Been to the post office lately?

I have.  Yesterday, in fact.  I had 3 packages to ship out-of-state, and I decided to do it the old-fashioned way: at the post office.

Thinking I was sly, I selected a small neighborhood retail station that I figured would be quick.  (Or as quick as you can expect on December 14th!)  I knew not to arrive at opening – there would be a mob of folks hitting the station before work.  And I knew not to go around lunchtime, either.  Target: 10:15AM. 

When I arrived, there were only 15 people in line ahead of me.  Not too bad, right?  The way the line curved, it was difficult to see to the counter area, but I could hear a well-natured, high-energy postal employee chatting it up.  So I figured I was in the right place. 

Fifteen minutes later, I had moved about two feet in line.  But it was far enough to see the counter area.  And Mr. High-Energy.  Despite the three cashier stations at the counter, his was the only one open!

I was frustrated.  That little voice in my head chastisted me (don’t act like you don’t have one, too):

“Great idea, coming here! What were you thinking! Why did you choose this post office?  Why didn’t you get those packages ready last week?! What made you think mid-morning would be the best arrival time? Why don’t you go to another station? Why not spend the extra money and go to the UPS Store?”

As much as I don’t like to hear that little voice sometimes, at least it’s in my head.  No one else can hear it. 

Unfortunately, the other folks in line with me - who I had already determined were retirees, based on earlier conversation - shared their thoughts out loud. 

“This is ridiculous! One window open at Christmas? They should staff better.”

“I can’t believe this.  How long is this going to take!  They make budget cuts and we have to pay for it.”

 ”They need to open more windows.  Don’t they have more workers back there?”

 Although I had been willing to deal with a long wait, I wasn’t sure I was willing to deal with a long wait while listening to these people. An internal battle over whether or not to bail ensued.  I gritted my teeth & stayed.

In between joking with customers, singing along to piped-in music, and doing the jobs of three people, Mr. High-Energy explained to someone that his other two team members had called in sick for the day. Someone in line commented about how cheery he was, considering the situation.

“Well,” he said. “I can make it a terrible day, or I can make it a great day. Not much sense in the first choice.”

Turns out I was right after all:  I was in the right place.  With that reminder from Mr. High-Energy, I switched from gritting my teeth to focusing on my to-do list for the day.  And there was no more grumbling from the other folks in line, either.

I’ve been working with a wonderful lady who first called me saying that she was just plain overwhelmed.

Through my careful questioning to determine what was causing her overwhelm, she explained that there is a lot she needs to take care of before heading into surgery, and she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She did not say she was disorganized. She did not say she had more to do than she had time to do it.

She did not even say that she considers herself a procrastinator, which is often a label that my clients use for themselves.  

In fact, she is retired and is not under any pressure to bring home the bacon each month. She simply said she had a lot to do and didn’t want to do it.

I was concerned that I was not the person to help her.

My initial thought was that she was seeking a “body double.”  You know, someone to hang out with her while she worked through her tasks.  Which is not what I do.

She was referred to me by another client of mine, and claimed to fully understand what I do: create systems of organization, efficiency & effectiveness in office environments.

And she was certain that I was just the person to help her.

Based on her confidence, I agreed to see her. And heading to that first meeting, I was slightly nervous. Was I really about to charge my consulting fee just to handhold and babysit??  I hoped not.

Oh, but how things have a marvelous way of working out!  Once we spent a little time together and I discovered what was going on with her, it was obvious we actually were a perfect fit.

After a few hours of extracting information out of this kind woman, she had FOUR full pages of tasks and projects listed down on paper. And many of them were not simple little just-make-one-phone-call-and-you’re-done kind of stuff.

All that overwhelm had been swimming around in her brain!  She was fearful of what she might forget, and of some of what she remembered! Ick.

As a result, she had been completely, 100% stuck.

I’d compare it to looking over Santa’s list and saying, “All right, you have 2 weeks to get each kid everything they want, and most of the toys will not be found with a quick trip to Toys R Us. Good luck!”

Do you ever feel like that? Like there’s just SO much to do, you literally don’t know where to start, and don’t have any clarity to help move you forward on any one thing, because it’s just all so overwhelming?

Of course, the easiest thing to do at that point is to go watch Dancing With The Stars. Or reruns of Friends.  But that doesn’t get you any closer to a solution. It just makes that icky feeling in your belly grow even stronger. Ugh.

Instead, we did this (see list below).  And while everyone’s situation is different, this is basically what I would recommend when you get stuck:

 1. Perform a HUGE brain dump – in this case we unloaded every last little thought from her mind. If you’ve never done this, give it a try- it’s incredibly freeing!  

2. And just when she thought she got it all out, I would ask, “What else?” And sure enough, she’d sit there a moment reflecting, and remember yet another thing she needs to take care of.

3. Then we organized the big list into a few categories that made sense with her various tasks, including phone calls, legal issues and personal tasks.

4. Determined everything that could be delegated, delayed or deleted from the big, long list.

5. Assigned realistic, bite-sized pieces to be accomplished each day so she could begin chopping away at the list and build some momentum.

6. Set up an encouraging and helpful accountability partner, to ensure she continued moving forward each day. 

Though it sounds simple looking at that list, when you’re the one in the midst of overwhelm, it really can create paralysis. It happens to all of us sometimes - even me!

But if you take action on just the first step, you’ll get a little relief.  And then follow up with selecting just one thing you can do. Then pick just one more thing you can do, then one more thing, and so on… I’ve seen this approach work well in so many different situations.   Once they gain a little momentum, my clients often wonder what had them paralyzed in the first place!

I would love to hear how you’ve moved through a state of overwhelm, and how it turned out!

Seems that I missed the crazy deals on “Cyber Monday” earlier this week.  But that hasn’t stopped me from fitting in a little online Christmas shopping.  That’s how I came across this shirt:

I’ve posted about procrastination previously, so I know that you know that I take it seriously.  But still, I couldn’t help but appreciate the irony!

NOTE: Just in case the FTC is spending its limited resources reading this blog, I’ll mention here that I am not an affiliate for the product mentioned above.  The shirt is silly and so am I.

Sometimes a person’s words seem to conflict with their actions.  In this client’s case, I nearly took it personally!  But then I learned what was really going on, and ended up admiring him instead.

Is there a beast lurking in your office?

Ten bucks says you have a few of those long, put-off projects that you swear you’ll get to someday. Everyone has at least one.  Even me. 

I used to call these dreadful projects ”beasts” because they tend to be ugly in appearance and – bottom line – we’re afraid to tackle them. That box of mish-mashed cables that needs matched up to their owners, that shoebox with nine months of business receipts that needs to be categorized for Quickbooks, the messy garage, the box of stuff from your previous office that never got unpacked, etc.

When working with a client recently, it became clear that her beast was an overflowing binder with a huge collection of various exercises, ripped from different health and fitness magazines.  A Personal Trainer, she’d been collecting these clippings over the past five years. As we were making great progress on organizing her office, this “beast” was getting louder, uglier and harder to ignore. 

Although we were creating order in her office and making progress at a very good pace, this “beast” was lingering around in the background, sucking up my client’s mental and emotional energy.

I quickly realized that having the two of us refer to that pile as a beast was not helping the situation. The mere term “beast” is a bit imposing,  and our repeated use of the phrase was giving power to her unwieldy project.

So I suggested that we use a different term for it.  Was there something we could call it that would be less scary?  So that we could begin to see the unwieldy project as something less intimidating than it was feeling to her at that moment.

She named it “Shrek”.

Such a perfect – and much friendlier – way to view the beast!  Changing its name allowed her to coexist with her project and not be intimidated by its “in process” status.

Sure, ideally you’d slay your beast immediately and be done with it.  But as you are well aware, that’s not always possible.   If you know you’re not going to get that shoebox of receipts organized right away, there’s no sense in allowing it to scare you as it lurks in the background, sapping your energy and creating feelings of guilt. Just make peace with it – as my client did with Shrek – and it’ll lose its power over you.

What’s your Shrek? Is it truly a beast, or have you just turned it into one? Do tell!

Do you struggle with procrastination?

You’re not alone. 

As world reknowned screenwriter Robert McKee said in the forward to Steven Pressfield’s War of Art:

I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem.  I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem.

Plenty of successful people struggle with this issue.  And while they fight hard to overcome it, they also know that their victory is temporary.  According to Pressfield, the battle must be fought and won each day – the procrastination cure is to sit down and do your work.  My interpretation: show up, do your work, reject distractions, and be ready to fight again the next day.  Simple, but not easy.

So while I have no quick-fix to offer, I can share with you a tactic I’ve unwittingly tried repeatedly that does not work.  I’m hopeful that my sharing it here will allow you to recognize when you unknowingly try the same approach, and can avoid the time and energy loss that it always brings.

It’s called “Making A Dread Sandwich.”  I wish I could take credit for naming it, but I must give credit to my friend Lisa Wagner, The Rug Chick.

Step 1: Identify something important that you absolutely don’t want to do. Don’t acknowledge to yourself how important it is – just make a mental note that you’ll get to it….tomorrow.

Step 2: Repeat for the next 5 days.

Step 3: Ignore that uneasy feeling in your gut every time a thought about the task or project creeps up on you.  Keep ignoring it until you can officially label that feeling “dread”.  Focus on “much more important” and pressing issues for the next few days.  Be sure to rationalize to yourself why your time is better spent dealing with that stuff.

Step 4: Finally acknowledge that you’ve GOT to buckle down and tackle the task or project at hand.  Overcome whatever barrier was holding you back: fear, lack of knowledge, finances, whatever. Get it done – and feel totally surprised that it wasn’t nearly as difficult or distasteful or scary as you had thought it would be.

Step 5: Realize the agony you put yourself through before taking action and getting it done.  Kick your own ass for a few days.  Really beat yourself up for not just getting it done in the first place. Keep that up long enough to diminish your motivation for the other stuff that’s on your plate. Doubt yourself, creating more dreadful feelings. 

So there you have it: The Dread Sandwich.  Dread on top, action in the middle, more dread on the bottom.  Not a procrastination cure, but it’s sure to create some heartburn.

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Have you ever made a Dread Sandwich?  Of course you have….so please share your story with me by commenting below.

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Someone once asked me, “You’re a professional organizer, what’s the most common issue you see with your clients?”

That’s an easy one: not having a plan for their day.

It’s not only the most common issue, it’s also our biggest issue.

What I mean by this is, too often, we walk into our office, open up email first thing in the morning, and let whatever fun surprises are in the inbox direct our day. We may know of one or two things we need to accomplish, but  often we are too casual with our time and those things get set aside. Without even realizing it, we become reactive, dealing with problems as they arise each day, and failing to prioritize more important (yet quieter)objectives.

I’m not a naturally disciplined person, but I’ve learned the importance of walking into my work day with a purpose - my mission to accomplish x, y and z.   And I always knock out at least one of those top priorities, before doing anything else that day, including checking my email.  While it’s not a natural habit (neither was flossing, but I finally adopted that habit, too!), the results it brings me are well worth the effort.  My clients echo this opinion.

If we don’t decide how we want to use our time, someone else will decide for us. Would you let someone else make decisions on how to spend your money? Of course not! Same goes for your precious time: it’s hugely valuable, yet irreplaceable, so you must have a plan for how you’re going to spend it. If we aren’t consciously choosing how to use our time, it will disappear wastefully, leaving us wondering at the end of our day, week, year, or life – where did it all go?!

If you face this challenge, it’s easily fixed: select your top 3 priorities for completion (or progress) each day, and ensure that at least one of them gets the required attention at the start of your workday, before you do anything else – including email. Especially email.  Did I mention email?

Good luck, and please share your results with me!

Well, they’re right:  When it rains, it pours.

A fresh flow of new clients, increased referrals from prior clients, and a few unexpected speaking opportunities have filled my schedule so much that I’m feeling very Crazy Busy about my upcoming seminar – the topic of which is teaching people how not to be such Crazy Busy Entrepreneurs!

Of course, I’m thrilled with these new developments, and would never complain about the increased growth in my  business, but I’ve got to at least mention the irony!

There’s another blessing regarding my upcoming seminar: I have saved my prospective clients some money. 

I’ve met a few people in the past week who are seeking assistance with organizing and prioritizing, but who did not have the budget for the one-on-one services I provide.  Solution?  Attend my upcoming seminar!  They were pleased with the price (just $59!) and I still have some breathing room in my April schedule. 

If you’re interested in learning how to maximize your time, how to create systems specifically suited to your needs, or how to prioritize intelligently so you’re always completing the most vital tasks, join me at the Organizing & Time Management Seminar for Success-Minded Professionals and Entrepreneurs.

Here’s a peek at some of the content I will cover:

Learn the SECRETS of hugely successful professionals:

• Maintain an organized office and actually see your desktop
• Maximize your time so you accomplish all you set out to do in the short and long-term
• Prioritize intelligently so you’re always completing the most vital tasks
• Overcome procrastination and say adios to stressful moments of waiting until the last minute
• Learn the best ways to deal with all that never-ending email
• Know immediately, what to keep, for how long, and what to throw away
• Find paperwork instantly with an organized file system
• Avoid the hidden dangers of multi-tasking
• Conquer those distracting ADD tendencies and learn to focus
• Get more done, in less time with streamlined systems
• Manage your tasks effectively, so nothing can fall through the cracks

So, if you’ve been meaning to take action in any of these areas, I’d love to have you join us on April 22nd.  For the $59 tuition, you’ll walk away with as many actionable, easy-to-implement ideas as my clients typically receive in a one-on-one session!

Are you always racing to the finish line?

I recently worked with the owner of a PR firm who was extremely overwhelmed. After our initial consult, she recognized that her biggest obstacle was the way she spends her time. She reported that she had been consistently working weekends, but she knew she wouldn’t have to do that if she could just use her time more efficiently.

This client discovered that though she had a lot on her plate,  it was not the typical case of having more to do than time to do it.

When asked what kind of change she was seeking, her reply was “I don’t want to always be racing to the finish line.” 

It’s very common to survive your workday, day in and out, squeezing things in at the last minute, without a master plan for the day – or the weeks.  But just because it’s common, doesn’t mean that it’s actually a recommended approach. 

Try this: invest ten minutes at the start of your day to identify 3 top priorities to accomplish.  This small investment will save you hours later on.  I’ve seen this one habit make such a difference in entrepreneurs’ lives!  This is an excellent way to keep better control of your day and duties, without feeling like it’s all getting crammed in at the last minute.

Adopt this habit for just one week and I predict you’ll no longer have to race for the finish line every time!

I suppose this is one way of dealing with a Crazy Busy life…just make it public that you won’t be arriving on time.  But I don’t exactly recommend this approach to time management!