it to you. It's not a problem. But again, I did it for for me, and it helped me with my mom's stuff just to stay organized.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

The other thing I did was, you already have a form. I have a form too that's a little shorter than your form. It— I— what helped me and changed the conversation for my mom during that final admission, but for many of her admissions, is they, you know, you'd show up in the emergency room and she would be like, oh, I take a lot of medication. And then, you know, you just see the staff, their heads are like exploding. There's brains all over the ceiling of the emergency room, and it's the healthcare provider's brains, right? And I would come in with my little form, the daughter in charge.

Yep.

Right. And I would go, these are the meds, they're alphabetized by generic name. And they would just went, yes, there's 20 of them. You did this. Thank you so much. They listened to me then. Yes, they listened to me.

But you know why paper is powerful? And I just realized it is because of your presentation. Jackie, do you know what we do when we bring in those forms? To our appointments, we eliminate overwork, underwork, and we create systems. Yes! Oh my gosh!

That's why we do it.

That's why there's a so you're like congratulations. My doctor knows how to use this EMR, and all I'm thinking is your doctor shouldn't need to know how to use the EMR. The doctor's purpose in the visit is to analyze, observe. and diagnose, not to know how to use email and find things. So when you present a piece of paper, even if it is in your electronic chart, then they can do what is their highest value and their unique purpose, which is observe, analyze, and diagnose. And it happens so much faster because you're not requiring them to do overwork, underwork, and rework in their own system, which is a a hindrance of the hospital system, you're not worrying about the hospital system. You're just bypassing them entirely and being like, here's all the information you need. Use all your brainpower, please, on me and my diagnosis. Great. We've got it. Figure out how your system works. We don't care, but I got what I need. I'm moving on to my next thing. That's what we do, Jackie.

Yeah, we did it.

We did it.

We did it. We did it.

We did it.

So thank you for having me. You've saved me So many hours. Like, I get to sleep more because of you. I get to like go to concerts because I'm not overwhelmed at the end of the day. It's like, oh, I have a routine. I'm good. I'm gonna have— I'm gonna go to an outdoor concert. That's what's comfortable to me. Outdoor concerts. No judgment. I don't judge people who do indoors. Don't judge me if I go outdoors. But you can do the things that are pleasant and refill you. Because I have this system, I can plan for it. I planned family gatherings around this. When we were locked down, I was able to plan Zoom meetings and keep us together. And now, you know, people are able to get together and it's like— so you can use this system for many things. The thing that I need to get better at is using this at work. I'm seeing as a result of this conversation, because I got this organized. I gave my boss your book. She loves it, by the way. Remember how you had to buy like a whole bunch of books to get something? I forget, but I ended up with, you know, I have it on Audible, I have it on digital, I reread it periodically, and I gave her one of my copies. And she's like, we need to do this. I actually started using Microsoft Teams, and I haven't quite figured out how to totally make it fit with the Workbox, but that's helped us because I'm thinking in this way.

Yes.

I was able to use Teams and use a group calendar. So it's a work in progress in healthcare because there are so many of these no correct paths that come my way. Do you know what I mean? So yeah, but thank you for having me. This is—

this has just been so great. And then I'm also like, I'm also extending an invitation. The Organized 365 community, you guys are like amazing. You are amazing. You're so generous and thoughtful and collaborative and helping. And I, I am more than willing and happy and able to, to find out how these theories and systems that I'm creating over here now in an actual office— used to be my bedroom— really do dovetail into theories and industries and thought processes that are already well established in Places I don't even know, just like Jackie has done through this presentation. Just let me know if you have something you want to share. And then the— also the other thing I'm thinking, which is totally random, so just be aware of that. As you're talking, Jackie, about how you're doing your research and like how this research ties into that research ties into that research, like we are not currently doing research in Organize 365, but I really feel like that research part of Organized 365 is going to carry on in a different way. I just don't know what that is. And I would love to be a part of research that is already going on in these different modalities where organization— Organized 365 might be a good fit, or the way I think about something might be a good fit. Because I think that there is value in the work that Organized 365 is doing and the lens of the The homeowner or housework that we see it through that is not really represented in a lot of research that is done. Most research is done in schools and in businesses, but not from housework unless it's done by a consumer brand, which again has its own lens of selling a product versus just the actual work. So invitations extended, lisa@organized365.com. Just know that sometimes it could take me years to actually schedule that or for that to work into what we're doing in Organize 365. But I just like, I just like to know what's out there. Some of you have contacted me and you're in these pink slash buckets for future. And, um, yeah, I just want to see what can come out of the collaborations. Anything else you want to share, Jackie?

I'll see you at Embrace.

Ah, yay! Well, this will air after, but, um, by the time this airs, you guys will all know that you can now get Embrace on demand. And my dream for Embrace is that Small groups will do Embrace on demand and continue to find what they are uniquely created to do. Because Jackie, like, I just love you. Your Wednesday podcast just re-aired. Like, there, there's a lot that you have been through in the last few years, and for you to say that you're sleeping better and that you have time to go to these concerts, like, it just warms my heart because that, that's the whole goal of Organized 365. I'm a nerd and a teacher, and I just want to keep talking to people and learning. But the whole point of Organized 365 is not that. It's that you get this overwork, underwork, rework, and no systems problem solved so that you have more time to do what you are uniquely created to do and gift the world with that. So thank you, Jackie, for taking the time to make this presentation for us and recording this. Uh, we're going to have this in a 2-part podcast series. I just love it so much. Thanks, Jackie.

Thank you, Lisa.