Organize 365 Podcast

Throughout September, I will be teaching you how to proactively plan your work, control your work situations, and make decisions about what your work is going to look like, now and in the future. It is time to plan our work. I have always been a non-traditional worker, so we use a very broad definition of work at Organize 365®. I want you to make a plan for your work and make thoughtful decisions about how to manage this part of your life. No one will ever get everything on their to-do list done. Getting a system in place to manage your to-dos will allow you to optimize your work and have more time for your life. What is work? Work is whatever you are doing for the majority of your Monday to Friday hours. Your priority for the majority of the week in this season of life is your work. It can be volunteering, caregiving, working a traditional job, or being an entrepreneur. It can also include being a stay at home parent, or a homeschooling parent. There are many different kinds of work. Work is a mindset about how you approach your activities, and may or may not be related to what you do to earn an income. Where do you work? The COVID-19 pandemic has changed where we work. Because of our new experiences, now we all can discuss in-person work, remote work, and hybrid work. Where each of us works will likely continue to change over the coming months and years. I started Organize 365® at my kitchen table, moved into a corner of my bedroom, briefly used a spare bedroom, had an office in a loft space at home, and then finally moved to the Organize 365® office. No matter what kind of work you do, you need to consciously decide where you will do your work. Many homes do not have a dedicated home office. Some work requires working in different locations on different days. However, establishing where you work is vital to effectively getting your work done. No matter where you do your work, you need a consistent place to capture your work papers, ideas, and to-do items. For your household, the Sunday Basket® handles all of your home paperwork. At work, the solution is the Friday Workbox. What hours do you work? I love working. I love creating impact through my work. I have never been successful setting work hours for myself, but I have learned to set non-work hours so that I have time and energy for my home and family. I set aside Sunday as a day when I do not do work, and I lavish my attention on my family. This is my approach, but yours may be different. You may be in a season where your focus and priorities are on parts of your life outside of work. In those times, you may need to fit your work hours into firm boundaries. In this situation, determine when you will start and stop your work day. Be clear about what can be flexible and what cannot change. Try different approaches to your work hours and determine what is best for you at this time. Where will your work supplies be put away? No matter what your work situation is, you need to have a place where you can put all the parts of your work away. This is especially important if you are working from home or working from multiple mobile locations. Just like in kindergarten, at the end of the day, your workspace needs to be clean. The Friday Workbox is designed to hold all of your active work papers, and to keep them organized so that you make consistent progress towards your work goals. When you have your Friday Workbox, a computer, and a phone, you can work anywhere. This is a system that is easy to grab, ready for you to easily access your work and take action, and safe for storing your work when you are done for the day. As more people are working and schooling from home, it can be hard to be done working for the day especially if our work is out in the open. Putting everything into the Friday Workbox (including the laptop) and putting it away, allows your work space to return to the other functional purpose. Putting away things we are not actively using improves the family enjoyment of our spaces. I am a multi-faceted, multi-passionate person. I know many of you are too. Over time, I have found that having a separate box to store the pieces of a project or job helps me to organize my brain. Prior to using boxes to store my projects, I had multiple unfinished projects in the open around my home. It was overwhelming, and I did not make as much progress as I thought I would by keeping these things visible. At the end of each work session, develop a transition routine. Check your email one last time. Close your computer. Drop any notes for action items or reminders in your Friday Workbox. Put your papers back in the Friday Workbox. Put your Friday Workbox away and enjoy your non-working time with the others in your home. If you need more help getting your Friday Workbox system started or optimized, we now have Certified Organizers who are specialists in the Friday Workbox System. They are specially trained to help you as an individual, or can help you get the Friday Workbox installed in your workplace. For more information, please check out our directory.

It's time to decide and make a plan. Last week, we talked about what is in your control. Control is about the decisions you make, how often you decide, and the impact of the decisions you make. These things matter much more than how many decisions you make. Today, we will talk about different aspects of decision making. Deciding seems so final. It's really not. I will teach you about making deliberate decisions today, and then reassessing them when the information you have changes. Almost a decade ago, I decided what to have for breakfast, and I haven't needed to decide again. I just grab the same breakfast and coffee and I'm ready to go. Who thinks this much about breakfast? We all do! We just don't realize how much effort we put into decision making if we aren't actively paying attention to our decisions. When choosing my breakfast, I thought about calories, energy level, hunger, and how different food choices affect my energy level. I weighed all these factors and made a decision about what I will eat every single day. I have shared about ways that other leaders make decisions once to avoid decision fatigue in podcast 271. Anyone can learn to make decisions about the little things like simple meals, clothing uniforms, or putting items into a Sunday Basket®. Deciding once spends more energy up front, but it reduces decision fatigue and exhaustion over things that do not really matter in the long run. Another important factor in making good decisions is controlling how many decisions you need to make in a given day. In the past, I used to think it was a sign of success that I made all of the decisions in the company; everyone answered to me! Now almost all of the decisions at home and work are happening without me - this is growth and success that can scale and be sustained! Organize 365® uses a decision making ladder similar to Michael Hyatt's Delegation Levels and the Phoenix Project Levels of Decision Making. We all have a finite capacity for making decisions. It's a physical reality. You can only make so many decisions. If you want to make more impact, you must empower and teach people how to make decisions the way you would make them. This means they can make decisions without you. Freeing up your own capacity and investing in your team furthers your mission and vision so much more than you can do alone. One important lesson I've learned about decision making is that you can only make decisions about your own home, work, and life. Decisions become easier once you truly embrace that you only control yourself. Other people will make their own decisions. I can see the beauty in all of the decisions that people make. The decisions that others make don't bother me. I love to learn how other people come to the conclusions and decisions that they make. You can't make a decision to control another person. You can only decide how you want to work, live, or do life. Very few decisions we make are permanent or irreversible. At certain times in life, and certain seasons of our lives, we will need to re-make our decisions. Whenever you get more information, you should reflect and reconsider your decision. Ask yourself: Does it still work in this season of life? What has changed and how should my decision adapt? I now look at what decisions may need to change at the start of each of my mini new years (January, May, and September). I make my decisions at the beginning of each 4 month stretch, and then I see how it goes. I don't mind taking 120 days to research and try new decisions, and the final decision tends to last five to ten years. I work on one or two big decisions each trimester; this system doesn't work with 30 new decisions. September is the most productive planning time of the year. Every year, I set aside a Planning Day for my home and set goals for myself, home, family, and finances for the next 120 days. I also set aside a day every quarter for myself and my team to do a Workbox Planning Day. I'd love to have you join me and make progress on your own decision making and goals!

Here's the thing, you don't have very much control over almost anything. But, you have so much control over a few things. I recorded a bunch of podcasts before I left for the book tour, but I like my podcasts to be as relevant as possible. I want it to feel like we are talking on the phone together in real time. But, I can't see the future. COVID keeps changing our lives. It is one of the things that we cannot control. We all desire a sense of control. But, when you focus on things outside of your control, it causes stress, anxiety, and worry. If you choose to focus on what you do control, you can reduce or eliminate the stress, anxiety, and worry. We have control over our mind, our home, our media inputs, and our impact in the world. COVID is extremely important, but it is not urgent. It is distracting most of us from our purpose and our impact on the world. Today, I want to talk with you about making decisions about the things you actually can control. You set the tone and cadence in your home. You control the decision making. Identify what you can control. Then, make decisions so that you can get some of your time back. I want you to be able to control what you can, and free up your time to do what you want to do. For me, stress and anxiety come from the unknowns in life. The more I focus on what I do control, the less I worry. I want this for you too.

In August, I start planning and thinking about the next mini new year - the school year. During July, I like to reflect and review the past year and begin to dream and plan for the future. No matter the season, I spent a lot of time thinking about and pondering how I invest the minutes of my life. I have always valued every minute and think through how to optimize, prioritize, and maximize each one. Time management is the process of evaluating where you are in all the areas of your life, determining your priorities, allocating the resources available to you, and making a plan to achieve your goals. In this podcast, I recap some podcasts on time management. In episode 134, I share how I plan my life in mini years (trimesters). In episode 426, I share how organizing is an optional investment of time today for a potential increase in your time in the future. The Sunday Basket® is an organizational system that will take 60-90 minutes of planning time to free up an extra 5 hours of time each week. More importantly, when you are organized, your brain is free to think and dream, instead of just trying to keep track of to-dos. Episode 366 is about organizational math. I share how I apply the same benefits of basic math skills to your transformational journey into organization. For any of you who are math phobic, I promise we only talk about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In episode 269 I discuss how we make decisions to prioritize either time, money, or motivation. Understanding what is most important in our current situation helps us to decide what approach will result in the most effective outcomes. I no longer measure value strictly in terms of time or money. Instead, I look for the tangible outcomes of my daily actions. The 100 Day Home Organization Program is priced at 10% of the cost of in-home professional organizers helping to declutter and organize an entire home. However, most of us do not value our time as much as we do our money. Committing financial resources to getting organized helps to motivate people to engage in the 15 minute a day tasks of the 100 Day Program, and actually achieve a transformation of their homes and lives. Which of your goals are worth an investment of your time, money, and motivation in the next four months?

Today, I am bringing back the Organize 365 lead researcher, Sarah Dyson. We are sharing about our soon to be published literature review scheduled to be in the The Journal of the Arkansas Psychological Association. We share how we needed to define a shared language in order to collect data and discuss solutions. The submitted article is titled The Role Women play in the 21st Century Home and Gender Equality- A State of the Art Literature Review. As soon as it is available, we will share a copy of the publication on our research page at organize365.com/research. My initial hypothesis was that women were doing more work at home than men. Interestingly, those are not the results of our research! Members of younger generations share housework far more equitably than we expected. Gender roles have changed and we need solutions for all genders, all age groups, and all types of households. Organize 365® is adjusting based on this information. The literature review covers four major topics in the home: cueing and goal attainment, gender roles, female entrepreneurship, and future research. Listen in for a sneak preview of all these topics.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week, I am sharing my interview with Adrienne W. She lives with her husband and 2 kids under 5 years old and she works as a teacher. She shares about getting her home organized has given her control over the whole household. She also shares her tip for using her Sunday Basket® to improve communication with her husband. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: Organize 365 The Sunday Basket® 100 Day Home Organization Program ALL ACCESS Workboxes Paper Organizing Retreats I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Learn more at organize365.com/podcast/defining-housework-maintenance In November of 2020, I did a two part podcast on the four kinds of work in business (361 & 362). It turns out, there are also four kinds of housework, and I introduced these in Podcast 418. There are many of these business concepts that also equate to our homes, we just don't think of running our household like it is a business. We hear a lot about work/life balance as though these are two separate ways of getting things done. There are so many parallels between your day job and your home job. A few podcasts ago, I shared that Organize 365 is pursuing research about organization. One of the first challenges we faced is that we do not have a common vocabulary around work inside the house like we have for work in the workplace. As part of our research, we needed to define the words we were using in the survey questions. That meant, we needed to define housework. This is the final episode of a four part series that defines and explains the different kinds of work we all do inside of our homes. Today, I am sharing some details about the fourth kind of housework - maintenance. Home maintenance tasks are the tasks that the owner of the property is responsible for in order to increase the value of the home. This includes things like painting, updating flooring, replacing HVAC units, and purchasing a new roof. It is technically optional, but it is in the best interest of the property owner to keep the maintenance up to date. It is an investment the owner makes to protect the value of the property. Maintenance can be done directly by the owner, or it can be done indirectly by hired help. Renters have very little, if any, maintenance expenses and responsibilities. In the most recent research, Organize 365® discovered two important things. Home maintenance is the kind of housework where external help is most often hired by the homeowner. Home maintenance is also the only category of housework that is most often completed by men. When Greg and I first purchased our home, my dad taught me a very important lesson. His advice was to make any desired improvements to our home as soon as possible, so we would get the most enjoyment from our purchase. He was so right! I also remember my aunt recommending an annual home maintenance budget of 5% of the value of the home. That is a lot of money. You may not spend the whole amount every year, but larger expenses can use up several years worth of the budget. If you own your home, I want you to think about being the landlord of your home. This will help you determine what maintenance tasks are most important. The Organize 365® Household Reference Binder is helpful in keeping track of your maintenance needs and documentation that the necessary tasks have been completed. Having an organized system for my documents and information has helped me to make decisions about when to replace and when to fix certain appliances. I can also better predict my maintenance expenses because all of my papers are easily accessible and organized. I hope that you find these descriptions of housework helpful and I want you to think about how you can become more efficient with your housework to do the work you are uniquely created to do!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week, I am sharing my interview with Lisa F. She lives with her husband, three kids, and a whole bunch of animals. She shares so much about how she has slowly increased her organization over the last few years. Lisa found Lisa from podcasts, and has consistently worked to transform her home, her family, and her life! I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: Organize 365 The Sunday Basket® 100 Day Home Organization Program ALL ACCESS Workboxes Paper Organizing Retreats I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week, I am sharing my interview with Sheila M. She has been through the 100 Day Program nine times already! She lives with her husband and two sons. Listen in to hear how she has gotten control of her paper and is ready to take on her newest life event - retirement! I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: Organize 365 The Sunday Basket® 100 Day Home Organization Program ALL ACCESS Workboxes Paper Organizing Retreats I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

In November of 2020, I did a two part podcast on the four kinds of work in business (361 & 362). It turns out, there are also four kinds of housework, and I introduced these in Podcast 418. There are many of these business concepts that also equate to our homes, we just don't think of running our household like it is a business. We hear a lot about work/life balance as though these are two separate ways of getting things done. There are so many parallels between your day job and your home job. A few podcasts ago, I shared that Organize 365 is pursuing research about organization. One of the first challenges we faced is that we do not have a common vocabulary around work inside the house like we have for work in the workplace. As part of our research, we needed to define the words we were using in the survey questions. That meant, we needed to define housework. This is the second of a four part series that defines and explains the different kinds of work we all have to do inside of our homes. Today, I am sharing some details about a second kind of housework, tasks of daily living. This type of housework is a set of skills we all need to do or have done for us for our survival. Tasks of daily living are related to the Social Security Disability definition of disability and include things like grooming, grocery shopping and meal preparation, transportation, and paying bills. Some transitional high schools offer training in these skills through Project search and other programs. Tasks of daily living follow the individual. In college, as a new parent, and as a grandparent, you will always have to feed yourself and do laundry. Conversely, the amount of cleaning likely went up and down depending on your stage of life. However, once you share a home with another person, you begin to negotiate to divide and conquer the tasks for convenience and productivity. Generally, these tasks become consolidated as the responsibility for the person who is home more often. Tasks of daily living are the hardest and most expensive to delegate. Some small portions of them can be outsourced, but it is not convenient to have help with these items. Most of those surveyed reported they did their own tasks of daily living. In the study, we also asked what the major barriers to doing these tasks were, and most of the general population reported a lack of motivation or being too tired. See more about the research at organize365.com/research. The major solution to keeping your tasks of daily living organized and getting them completed proactively is the Sunday Basket®. You need to create better systems, better habits, and reduce your expectations!