There are rarely times that multi-tasking is efficient. For most people and projects having a single focus from start to finish of the project allows you to focus, gain momentum, and leverage the resources you have available. For example, getting the paper file out for the alpha project, opening the computer folder on the alpha project, and working for an hour to two on the alpha project is a proven way to make a lot of progress on the alpha project.

However, while you working on the you could be doing exercises. Ah yes, you haven’t forgotten your New Year Resolution to get in shape have you? Neither have I. A way to strengthen your core (belly and back) while focusing on your alpha project is to sit on an exercise ball. This inexpensive piece of gear will require you to use muscles from your hips to your shoulders to keep balanced. A colleague of mine bounces to the tune of whatever is playing in his headset while he works.

It’s one of the few times you’ll hear me say multi-tasking can be beneficial. A 5′10" person fits on a 65cm (26") ball with an easy reach across a desktop and good form all ’round. How’s a move toward a belly six-pack sound?

Myth: I cannot stop the stuff from coming in and that clutter is making me disorganized and hurting my productivity.

Reality: You can stop much of the paper mail, email, and ‘stuff’ (personal articles) from encroaching on your life.

Some of those organizing skills and routines mentioned yesterday as well as some preventive actions that you can apply to reduce the amount of stuff coming at you apply here. In some cases you will have to develop a very clear boundary between you and invading correspondence and physical things. In other cases there are simple and quick steps to take. Let’s look at a few representative cases. Use them to develop a strategy to stop your stuff.

Case 1 – Email. Regarding email that piles up in your inbox and you have no interest in reading, stop it from being sent to you. Send a request to the creator of the email saying simply, “Please take me off the mailing list for _________. I am making an email reduction effort and removal from the distribution list would help me. If I find I need that report in the future, I know you’re the one to contact. Thank you for your help on this.”

Case 2 – Paper mail. Stop all subscriptions to periodicals & catalogs. Yes, you read that correctly, stop all subscriptions. This is extreme but you really aren’t reading most of them anyway. Simply call the customer service number listed in the front of magazines and throughout the catalogs and cancel your subscription. Be sure to say, “Please cancel my subscription and send the refund to me at the address you have. And, please delete or mark my record so that no future mailings of any sort are sent to me.” Now sit back and imagine how much relief you’ll have without a backlog of periodicals piled high reminding you of your lack of time.

Case 3 – Stuff This is good place to be clear with others. Try saying, "I’m trying to streamline my life and reduce the amount of stuff I have to take care of, insure, store, keep track of, maintain etc. Please give me the treat of a meal (or coffee) with you for my _________."

You might need to be a little creative and you must be diligent then you can curtail the clutter that threatens to overwhelm – and stop the stuff! .

Please comment or write to me (Susan@organizersinc.com) with your own special situations… I can help solve them!

Myth: Being organized is something you have or don’t have from birth.

Reality: Being organized is a set of skills and routines that individuals learn. A pet vision of mine is that these skills would be taught universally in all schools because everyone benefits when they have a sense of order and flow to their life.

For example, an organizing routine is to pay all the household bills in full on the 15th and 30th of the month. With such a routine establish the people with that routine never miss payments. As a result they don’t pay interest charges and they don’t pay late fees. And, their credit score is high yielding flexibility and opportunity.

The impacts of disorganization are many and varied from a marred reputation for consistent lateness, to stress and lost time while looking for things, to unattractive environments. The opposite of that is true for the organized – free time, a clear mind, a good-looking environment, less stress, and opportunity.

Learning to organize is like learning a sport or to reading ~ it (organizing) is a set of skills that have a predictable and targeted result. And, like reading, life is easier if you have the skills. These skills also take time to understand, practice, and polish. So, take heart – if you’re learning a new organizing skill, it’s a matter of practice over time.

For accelerated and personalized learning consider hiring a productivity coach. Just as a golf pro helps you learn to drive and putt better and faster, a productivity coach will help you organize better and faster. A coach will uncover what skills you lack, what skills you have, and figure how you can master new organizing skills that relate to your life. Many corporations pay for this type of coaching because they know that a more productive professional will contribute more to the company and be a role model.

Read this book – The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz! There are a number of reasons that I think this book will contribute to your success. In my usual streamlined way, let me list some reasons why:

• This book is a perfect blend of wisdom, recommendations, and stories to illuminate their points.
• PoFE (Power of Full Engagement) treats us as a whole, not just workers. They emphasize the physical supporting the emotional supporting the mental supporting the spiritual. The subtitle ‘Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal’ could be, ‘The Key to High Performance’ because the whole package is what they’re about.
• If you are an active or former athlete, they talk our language. Train hard (stress your body) and balance that with conscious recovery makes perfect sense for the corporate athlete too. As a cyclist I have training weeks with 200-300 miles – but after a few high-mile weeks I have active rest – no stress but keep moving. The result: improved performance. Loehr & Swartz advocate a parallel approach for work – focus & work hard to accomplish things then go home and don’t forget vacation.

Today I was launched as a guest writer for lifehack.org – a blog about lifehacks. The phrase describes any hacks (shortcuts), tips and tricks that get things done quickly by automating, increase productivity and organizing. Right up my – and your – alley!

You can read the article here: Productivity & Organizing Myth #1 – Born Organized . In fact, I’m planning on posting these articles on the Productivity Cafe, too. What do you think, should I publish them here first or after they appear at lifehack.org?

Having just read The World is Flat this community of contributors smacks of the new economy. Leon Ho is located in Australia and puts lifehack.org together from there. The writers are around the globe. The time from submission to publishing around the world is instantaneous. Traveling to more than 47 countries on every continent except Antarctica myself I spent more hours in airplanes than I care to count. As a result it’s vivid to me how these immense distances are closed by the internet. Life is good!

Update January 2009 – I have stopped writing @ Lifehack.org – - there is too little time to do all that writing and this writing and my regular work. It’s a study in priorities!

When we are really close to something we don’t usually see the whole picture. This base of a building illustrates the point.

While standing next to the building it seems completely hard and cold concrete. It is big and bulky and there is no telling what is on the other side of the thing. We could make a plan to have a picnic on the ledge or steps. Or we might walk by it thinking it’s unwelcoming and ominous.

Yet, if we take a few steps back we will see that the building is much more than that hulking mass of concrete. As our perspective changes our insight into this building changes.

In this illustration those concrete pillars shrink to being small accessories. We also see that the building is more than what met the eye when right up close. This building actually gleams in the morning sun and reflects the sunlight and surrounding building. We get a better idea of how it fits into the cityscape.

For the even bigger picture we can climb up to the top floor.                  The perspective is immensely different from this vantage point. When we observe how the building fits into the whole city from here, we have more of a context.

None of these views is better than the other. Each contributes different things to our ability to put things in context.

If you can apply this idea of different perspectives to your planning you will enhance the overall scheme of things. Your point of view is the up-close. Ask a colleague, friend or consultant for the view from a few steps back. Consider how your project or program fits into the whole picture by asking someone far away from the actions you take on it. This could be a VP, a manager, a director of your department, or a mentor outside your daily sphere.  Look from different perspectives to see how everything meshes and let that impact your direction.

David Allen has a version of this sort of change of perspective in his GTD (Getting Things Done) book. He, however, talks about runway, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, and 50,000 feet perspectives. Honestly, with this third photo at somewhere around 500 feet, you have to imagine that at the 10,000 level and up, about everything below is a dot. If you’ve had challenges with David’s scale, bring it down to earth with the street level through the hot-air balloon level. You might find it little more manageable by being more realistic.

As we get a clean start on 2007 it’s a great time to weed stuff out of your life. A report I read recently say that >35% of housework could be eliminated if clutter was removed from the typical home. From what I’ve seen >35% of time spent spinning wheels in an cluttered office setting could be replaced with productive time. I’m just talking about the physical ’spaces’* here but we could extend that to time and computer/data (how fat is your daytimer/day runner/planner?)

Reusing and recycling are two close relatives. Generally I think if reusing as pulling something out and putting it back in active duty. You might reuse paper boxes for archiving documents. Recycling generally mean reusing by someone else. Recycling a keyboard takes it out of your inventory and moves it to someone else.

Earth 911 has a lengthy list of resources for recycling. They have everything from a destination for those old and bulky monitors (which are now cluttering the back room or a closet) that you’ve replaced with slim and new flat screens to guidelines for setting up a recycling program at your office. I was happy to read about places to recycle books because no one likes to throw out a book and everyone likes to share their books.

to recycling are reducing your clutter!

*A friend of mine turns on HGTV and says to her husband ~ we’ll leave it on only until we hear the word ’space’ used three times. Sometime it’s off within 2 minutes. That’s as opposed to calling it a room, closet, or kitchen. Where did that label ’space’ come from?

Most of us have taken advantage of the National Do Not Call Registry. There are folks out there aiming to duplicate that protection of privacy with regard to junk mail. The New American Dream is joining that cause and has terrific ideas on curbing junk mail as well as disturbing background on why this is so important.  Here are some of their background:

Click here for specific junk mailing stopping steps you can take and to learn more.

For those of you who don’t know about the do not call registry… by joining the registry calls to solicit your business are forbidden.

If you have a reading folder you are ready for meaningful and enjoyable use of ‘down time’. A reading folder can be filled with the things that you’d like to get to or must get to. Filling it with articles, magazines, and other materials as you process your inbox allows you to

• Use time that would otherwise be wasted
• Defer reading until your must-do activities are complete
• Read in a more comfortable environment
• See if you really do have to read it by aging it
• Meter how much reading you really can do and do do vs wish you could do

[A to-read folder works both for physical documents & material and email. Simply drag your to-read emails into the to-read folder.]