Organizing Creative Professionals: Sorted

Getting your photos sorted

The idea for this post came from one of my prize students, Sally Hartman of the Norfolk Foundation. I helped Sally organize her desk almost a year ago for an article in the Virginian-Pilot. Sally took my suggestions and totally ran with them, and now she's organizing her family's photos.

I don't usually delve into home organizing stuff in this blog, but it occurred to me that many businesses probably have a lot of unidentified, unorganized, amorphous photos in their offices just like we do in our homes. Humans as a species tend to like to take photos, so this advice can apply to just about any situation. 

Sally, like most people, has physical and digital photographs. Fortunately, the steps for organizing both kinds of photos are similar.

1. Find them all. For physical photos, this means digging out all the packets you got from the developer, the boxes, the albums, even that collage you might have made for a retirement party. For digital photos, this means checking the servers for images (and that can be a pretty monumental task unto itself) and asking everyone to check their hard drives for pics they might have taken on their own.

2. Toss the obvious "no"s. The standard is the same for physical and digital photos: any photo that's blurry, whose main subject is a thumb, whose subject matter could cause a divorce or lawsuit. If you have no earthly idea who anyone is in the photo, or what's going on, feel free to toss it if it's for your personal collection. If it's for the family or a business, hold onto the mystery photo and ask some folks if they know what its story is. If they're clueless as well, it can be tossed. Sally has done a great job of culling her photo herd, and has found a way to spread some joy, too: she's sent her friends pictures of their kids that she had taken.

3. Sort them out. How you sort your photos is up to you; as always, use a system that makes sense to you and that you'll understand and want to use in the future. Photos can be sorted by date, by event, by project or by location, or some combination thereof. Try to keep your categories specific enough to help you find things, but not so specific that they overwhelm you. Sally has done just this by organizing her family's photos into branches of the family, events and stages in her son's life.

4. Solve the mysteries. There's no point in keeping a photo unless you know who's in it and what they're doing. Find out who everyone in the photo is and what event was being commemorated on film. Once you've learned the who and what, you can make further decisions about what's worth keeping and what isn't.

5. Label them. Now that you know who's in what photo, hold on to that information by labeling the photo. If it's a physical print, you can use a special photo-labeling pen to write on the back. (Also, if you're using an album to store prints, make a separate label to go into the album.) If it's digital, use the file's metadata (usually found under "properties") to store the labeling info.

6. Store them. Physical photos should be stored in acid-free boxes and albums; you can find them online or in basic home stores. (Sally found some at Costco and TJ Maxx.) Hold on to the negatives of your photos in case you need reprints; if they have sentimental or other value, keep them in a fire-safe box or safety deposit box. Digital photos can be stored on your hard drive (which you back up regularly, right?) and online through photo-sharing sites.

7. Repeat as necessary. If you take a lot of photos, make a semi-regular date with yourself to organize and label them. The labeling part is the most time-sensitive; the longer you go without labeling a photo, the more likely you are to forget who's who and what's happening.

Photo organization can be a major undertaking, and if the photos have personal or family value, it can be an emotional process as well. So allow plenty of time for it, be gentle with yourself and give yourself rewards for every minor milestone.

What about you? Have you been on the photo-organizing trail like Sally has? What has and hasn't worked for you? Let me know in the comments!

Getting It All Done: Do It

Hey-o, dear readers! This is the final part in a four-part series to answer the question posed by my friend Felicia in response to a call for blog topics: "A "getting it all done"-sort of thing?"

There are four options to get something done: delegate it, defer it, delete it or do it. Today, we're talking about the last one: just doing it. Of course, it's not usually as simple as "just" doing it, or you'd have done it. So we're going to talk about the approaches you can take to completing a task.

Systemize it. If you've got a recurring task, like cleaning the house or filing a weekly report, schedule a regular day and time to do that. I mean that in the formal sense: block off that time in your calendar, and try to keep that time free of any other appointments. That time becomes When You Do That Task, which means you don't have to create a separate to-do item for it. Four o'clock on Friday? Time to write your TPS report. Sunday morning? Time to shop for groceries, start cooking for the week and put your laundry in to wash. Once something becomes part of your routine, it becomes less of an onerous task and more of "just what you do."

Break it down. If the task seems large or overwhelming, that can cause some serious paralysis. Try to break it down into manageable chunks of work. I'm currently trying to program an iPhone app (despite having no programming knowledge whatsoever). Rather than have a task called "work on iPhone app," I've got "read & highlight Chapter 8 in iPhone app dev book." That, I can do in an hour or so, while the iPhone app itself could conceivably take the rest of my life.

Relax the results. I remember a minor revelation my mom had when I was 12: "I've realized that the saying 'If something's worth doing, it's worth doing well' doesn't apply to everything. In fact, it might not even apply to most things." Even as a callow 8th-grader, I could recognize the power that realization had given her. And she was absolutely right! Many tasks don't require a high level of achievement; they just need to get done. Your TPS report doesn't have to read like Proust; it just has to spell out what you've done. A toilet doesn't need to sparkle in the sunlight; it just needs to have the dirt cleaned off. Identify the tasks that merely need to be done to a baseline level of competence, and see if you don't approach them with more energy.

Find a way to want to do it. If you can't delegate, defer, delete, systemize, chunk-ify or expectation-ease a task, and you still can't quite bring yourself to begin it, you'll have to get manipulative... with yourself. As we discussed last month in "Where do you start? Part 2," finding a good reason to do something can give you the motivation you need to get it done.

It's important that your reason for doing something be phrased positively, or you'll have the same stressful result that a "have to" gives you. Saying "finishing this report will bring me closer to a good grade in the class, which will bring me closer to my degree" has a completely different feel than "if I want to get my degree, I have to get a good grade in this class, so I have to finish this report." In the first instance, you're deliberately moving toward something; in the second, you're being forced ahead by it.

And always be sure to reward yourself. I was going to list this as a tactic and call it "bribe yourself," but that seemed kinda limiting. No matter how you've managed to begin a task, be sure to reward yourself for completing it. Treat yourself like a good manager treats an employee, using praise and positive reinforcement. After all, people will do a lot more for a good manager than a harsh one.

So that's the general guide to "getting it all done." I hope you've found something in this series that has helped you. If so, please let me know in the comments. If not, please let me know in the comments. And always, don't hesitate to make requests about what you'd like me to write about. Thanks!

Getting It All Done: Delete It

Hey-o, dear readers! This is the third part in a four-part series to answer the question posed by my friend Felicia in response to a call for blog topics: "A "getting it all done"-sort of thing?"

There are four options to get something done: delegate it, defer it, delete it or do it. Today, we're talking about the third one of these, which can cause the most anxiety but be the most liberating: deciding something just plain doesn't need doing.

This item obviously applies more to the tasks we take on by ourselves than the ones we're assigned by a manager or client. But it's so easy to overwhelm ourselves with things we believe we need to do, never stopping to examine why we believe we need to do them.

In the introduction to this series, I asked you to begin thinking of the potential consequences for not doing each task. This is where that approach can really pay off.

If, for instance, you've tasked yourself with making an amazing dessert for a party you don't even really want to attend, consider the consequences for not doing it. If you just make brownies from a box, will there be any consequences, or will the attendees happily scarf up the brownies? (My personal experience dictates the latter.) Furthermore, if you decide to RSVP "no" to the party, will there be any consequences, or will you be free to enjoy an evening some other way?

Often the most powerful consequence we apply to ourselves is if that we don't do something, someone won't like us or won't approve of us. Not only does this fear tend to nudge us towards living our lives based on someone else's responses, it sells the other person short. If someone only likes you because of what you do for them, they don't actually like you; they merely find you useful. Hopefully, you have more genuine relationships in your life.

We also tend to add unnecessary to-dos to our lives because we feel we "should" be doing certain things to live up to an image that's often highly unrealistic. We create a "superman/woman" standard and drive ourselves to meet that standard, ignoring the much more important standard of being ourselves and being true to our mission(s) in life.

If you find yourself reluctant to delete some items from your to-do list, ask yourself if each item resonates with your individual mission, whether it's to write amazing books or lead a department at work. If you have that item on your list solely because you feel it's the sort of thing an archetype of a successful/upstanding/popular person would do, it's not really serving you. It can probably go.

At first, you might feel guilty about deleting items from your to-do list. If it helps, try to think of it as streamlining your activities; you're removing the extraneous stuff to give you more energy for the important things. Deleting items becomes more comfortable with time and practice, and soon you're likely to see it for the important focusing tool it is.

What about you? What items have you deleted from your to-do list recently, and how did it feel? Let me know in the comments!

Getting It All Done: Defer It

Hey-o, dear readers! This is the second part in a four-part series to answer the question posed by my friend Felicia in response to a call for blog topics: "A "getting it all done"-sort of thing?"

There are four options to get something done: delegate it, defer it, delete it or do it. Today, we're talking about the second one of these, deferring something.

Before we go any further, I need to clarify the difference between deferring a task and procrastinating on it. When you defer something, you schedule it for a later date. When you procrastinate, you've still got that item on your plate and you know you should be doing something about it, probably now, but you just can't seem to manage it.

Boiled down, deferral is "it doesn't have to be done now." Procrastination is "I hope I don't ever have to do it."

To defer a task, you need to have a pretty clear idea of your own schedule and the timetable for that task. Some tasks have a clear due date, while others may be sequential in that they need to happen before something else can happen.

When deciding whether to defer something, consider how many items are on your to-do list and how much time and energy you can bring to each of them. Remember, too, that these items are cumulative, and that the later in the block of work time an item falls, the less remaining time and energy you're likely to have to devote to it.

If a task has no clear due date or dependent subsequent tasks, it's okay to defer. Similarly, if you recognize that you don't have the time and energy available to devote to the task, deferring it makes a lot of sense.

Keep an eye on your own patterns of task deferral. If you find yourself deferring 20% or more of your daily tasks, that's a sign that you're biting off more than you can chew and should begin delegating or deleting tasks rather than deferring them. And if you find yourself deferring a particular task day after day, that's a very clear sign that you simply don't want to do it. See if you can delegate it, delete it or find some way to reframe the task so you want to do it. (We'll talk more about those latter options next week.)

What about you? Have you found yourself wondering if you're deferring or just procrastinating? What patterns have you noticed in your deferrals? Let me know in the comments!

Getting It All Done: Delegate It

Hey-o, dear readers! This is the first part in a four-part series to answer the question posed by my friend Felicia in response to a call for blog topics: "A "getting it all done"-sort of thing?"

There are four options to get something done: delegate it, defer it, delete it or do it. Today, we're talking about the first one of these, because if done right, it can create the most positive repercussions.

Here's the thing: you don't have to do everything yourself. It's so easy to get caught up in your tasks and your expectations of yourself that you forget that there's other people out there. 

The word "delegate" tends to make us think of office situations, direct reports, assistants, that kind of thing. But the idea of spreading a workload around can apply to any situation.

For instance, say one of your tasks is "clean the house." If there are other people living in that house who are at least eight years old, you can delegate that task to them, breaking it up and parceling it out as need be. (If you're reluctant to assign your kids chores, let me assure you: chores done by kids not only make your life easier, they make your kids better roommates, partners and spouses when they grow up.)

If you live alone, you might believe that you have no choice but to clean the house yourself. However, you still have the option to hire a cleaning service to delegate that task to. It will cost money, but it will free up some time, and depending on how pressed for time you are, that might be a worthwhile investment. This can also apply to solopreneurs who get bogged down in paperwork: ask if it's worth your time to hire a virtual assistant so you can spend more time on your business.

"Delegation" doesn't always mean that you have more power than the person you're delegating to. In the case of overwhelm at work, you can delegate laterally by asking a co-worker to help you with a project, or delegate up by asking a manager for help by assigning more people to your workload.

There are two crucial aspects to delegation that make many people shy away from it. First, you're admitting that you can't do everything yourself. There can be a lot of shame attached to this, especially in a culture or an environment that values achievement. However, if you can recognize how unnecessary that shame is, how ridiculous it is to be reluctant to admit imperfections, you might find that the people around you welcome the chance to help. Keeping quiet and suffering through a stressful workload not only wears you out, it can distance you from the people in your life.

The second thing about delegation is that you have to be willing to let go of the results. Perfectionists really struggle with this one. If you're letting your fifth-grader do the laundry, the price you pay for that extra time and lowered stress is that you have to accept how they fold the clothes, even if it's different from how you were taught to fold them. If you're asking a co-worker for help, the price you pay is accepting their efforts.

Ironically, the more reluctant we are to ask for help, the more we guarantee that we'll be dissatisfied with the results. When we can ask someone to do something with the attitude that we're giving them a chance to contribute to a larger mission and to help us out, we're giving them a "want to" rather than a "have to." We're also more likely to take the time to spell out exactly what we need and to show them we believe they can do an excellent job.

Of course, delegation works best in an atmosphere of mutual respect and appreciation. If you've been treating the people around you unkindly, a delegation request will probably not be met well. So even if you don't have any delegate-able tasks on your list right now, begin creating an environment where people want to help each other—or at least help you.

What about you? Have you delegated anything recently? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!

Getting It All Done: Intro

Hey-o, dear readers! This is the introduction to a four-part (five if you count this) series to answer the question posed by my friend Felicia in response to a call for blog topics: "A "getting it all done"-sort of thing?"

"Getting it all done" covers a lot of topics: time management, task management, resource management and prioritization, among others. But underneath it all is the more nebulous, "woo"-ish topic I want to talk about today: the thoughts and feelings that we bring to our to-do list. 

Usually, when we think of the things on that list, we think of it in terms of "I've got to..." or "I have to..." The way I see it, there are two problems with that. First, we phrase it as a demand rather than a desire. There's a world of difference in the energy we bring to stuff we "have to" do versus stuff we "want to" do. 

The second problem is that we tend to leave off the other half of the "I have to" sentence, the half that begins with "or" and describes the consequences of our not completing something. That tends to make everything a "have-to" of equal priority and makes it harder to figure out what to put our attention to first.

Both of these problems mean that thinking in terms of "have to" basically removes our sense of choice in the matter. And it tends to heighten our stress. Someday, I'd love to commission research to study the effect of using the phrase "I have to..."; I truly believe that hearing it, saying it or even thinking it triggers the release of stress hormones in many people.

So my introductory bit of advice to all of you is that you begin to approach your to-do list from a new perspective. First, look on it as a list of things you want to do or choose to do. (Even if you don't at first.) Second, don't just take each item on your list as a given; think about what might happen if it doesn't get done. You might find that the consequences aren't all that bad.

I also want to say that as you read through this series, you might find that you experience some emotional resistance to the ideas. In response to that, let me share one of my favorite scenes from an early episode of The Simpsons. Bart was visited by the devil and told he was destined for hell at the rate he was going. Bart asked if there was anything he could do to prevent such a fate, and the devil responded knowingly, "Oh, sure. Plenty of things. But you probably wouldn't like any of them." 

Changing your approach to getting things done probably won't be much fun at first; you very well might not like it. But just making a few adjustments in how you view your tasks and to-dos can keep you out of the hell of an endless list of "have to"s.

How do you approach the tasks in your life? Do you think "have to"? (And does that affect your stress level?) Let me know in the comments!

Where do you start? Part 2

When last we left you... My friend Angela had suggested a topic: "How about how to keep it (paper, stuff to do, etc.) from getting completely out of control so that you are faced with a giant project and don't know where to start and it just keeps getting worse?" 

We discussed giving your stuff a home and had closed with the needlepoint-ready maxim: Your stuff exists to serve you; you do not exist to serve it.

This leads us into the second part: "...you are faced with a giant project and don't know where to start and it just keeps getting worse." One of the side effects of not having a home for all your papers is that they're out there in their piles, basically in your face 24/7, and it's almost like they're harassing you about the project or work they represent.

The best thing you can do in such a situation is to step back and get more of a bird's eye view. Think about your project not in terms of what you feel you have to do, but in terms of what you want to accomplish and, most importantly, why. The "why" can carry you through the rough times of a project much better than "I have to" ever could.

"Why" can be tricky when it's not a project of your own inception. If it's a project your boss assigned you and you can't see any real point in it, the best possible thing you can do for your own motivation is to find some way that someone, somewhere could benefit from this project, even if it's in an unforeseeable future. "This will make Customer X's life easier" will give you some traction; "Boss says I have to" will only bog you down.

Once you've got a clear handle on what your end objective is, and why it matters, then you can do the nuts and bolts of planning your project. Break it down into steps and determine what you'll need in terms of time and resources to do each step. 

Also list the resources you have, especially the human resources. Don't be afraid to delegate some steps to others, or to ask for help or advice on any of your steps. Often, getting people you respect and trust involved increases your momentum and helps make that "why" stronger.

From there, you can start on your project, going step by step, and giving yourself some kind of reward at each step.

This makes a rather nice lead-in to the series I'll be starting on Thursday. I call it "Getting It All Done," and it will cover the ways we can handle the to-do list that seems insurmountable. If you have any questions, concerns or requests, please let me know in the comments!

Where do you start? Part 1

It's another post inspired by a response to my call for topics! This is from my friend Angela: "How about how to keep it (paper, stuff to do, etc.) from getting completely out of control so that you are faced with a giant project and don't know where to start and it just keeps getting worse?" 

This is a pretty complex question, but I think it's also a pretty common experience. Under ordinary circumstances, stuff seems to pile up almost on its own (and even breed more stuff!). Then, when there's a big project to do, the stuff seems to accelerate its piling, and the result is overwhelming and almost paralyzing—and at the worst possible time, too.

Let's tackle the "how to keep stuff from getting out of control" part first. The boiled-down answer to this is: give all your stuff a home. Everything you own, from your clothes to your toothbrush to your files, should have a designated home. Not only does this make it much easier to find stuff (so you don't have to think every night, "Dang, now where did I put that toothbrush?"), it keeps things from piling up when they're put "to the side."

All your papers need a physical home. Your important, irreplaceable stuff should be housed in a safe deposit box. The stuff you don't need to act on right now should be housed in reference files, and the stuff you do need to act on should be housed in some form of action files until you are ready to start doing it (then it's fine to put it out on your desk).

This means, essentially, that you have to carve out a space for everything you own. Not only that, you have to carve out some time for it as well: time to put it in its home, time to do whatever action the item requires, time for maintenance, etc. 

This might sound like a lot of work, like a lot of space and time to devote to just stuff, but I assure you, you're already putting in that much space and time for your stuff. You're giving any un-homed stuff space that you need to work in and you're giving it the time it takes to find it, relocate it, work around it, etc. You're also putting in a lot of mental energy, usually in the form of stress and worry.

So the answer to the "how to keep stuff under control" question is this: be deliberate about it. Designate homes for all your stuff, and designate time (even if it's just in short increments) to put your stuff in its homes and/or do what the stuff requires. The initial investment of time and space might feel like an imposition, but you'll get both back once you've got a home for everything.

If you find yourself being reluctant or resistant to devote your finite space and time to a particular piece or category of stuff, that might be a sign that that stuff isn't that important to you and it might find a better home with someone else—or in a recycling bin. Always remember, my dear friends and readers, your stuff exists to serve you; you do not exist to serve it.

On Monday, we'll answer the second half of Angela's question and talk a bit about sinking your teeth into a big project. In the meantime, do you have a home for everything? Let me know in the comments!

Sorting out a new job

First, a big thanks to my friend Beth for suggesting this topic. I asked what I should write about, and Beth responded: "How to deal with the piles from a predecessor when you get a new job."

If you're dealing with this, first of all, congratulations on your new job! That said, it can be frustrating to drop into someone else's office, desk, computer, filing system, etc. What made sense to the person who worked there before you might not make sense to anyone else, and there might be some very important items and tasks hidden in all that stuff. To approach those piles, I recommend that you think like ... a detective.

Survey the evidence. There's no way around it: you'll have to go through those piles and at least glance at what's in them. If you come across stuff that's already due or due soon, put that into your action files or tickler file immediately.

Look for patterns. You might notice that your predecessor piled all the invoices, receipts and other finance-related stuff together. Or you might detect that they put binders together regardless of what was in them. If you can find some patterns in the way your predecessor worked, it will make it easier to anticipate what's in the remaining piles (and the file cabinets full of stuff you'll eventually have to tackle).

Interview the witnesses. The people who worked with your predecessor will have some insight on what made them tick. Ask co-workers, manager, direct reports -- as well as the people outside the company such as vendors -- how your predecessor handled paper, information and assignments. Also ask what they liked and didn't like about your predecessor's organizational systems.

Then put things to right. Once you've figured out what you've got to deal with, it's time to make it work for you. Handle any immediate items from those piles that need your attention, then spend some time moving the papers into a system that works for you. 

Depending on the workload at your new office, you might have to break this task into 15 or 30 minutes a day while putting out fires. However, your new manager might understand that the time you invest in organizing your new office will yield greater productivity almost immediately (especially if you explain it that way).

What about you? Do you have any tales from a new job and the piles you inherited? (Also, have you ever worn a deerstalker hat?) Let me know in the comments!

Manuals can make your business more automatic

Every business does something. Your business may be service-oriented or product-oriented, but unless you've discovered the goal of alchemists and slackers alike—to get paid for doing nothing—you perform some kind of activities for your business.

Now, what if you couldn't do those things, even for a short time? What if you were hospitalized or needed to go out of town, and needed to hire someone to keep the baseline stuff running in your absence? Hell, what if your business was so successful you needed to hire someone to help you keep the baseline stuff running? Could you explain your business's processes and outcomes to another person?

If those questions make your hands go clammy or make you want to change the subject, that's a good indication that your business could benefit from a great tool with an uninspiring name: the Procedures Manual.

A procedures manual is basically a how-to guide for your business that covers the basic operational processes. For instance, if you're a web designer, your procedures manual wouldn't cover how to design or program anything, but it would cover how to send out invoices and reminders and how often to check your clients' web sites for functionality. If you run a nail salon, your procedures manual would cover opening and closing the shop and keeping all the supplies stocked, but it wouldn't cover the secrets to a perfect French manicure.

If you ever want or need to expand your business beyond you and you alone, a procedures manual can help you train new people and give your new hires a resource to check when they need reminding of how to do something. It can also provide empirical examples of how something should look or what wording should be used.

Creating a procedures manual is not a short, one-sitting project. It's a pretty important item, so take your time with it. Here are some tips for how to develop your manual:

1. Observe what you do for at least a week. Most business procedures don't occur on a daily basis; they're more like weekly or monthly items. So give yourself a chance to remember all the stuff you do and how you do it.

2. Keep a notebook nearby and write down what you're doing, how you're doing it, what your desired outcome is and how it relates to other aspects of your business.

3. Take pictures, make printouts. You can use hundreds of words to describe what a completed invoice should look like, or you can print out a correct generic invoice and write a few notes on it. Most people learn better with pictures in addition to words, so having visuals will help with training.

4. If your manual is longer than 10 pages, use a table of contents and an index. Microsoft Word has both those functions, so you can automatically generate these useful guides to your manual.

5. Once you've finished your manual, don't just put it on a shelf. Review it every time you do your procedures yourself for a while, and make sure that's how they're actually done. Whenever a procedure changes (you get a new vendor for supplies, for instance), make note of the change in your manual and print out a new page. After all, an out-of-date procedures manual is just a 3-ring paperweight.

It's a bit of an investment of time and energy to create a procedures manual that works for your business. Fortunately, you'll get that back and more if you ever ask another person to work for your business, too.

What do you think? Have you encountered good procedures manuals, bad procedures manuals or no manuals at all in your previous work? Let me know in the comments!