Palais Professional Organizer

Posts Tagged ‘professional organizer’

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other night who is a successful business owner.

She and her husband do the lions-share of the work in their 2 stores and what came up were all the million and one ways in which to keep track, log, list, remind and otherwise drive oneself nuts trying to stay organized and on top of the workload of a small-mid size business.

This is not the first time I have heard this. Many of my clients are faced with not the lack of tools with which to stay organized but quite the opposite…there are so many!! Which is the BEST?

I wish I could tell you. But I can’t. What I can tell you is that I try to use them all for a while so that I can speak to as many of the productivity tools out there with some aplomb.

Having said that I think the simplest is always best. And on top of that I think that you just have to make a decision to use one or two – for better or for worse and stick to them. Even if something shiner and newer comes out. Just stay where you are and get really good with the tools you have otherwise you’ll go nuts and spend all of your time messing around with productivity tools and no time being productive. I see that a lot.

My short list:

Evernote – it is your external memory. You can use tags and notebooks and don’t really have to be too terribly organized. Just throw stuff in there that you want for later. It is great for information that you want but don’t know where to put. Information that you don’t necessarily need immediately.

Book lists, pic of your friend’s purse that you want to find online, clip web pages of notes for your website etc Syncs to your phone.

Manymoon - great for project management and sharing in groups. You can link to Google calandar and upload docs to it so there is a bit of a dropbox functionality here. There are tasks for each project that you can assign to team members, reminders can be set up, Also syncs to your phone. I’m using it for a work team and will try it with a client too. Stay tuned!

What are your favorite to-do list apps? Project management tools?

We think we control what we do.

But the reality is that…. we just kindof end up doing what we do. A simple example is this: I go into the closet and choose what to wear today. I am not one of those people who can lay out my clothing the night before. How am I going to know what I am going to wear tomorrow until t0morrow gets here?  Sometimes I wonder why I am even wearing what I’m wearing. This happens more all the time actually and I’m grateful for it. Not for any fashion statement but for a letting go. A discovery. Oh – so this is what it is going to be today? Fine.

And before you start to argue with me about free will, think to all of those times when you said you wanted to work out and you just can’t seem to do it. Or you wanted to save that money but you bought a guitar instead. Or you were supposed to get the salad but ordered the burger. There are plenty of times when we do what we say as well. But can you really point to why? Seems almost luck if you think of it in comparison to all the times body and mind refuse to line up.

Observe yourself in your day and see how easy it is to “make” yourself do anything at all.

That is why I think with organizing, or working out, or any other change or alteration you want to make it is easier to go very  slowly with small almost imperceptible changes and implement alterations in other areas that aren’t “hot.” Telling, ordering, demanding and planning sometimes works about as well as reasoning with a 2-year old.

What does maturity and gentleness have to do with organizing?

I’m thinking…a lot.

Not to say that I am always the epitome of maturity (especially when it gets construction-style loud around here). But when I’m my best professional organizing self I feel that it looks just like this:

maturity = gentleness.

Add in a whole lotta listening to the equation and call the nursing home!

When I think of gentleness I think of calm, equanimity and the ability to take in and assesss information.

I have to say that my best session in 10 years was this month. Everything was hooked up. What did it feel like? Like I wasn’t really there. Gentleness doesn’t take so much effort.

Feel guilty doing nothing?

Sometimes you just need a license to be lazy. With all the productivity and lists and organizing…uh…

Can I get a lazy license?

What is that you might ask? It is a license to do nothing! Stay in bed and read magazines all day whilst eating cheese puffs (or soy cheese puffs as the case may be).  Or watch 4 or 5 episodes of whatever is on Tivo. Stay out all night, all day…whatever makes you feel completely new.

You may find you are more productive if you let yourself be you most lazy self every now and then. Some experts (I don’t know who – just some!) say that even 30 minutes of laziness a day can improve productivity…how about that?

I give you license.

Dr. Who (Photo by TV Screener.com)

I’m addicted to this season of Dr. Who.  This BBC series which famously ran from 1963-1989, started back up in 2005 and is just plain old good story-telling. Dr. Who is kindof a mess and I like it. I don’t really want to analyze it too much for fear I’ll ruin its allure. Not for you but for me!  I’ll just say that things don’t always turn out perfectly,  but they turn out the way they should. Nothing seems in order and yet all is well.

Vintage luggage

I love vintage luggage. I think it is beautiful and it is functional at the same time. You can store photos, blankets, sweaters and keepsakes in them. Anything you want really. All hidden in plane view. I found the vintage luggage pieces I have at garage sales for $5 and $10 each and use them for coffee and side tables.

Beautiful, functional and budget friendly.

Connecting with my book, The Art of Happiness

Right now I’m reading The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. I don’t know if I’m any happier yet but I have even more understanding and compassion than I already did (the DL is big on compassion) for those lacking in the letting go gene.

Cutler explains the Dalai Lama’s perspective on our inability to connect to one another, our lack of intimacy and our connection to our “stuff” in the following passage:

“He (the Dalai Lama) even theorizes that the physical contacts we have with objects in our environment, from cigarettes to jewelry to waterbeds, act as substitutes for intimacy (pg 80).”

Well…that explains quite a lot doesn’t it?  The shopping, the materialism, consumerism…lots of other isms I can’t think of right now. It also explains why when it is time to let go of the stained shirt, the torn pants and the tarnished ring it can become nearly impossible. You’ve  developed a relationship with these items,  and maybe you feel they know you better than anyone else does. They are friends, family even.

Maybe…what do you think? What are your reasons for keeping too much stuff around you? Or if you know someone who has clutter, why do they have problems letting it go?

"Can you let me play?" My client and I found this note on her desk...what is you answer?

The importance of play.

In is TED talk, Dr. Stuart Brown, author of Play and founder of the National Institute for Play, speaks about the psychological importance of play. He cites many studies showing the benefits of play on memory, vitality, stress-reduction and more. Much more.

I don’t doubt his findings.  One of the most creative and productive people I know often starts his day with 20 minutes of Red Dead Redemption or Guitar Hero. Both are in his office. That is the extent of my current research but luckily, Dr. Brown has done quite a lot more.

We are all working harder than ever these days. It is necessary, no doubt about it. However, the other side of that work equation is play. Maybe we need to also play a little harder to balance out all of that hard work. I have long been encouraging my organizing clients to reward themselves when they spend time clearing out drawers, planning their week or whatever it is they don’t particularly want to do but must. Rewards can make the “chores” a bit more fun or at least increase the likelihood they’ll get done.

However, what Stuart Brown is suggesting is so much more powerful! He is saying to infuse everything we do with play. Let the work (including the organizing!) we do be as playful as possible. Infuse it with body motion, use objects, fantasy, story-telling and whatever kind of transformational kind of play we can think of. Let’s rework work.

The best part is he has so much science backing his findings. Reworking work into play, well, it works.

How have you made work more playful? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Also published on Examiner.com

2010 Toyota Prius sedans (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Toyota is famous for Kaizen – not just as a philosophy but for successfully implementing it daily into their manufacturing culture to achieve consistently high quality output. Kaizen is the philosophy of continuous improvement and at Toyota each employee is invited to participate. Employees can speak to management about opportunities for improved productivity in any area of the company.

I heard more about Kaizen and Toyota’s culture on an informative and moving This American Life podcast about Nummi, the jointly run GM and Toyota plant located in Fremont, CA.  Nummi shut down on April 2, 2010 after producing cars for more than 26 years. The GM workers were transformed by Toyota’s practices but GM as a whole was not, or at least, not quickly. Still,  I am struck by how powerful Toyota’s Kaizen method and message is for anyone trying to make small changes over time.

As a professional organizer, I’m fascinated with the philosophy of Kaizen and how Toyota uses it to create an amazing product and a healthy corporate culture. They are doing on a very large scale what I’m trying to do on a small scale with my clients: Increase the client’s productivity (rather than the factory’s) in increments, creating change (rather than a car) that is sustainable over time.

I did a lot of research – probably more than I should given my current time restraints – to see if there have been many changes to Toyota’s Kaizen culture in the wake of the relatively recent Toyota vehicle recalls. Although, it seems unlikely Toyota’s recent problems are due to Kaizen practices. More likely their overly growth-centered goals are to blame.

CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, grandson of the car company’s founder, announced in February of this year that he will lead a new quality committee. This is a shift from employee, internal, Kaizen-like improvements. Steven Spear, who has studied Toyota for years, wrote a landmark PhD dissertation on their production systems and in 2008 wrote Chasing the Rabbit lauding all things Toyota admitted, “We are now sadly seeing that the capacity for developing people can be overstretched.” Spear went on to say, “It was not recognizing this, and succumbing to the temptation to make growth its first priority, that led to Toyota’s current problems.”

In saying the “capacity for developing people can be overstretched” did Spear mean that Kaizen culture was pushed too far? That you can only improve systems and efficiency and productivity so much? That Kaizen reached the point of diminishing returns at Toyota? Because I do think there is such a thing as being too organized and too productive. This kind of effort can double back on itself and have the opposite effect. Like sharpening a knife to the point it disintegrates as Alan Watts has pointed out in his lectures on Buddhism.

Or did he just mean Toyota pushed too fast and too far? As in away from the center where people understood it? Spears points out in his second statement that growth became Toyota’s first priority and in order to grow they started outsourcing, sending production to other countries and getting materials from other places. Places where Kaizen was not practiced perhaps?

In my experience running a big car company…ok…well…I don’t have any experience running even a small car company. But I do have experience with growth. And with trying to grow too quickly. I have personal experience with this and I’ve seen it with my clients. It looks like working out for hours and not being able to move for days, or working in your office all night organizing and never wanting to go back in.

In fact, this is often what people want. Make change. NOW. Whenever anything grows too quickly or beyond its reach we get results similar to what we have seen with Toyota. Some overheating and then production shuts down.

Don’t get me wrong. Growth is great. I’m all about it.  I’m just kindof partial to Kaizen.  It feels real and the results stick around.

Kangaroom photo storage tray

There is a fabulous organizer in Texas who reviewed a great product today – http://organizenrefine.blogspot.com/ – and now I’m going to pass it on to you:  Kangaroom Photo Storage Trays. These “trays” are only $40 and hold 400 4×6 photos. The photo above doesn’t show the feature I love most but if you go to their website you’ll see that each of the tabs on top holds a photo and opens up into its own section. So you can put a photo in as a label for that section. No more searching and wondering what photos are in what box or labeling with a labelmaker. And the boxes are nice enough to have out on a dresser or counter so it doubles as a display piece. This product is the perfect solution to photo clutter.

As a society we are printing less photos these days but most of my clients have a backlog of photos they don’t know what to do with. This photo clutter is one of the biggest concerns people have. If putting photos into albums is too much of a project for right now these trays are a great option. You can still sort and organize them by event or year(s) and make decisions about albums later. Or if you already have albums and don’t know what to do with the remaining photos this is a great option.

If you hate photos and you keep everything digitally – my hats off to you! Buy one for a friend or family member – this is a great gift!  I’m not an affiliate – just to be clear – I just love this product.

If you end up purchasing it let me know how it works for you. If you have favorite photo organizers let me know what they are – I’d love to hear from you.