Organize 365 Podcast Episode 147 - Getting Organized Step 3: Increase Productivity

This episode is brought to you by my virtual organizing sessions. Would you like me to help you get your home and life organized? Listen at the end of this podcast to find out how to sign up for virtual organizing sessions, or go to organize365.com/virtual to learn more. Welcome to the Organize 365 Podcast. My name is Lisa Woodruff, and I'm a professional organizer and blogger in Cincinnati, Ohio. I want to help you get your home organized and help you organize life stages and unexpected events. So sit back, relax, and let's get organized. I cannot even tell you how excited I was over winter break when I realized that productivity ties in with decluttering and organizing, and this is the magic piece that is missing when you get decluttered and you get organized. You're like, it just doesn't feel like it's all the way done. This is the frosting on the cake. This is the cherry on top. This is step 3 in getting organized, which is increasing your productivity. Now, in my mind, sometimes decluttering and organizing is separated, but often they blend. You know, people who talk about decluttering talk about organizing. People who talk about organizing mention decluttering. Usually you specialize in one or the other, but you almost always talk about both. So the idea that you have to declutter before you organize and that they go together was probably not a brand new revelation for you. But when I think about being productive and, and being organized in that way with my schedule, with my time, with my business, It's almost always an intellectual or paper and pencil type activity, and I don't equate it to decluttering and organizing, which I usually equate to my closet in my home. However, in my home, when I declutter my closet and my kitchen, it does increase productivity. And when I do the same in my intellectual pursuits with my increasing productivity, I have to declutter and organize first, but it is more of a mental event and not a physical event. When I realized that these, these situations were more common and more similar than I had thought before, it's like a big light bulb went off. So as I go through this podcast, I'm hoping the same thing happens for you. Definitely let me know. You know, you can join our free Facebook group by going to organize365.com/facebook and interact with me there. And let me know what you thought about the podcast. So let's start like we did with the other 2 podcasts, and what do you think of when you think of productivity? Remember last week when I said that when I'm organized, I feel like I can make forward progress on my goals and my projects? For me, productivity means doing more, usually In less time, or more importantly, with less resistance. So if you break down the 3 steps in getting organized and match them with what you're doing, step 1 is decluttering, which means you're removing things. Step 2 is organizing, which means you're rearranging what you have left. And step 3 is increasing productivity, which means moving forward. Forward faster. It's like you're putting the gas on the situation and making everything go forward faster. Let's specifically look at increasing productivity. And I told you before that comes from thinking and planning. Now there is no way to credit who originally came up with this, but every minute you plan saves you 4 to 5 minutes In executing our plan. I know that's true. You know that's true. When you take the time to make the plan, everything goes smoother, gets done faster. So planning equals time saved. While I know it may be hard to find time to plan your day, your meals, or your vacation, you know that when you do, everything goes easier and faster. So the last podcast I talked about the book The One Thing, and planning is the one thing that will make everything either easier or not even need to be done. So productivity has a lot to do with planning. Now, once you realize that this productivity and this planning can be in every area and facet of your life, I'm going to share with you what that looks like to increase your productivity in your master closet, in your kitchen, in your schedule, and in your Sunday basket. But once again, I have one caution. To be most effective, you need to have decluttered and organized the area you want to increase productivity in. These steps do need to be done in order. And this was the big aha that hit me over winter break. So often people want to increase their productivity and move faster when they haven't taken the time to declutter or organize whatever it is they want to be more productive doing. And I think why is because often when you think, I want to be more productive in my work, and you work on a computer all day long, you don't think about, well, that means that I probably should clean up my computer desktop, my email, and all of the bookmark bars in my Chrome browser. But when you do that, all of a sudden you're much more productive in your work. And so often when we think about being productive in work, we think about it in the 9 to 5 aspect, whether or not we work in a 9 to 5 office, because that's just where our mind goes when we say work. We think 9 to 5, work the entire time. And in my experience, I have yet to go into a corporation or meet with a vice president or anyone who works in a 9 to 5 job where they have and feel they have the ability to take a block of time just for planning in their day. So for example, anyone I have ever worked with in any corporation, when I say you should take from 2 to 5 o'clock on Friday and just go through your email, plan your next week, finish up projects, they're like, oh my gosh, I can't do that. Like, I can't do that. Why? Why can't you do that? And sometimes this is the owner of the business. Like, it's not like there's somebody telling them they can't do it, or it's a VP-level person. And they're like, well, I need to do, I need to do that not during 9 to 5. I have to do that other times. Well, fine. If you want to stay after, you can do that that way. But I am telling you that if you take from 2 to 5 on Friday, or just start 4 to 5 and gradually get it to be a bigger chunk of time, every minute you spend in that Finishing out projects, following up with emails, and planning your week for the next week. That 3 hours on Friday, when I do that, it sets up my entire next Monday through Thursday of the next week. I, I am ridiculously productive. I'm a productivity nut. I get so much done. People, you know, the Army says we get more done by 9 AM than most people get done all day. I am not in the Army, but I do it like I'm productive in my relaxing. So I think I've already told this joke. When I went out to dinner with my college friends, we got there and they're all looking at their menus and the waitress comes and I said, I'd like fried rice. And everybody's like, fried rice isn't even on the menu. I said, I know, I asked when I got here and I knew they made it and that's what I want. And so everybody's figuring out what they want to order to drink and again I ordered something not even on the menu. I said, I know, when I got here I asked if They make my favorite drink, and they do. So they brought it out. So when I got to that restaurant, I knew what I wanted to eat, I knew what I wanted to drink. As soon as I walked in, I said, do you have this? Do you have this? They said, yep. I said, great. I sat down. My friends, who I hadn't seen for 20 years, were spending anywhere from 2 minutes to 10 minutes looking at this menu trying to figure out what they wanted to eat, and I got to spend all of that time socializing and, you know, catching up with my friends. I was productive. Even when I was out to eat with my friends, because I didn't wanna lose any of my socializing time trying to figure out what I wanna eat. Now, we all know food is not really my thing, so it's not a big loss if I don't get a great meal or anything. But in everything you do, there is a way to increase your productivity, and I can just see it. Like, I'm able to see more productive solutions in everything. So let's get into the 5 steps To increased productivity. So I'm gonna go through the 5 steps, I'll explain them, and then I'm going to apply those here to the 4 areas we've been talking about in the last 2 weeks. So 10 steps to increase productivity. Number 1, use the organized system. Number 2, plan. Number 3, refine and reorder. Number 4, Evaluate and maintain. And number 5, execute. So number 1, use the organized system. This is where a lot of people get frustrated when they very first want to get organized and they think organizing is just about cute containers and they go to the Target organization aisle or The Container Store or IKEA or wherever you get your favorite cute baskets, bins, and labels and they spend a couple hundred dollars And they come home and they totally tear apart some bookshelf or closet or pantry and they put everything in these cute containers and they label them and they shut the door and they haven't necessarily gone through the decluttering step or they haven't really thought about what's gonna work best for their family. They just wanna use these really fun containers, right? So they get it all done, but then they don't use the system because the system that they set up, which was adorable in the store, Doesn't work for their lifestyle or their family. So you need to use the system that you set up. And remember, I told you, you're never gonna get your organizational system done 100% correctly the first time you do it. This is where you do a little bit of tweaking. So if you realize that you bought these adorable matching black bins for your pantry that have little chalkboard labels on the front, and you wrote on the chalkboard what was in each of the little black bins, and you're on week 3 of using the pantry, And it's a hot mess because now you realize you should have gotten clear bins. It doesn't matter if you write it in chalk on the little chalkboard, then that gets smudged or you change what was going to be in that bin and you couldn't see there was only one cereal bar left and you have 2 kids and now it's 8 AM and you don't have 2 cereal bars because they were in a black bin. So that system needs to be changed. But once you have a system that works, You need to use the system. So if you put in a system that didn't work, you don't go all the way back to decluttering, you just go back to that organization, go through those steps again, and make a system that's going to work. So use the organizing system. Number 2 is to plan. Number 3 is to refine and reorder. Like I just told you, that system didn't work, so we have to refine, reorder, go back to organizing and using that plan. Evaluate and maintain. So if you put all of the cereal bars in a clear box and that's working, a clear shoebox for a dollar in your pantry and that's working, then make sure when you go to the grocery store and you buy 3 more boxes of cereal bars, when you empty the groceries you take the cereal bars out of the boxes and just put the cereal bars in the shoebox, not the box of cereal bars. See how that's not going to work? So that's your Evaluating and maintaining, and then execute, which means do. How often do we come up with this great plan? Like, I am like the worst offender. If I want to sit down and plan, the first thing I want to do is go to an office supply store and get some fun pens and a nice new legal pad. And let's get out colorful Post-it notes and let's put all of our to-dos on Post-it notes and let's put them on the wall. Okay, let's rearrange them by day. Let's rearrange them by time. But you have to do it. Like, you have to execute. Part of being productive is doing. And the more you increase your productivity, the faster you're going to go through these 5 steps. So let's evaluate this in all 4 areas, starting with the Sunday basket. So step 1 is to use the system, which for the Sunday basket means every Sunday, go through the basket. If you don't do it every single Sunday, then the system isn't going to work. So use the system every Sunday. Number 2 is to plan your week. Last week I told you you could get a printable. I'll have it in the show notes for this episode also. I have a weekly planner printable that you can print out even if you use a digital calendar. I love to plan out my week on paper so I can see where I have time blocks and where I have too much scheduled in one day. So step 2 is Plan. Step 3 is refine and reorder. So if you're using the Sunday Basket, you already know this. You went through the Sunday Basket on Sunday, you planned your week, and then you naturally refine and reorder. So refining and reordering in the Sunday Basket means realizing you're never going to read that article, so you just throw it away or recycle it, and maintaining the slash pockets that you have. So you Put in new slash pockets because a new event has come up that didn't have a slash pocket before, or an old event has ended, so you take that slash pocket out, or you consolidate. So that's your refine and reorder, and that's also your evaluate and maintain too for the Sunday basket. And step 5 is execute, so do the plan that you made. So let's talk about this in some areas where you wouldn't normally think about productivity, which will be your closet And then in your kitchen. So in your closet, if you've put in a system and you've organized your clothes, you think you're done, right? Well, the productivity part about having an organized closet is being able to wear the clothes that you want every week and have everything available. So number one, you're gonna use the organizational system in the closet that you've set up. If you've put in a shoe wall, if you switched— Swapped places where you and your spouse are having clothes, If you've reorganized the kids' closet, there's gonna take some time to get used to using that new system. Step 2 is to plan. Well, planning is now planning out your weekly outfits. Maybe the night before now, you make sure you have everything that you need, or you plan out what you're gonna wear for the whole week. Step 3 is to refine and reorder. So refining and reordering for me is realizing, you know what, I haven't worn that necklace in a whole year, And I'm probably not going to wear it. Abby, do you want this necklace or I donate it? So I am constantly putting things in the donating pile, probably one thing a week. It's not an event to declutter my closet anymore, I just naturally do it over time. The other refining and reordering thing that happens in the closet is the one in, one out rule. Now I don't follow this 100%, but the idea is that if you buy a new pair of shoes, an old pair of shoes has to go. I don't always do that because I don't have a lot of clothes, so I could buy 5 sweaters and only get rid of 1 sweater, or I could buy 2 pairs of shoes and only get rid of 1 pair of shoes, or I might not get rid of any pairs of shoes. But the more you can get rid of as you bring in, then your system will be maintained because it will not get overstuffed. Number 4 is to evaluate And maintain. So in the closet, to evaluate and maintain is to make sure, okay, it is the change of the seasons. For sure twice a year, usually 4 times a year, I look at my closet as each of the seasons come and go and I move around what's in there. So I move the summer to the bottom and the winter to the top. And here in Ohio, I'm always cold. I keep my house set at 72, so that tells you I'm always cold. I pretty much wear summer clothes for about 5 months of the year and winter clothes for about 7 months of the year. And then there are these 2 to 3 weeks in the spring, usually only 1 week in the spring, and then usually maybe 3 to 4 weeks in the fall where I don't wear summer clothes or winter clothes and I wear like a long sleeve shirt with no jacket, which is like almost never. Or I like these little 3/4 inch shirts. So I have this really tiny fall wardrobe and really tiny spring wardrobe, but pretty much I just have a winter and summer wardrobe. So twice a year I move the clothing that is most prominent to the top shelf where I can see it. And then for spring and fall, I move on that rod where those quarter-length sleeves are that I like on the rod. So that's your evaluating and maintaining. Like every once in a while you spend an hour or 2 and move stuff around in there. And when I do that, when I notice, oh, we're in the fall weather, or oh, we're moving to summer weather, that's when I look and I go, oh, that's right, none of those shorts fit last year and I only have 2 jean shorts or whatever I have. I need to go buy XYZ. This is when you would go and add more things to your closet. Let's look at the kitchen. Now this is where I really got the aha moment because you would think naturally that that makes sense with the clothing. That totally made sense. Well, how can you be more productive in the kitchen? Because whenever I think about organizing the kitchen, I think about dishes and utensils, and I mean, how are you going to be more productive in that? You're just not. However, when I really thought about the purpose of the kitchen, the purpose of the kitchen is to provide food for the family. Well, we can definitely get more productive in how we provide food to the family. So here's the productivity part. that comes after your kitchen is organized. Number 1 is to use the organized system. So like I said before, make sure that the systems that you put in place are working. As far as productivity goes, one of the systems we haven't talked about in organizing a kitchen is having a good grocery list and a system for getting food into your house. So the organized system would be making the grocery list and the meal plan. Which is also part 2, to plan. Our family's not great at this. This is our goal for 2017. We're good at the grocery store because Greg does it and he's fun, so he brings home fun foods. So the system was Greg goes to the grocery store, he brings home fun foods, we have food to eat, and everybody likes it because he's fun. Now we're gonna add in step 2, which is planning. And the planning part that actually got done in 2016 was when Greg would make his grocery list, He would check for coupons. I cut coupons and we have coupons mailed to us, so he would add coupons to the grocery store probably 75% of the time. Pretty good, that's pretty good planning. This year we're also planning our meals, which will save us a little bit more money and it will help us not have to have very much waste, although we don't have very much waste as it is. Step 3 is to refine and reorder. So this is using up your pantry items, especially that are seasonal. So in the summer I love to eat fruit, but in the winter, I mean, I eat it, it's just not as enjoyable and a lot more of it spoils. Or in the summer we do a lot of grilling, so we have a lot of sauces and things that Greg can marinate the meat in, but we don't need a lot of marinades in the wintertime. And the kids eat macaroni and cheese like crazy in the wintertime. But we don't buy that as much in the summer. So refining and reordering, as far as it goes to pantry, this is something I just realized a few years ago was the seasonality of food. Maybe you already do this because you like food, but I really, I would go to the grocery store every single week and buy the same things all the time. And Greg also. And now that we finally realized, oh, you know, we only eat bananas in these certain months, or obviously we're only going to eat canned pumpkin in November and December pretty much. So making our grocery list and our meal plan match the kind of foods that we like to eat based on the seasons really helps save us money and space in our kitchen. Evaluating and maintaining, which is step 4, that's cleaning out the pantry, cleaning out the refrigerator. We glance at the refrigerator probably, well, definitely every week when we take out the trash, but we actually clean out the refrigerator probably once a month. I do it and Greg Loves it every time I do it. He's like, oh, it looks so nice. I should do it more for him. And cleaning out the pantry. And then number 5 is to execute. It's actually to do that. All right, now I'm gonna go into the area that you would probably most logically think about productivity in, which is going to be your to-do list and your calendar. So step 1, use the organized system. That is to use that brain dump that we did in week 1, and we've been picking things off of that, and we might've moved it into a new notebook, In the organizing step, you're going to use that system whenever you get all these ideas or you need to do more brain dumping. It goes in that one notebook, or the notes that you write to yourself go in the Sunday basket, and then they go from the Sunday basket on Sunday into the notebook. That's your to-do list brain dumping organizing system. And then when you want to talk about your calendar, similarly, notes that come out of the Sunday basket are going to end up getting put on your On your calendar, whether that's a planner or that's an electronic calendar. Step 2 is to plan. And when you're going to plan your to-dos and your calendar, I want to limit you to 2 to 3 goals or tasks. Now, as you get better at this, it may be 2 to 3 things you can accomplish a day. I can almost always accomplish 1 thing a day. On a really good day, I can accomplish 3. And I am a super productive person. So you need to realize that we only have a certain amount of bandwidth. We only have a certain amount of extra time. It's true too at your job. Like if you go into your job and you expect yourself to tackle 8 things on your to-do list, you know how stressed out and frustrating that is. So having 1, this has to get done before I'm allowed to leave, and 3, it'd be awesome if I could check all 3 of these off the list today, that's much more doable. So step three is refining and reordering, and this is where good productivity comes into play. You map out your week on paper, and you pick your top one to three things that you're going to do each day, right? But then things happen, like I told you a couple podcasts ago where I lost eighty hours in in two weeks, and the hits keep to keep keep on coming with that. Yesterday I lost another whole day with a a kid's medical emergency. That kind of stuff is going to happen all of the time. So if you are planned like this, you know what your 2 to 3 things are that you want to get done each day. You've planned out your entire week, and then all of a sudden you have to pick up a kid at school at 11 o'clock and you lose that whole day. As I'm driving to pick up that child who is fine, who is okay, like there's— it's not a life-threatening emergency, but I've just lost my workday. In my mind, Because I'm visual, I can see how I had fleshed out the rest of my week, and I'm able to reprioritize in my mind and in the car before I even get back in front of my desk and go, okay, the most important things are that I record these podcasts because they come out on a regular basis, so those have to get done. The second most important thing is— and, and look through that list and go, okay, well, that's not going to get done till next week, or I'm going to have to decline doing that project, or that opportunity is going to have to wait because there's just not enough hours in the day. When you are able to refine and reorder things on the fly like that, there's so much less stress because you only had 1 to 3 goals for yourself for the day. So if you lose a day, you can take those 1 to 3 goals and you can try to put them on the 2 days of the week you have left, or just move them to next week. A lot of increasing your productivity is managing your expectations and being more realistic with yourself. Step 4 is to evaluate and maintain, and this is our favorite part. This is where you get to scratch it off the to-do list because you've done it. This is where you get to add new ideas that come to you into the Sunday basket and maintain that Put the idea on a piece of paper, dump it in the Sunday basket, write it in the notebook on Sunday, plan out which ones you're going to do for the week. Once you start living a more productive and organized life, time magically starts appearing. You get more and more time. And when you have more and more time and you have a system like this where you know what you want to get done and you know how much time you have, then you are able to pick and choose wisely and get even more done. This is the most amazing thing that has happened for me, is like I could come up with big ideas and implement them in just a few days or a couple of weeks, and then guess what? I get to pick something else off that list, some other big hairy audacious goal that I want to go tackle, like writing another book or, you know, whatever it is. Like, I got a lot done in 2016. And while initially when you go to that brain dump list that was pages and pages long and you go, oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to get all of this done, once you really get organized and you really start being productive and you have this forward momentum, you will actually get things done. Like, you may pick only 3 things off of that list, but at the end of the week, those 3 things are done. Whereas in the past, you may have had that whole huge giant to-do list staring at you all the time and nothing was getting getting crossed off, or things were getting added to the bottom of the to-do list faster than you could cross them off at the top, and you were just treading water. That's what it feels like when you're not organized. You're treading water, you're surviving, you're just trying to make it to the next day. Lisa, that would be fabulous if I had 15 minutes a day to do that 100-day challenge, but I don't have enough time to take a shower today. Like, I literally have no time. This is a process. It takes quite a while to get organized when you are unorganized, but you will get small wins. And now that I've realized that the productivity part and this figuring out how to get things off of your to-do list and onto your calendar is the benefit of living an organized life, it is just so freeing and eye-opening and exciting. It's almost like I can pick anything I want to do now because I'm organized, and I want you to get there too. So now that you've seen all 3 steps in the Getting Organized System, you can see how they work together and how each one has a different set of skills that you need to be successful. For this step, virtual organization sessions are the best complement. Like when I told you about Getting Organized, the 100-Day Challenge was the best. Virtual organizing sessions are the best complement when you're working through getting organized and you're working on being productive, specifically when you are looking at getting your calendar schedule or your to-do list organized. It's just so hard for you to see your time objectively, and I told you I am a productivity nut. Sometimes I think I might be too productive. My ability to see out-of-the-box solutions and match those with your life is uncanny. It's really hard for me to But let me try. Let's say you want to work on organizing your home office with me through virtual organizing coaching. First, you're going to tell me by email what is and isn't working and send me pictures. You can be as wordy as you want, like tell me your whole life story, it's fine. Then on call number 1, we're going to look at decluttering. What can we eliminate from your space, your calendar, and your to-dos? On call number 2 and 3, we're gonna focus on organizing. What systems can we add? How do you work best? How can we group tasks and events? And where are you specifically still blocked? And then call number 4, we're gonna increase productivity. Now that you're organized, how can we use that freed up time for more income or outsourcing some of those tasks in your home-based business? Now, for an example, I just did a webinar and one of the questions people had about organizing their home office was the example that they never are in their home office. Like they work out of the car, they travel a lot. And so my solution for them was to think of their trunk as their home office. So we organized the trunk of their car. And then also to think of your garage as your home office. So I did this for a lady up in Dayton and we put in some bookshelves in her garage. They're like those industrial bookshelves. And we put everything in bins that had lids so it didn't get dusty and it didn't get dirty. Oh, that's great. But she had 3 different jobs and they were at 3 different locations, and everything that she needed for those jobs she used to carry into her house, but she never did anything with them in her house. She's a physical therapist, so she would carry in books and balls and weights and all these things that she would use for therapy, but there was no reason those things had to make it all the way inside her house. So we set up these bookshelves and all of these items in the garage So now when she pulls in her garage at night, she goes to her trunk, she gets out anything that needs to go inside, which is usually just her planner or this one bag. The rest stays in the trunk because that's her office. And then she takes out anything that she used that day that she doesn't need the next day and anything off of the shelves in the garage that she needs and puts them in the trunk. Now that is not something I've really blogged about, but it is a perfect solution for her. This is what I can do in virtual organizing. Why isn't the system working for you? Let's think outside of the box and come up with a better solution. This also works really, really well with paper organizing. So in paper organizing, you would go through all my free videos online and, and then you would buy the paper organizing system first so that you would have all of that information, all of the printables, all the binders are included in that. Then we would start virtual organizing sessions. And you would say to me, how do I organize my kid's IEP binder, or what do I do with my parents' medical forms, or how do I organize my home-based business tax forms? And we will go through whatever papers you can't figure out how to organize, I will help you with a system individually. Another area where virtual organizing is perfect is when you're going through a life event. So let's say you're getting remarried and you're gonna be blending houses. It's a great thing to use those 4 calls for. Or if you need to handle an estate or become a caregiver for someone, or you're going to have a new baby. Again, each of those 4 calls, it's not necessarily going to be the first call is always decluttering and then 2 organizing calls and then increasing productivity on the 4th call. It's— I'm guiding you through. If you don't need any help decluttering, we just focus only on organizing or only on productivity. Whatever is stopping you, I can help you overcome that and move on to the next area. So another one that's really popular and I've done with virtual organizing in the past is just general home organization. Like you're already going through the 100-day home organization challenge and that's working really, really well and you're getting all of these areas organized, but you just have a couple areas that you're getting hung up on or they aren't addressed in there because you have children. So call number 1 may be we troubleshoot how to organize your kids' playroom. And then call number 2 could be specific ways to organize your kitchen. And call number 3 is about your master bedroom. And call number 4 might be the monster that is laundry. And we just talk about organizing laundry. The options are really endless. We can do anything you want in these virtual organizing calls, but we're going to follow this kind of a system. Whatever area you want to organize, We're going to talk about decluttering it, then organizing, then going to increased productivity. I am so excited to be offering virtual organization services in 2017. I have been professionally organizing clients for over 5 years, and in podcast number 143, I really explain how the coaching and strategy part of professional organizing can be done through phone calls. Virtual organizing is perfect for you if you cannot find a professional organizer in your area, or you do not want someone else in your home. You might really want my input on your situation, and you want to make quicker, focused progress in your home. I know you get stuck, and I would love to help you come up with ideas and troubleshoot exactly solutions that will work for you In your home. To learn more, listen to episode 143 or go to organize365.com/virtual to find out your next steps and to sign up. I'd love to work with you and help you get your home organized in 2017. You can find the links for my virtual organizing services and everything else mentioned in this episode at organize365.com/virtual.