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5 reasons to use checklists for organizing your mind and space

· Tuesday, January 19th, 2021

I believe that having routines helps you to accomplish things using less energy. It automates chores and tasks that need to be done regularly to keep an office or home organized. If one person has routines for the tasks the system works. That person will get burnt out doing all the work. Delegating the work is the key. How do you delegate work that is in someone’s mind?

Checklists

Checklists can be used for many reasons.

to make a process repeatable
to clarify a task for another person
to schedule tasks to be completed at regular intervals
to reduce what you need to remember

Reproducible

I have many tasks that I do infrequently or I am learning. I set up a checklist with all steps I need to do so I don’t forget one. The checklist takes the stress out of completing the task. I don’t need to figure out how to do it each time. The checklist will become refined after each use when I realize I left out a step or I have found an easier way to do it.

Some examples are:

Collecting income tax records:

material needs to be gathered from a number of institutions,
forms need to be filed,
receipts need to be organized,
copies made,

Setting up meetings:

agendas prepared
reports requested to be compiled/ submitted ahead of time for the meeting
meeting notice sent with the current date, time, location and attachments
set-up meeting room in-person or virtual
take meeting minutes
meeting minutes sent out to attendees
follow up on items to be completed by participants

Social media posting

list hyperlinks to social media sites so I don’t need to look them up each time
record steps on how to post to each site until it becomes easy
record date when something was posted
record the topic that was posted so it is not posted twice

Photo by STIL on Unsplash

Clarity

How many times have you asked someone to do something and you come back and you are shocked by what they did or didn’t do? Checklists clarify what needs to be done in order to call the task completed. It allows you to delegate work.

Some examples are:

Clean your room – this means something different to each person

Take the sheets and pillowcases off the bed and put them in the laundry
Put on clean sheets and pillowcases
Pick up everything off the floor and put it away
Dust everything( list the items)
Vacuum the floor, closet and under the bed
Empty the garbage can into ……

Filing

place documents in designated box for filing
recycle advertising
shred unimportant documents with personal information on them
sort pile alphabetically or by date or category
file placing new documents in the front, header to the left

Planning an event for your family or at work

set date, time and place
send out notice/invitation with date, time, directions, need to know information, RSVP
start to build a purchasing list
decide on food and drink- quantities, order or prepare on site
set up the room – seating, decorations, pens, paper
clean the location
have a place for coats
plan activity- ice breakers, games,
purchase/shop for items for the event
set up a timetable for the event
reminder notice
post signs showing where to go, the name of the event Developing a checklist is a good way to think through all the steps in a task. Click To Tweet

Avoid mistakes, frustration and embarrassment

Checklists are great for things you do from memory to confirm you have not missed anything. Memory is fallible, especially the busier you get. If you have a checklist you won’t forget to make sure you have enough handouts for your meeting, you have defrosted the meat for supper, you have your passport etc. Sometimes I have a mental checklist I run through before leaving the house, a written checklist is better

How to write a good checklist

In his book, Gawande said a good checklist contains only five to nine items and fits on one page. You might not get your checklist right the first time, so practice using it in the real world, and then refine as needed.

Checklists can improve performance, help you be more consistent, reduce anxiety and errors. If there is something you are doing and it is hard, complicated, never seems to go right or needs to be delegated try making a checklist for that task. It is a good way to think through all the steps in a task. It only works if you use it before you begin your task.

Need help making a checklist book a 30-minute complimentary virtual organizing appointment. https://mindoverclutter.as.me/virtualorganizingassessment

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. If you’re in a difficult transition Julie can coach you to break-free of emotional clutter constraining you from living life on your terms. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : checklists, organizing, virtual organizing

Make progress every single day and you’ll beat procrastination for good

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, November 17th, 2020

· 4 Comments

It’s hard to believe but we are coming to the end of our seventh blog to get off your butt and finally beat procrastination. I hope you’ve been following along and more importantly that you’ve been making progress on at least one of the things you’ve been procrastinating on. We end today with the most important piece of advice and the main lesson I want you to take away from all this.

Make progress every single day!

Of course that’s easier said than done. That’s why I’m leaving you today with three simple hacks or strategies to help you. Give them a try and see if you can’t get into the habit of being productive every day instead of procrastinating.

Plan For It

It’s easy to make progress every day when you know exactly what you should be working on next. Make a plan and then decide what you will do each day of the week. Write it down in a planner and adjust daily as needed. In the morning, you can see at a glance what it is you should be doing. Then get to work on it first thing before the day gets away from you. I find it helpful to have my planner sitting right in front of me at my desk, keeping me on track.

Don’t Break The Chain

There’s something to be said about a chain or a streak. Record every day you don’t procrastinate on something. You can mark it on a monthly calendar, or create a chain of sticky notes, stickers, or even one of those paper chains you used to make in school. The goal is simple. Don’t break the chain. Once you have a few days under your belt, you’ll be motivated to go the extra mile and do that one thing you need to do to avoid breaking the streak.

Check In With Yourself

As you start to make progress on the things you know you need to be doing, you should feel your anxiety reduce. Instead you will feel your confidence go up. Don’t be surprised to feel proud of your accomplishments. Instead use those feelings to propel you forward to more procrastination free days. Procrastination is a habit. It’s something you learned to do, which means it’s something you can unlearn. Stick with it, make progress every day, and enjoy those feelings of accomplishment.

Make progress every day, and enjoy those feelings of accomplishment. Click To Tweet

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : Attitude, procrastinating, procrastination, productivity, virtual organizing

Beat procrastination – listen to your inner voice and change that dialogue

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, November 10th, 2020

· 10 Comments

Something we haven’t talked about yet is that little voice in our head that either encourages us to go do something else – thus procrastinating, or the other one… the critical one… the one that tells us how much we suck because we didn’t get the things done we set out to do. Listen to your inner voices; the negative one, the fun one, change that dialogue and stop procrastination Click To Tweet

Forgiveness

Why is it important to listen to those voices? Because they have an impact on your life both on a conscious and a subconscious level. Let’s start with that negative voice because I think in the long run it’s the most destructive of the two. Back on day one of this seven-day challenge to beat procrastination we talked about the importance of forgiving yourself. To quickly recap, it does you no good to beat yourself up over past procrastination and that you should expect to “fail” by procrastinating again here and there. Nobody is perfect. We all have good days and bad days. The important part is to show up and try your best.

Negative Voice

That little negative voice in your head doesn’t help you do that. Become aware of it and when you hear it, defuse it. You can do this by responding to it out loud or in writing (via a journal). Or go up and do something else. Do whatever it takes to silence that voice. A great option is to prove it wrong by doing something productive. Over time that voice will speak up less and less unless you indulge it by paying attention to it and letting it ruin your day.

The Fun Voice

Next it’s time to tackle the voice in your head that tells you it’s much more fun to do just about anything other than what you should be doing. We all have that voice. It’s why we come up with terms like procrasticleaning and procrasticrafting. We can get pretty innovative when it comes to doing anything but the thing we don’t want to work on and that little voice is feeding us suggestions and cheering us on.

The best way to diffuse this particular voice into something more productive is with “yes, and” statements. “Yes, playing video games sounds like a lot of fun and I’m going to play for an hour or so after I get this task done.” Use the suggestions this voice gives you as bribes if they sound like something fun. Ignore them otherwise, or put them off until tomorrow.

Comment on which voice do you listen to most often and why?

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : Attitude, procrastinating, procrastination, productivity, virtual organizing

Old habits are hard to break – accountability is key to beating procrastination

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020

· 13 Comments

Beating procrastination can be hard. We do well for a few days, but then old habits set back in, or we get frustrated with our lack of apparent progress. Nothing goes fast enough. If you face a small setback at this point, it may be enough to stop working on what you wanted to accomplish in the first place. Thankfully there’s something you can do to greatly improve your chances of success. Accountability.

Procrastinating is a habit and you can get out of it and turn yourself into the motivated and productive version of yourself you want to be. Click To Tweet

Track Your Progress

Start by tracking what you do. You can do this via a simple habit tracker. Use a box for each day of the week and check it off or fill it in when you do the thing you told yourself you would do. Keep tracking until it becomes a habit or until the project is done.

For larger projects that you may or may not work on a daily basis, it helps to write down your goal and then break it into milestones. Record your progress and how much closer you’re inching to each of your goals.

Make Daily To-Do Lists

Write out a list of everything you want to get done for the day. I find it helpful to do this the day before. Play around with how many items you put on that list. You don’t want it to overwhelm you, but you do want to challenge yourself to get more done. The list holds you accountable because you can see in black and white if you procrastinated or not.

Tell Someone About Your Plans

If there’s something you’ve been struggling to get done, tell someone else about your plans to finally tackle it. Call a friend, tell your spouse, or announce it on social media. Encourage the people you’re sharing with to check back with you on how you did. It may be the little extra push you need to stop procrastinating.

Find An Accountability Buddy

Last but not least, find someone else who’s procrastinating and start holding each other accountable. This could be as simple as checking in once in the morning to declare what you each want to get done, and then again at the end of the day to see what happened. Knowing someone else is right there with you can be super motivating.

Give each of these procrastination beating strategies a try and see which ones give you the best results. Like anything else, procrastinating is a habit and you can get out of it and turn yourself into the motivated and productive version of yourself you want to be.

Need help being accountable? Set up a complimentary 30-minute virtual appointment to help you stop procrastinating

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter in your, home, office, mind and time. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : procrastinating, procrastination, productivity, virtual organizing

Don’t let things or people distract you into procrastinating

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, October 27th, 2020

· 11 Comments

You wake up in the morning motivated and ready to tackle whatever it is you’ve been procrastinating on. Or maybe you’re excited about a new project. You drink your coffee, get dressed, and get ready to get to work. Then something happens.

Maybe you open your email, or worse Facebook and get sucked into spending the next few hours on your computer. Or maybe a good friend calls and asks you to go shopping. Or you get an alert that your favorite TV show dropped on Netflix. It doesn’t matter what it is, the point is that there are people and things that will try to distract you into procrastinating. If you let them.

Strategy – plan the night before

There’s a simple strategy you can use to keep this from happening. It’s to make the important project you’ve been procrastinating on a priority and working on it first thing every morning. The whole process starts the night before. Before you call it a day, sit down and make a simple plan for what you want to get done the next day. Identify the three most important tasks. This will be things that start to move the needle. Maybe they are all focused on one main project, maybe it’s several things you know you should be getting done.

Write 3 things down

Write these three things down. They don’t have to be anything big. In fact, I find it helpful if they are all items I can take care of in an hour or less. When you get up in the morning or get to your office, look at your list and work on these three most important tasks before you do anything else. Don’t look at the email. Don’t start playing on your phone. If possible don’t even answer the phone or attend meetings before these three tasks are taken care of. Make them your number one priority.

Don’t leave it to the end of the day

This alone will make a huge difference in how your day goes, how productive you are, and it of course keeps you from procrastinating on those projects. Putting them off until the end of the day when you’re too tired to do anything is no longer an option. Stop procrastinating: strategize, write 3 tasks down, complete them first thing in the morning and beware of things that derail your plan. Click To Tweet

Pinpoint what caused you to procrastinate

Aside from that, simply being more aware of what things, devices, and people tempt you to procrastinate is helpful. When you find yourself putting something off, look back and see if you can pinpoint what caused it. Then take action towards preventing it from happening in the future.

If you’re having trouble changing your habits, book a complimentary 30 minute coaching appointment to discuss how to increase your productivity and reduce your procrastination.

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : procrastinating, procrastination, time management, virtual organizing

Stop procrastinating: 7 Hacks to motivate yourself to make progress

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

· 10 Comments

Ready to stop procrastinating and make some progress? Try one of these seven simple hacks to motivate yourself into action. Give them each a try over the coming days and weeks and find the ones that make the biggest difference for you. Whenever you find yourself procrastinating, come back to this list and employ one or several of these hacks. Your productivity will soar.

Tip #1: Pick Something Small

One of the big reasons we procrastinate is because something feels overwhelming. There’s too much to do, so we choose to forget about it for a little while. It’s a coping mechanism, just not a very productive one. Instead, pick one thing, something small that you can do right now to move you in the right direction. This creates momentum and forces you to take action.

Tip #2: Set A Time And Go

Another hack that works like a charm is to set a timer. Your phone has one built-in, as do most smart watches. Set it for fifteen or twenty minutes and chip away at a task you’ve been procrastinating on. This works just as well for decluttering your closet as it does for filling out those dreaded forms. If twenty minutes feels too long, start with ten and increase your time. Again, the goal is to start and do something.

Tip #3: Bribe Yourself

There’s nothing wrong with bribing yourself if that’s what motivates you. Work on a home organizing project for an hour and then watch an episode of your favorite show. Or promise yourself a walk or dinner out when you finish decluttering the living room. Come up with something that motivates you and go for it. Remind yourself of the prize at the end of the project whenever you’re tempted to put things off for another day.

Tip #4: Find An Accountability Partner

Find someone else who’s either trying to be more productive or beat procrastination themselves. Check in with each other daily. Share what you want to accomplish and what you will get done today. Knowing you have to report to someone else makes you take action. It’s also motivating to see the other person do the same. Try it.

Tip #5: Measure Your Progress

When you’re working on something long-term like organizing your enitre home for example, it can be tempting to procrastinate because it doesn’t seem like you’re making much progress. Instead, prove to yourself that you are getting closer and closer by tracking or measuring it. Make a chart, use a spreadsheet, keep a journal. Find a way to measure your progress and use it to motivate yourself to keep going.

Tip #6: Remind Yourself Of Your Why

There’s a reason you’ve decided to do that thing you keep putting off. Think about why you want to get it done. Is it so you feel less overwhelmed? So you can run around with the kids? So you can find the clothes you actually want to wear? Find out your why. Write it down and then keep it front and center. Look at it every day before you get ready to get to work.

Tip #7: Just Start

I’ve saved the best for last. It’s the easiest but also the most powerful. Hear this. Just get started. That’s right, sometimes all you have to do is just get moving in the right direction. Do something. Do anything. Even if it’s something super small. You get over that initial hump and start to build some momentum.

Comment on the hack that works best for you.

Need some help to get started? Book a 30-minute complimentary virtual appointment and let me help you get started on your mission.

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : procrastinating, procrastination, virtual organizing

Stop procrastinating: Set a goal – Write it down – Get started

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, October 13th, 2020

· 8 Comments

Getting over procrastination takes action. Of course that is easier said than done. Today I’m going to share a simple three-step process with you that will help you get started and get more done than you ever thought possible.

Set a goal

It all starts with a goal. You have to know what it is you want to accomplish. If you don’t know what your goal is, it’s hard to know what you should be doing first or what you should be doing right now to move in the right direction. So what do we do instead? Anything other than the work we know needs to get done.

Your goal is simply putting what you know you need to get done into words. A good goal has defined parameters and a set deadline. That doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s a simple goal we all strive to accomplish. We have to file our taxes by a specific date. You have a pretty good idea of what paperwork you need, what forms you need to fill out, and where you need to turn them in. You also know what your deadline is. In other words, you have a well-defined goal when it comes to filing your income taxes. And yes, I realized most of us still procrastinate when it comes to this particular task. That’s why the remaining steps are just as important as the first one. For now I want you to think about one thing you need to get done and turn it into a goal.

Write it down

Write it down. I don’t care if you find a random scrap of paper, use your favorite notebook, or type a note to yourself on your phone. The important part is that you put your goal into writing. This does two things. First of all, it helps you clarify what your goal is. You have to get pretty specific when you try to put what you want or need to do into words. Secondly, writing it down gives you something to look back on. It serves as a reminder and as a tool that you can use when you are tempted to procrastinate.

Set an appointment with yourself

Last but not least, it’s time to get started. That’s often the hardest part, isn’t it? You’re tempted to skip your workout until you lace up your shoes and get started. Once you’re off and running, it’s much easier to keep going. Once you have your goal written down, think about something you can do right now to move you in the right direction. Go do that. Then come back and do something else. Each morning, start by looking at your goal and challenge yourself to take action. Before you know it, you will have made some serious progress. And you’re starting to beat procrastination.A three-step process to stop procrastinating: set a goal, write it down, schedule time. You can do it Click To Tweet

Need help setting goals? Book a 30-minute complimentary virtual appointment and let me help you get started.

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She uses her love of physical activity to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : procrastinating, procrastination

Forgive yourself for procrastinating in the past

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, October 6th, 2020

· 8 Comments

Are you a procrastinator? Many of us have the tendency to put things off and no matter how often we beat ourselves up over waiting to the last minute to pack for a move, declutter our home, or file our taxes and struggle to get it all done in time, we keep doing it again and again. If you’re ready to finally beat procrastination and get ahead of the game, you’re in the right place.

Forgiveness

Over the course of seven blog posts, I’m going to share my best tips and strategies for overcoming procrastination with you and we start today with – Forgiveness. I know it seems like a strange place to start, but it’s an important first step. Here is why forgiving yourself for procrastination should always be the first step.

There’s nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. Beating yourself up about not following the plan you made for reaching a goal does you no good. Quite the opposite actually. If you stress yourself out and engage in negative self-talk, you make it worse. Those feelings of anxiety will enforce your habit to procrastinate again the next time.

Forgive yourself for procrastinating so you can move on and practice some more. Click To Tweet

Try to do better

The next time you find yourself procrastinating, tell yourself that it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. Say it out loud and then promise yourself to try to do better. Trying is the important keyword here. You’re working on mastering new skills and changing a habit. That takes practice, time, and of course failing again and again. It’s part of the learning process.

You may feel frustrated at times about your lack of progress. It’s normal. If you can, tap into that frustration and use it to motivate you. Vow to try again and do better. Look at your mistakes. What caused you to procrastinate this time? Learn from it and you will start to do better.

Learn from your failings and start again

Maybe there’s a big task and you started strong, chipping away at it a little at a time. Then you missed a day and another. That’s okay. Not great, but okay. You did well for a while. It’s good practice and maybe this particular experience taught you that you can’t allow yourself to skip more than one day on an ongoing project.

There’s always something new to learn whenever we fail at something or slip back into a bad habit. At the very least we figure out that something isn’t working for us. Maybe you do better with three or less to-do’s per day. Maybe you need twenty-five so there’s always something to check off. You won’t know until you try.

Forgive yourself for procrastinating so you can move on and practice some more.

If you need help to get back on track with your project try a virtual organizing appointment. Virtual organizing allows me to support your organizing projects by providing planning, coaching and mentoring while both remaining safely at home.

Book a 30 minute complimentary virtual organizing appointment.

Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, in person and virtually. She enjoys working with her clients to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situation. She reduces clutter, streamlines processes and manages time to help her clients be more effective in reaching their goals. Julie can coach you to break-free of the physical or emotional clutter constraining you from living life on your terms.

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : procrastinating, procrastination, time management, virtual organizing

Understand how sleep cycles and time management can improve your productivity

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, April 7th, 2020

· No Comments

Man in blue shirt with a coffee cup in each hand sleeping on one of the cups on a brown desk

Most people need more sleep than they realize

Some people say they don’t need very much sleep. Recently a super sleep gene was found. Only about 5% of people have it. It allows their body to cycle through the REM and non REM sleep cycles more quickly so the person feels more rested in a shorter amount of time. Unfortunately, about 30% of people report only needing 4 hours of sleep a night. So about 25% of those people would benefit from more sleep. Harold Taylor is a time management expert. He publishes a newsletter, Taylor Time Newsletter. The August edition has a great article on sleep and time management.

by Harold Taylor Work Smarter is more about Timing then Technology

What are sleep cycles?

When we sleep, we do so in approximately 90-minute cycles throughout the night, each cycle consisting of five stages – four stages of non-REM sleep (about 75% to 80% of our sleep time) and one stage of REM sleep (about 20% to 25% of our sleep time.)

The first REM stage begins about 90 minutes into our sleep and then the cycle begins again about every 90 minutes until we wake up.

Scheduling your worktime and projects

What most people don’t realize is that these 90-minute “sleep cycles” run through the entire day. We obviously don’t sleep during the day if we have slept sufficiently during the night, but the cycles become waves of high and low energy and are referred to as ultradian rhythms. Our internal clocks are critical to our personal performance as well as our health and well-being. Our body has many internal “clocks,” each operating independently but in constant communication with one another.

In a few of my books and articles and all of my seminars, I talk about scheduling projects in 90-minute segments.I recommend that people find their high energy time in the morning and start working on their top priority items for about 90 minutes Click To Tweet

I have always known that I was more productive working in sixty or ninety-minute chunks of time, and I suggested all kinds of reasons for it – such as it was the maximum amount of time I could work without having to be interrupted or even interrupting myself. But I never knew until recently that ultradian waves of high and low alertness had actually been identified. One study of young violinists back in 1993 revealed that the best violinists all practiced the same way – in the morning in three segments of no more than 90 minutes with a break between each segment. The same thing was noticed among other musicians as well as athletes, chess players and writers.

I recommend that people find their high energy time in the morning and start working on their top priority items for about 90 minutes. Then take a break of about 15 or 20 minutes before starting the next task. Following the second 90-minute work session there should be a break of at least an hour before resuming. (This could be lunch and a brief walk.) It will take time to get into the right pattern. You have to listen to your body to determine the best start time and the actual duration of your high-alertness cycle.

Breaks are important too

You don’t necessarily have to take a coffee break, go for a walk or do stretches during your breaks as long as you switch to a different type of task. There are three basic types of activity – mental, physical and emotional. If you have been working on a mental task requiring intense concentration such as writing a business proposal, a switch to cleaning your work area, filing or checking messages on Twitter or Facebook for twenty minutes might be just as relaxing to the mind as a twenty-minute chat at the coffee center.

Use your natural body rhythms to be more efficient

The problem is that people have been fighting their natural body rhythms by feeding it coffee and other stimulants and therefore developing inefficient working habits. They have likewise short-circuited their natural sleep cycles with late nights, artificial lighting and stimulating electronics.

Contact www.taylorintime.com to subscribe to his newsletter

Virtual organizing allows me to support your organizing projects by providing planning, coaching and mentoring while both remaining safely at home.

Book a 30 minute complimentary virtual organizing assessment to help develop your productivity. https://mindoverclutter.as.me/virtualorganizingassessment

Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca

Twitter – Facebook – Facebook group Organizing Mind and Space

Click here to learn more about working with a Professional Organizer?

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Categories : Time Management

Tags : Business, procrastinating, sleeping, time management

Have you been putting something off?

Posted by Julie Stobbe

· Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020

· 11 Comments

Here is an excerpt from a great article on why we procrastinate and tips on how to stop procrastinating.

“You know how it goes. One part of your brain says –

“Stop procrastinating. Just get on with it. Finish it!”

But then another part screams-

“But I don’t want to!”

Ziegarnik effect

It may not be anything major, but the task keeps niggling at the back of your mind. It can leave you feeling unsettled, slightly annoyed and stressed. Here’s the thing: you can’t be fully at peace until you complete the task. Why? Because the Ziegarnik effect is in full swing. The Ziegarnik effect is the tendency we have to worry about something we have started and haven’t yet finished. But if you can just get it done, your brain will breathe a sigh of relief. You will feel lighter. Chances are you will have turbocharged energy levels too.”

Read the entire article at http://learningfundamentals.com.au/blog/how-to-motivate-yourself-at-any-time/

Procrastinating, why do you do it?

There are tasks or projects that needs to be completed and they are getting put off to the side and nothing is being done. Many times the problems is that you don’t know what to do. Break the task or project in smaller pieces that so you can start on the things your know how and complete them. As you continue you will find the parts you are not sure how to handle. When you have determined the part that is outside your knowledge, ask for help, do research or delegate to someone with that expertise. Let procrastination be a trigger to look at the situation as a problem solving question instead of an activity you don’t like to do.