Only Handle It Once

I’ve spent time cringing at promoting this to most people!  If we take the idea literally – when you grab the mail, you will spend time attending to each bill and making separate trips to the filing cabinet or shredder each day as you deal with each piece of mail.  Doing a web search on those terms several hits talk about the myth of Only Handle It Once (O.H.I.O) while others talk about how helpful and important it is. Yet all of these articles, whether “debunking a myth” or using the system, really boil down to the same thing – it’s really about your level of efficiency.

It requires that you don’t try to apply this literally to every situation.  There are times to handle something only one – junk mail and spam e-mails are good examples.  Is there really any reason to have this cluttering up your space and not getting it into the trash (physical or electronic) quickly?  It does also rely on your definition of junk and spam – for example, if you are in the market for a new credit card, those offers might be worth examining.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of things you aren’t going to handle only once, at least in the literal sense.  If we think about “handle” more loosely, as in moving the item to a temporary “home” until it is time to attend to it, you can eliminate any worries it could cause by knowing you will complete later.  You are handling it once – in that you are moving it along in your system.

Therefore the key piece here is to have some systems that work for you, where you’ll put the things in the meantime.  It needs to be the same place each time and not cluttered with unrelated items.  This means that you can create different areas for phone calls, bills, scheduling (parties, social events, etc.) and focus on each one independently of the others, or if it works for you, keeping this all together.  Regardless of how you choose to set it up, you need to use it and make time to deal with those items.

If you are able to make a specific home for things and when the time is right, focus on them, you are still handling it only once since your brain is not continuing to “handle” it between when you got it and the time when you need to deal with it.  Sometimes this is where things break down for people; they don’t have working systems.  This is a different issue, as it isn’t handled only once.

This applies to e-mails as well, if you deal with it promptly, you will not keep re-reading them over and save yourself time.  In truth, it applies to many things.  If your dishwasher is not actually getting your dishes clean the first time through, you have to handle them repeatedly – hence why some people will almost wash the dishes before putting them in.  If we can streamline the laundry and get it put away, we’re not handling our clothes over and over again.

The truth is that even I still struggle some with thinking about this phrase as not literal – when I hear it, when I talk about it – I still cringe inside.  I’m afraid people cannot take it more figuratively – and from much of what I’ve seen and heard, when people talk about it, they use it literally.  Yet, if we can shift our thinking about the term handling to being about moving things along in the process, we’ll become more efficient.  As well as we’re simplifying things in our lives.

Be a Human Being Not a Human Doing

There are so many of us striving to do more and more and more.  We are driven to be as productive as possible, and when we fail to live up to our standards (or the standards we imagine others have of us) we have this sense of disappointment – or worse.  I wonder if we’ve lost our perspective along the way somehow.  We need to learn – or relearn – how to make the most of our productivity without losing the critical skill of taking time to relax.  This becomes even more essential if you are dealing with health issues.  This is important for each day.

That need for a feeling of accomplishment is more prevalent for people who don’t work in the traditional sense – whether they work from home, are stay-at-home parents, or do not work.  The days can fly by and looking back appears like “nothing” got done.  Often this is a matter of perspective, as when they sit down and actually start listing what they did, there are many things, small things that do add up over a day.

Therefore we need to pace ourselves.  In looking at your schedule, there are certain things that are non-negotiable.  Your work schedule and appointments can be the structure.  The times around these can be more flexible.  When you consider your “free” time, you likely have tons of things you could put into those open spots.

Since we all have the exact same amount of time to spend in a day, decide what is important to work on.  Set a time limit, even setting the timer, so that you don’t get lost in your task.  You do not need to finish each project you start, you can dedicate a set amount of time to it every x number of days.  You will make consistent progress, without overwhelming yourself, and eventually complete it.

Just as important as making time for those tasks, is making time for you.  Value your energy and sanity enough to leave time for down time.  Time to relax and time for your mind to stop running.  You can set a timer for this as well.

Pay attention when your body or mind gets overwhelmed – then do less the next time.  Do you find yourself utterly exhausted at the end of the day (or before then)?  Do you need to take a day (or more) to recover from a prior day’s activities?  Do you find yourself doing mindless activities when you know you have important things to do?  These are signs that you are pushing yourself too hard.  You are attempting to do more than you can truly handle.

Remember, “We are human beings, not human doings.”  Our value does not come from our level of productivity – or lack thereof.  Nevertheless, we do want to use our time to its fullest potential.  What that fullest potential is will vary from person to person.  We all have limitations, in one way or another.  We can make the most of our time and energy, and it requires that we nurture ourselves in the process.  Interestingly, this often boosts our productiveness too!

Take Time to Plan

I don’t know about you, but I always hear how important it is to take time to plan and schedule. I even believe it – how could I not, being a professional organizer? I recognize how important it is to take your time and figure things out before jumping in. Taking the time to plan means that you are more effective and productive. Most of us have probably heard the saying, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”

When we re-did the room in our home, we waited until we had certain things figured out. We did not empty the room, let alone paint it, until we knew what we wanted to do with the room. This is an interesting example since I am not sure how many of us would do it any other way.

Why then do we not take the time and consideration for the smaller things in our lives? We all have busy lives, yet too often we neglect planning. This is one of the most critical times to plan. If we want to live fully today and every day – to suck the marrow out of life – we need to take the time to figure out what we want and need to do. And we need to make a routine out of it – set aside time regularly to do plan, and this also means having discipline to keep up with it.

Recently I have been struggling with what to use for planning. I have been considering lots of different options and considering what I need and want. I was using some lined paper and creating a schedule with to-do lists based on another design. I was getting fed up with re-doing my outline for it each week and sat one day and created the design on the computer. It took me less than an hour.

You know what though? I felt guilty! I was consumed with feeling like I had wasted my time. “I had better things to be doing.” “I was neglecting all those other things that need my attention.” As I was talking to my husband about it, I was struck by the illogic of it. I was creating an easier way for me to schedule and plan. I was saving myself time each week in creating the outline, by spending this one hour; I could save myself 20 minutes every week. In less than a month I will have saved myself time. Still it did not FEEL that way.

This is the problem many people face trying to set aside time for planning and scheduling. On some level it feels counterproductive. We also often manage without taking the time to plan; yet the key word is – manage. We manage to get by and get the things done we need to. This is not thriving.

There is no one easy answer to solve this struggle. We need to find ways to show ourselves that it actually helps us. If we make the time regularly to plan, it can become obvious that it is worthwhile. The way life starts to suddenly feel easier somehow. Our stress levels decrease while we are actually more productive. Our happiness increases. We feel in control, or at least more so! The goals we want to achieve are within reach.

In closing, a lovely quote from Annie Dillard,

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.”

Consider What Your Time is Worth

What is your time worth? What would come up with, if you break it down into a monetary value? Everything we do costs us time and energy. There are things that we value so personally that it would be worth anything to be able to do. Your career may not even pay you what you determine is your worth, though I speaking now about how we use our personal time. Time is limited, we all have the same amount, and how we choose to spend it needs to reflect and enhance what we value.

There are restrictions since most of us have limited money to delegate all the unwanted tasks to someone else. Nevertheless, considering both money and time as having limitations, we can make choices about how we spend both of these. If there is something that you just love to do, that you get a sense of pleasure and accomplishment from doing, it is likely this is something that will never be worth paying someone else to do. The things that we value most will help determine where you might spend your money.

If you enjoy cleaning the house, you get a great sense of pleasure and accomplishment from handling that, you would not consider hiring someone to come in and do that for you. On the other hand, I had a client that struggled to clean and after some things changed financially, she was able to hire someone to come in twice a month. She raved about what a difference it made to her and what a luxury. It had the added benefit of helping her keep on top of her clutter since she picked up regularly so the cleaning lady could do her job.

Sometimes we need to pay for services –due to our own limitations. I had a client who had Peapod deliveries for heavy and bulky items that she could just not handle, while she still did other grocery shopping. This was a benefit for her since it was too taxing otherwise. She recognized that her health was more valuable than her money – what was her money there for besides helping her live a fuller life?

As we consider the idea of what your time and energy are worth, we need to think about your skills. If you already know how to do something, you know how long it is likely to take. You will also know whether you dread doing it or you look forward to it – or most likely something in-between these two extremes. At some point, it is worth asking yourself whether it would be more valuable to you if you could just pay someone to do it.

Changing the oil in your car is a prime example for many people. It is not difficult, yet the minor cost and speed of many shops that change oil means that more people take the car in rather than spend the time and energy to do it themselves. This is a good example of deciding what your time and energy are worth.

On the other hand, you may not already have the knowledge about how to do something. Unless it is something that requires extensive skills, you can consider learning how to do it yourself. This promotes brain health and self-esteem. It also takes additional time and energy since you need to research what it will take. Sometimes you won’t do it correctly the first time and will need to re-do it – more time and energy. That is not to say that it is not worth the effort, just that this needs to be considered as you contemplate how to spend your resources.

Paying someone means that the project will likely be done in a fraction of the time though will likely be more expensive. This is why thinking about the value of our time is important. Is there something else that you’d rather spend your time working on?

Consider what your efforts cost you – the time and effort something takes you and then factor in what the personal value to YOU would be if you paid someone else to do that same thing. When we think about how much our time is worth, it can alter the way we think about things. Money is meant to spent, we cannot take it with us in the end, so if we use it in ways to maximize our time, pursuing our goals and priorities, we are using it for it’s best purposes.

Work to Be In the Moment – Every Moment

When I was discussing spring-cleaning, I talked about staying focused on where you were working. This topic deserves its own discussion. How often have any of us started doing something and gotten distracted by something else? I cannot even count how many times in my life I have walked into a room with an intention, and when I get there I cannot recall what I was going to do. This is going to happen sometimes. Minimizing the frequency is worth striving for and can help keep us focused. If we are more focused, our productivity will only increase. Our time is spent more wisely and we might find more time to do the things that really matter to us, for instance, spending time with loved ones. With all the demands on our time and energy the thought of working on something else might be daunting, yet striving to be more mindful of ourselves will only benefit all other areas of our lives.

This is especially difficult for any of us that feel overwhelmed, hyper-aware of all the other things waiting for our attention and energy. Our minds almost work against us at these moments. That is why it takes work. We have to strive to be aware of where our minds are wandering. Then once we see that while we’re washing the pile of dishes that we’re worrying about the grocery shopping that needs to be done, we have to catch ourselves and stop. Decide that you will focus on washing the dishes and slow down. Chances are that your mind will return to thinking of other things before too long. The work continues, trying to catch yourself again and again to return to the present moment.

When you are able to be largely in the moment, the effects are noticeable. The tasks will be completed without sloppiness or errors. That alone decreases additional time and energy to correct them later. If we do it right the first time, we are actually done. It is important to guard against the temptation for perfection though. There is a balance between good enough and perfect. The last thing any of us want is to create more work for ourselves. If you keep finding particles of food on your dishes, this just adds to your workload. Look for a way to prevent this, whether you need to rinse your dishes before loading the dishwasher or slowing down as you wash them.

How much can you go, go, go before you are exhausted? It varies wildly between every person. I find that working yourself to that level of exhaustion is largely unnecessary. When we can maintain a certain degree of consistency in being in the moment, that exhaustion can be prevented. When I am doing things and can remain in the moment throughout, those tasks are completed and I do not feel drained, I feel refreshed. I finished the task, appreciating the effort I put in, and ready to move on to the next task.

Many of the things that we do regularly are never actually completely caught up. Dishes get used every day, laundry is always accumulating, the lawn will need mowing again next week (excepting the break winters can provide) and the job is never complete. Or so it can seem. One of the joys of being in the moment while you work on these tasks is that when you finish them, even just for that moment, you can appreciate the effort you put out. It is often easy to feel relieved by completing a big project, it can be more challenging to appreciate the little things that get accomplished. Being in the moment provides an acknowledgment to yourself for a job well done. You were present during the process and realize the value it holds even if you’ll have to do it again tomorrow, next week, or whenever.

When you can stay in your moments fairly consistently you will find time and energy that you never knew existed. Your work will be completed well the first time so you will not need to spend time rectifying any mistakes. This alone adds to the amount of energy you have for other things. Also, keeping your thoughts on your present moment curbs unnecessary energy being spent worrying or planning future events. Racing thoughts are surprisingly draining.

Striving to be in the moment applies to all aspects of life; from work to home, and can only benefit you in all these areas. If any of you struggle with more work than is necessary, I plead with you to strive to pause your mind and focus on the moment you are in right now. My greatest wish is that you do not create more work for yourself. Life improves exponentially when you can slow down. This is easier said than done and even I continue to catch myself and work on these skills.

Organizer Problem or Personal Problem?

I have been exploring planners and date organizers lately, being dissatisfied with my current setup and wanting to find something that accommodates my preferences and limitations. In talking with my husband about my personal pros and cons of different systems, he brought up his struggles and said, “I don’t have an organizer problem, I have a personal problem.” I knew exactly what he meant. There are systems and organizers aplenty out there, yet they are not the answer to all our problems. Finding the perfect one is not going to solve the struggles we have in using them.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are personal preferences and different ways that we all process and function, so there are organizer systems that will work better for some people than for others. Yet, some people can bounce from one organizer to another searching for the one that will somehow “fix” the ways we manage ourselves.

I could argue that most planners are all relatively the same concept with slight differences. The market continues to keep producing variations, offering more selections and in some ways propagating the idea that there is a perfect solution for everyone. The temptation is to try the newest, latest versions. This is further complicated by the ever-growing electronic choices. Now we need to choose between paper or electronic, or find a way to work with both.

When I was in high school, my dad was quite persistent about getting me to use a planner, and he was (and he still is) a huge advocate of the Franklin Covey system. Due to the price of getting started and possibly due to my resistance, I began with a DayTimer planner. After using the DayTimer and even liking it, he moved me to a Franklin planner. And for most of that time, it worked for me – in fact, for the past 20 years, I bought purses so I could carry that good-sized Franklin around with me, to the point I was getting shoulder and back pain.

In recent years, I found myself using aspects of the organizer, but there were facets of the system that I was resisting. I find the month at a view crucial for tracking my schedule and I use it consistently. Yet, the daily task list was either empty or it was overloaded with items. I was either significantly overestimating what I could accomplish in a day, or avoiding listing anything so I would not feel bad at the end of the day. In using the task list, I ended up doing the very things I encourage others to avoid: underestimating the time you think a task will take and overestimating how much you can get done.

Attempting to compensate for my resistances to daily task lists, I started making a general list of tasks on a blank sheet of paper, referring to it periodically where I would pick and choose what I was going to work on. The problem with that was it was a huge list, had varying degrees of importance, and could easily feel overwhelming just to look at.

Recently I have begun making weekly lists, working at keeping them relatively short and limited to the important tasks I want to accomplish in the next week. Finding myself processing things in this way I started thinking about the PlannerPad system. It has a two-spread page with a section at the top for the task list, under it the tasks can slide into specific days, and finally at the bottom is the schedule with time slots.

Despite my struggles with certain aspects of planning, I recognize that I have slipped in my own discipline. I was feeling overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to get done and overestimating how much I could do in a given day. This is the very reason I have talked about being careful in our thinking about how long things take us.

We need to stop looking outside ourselves for the answer to the difficulties we have.

As I have been looking at and considering different systems, I am focusing on what would benefit me, the aspects that will assist me in the areas where I am struggling. There is no telling how long the planner I choose will work for me and I will need to re-evaluate its functionality regularly. I have identified how the monthly view and concrete schedule continues to work, but the area where I have faltered is the tasks. Now considering where I slipped into being more lax, I want something that will help me strengthen those skills again. It will not happen overnight, and no organizer will cure that problem. Nevertheless, there is a system that will support me while I improve my techniques.

If you are struggling with a planner or day organizer, step back for a moment and consider: is this a planner problem or a personal problem? If it’s a planner problem, there’s plenty of alternatives to choose from and try out. However, if it’s a personal problem, no amount of money spent on planners can help. It takes discipline, attention to the areas where you are struggling, and most of all, a commitment inside yourself that, no matter what, you will work to be more organized.

The Ever Elusive Time Part II

Last week I talked about setting the timer to find a distinct measure of how you are spending your time on tasks. Yet, this is only one side of the difficulties time throws at us. So often we feel that we just do not have time to work on this or that project.

Time is easily transformed by the feelings we have about how we’ve spent it. It can be our ally or the enemy that disappears without warning. Too often, it feels so fleeting that we have no idea what happened, it is just gone.

Our talent at procrastination can magnify the effect of time’s elusiveness. We’ll start that task in just a little while, but something comes along and distracts us. Maybe something that demands our attention interferes and since the task is a relatively low priority comparatively, that task easily falls by the wayside.

It is easy to tell ourselves that we just do not have the time to tackle cleaning out the closet, or whatever it is that we would like to find the time for, yet this is inaccurate. We fail to recognize that we can break things into smaller chunks, fitting it in when we have just a small amount of time.

Here we return to the importance of the timer.

Set the timer for an increment of your choosing and when it goes off you stop. If you feel you have more time to work on a project, great; set the timer anyway to make sure you don’t lose track of time. Be careful to not overwhelm yourself since there are alternatives to finding a day (or a weekend) to clean out the basement. Setting aside as little as 15 or 30 minutes every day to start working on your projects is a remarkably effective way to get things accomplished.

Many tasks that feel large can be broken down into smaller segments, where you can whittle away at them. You fit tasks into your schedule and do not feel controlled by them. That closet shelf (or even part of a shelf) can be sorted and purged in 15-minute increments.

If you enjoy watching TV, you can get up and work on something during the commercial breaks, and by the end of a one-hour show, you will have spent at least 15 minutes getting things accomplished!

Who does not have 15 minutes in their day to spend on something that will provide value for them? You will be amazed at what you can get done in those 15 minutes.

We all have things that we wish we had time for and yet somehow feel that there is not enough time. Even bigger or detail oriented tasks can be broken down into smaller segments. If you have a stack of photos you want to go through, but are convinced that you do not have the time to go through them, pull out a small pile and start with that. You can always pull another pile later.

This idea of setting the timer to help you track time can also be applied to ways to make time for any number of things you put off. If you wish that you had time to take a bath, time to luxuriate and relax, set the timer for that too. You can fill the bath and set the timer just before you hop in, then you can focus on enjoying that time and not worry about losing track of how long you’ve been in there.

Our time is immeasurably valuable. We can find ways to evaluate and appreciate how we spend it and maximize how we use it. It should not control us, and the timer is a wonderful way to take control of your time.

What are you going to do with your 15 minutes today? Tomorrow?

The Ever Elusive Time Part I

Time is this amorphous entity. On one end of the spectrum there never seems to be enough time and on the other end of the spectrum, it does not pass fast enough.

Everything I have ever read on time management addresses the idea that when we are planning, setting up schedules, we do not set aside enough time for the project. We easily underestimate how long something will take us to accomplish. I have heard of doubling and even tripling the time you think it is going to take you!

Of course, as soon as a project takes us longer then the time allotted, we are then off that carefully arranged schedule, the rest of the day is off. It is easy to see how this can contribute to people feeling overwhelmed and not in control of their lives.

Part of this struggle of setting up time frames for projects is that we desperately do not want something to take too long. We are determined that it can be accomplished with the ideal amount of time. We are reluctant to sacrifice more of our valuable time to this or that project.

My husband and I set out to paint the blocks along the basement wall and we both thought that working together it would be a few hours, eight hours later we were almost done! It appeared so straightforward and simple, but it still somehow was quite time-consuming.

It is obvious that there are a plethora of reasons how time can get away from us, more than just the ones I’ve listed. The elusiveness of disappearing time bothers people more than when time feels like it is dragging by.

My solution to the struggles with time is simple: a timer. Start timing how long repeating tasks take you. It will give you a concrete measurement for how you are spending your time.

Something as simple, yet pleasing, as making the bed can take as little as two minutes, with elaborate pillows. When doing your dishes, whether by hand or by loading the dishwasher, as long as you do not have a huge pile, can take less than 15 minutes.

Laundry, which takes time with the sporadic attention it requires, is not as time consuming as it seems if you look at just the specific time needed for your effort. The majority of the time with laundry is taken by the machines. How long do you actually spend sorting, filling the machines, folding, and putting away the laundry? If you knew that it takes no longer than 30 minutes altogether of your time, would you be less reluctant to start a load? Granted you need to be around to move the laundry, but if you don’t want to take time away from your children or away from your favorite TV show, the time required is minor and can no longer be a reason to put it off.

Get a real sense of time, how long things take you, and from that knowledge, you can make educated choices about how you want to use your valuable time. Without an actual timer, you too easily judge things by how it feels time-wise, but not based on factual data.

What about filing? If you dislike filing papers, would you rather spend 30 minutes doing it once a month or half a day sorting and organizing them so you can then file them? It is your choice, but think about the time and how you feel about the task. If you knew that it was only 30 minutes once a month, it lessens the weight of it, making it a minimal effort and takes it off your mind. On the other hand, maybe you would prefer taking half a day less frequently. Of course, it also matters whether or not you find yourself searching through piles to find a paper you need, which if you filed monthly would be simple to locate.

This is one side of the time puzzle. Next week I will discuss the other side of things.

In the meantime, are you going to use your timer to find out precisely how long things take you?