Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Sue Becker is an ADHD specialist, who is a certified professional organizer.
It’s hard to believe, but we’re three fourths of the way through the year – how are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? Was one of them to lose weight? It may not quite be what you had in mind, but if you’re trying to shed a few pounds, one quick and easy way to do that is to clean out the purse, wallet, briefcase and/or bag you’ve been lugging around. Besides lightening your load, it will make the things you carry with you every day more organized and easy to find. Here’s how to make it happen: Empty it out. Dump the contents of your purse, wallet, bag or briefcase into a shoebox or other container so nothing gets lost. Toss the trash. You may discover you’ve been carrying around a portable trashcan. Toss the obvious items: used or…
Monday, June 25, 2012
Tips for staying on task to get more accomplished.
Did you ever have one of those days where you didn’t finish anything you’d planned because you just couldn’t seem to buckle down and get focused? Actually, is there anyone who hasn’t had one of those days? Time to throw off my superhero cape and reveal that even this time management expert has days like that. All the planning and scheduling in the world is useless if you can’t focus on important tasks. Maybe you can benefit from some of the things that have helped me stay focused when I‘m working in my office: I have a clear goal and purpose. I make sure that whatever I’m working on is moving me closer to one of my personal or professional goals. If a task isn’t meaningful in that way, I strongly evaluate why I’m even considering doing it…
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Live more efficiently by seeing tasks such as doing laundry through completion.
A recent client of mine (I’ll call her Donna) struggled mightily with getting her clean laundry put away rather than strewing it across the living room couch. As we worked to understand the causes of her challenge, we discovered that she didn’t view putting the laundry away as being at all related to other steps in the laundry process. Instead, she viewed each step (sort clothes, load washer, run washer, empty washer, load dryer, empty dryer, fold clothes, put clothes away) as separate from and unrelated to any other step in the process. In her view, sorting and washing the clothes without having time to do any of the subsequent steps was better than having a mile high stack of dirty clothes. However, operating in this fashion sometimes (…
Friday, April 27, 2012
A little advanced planning will make your vacation even more enjoyable.
Summer will be here soon, and with summer typically comes travel. While you may be looking forward to your vacation destination, you may be dreading the last-minute scrambling that typically accompanies your pursuit of relaxation. This month's tips will help make sure your trip is actually as relaxing and enjoyable as you've imagined it will be by helping you get organized before you leave. Have a single place where you store all of your travel information. Use a notebook, file folder or binder to hold your itinerary, airline tickets, car rental information, passports, maps, travel agent information, brochures, etc. Use lists to help you make sure that you have everything taken care of before you leave. You should have a packing list for …
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Sue Becker offers her tips on living a more organized life.
Getting organized can be quick and painless if you have the right tools for the job. Some advanced planning will help you get everything you need close at hand so you can stay focused on your organizing project. Here are some things to have on hand: A vision of what you want – Although not often thought of as a tool, having a vision of your desired outcome, like having the right tools, will help you work more easily and quickly towards your organizing goals. Write out or draw a picture of your organizing objective for each space. For example, your vision might be to clean out and organize a spare bedroom so you can have guests stay over, or so you can have a place to work on your crafts. Garbage bags – It’s inevitable that somewhere along …
Monday, February 27, 2012
Eliminating electronic clutter can boost your productivity.
Last month I wrote about how getting rid of visual clutter will give you more energy. Now let’s consider how getting rid of electronic clutter will do the same: Email, text messages, social media and other forms of electronic communication can suck huge amounts of time from our day. While we may think being connected 24/7 helps us be more productive, my experience is that it makes people less productive and mentally drained. Now I’m not saying that these additional forms of communication aren’t valuable and useful – I use them quite a bit myself. However, when they get in the way of focusing on the task at hand (“Hmm let me see what new emails I have before I work on this report that I’ve been putting off all week”), they lose their value…
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sue Becker offers tips for increasing energy by de-cluttering your living space.
I hear it all the time: “If I only had more energy I’d be more organized.” It may be a case of the chicken and the egg – your disorganization depletes you so you don’t have the energy to get organized and vice versa. While there are certainly physical conditions that can zap energy, our own habits sometimes deplete us as well. There are two common areas of clutter in most people’s lives: physical and electronic. I’ll talk about physical clutter this month and electronic clutter next month. Is there a room in your home that, when you enter it or even just walk by, seeing the clutter just drags you down? Or maybe you feel that way when you enter your house. Clearing physical clutter will help reduce your stress and anxiety because your …
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Most people give up on resolutions by March, but a few tricks can ensure you follow through with your 2012 goals.
Here we are again – a new year is almost upon us, and once again, millions of people will be making resolutions to improve their life. Most people tend to start the year with plenty of enthusiasm and determination, and then lose momentum as the year rolls on. In fact, by this time next year (actually, by March of next year) most people will have abandoned their resolutions. Here are seven tips to set realistic New Year's resolutions...and keep them: Best wishes on achieving your New Year's goals!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Understanding how you learn can help you figure out ways to stay organized.
You may have heard of learning styles or modalities, the way we prefer to process information. Knowing your own learning style can help you understand your current organizational (or disorganized) situation and offer insight into how to get and stay organized for long term. There are four commonly recognized learning styles: People typically have a range of learning styles. I happen to be auditory and kinesthetic, with a bit of tactile thrown in – I’m definitely not a visual learner. My husband, on the other hand, is very visual. One way our differences manifest themselves is when giving/receiving driving directions. He’ll draw a map of the route and describe where the road curves and the landmarks along the way. I will write out the …
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Professional organizer Sue Becker offers her suggestions for managing your time.
Time – you can’t see or touch it, yet it plays a major role in our lives. There are many facets to time management, but one that many of my clients find most helpful is viewing time as something tangible, something you organize as you would any physical space. In her book, Time Management from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern gives a great example of making time visible. She compares a cluttered schedule to a cluttered closet – your day is jam-packed with more things to do than your schedule can hold and tasks are randomly assigned to any available pocket of time, making it hard to see what you have to do in an orderly fashion. To make your day easier to manage, consider having regularly-scheduled times to handle various categories of …
Nancy Pipal
6:56 am on Friday, June 29, 2012
I second that, James. This is a GREAT list of things to do and not do in order to stay on task. I especially like the idea of taking breaks. Thanks for the excellent advice, Sue. more ›