Organizing Creative Professionals: Sorted

What Halloween can teach you about getting Sorted

You wouldn't think trick-or-treating and costumery would have much to do with getting organized, would you? Well, you'd be right, mostly. But independent of the parties and the glucose consumption, there's an interesting aspect to Halloween that tends to underlie a lot of the celebrations: the idea of what it might be like to be someone or something else.

Some costumes are chosen for their topical nature (Obama or Octomom) or the ease of creating them (my personal hint: safety-pin some dryer sheets and socks to your clothes and go as static cling). But some folks choose a costume because it allows them to try on another point of view for a little while.

And sometimes getting a new perspective can teach you a lot. You can view your own life through someone else's eyes, and you might get a bit of insight into some new idea or habit or point of view you might want to try. Hell, being static cling might awaken you to how you tend to hold on to things even if casting them off might make you happier.

Another perspective Halloween can give you is that your present life probably has a lot to recommend it. It might be fun being someone else for an evening, but when it comes down to it, you're pretty good at being you, and you is a pretty cool thing to be.

What about you? What are your costume plans, if you have them, and have you ever had any kind of "aha" moments while pretending to be someone or something else? Let me know in the comments!

Organizing for NaNoWriMo

It's almost that time of year, folks! Every November, writers of all types celebrate National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal of participants is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, so it can be a pretty major undertaking. Here are some suggestions for NaNoWriMo'ers.

Note: From what I can tell, there aren't any comparable events for non-writing creative pursuits (which means there's a vacuum there!). But whenever you're planning a major creative project, the same guidelines apply.

Know your writing habits. The initial rule for organizing anything is: know yourself. As it applies to NaNoWriMo, that means knowing when you're likely to be in the creative-flow state, knowing how fast you can write and knowing how long (words or time) you can write before you need to take a break and/or you're just plain done.

Plan to miss a day or two. If you divide 50,000 by the 30 days in November, that comes to 1,667 words a day. Now, not only is that a messy number, it presumes that you'll be writing every single day, which might not be feasible for everyone—especially during a month that contains a major holiday weekend that many people travel for. If you plan to write 2,000 words a day, you only need to write for 25 days to make the 50,000 mark and "win" NaNoWriMo.

Know where you're going. Maybe some people can sit down before a blank page and write a narrative arc with no pre-work. I can't. I "won" NaNoWriMo in 2006, and part of how I did that was to figure out before I sat down to write what the next 5-10 steps in the narrative would be. Once I knew what would happen, it was much easier to tie the steps together with words. I'm a big believer in planning and outlines, and NaNoWriMo is no exception.

If timers work for you, use 'em! Another way I got through NaNoWriMo in '06 was to use my timer. I knew that once I had a good idea of where my plot was going, I could bang out 500 words in 15 minutes. So I'd set my timer for :15, knock out my 500 words and use whatever time was left over to adjust my narrative outline if need be. I repeated the process 3 more times, and I had my 2,000 words for the day in an hour (plus the half-hour or so of pre-writing outlining).

Reward yourself along the way. Every night after I had finished my writing, I'd treat myself to a cup of decaf chai and some mindless TV. After the halfway point, I got some bath goodies. After finishing the little bastard, I took myself and my husband out to dinner. Remember: this is genuine work you're doing, and you deserve some rewards for doing it.

Marelisa at the Abundance blog has some great strategy and planning tips for NaNoWriMo in this post, which I highly recommend.

What about you? Have you done NaNoWriMo before? If so, how have you gotten through it? What do you know now that you wished you knew then? Let me know in the comments!

Scrapping "Sussed & Sorted"

I've been thinking a lot about simplicity and streamlining lately. As a productivity coach, I counsel people to make sure that what they're doing is what will deliver the results that they want without diluting their mission or focus. I'm now applying that rule to myself, and as a result, I'm discontinuing the Sorted newsletter, "Sussed & Sorted."

I'm grateful to everyone who subscribed, but I believe that all the information in the newsletter can be found just as easily in the blog and in my Twitter feed. And without Sussed & Sorted, that's one less thing to open in your inbox, so I'm helping you clear out the clutter, too. :-)

Thanks for your support.

How to do your best work when you're sick

Gotcha! You can't do your best work when you're sick. In fact, if you try to do any kind of work, the quality of that work will suffer and your illness will just be prolonged.

So do like I'm doing today and focus on getting better. Until you're back on your feet, your job is to get well. That's what needs your focus and your best efforts.

I'll see you again on Thursday... provided I feel better. Please take care of yourselves; this flu season is gonna be a doozy!

8 business-trip organizing tips

As online meeting tools have become more robust, business travel has declined over the past 10 years or so. (Remember the '90s? Dude, everybody was traveling for business then.) But it's still sometimes necessary to hoof it in person to close a deal, pitch a sale or just touch base with the folks who help you do business. So here are a few suggestions to minimize the hassle of the business trip.

1. Confirm the day before, check the day of. This especially applies to flights, where the weather can make a huge difference. Just last week, my husband called me from the airport an hour after I had dropped him off with the news that his flight had been canceled due to high winds at LaGuardia. Confirm your reservations the day before (and print your boarding pass to save time), but remember to check the most current conditions before you leave the house (or your wife leaves the house in her jammies, as the case may be).

2. Check to see what your hotel already has. If there's an iron, hair dryer and/or alarm clock provided, that's some space and weight you've saved in your luggage.

3. Focus on packing your specifics. Remember, you're going to another work location, not Outer Mongolia. Chances are that if you forget to pack something generic (such as shampoo), you can get it there. However, if you forget something specific to you (such as prescription medication, your business cards, your USB drive with the files for that presentation on it), you're out of luck.

4. Keep a ready-packed toiletry kit on hand. If you travel more than once or twice a year, it's worth it to keep a one-quart plastic bag stocked with your toiletries in the same place you keep the rest of your luggage. That way, you can just grab it and throw it into any bag.

5. Consider getting one of those office-supply kits. You know, the kind that schools sometimes sell as a fundraiser. They're not that useful around the office itself, but when you've got to improvise in the field, having a tiny pair of scissors or a tape dispenser can save your bacon.

6. Plan to spend time waiting. Travel involves a fair amount of killing time, but you might not want to assume that you can kill that time while working. If you can bring along some mindless work that needs doing, that's great. But don't plan to read a lot of highly technical stuff while wondering if your flight will take off that night. Better to bring some music, books and/or games to pass the time in a leisurely fashion and hopefully alleviate some of the stress of waiting. (My iPod touch, which I love, carries music, games, books [thank you, Kindle app!], photos, plus Wi-Fi email and internet. And it's about half the size of a deck of cards.)

7. Let the people you work with know that you'll be only partially in touch. If you can, it's a good idea to check your email and voicemail about 3 times a day. But that's not always possible, especially if you've got a lot planned for your trip or you're going somewhere with shaky coverage. Before you go, tell everyone you think might want to contact you that you'll be checking in, but since you're on the road, you can't promise to get back to them in a normal not-on-the-road time.

8. Designate a folder for receipts and use it. This can be a paper folder, or an organizer folder in your planner, luggage or briefcase. Doesn't matter. All that matters is that you save your receipts in the same place, and write yourself a note to extract them the day after you get back.

What other business trip tips have you learned in your travels? Let me know in the comments!

Give your stuff a home

"A place for everything, and everything in its place."

That old adage might make you flinch instinctively. And I can't blame you if it does; it was originally posited as a prevention for "every degree of evil" (?!?) by an Ohio minister in 1827. While I certainly don't advocate assigning a moral dimension to organization (it's a loaded enough issue as it is, y'all), I do like the axiom itself on a purely practical level.

That said, I think the first part of the saying gets ignored sometimes. It's certainly great for everything to be in its place, but first of all, it has to have a place to be. It has to have a home.

Check out this desk. Nice, right? Lots of open space with nothing interrupting it, plenty of room, none of the usual office-supply crap to break up all that space.

So... where do you put stuff? When you've done as much as you can with a project for the day, where do you put that project's folder? Where do you put the information you need to have on hand three days from now? Where do other people put stuff they want you to look at so they know you'll look at it?

If you're like most human beings, you put all that stuff "to the side," and we all know where that leads: piles. Before you know it, all that lovely open space is a distant memory as your desktop has been taken over by stacks of stuff.

A desk doesn't have to become a warren of cubbyholes and stacking baskets to have a home for everything, either. Most desks can get by with just an In/Out/To File sorter, a tickler file and a desktop box for action files. Like this desk, currently being enjoyed by my client Gail:

There's still space for her to spread out and work, but there are also homes for the stuff that's bound to pile up in the course of her work.

So as you sort through the papers, piles and other stuff around your workspace, be sure to create a home for everything you're keeping. (And remember: if you don't feel like creating a home for it, why are you keeping it?)

What sort of home-building experiences have you had as you organize your workspace? Let me know in the comments!

The road kinda-sorta-not taken

Earlier this week, my buddy Colleen (aka The Communicatrix) wrote this awesome post about deciding what you're going to focus on and "planting your flag" on that particular hill. I really liked this part:

...part of the process of clearing is asking some really tough questions about what’s serving and what’s not, what’s valuable and what’s not, what you have time for and what you do not. Choosing one thing means not choosing something else. At its best, there’s a certain wistful sadness to it...

This happens a lot when creative people sort out their workspaces and their time, and it can be a painful process. After all, when you choose something (and thus don't choose something else), you're acknowledging that your time and space aren't infinite. And that can open the door to all kinds of thoughts about the limitations we all have as human beings, which is rarely a happy fun time.

Also, not-choosing something can feel like saying "no," and that's something creative people are reluctant to do. Our instinct is to say "yes" to every idea, every possibility, every "maybe/someday," because it feels like we're saying "yes" to life when we do that.

But I'm not so sure that's what we're doing when we embrace every possible thing. Because while our hopes and aspirations can fly in a million directions, our presence really suffers when it's fragmented.

Take the "two roads" photo there. If you choose one road, but you keep looking through the forest to see the other road and even thrashing through the trees to travel on it for a while, you're not going to get very far on either road.

And even if you stay on the first road but keep thinking about the other road, are you truly on the road you have supposedly committed to?

Clearing unnecessary stuff out of your life isn't just about deciding what not to keep, it's about committing to what you are keeping. If you're going to keep an item, make sure to give it a home and look after it. If you're going to pursue a path, give that path your full attention.

Yes, it's painful that our finite time, space and energy make these choices necessary, but that's all the more reason to be fully present for the stuff you do choose.

What choices and commitments have you made recently with your time, energy and space? Were they hard, at first anyway? Let me know in the comments!

Informational clutter

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about physical clutter in your workspace, possibly because it's the most obvious. But there's another level of clutter that can really undermine your ability to get the important things done.

See, this stack is physical clutter, but it also represents informational clutter. This is that stack of magazines, books, reports, newspapers, etc. that you do genuinely intend to read... someday.

You ever notice how often that word "someday" comes up in terms of clutter? I'll read that someday. I might need that someday. I'll give that to my cousin someday. Organizers know that unless you attach a time to something, "someday" doesn't really exist.

So, think of all of that information sitting around your desk, stacked on your dining room table, lurking on your hard drive in PDF format, tagged in your bookmarks. (Breathe deeply if you need to.) And ask yourself a few questions.

• First: How long would it truly take you to read it all? Eight hours? Five days? A couple weeks? Maybe longer?
  
• Second: Do you have the time available to read it? That's not a rhetorical question, necessarily. You might have the time you need, especially if the informational clutter isn't very big.
  
• Third: Is it worth the time you'll spend reading it? This can vary based on the format.

• Magazines: Is it worthwhile information or creative inspiration, or is it just a guilty pleasure? It's totally fine if it's a guilty pleasure, but if so, take it out of your office and put it by your bed, sofa or toilet (come on, we all do it).
  
• Newspapers: Once you've set aside a newspaper for more than 24 hours, you might as well recycle it because it's old news -- and a new newspaper has probably arrived in the meantime.
  
• PDFs: Some downloadable PDFs are chock full of useful info (ahem). Others, well, sometimes you get what you pay for. When you download a PDF, spend no more than 60 seconds looking through the first few pages of it; that should give you a good sense of how useful it will be. If it looks promising, feel free to keep it. If not, hey, it was free anyway; you're losing nothing by trashing it.

The value of information can also depend on how fast new information is coming into your office (and that does seem to accelerate every day, doesn't it). 

• Fourth: Will you set aside the time to process all this information? Like, right now, will you make a daily/weekly appointment with yourself to read, absorb and implement all this info that's accumulated in your workspace?

It's the fourth question that really matters. Unless you're willing to take the time to not just read the info but take it in, learn what it has to offer and begin using this information, it might as well not exist. And I don't mean that in the sense that "you're wasting precious info!" I mean it in the sense that information that isn't enriching your life has no right to take up your precious space, time and mental energy.

What kinds of informational clutter are lurking around your workspace, and how do you deal with them? Let me know in the comments!

The power of the Inbox

I saw this video of David Allen's office system on Unclutterer earlier this week, and it reaffirmed to me how essential the Inbox is.

I've already written about the In/Out/To File sorter and how it functions as part of the Sorted Seven, but I don't think I've gone into what a difference the Inbox can make in your work and life.

In the video, Allen has quite a few information gathering tools (he calls them "buckets," which I've never liked for some reason): his PDA, his notebook, his voice recorder and his briefcase. But he has only one Inbox. There's a reason for that.

If you have a lot of places to look for new stuff, you're going to expend more time and mental energy looking for that stuff than using it. And the more sources of new stuff you have, the more imperative it is that they eventually go to one place.

It does take a few extra seconds to take the receipts out of your bag, to take the pages from the notebook, to fish out the recorder or PDA and put them in the Inbox. But you'd need to do that anyway if you were using them with no Inbox. And this way, you know exactly where they are. It's just that it takes a bit of extra effort to build up the habit of putting stuff in the Inbox, at first, anyway.

Another essential habit to build is visiting the Inbox several times a day and doing your best to empty it every day. As Allen says in the video, he sometimes has to keep stuff in the Inbox for a couple of days, but it's much easier to finally clean it out if the couple days' worth of stuff is the only stuff in there (and not the days' or weeks' worth of stuff that preceded it).

So yes, there is some initial effort and some very minor maintenance effort involved in maintaining the Inbox. But that time investment has some great returns:

• You will know where all your new information is rather than wondering if it's in that other folder or briefcase.
• You will have the resources you need to enter new information into your electronic or paper files rather than pausing to dig out your PDA.
• You won't have to ponder "What next?"; it's right there in your Inbox.
• Once you're comfortable with the system, you can explain it to other people so they'll know where to set new stuff in your office rather than risking it being buried in a pile.

One box (and one system, and the habit of using it) can do all that for you. It's a pretty good deal.

What about you? Have you embraced the Inbox, or have there been problems along the way? Let me know in the comments!