This has been a week in which my best intentions were thwarted, and I received feedback from a couple of trustworthy sources that I wasn’t “on my game.” Email was part of it, but I also gave out the wrong time for a class, failed to prepare properly for a meeting, and spent too much time working on stuff that wasn’t all that important.

Stressful? You bet.

My high standards are where the problem started. When I made my first flub of the week, the little Gremlin of Self-Judgment perched on my shoulder and whispered some not-very-nice things about me.

When I made my second flub, the whisper became a stern repartee.

It only got worse from there. I mean, seriously! I was counting my errors! By the end of the week, I was buried in self-judgment, exhausted, and feeling rather insecure about my competence as a business owner.

Thank God I’m normal.

If people I admire didn’t tell me they have weeks just like this, I would be really scared. But I know it’s normal.

If anything, making a few gaffes this week illustrates how far I’ve come as a cluttered creative person. I used to forget things daily. I was constantly late, making excuses and tearfully begging forgiveness. My teachers never knew how to grade me at the end of a semester because (although I participated enthusiastically in class) I’d never turned in any homework.

I have come a long way.

What trips me up

When I start forgetting things, I use it against myself. As evidence.

That nasty gremlin is out to prove that I’ll always be that disorganized girl. It says, “You think you’re so organized, we’ll just see, shall we?!”

And then I make another mistake. “See?? Ha! Ha! You ARE the same person you’ve always been! You’ll never be organized!” And then I make even more mistakes.

Ugh.

Ever been there? It totally sucks.

What I do (and maybe you might like to try too)

The other day, I had a nice talk with my wonderful, sensitive uncle and friend — who also happens to facilitate non-violent communication (NVC) groups. Uncle Tim caught me off guard when he used a term I’d never heard before, “self-empathy”. When he said it, little bells rang gleefully inside my heart.

Self-empathy!

I don’t know how the official NVC technique works, but yesterday when I “caught” myself making a mistake and entertaining that nasty gremlin, I took a deep breath — and this is what I said to myself:

“Jen, you are having a hard week. You’re feeling badly about not showing up the way you want to with people you really love. You’re feeling really embarrassed for missing connections and for giving incorrect information. It’s okay to feel sad and embarrassed and disappointed.

“You’re human. It’s okay to make mistakes and not to be perfect. You are doing the best you can right now. I want to remind you that your heart is in the right place. Forgive yourself for making these ‘errors’. Don’t let your past determine your future, okay? You can start fresh, right now. You are a good human being and I love you.”

I wiped away a few tears, took a deep breath… and sat for a while with a nice cup of tea. It was such a different way of talking with myself, and I could feel peace settling into my heart, where doubt and anxiety had been.

Compassion is a powerful tool for creating order

What I am slowly discovering is that the more compassionate I am with myself, the more productive I am. It sounds anti-intuitive, but judgment makes my spirit shrivel up and escalates stress. When I am compassionate with myself, I feel free. I have choices and see opportunities to adjust my actions creatively.

Of course, this is about organizing, but it’s also more than that. The truth is, no amount of order creates happiness. Only you can create happiness. So, while you’re on the path to becoming more organized and less cluttered, why not offer yourself the compassion and self-empathy you crave — and so rightly deserve?

Thoughts? Yeah, buts? Me toos?

Leah Piken Kolidas

Website: www.bluetreeartgallery.com
Blog: www.creativeeveryday.com

What she does: Leah is an artist who sells her originals and prints, and teaches others how to use their creativity.

What she loves best about her office: The light, the views of trees

How her office helps her: It’s still new to her, but in her new space she notices that she sees lots more possibility in her business.

Leah’s everyday genius idea: She creates a visual to-do list in her sketch book, drawing images that go along with the items on her to-do list.

Listen to the recording (13 minutes)

Genius quote:

“Doodling helps people people absorb information and think.”
- Leah Piken Kolidas

Online distractions.

Although the Web and email are all pretty handy tools, sometimes they’re so visually stimulating that they feel like threats. Enemies. Barriers to concentration.

If you want to focus, there are lots of ways to prevent distraction and still get the most from these tools.

Here’s what I do prevent online distraction

• Close browser tabs - Firefox and Internet Explorer (and I’m sure many other browsers) allow users to open an infinite number of tabs. I just know that if the little tab says Facebook, I will click on it whether I really want to go on Facebook or not. So I keep it (and other distracting websites) closed. In fact, I keep as few open as possible. Usually just my gmail and gcal are open.

• Prevent popups - Most of us know about pop-ups from websites. But I’m talking about the pop-ups that Skype creates every time one of my contacts gets online. And the pop-up on gmail when someone wants to instant message me. And the pop-up that appears when an email comes into your inbox.

Concentration is hard enough without pop-ups, so I’ve turned them all off. With Skype, I have to actually log off. With gmail, I have to select my status as “offline”. If you have Outlook, you can opt out of the “so-and-so has sent you a message” announcements. And good riddance!

Here’s what I’m working on

• Twitter and Tweetdeck – I’m not sure I’m actually working on this, but I’m aware that although I keep very few browser windows open, I almost always have TweetDeck (a tool that makes Twitter easier to use) open. I’m still figuring out if it’s a distraction or a tool – or both.

What do YOU do that minimizes online distractions?

Your turn! If you’d like, please share what you’re doing that helps you in your business and/or life – and also something that you’re working on/experimenting with.

Your comments on your own process are welcome. Just remember to give advice to me or others only when it’s specifically requested. This makes exploring safe and learning possible for every reader.

Do you remember the last time you took a walk in the woods?

Maybe you can recall the quality of the light, the views and scenes that passed you, the kinds of plants and trees along the way, or the companions who accompanied you. There’s something meditative about the woods.

Practically speaking, most people find that a walk in the woods is fairly easy to do. You simply choose a place to begin and then start walking. It’s so obvious how to take a walk in the woods that it hardly seems worthwhile to explain it.

You just start.

You don’t worry about step 247 or bridge number 2 or the fourth squirrel. You just walk.

Organizing is like that too.

Organizing is just like a walk in the woods. You begin. You take a single step forward – and another – and another, pausing occasionally to take in the sights.

Except when it isn’t.

Unlike walking in the woods, people do get stressed about where to put things (step 247) or how to deal with email (bridge number 2) or dealing with time management (the fourth squirrel). When you worry about these things, it’s as though you’re standing stock still in the middle of the path with your eyes closed.

You can’t get there any faster by thinking so hard.

Just take a step.

Depending on the length of your legs, a single step happens in about a half-second. Is there something you can you do in your space today that would take a half-second?

The idea isn’t to get to the end of the trail in one fell swoop. Your legs aren’t that long – and neither is your attention span.

Maybe, just maybe, you’d be willing to take a “walk” through your workspace today, taking half-second actions to move what you can.

That fourth squirrel will appear when it’s supposed to and no amount of thinking will make it come faster.

Enjoy your walk.

A deer in the technology headlights

Over breakfast this morning, Inspired Spouse, who is a lover of all things technological, informed me that there is a new android from Google. (blank look)

At least that’s what I heard. Inspired Spouse informed me gleefully that it was a kind of phone. Which could possibly be synced with a computer and other digital devices so that you could access your information anywhere.

If this is going over your head, don’t feel badly. Although I appreciated the information and enthusiastic delivery, I wasn’t tracking the whole thing myself.

A dose of healthy skepticism

I confess. I tend to reserve my rejoicing regarding new products that organize. Whether it’s a phone or digital doodad or paper organizer or (insert retail item of choice), there is simply no better organizing tool than your own brain.

Unfortunately, unlike many gadgets, your brain comes with no user’s manual. This makes it easy to fall prey to the belief that your brain is broken. Disorganized. It’s easier still to succumb to clever advertising that convinces you that some doohicky will make you be organized and save your life.

Celebrating your brain

This is a topic we’re discussing in the Inspired Organizing program right now: the truth that your brain is organized. Really. Since the day you were born. In fact, as you went through childhood and got older, your brain became even more refined and orderly.

Like any tool, you just need to know how to use it. The two keys to utilizing this miraculous natural order inside your head are awareness and space.

Key 1: Awareness

Awareness is most effective when you concentrate on your strengths (for example: creativity, appreciation for color, skill with words, estimation of distance). Even though we all have weaknesses, they’re really, really hard to change. So, by focusing on what you naturally do well, you get lots of good-feeling material to work with in your organizing.

To create awareness, just jot down a list of things your brain is really good at. You may find you want to use some of these strengths in your organizing systems. You might even discover that you already do!

Key 2: Space

In my experience, the people who create the most satisfying, enduring organizing systems are the ones who allow their process to be spacious. In other words, they stop looking for a quick fix.

Stepping out of the quick-fix mode is challenging in a culture that values taking a pill to solve dis-ease and buying its way out of problems. Frankly, choosing to step out of that mentality is a decision I have to make again and again, not just once. But it’s worth it.

Organizing is a process that evolves over time – because you evolve over time. Thank heavens for that! I invite you to notice if you’re open to creating an attitude of space in your life – so there’s room for discovery.

Things to try

Become aware of what you’re good at: As suggested above, take a moment to write down all the things your brain is naturally good at. Add to this list over time. Then think about how your might use these strengths in your organizing.

Create space: While you’re writing, jot down your thoughts to these question: How open are you to letting go of the quick-fix mentality? What might need to shift in your life in order to accomplish this?

Remember when you were a kid, and “getting mail” was really exciting?

Maybe it was a card from your grandmother, a letter from a pen-pal, or even the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes envelope (am I the only one who used to play with the little magazine stamps as “stickers”?). Back in they day, getting mail was fun and kind of exciting. Of course, we got less of it, and we usually didn’t have to worry about things like “filing” or “paying” or “sorting.”

Nowadays, getting mail usually means bills (ugh), junk mail (double ugh), or magazines (fun, but potential clutter). While most of our everyday communication takes place on the phone or online, snail mail is still a presence in our lives… and on our countertops or desktops!

Here’s what I do for snail mail

What works well for me:

Most junk never crosses the threshold into my house. I keep my recycle bin near the door between my garage and house, the entrance I use when I’m coming in the house after retrieving my mail. Before I enter the house, I pause for a minute and pull out all of the flyers, pamphlets and junk mail envelopes that don’t contain private information, and I dump them directly into the recycle bin. They never come in the house.

The shreddable items (credit card offers, for example) come in the house, but go directly into the shredder. If I set them on my desk or counter (ostensibly to “shred later”) they sit there for weeks. Directly to the shredder they go!

The magazines go onto a small end table that sits near my loveseat. Once the shelf on that end table is full, I have to either recycle magazines currently on the shelf, or (if everything on the shelf is Need To Read material) the new magazines get tossed into the recycle bin with the junk mail before ever coming in the house–until some room is made on the end table shelf for new ones!

What I’m working on:

The “needs some attention” stuff is tough. The flyer for a conference I want to attend and need to register for. The bill I need write a check for and pay. The invitation I need to RSVP for (after checking my calendar and figuring out travel details).

The items that require some interim step between receiving it in the mail and disposing of it are the ones that befuddle me, and often end up being tossed in a pile on my desk where they promptly… sit. (Well, they sit *and* act as the foundation layer for additional pieces of “needs further action” snail mail that come later… so let’s not pretend that they’re completely useless.)

And then there’s the outgoing mail that I need to generate: birthday cards, thank you notes, the stuff that I want to send the “old fashioned” way rather than by email. I have the card, I have the stationery, I have the stamps… but all those separate pieces usually wind up sitting on my desk (near that nefarious pile of “needs further action” mail) rather than getting assembled and mailed.

What do YOU do with your snail mail?

What works really well for you? What are you working on?

From your enthusiastic and heartfelt emails about the squirrel in my truck, I could tell that the topic touched a nerve. Apparently, I have a lot of overwhelmed readers who are in good company.

Simply put: you’re busy. You have a million commitments to your work, your family, your community, your inbox… not to mention the fact that you’re trying to keep it all balanced and maybe have a little fun from time to time.

So I wanted to make space in this Juicy Gems to share how to meet that need for retreat.

Resistance

Although you might think people would feel enthusiastic about taking a reprieve, most don’t. When they acknowledge how truly tired they feel, most people try to ignore it. It often feels overwhelming and even frightening to consider taking a break.

So instead of meeting that deep need, we make up reasons why we shouldn’t, can’t, don’t have time, don’t have money, etc. Indeed, there isn’t a lot of time or money to spare in most households today. You do have commitments and obligations to meet. But what’s the real cost to you?

What do you really gain in the long run by denying yourself the space and time you truly need?

At the heart of the matter

I believe that there nothing more important than nourishing your heart-spirit. Nothing. You weren’t born to be a slave to your work or your duties. You were born to live.

If you look in nature, you’ll see busy birds work at their nests, gathering food, raising young – and yet they also sit, fat and happy in a sunbeam, and sing for the sheer joy of it. Even our resident hummingbirds, the most active bird on the planet, sit in the tops of trees and just look around for whole minutes at a time.

Photo credit: Marc Langille – www.marclangille.com

If they can, can’t you?

It’s an inside job

The biggest challenge isn’t deciding what you’ll do with your retreat time. The biggest leap for most people (including me) is actually agreeing to do it. So, I’d like to offer 3 suggestions that might make that process easier.

- Set your intention

In a quiet moment, ask yourself: What kind of retreat do I really need?

And listen inside of you for messages from your heart. Images. Sensations. Just notice if anything comes up – and trust it.

If you feel the urge to squash the first things that come up, don’t. Be gentle with yourself.

Over a period of a few moments or even several days, allow yourself to dream up your idea of what a retreat might look like. Maybe it includes other people, or maybe not. Maybe it’s in your home, or away from it. Maybe it involves activity, or maybe doing nothing at all.

You get to decide. Dream a little.

- Create the space

Once you have a clear idea of what it is you want, then create the space in your life to have it.

About a month ago, I decided I needed a get-away-from-everything retreat at the end of this month. I haven’t done this in over 2 years and it felt like a huge leap.

• Commitments: In order to clear the space in my life, I spoke with and asked permission from more than a half-dozen people. Inspired Spouse, co-workers, business buddies, clients, etc. 10, to be exact. Some of them, multiple times. It was a little scary to be clear with them about how I needed their support and help, but asking them helped make space.

• Finances: I had to check my budget and make sure I could swing time off from work and spend money on my retreat. I was able to negotiate a discount on my accommodations. This made space in my finances.

• Calendar: I looked at my calendar again and again to make sure I hadn’t forgotten to close a loop or follow up on something. It took about a week to work out the details.

The good news? After all this clearing, I’ve made space for a whole week off next week. I’ll be completely unplugged. I’ll be spending 4 days at an abbey – a totally new experience for me. I can’t tell you how freeing this feels.

- Commit

Once you have an intention and you’ve made space to retreat, put it on your calendar (or however you remind yourself).

When possible conflicts arise beforehand, you may find yourself struggling to keep your time a priority. You may be expected to put others first, or work, or school. Practice holding the space open for yourself. It can be a stretch, but your heart-spirit is worth the effort.

Yo, Jen. What does this have to do with organizing?

A valid question. : )

The way I see it, when your heart and spirit are nourished, you can do anything you set your mind to. Work becomes easier. Creativity flows. Relationships blossom. Nourishing yourself makes everything possible… including having an inspired home office.

Everyone needs time to replenish. And if you’re still not convinced, think of how much more focused and relaxed you’ll feel when you return.

If you’re inclined, I’d love your positive thoughts and prayers while I’m on retreat next week.

What would be your idea of a truly soul-nourishing retreat?

Passwords.

Aside from their helpful purpose (to keep your sensitive information safe), they can be kind of a hassle to remember, to find, to concoct.

Here’s what I do to remember to remember passwords

What is currently working well for me:

Low tech. I wrote them down – every last one – on a piece of paper. Remembering them is hard. My magic password sheet makes it easy.

Bright and shiny. The magic password sheet lives in a see-through red plastic sleeve that is practically impossible to miss.

Handy. I keep it very close to me in the most convenient place. No, not my Brownie Smile. My magic password sheet. I can reach out my right arm and – voila! – there it is! Lickey-split!

Security. My vivid imagination gets me to worry sometimes that a nefarious character will get their grubby paws on my magic password sheet. So all of my passwords are written in code. The passwords on the paper are not the actual codes themselves, but I know what they mean.

Laugh if you will, but I sleep better at night.

What I’m currently working on:

Remembering to write them down. Whenever I set up a new account somewhere, I write down the login and password on my magic password sheet. It’s not hard to do, it’s just sometimes a trick to catch myself in the act and recognize, “Hey! I’m creating a new login name and password! Better write it down!”

What do YOU do to keep track of passwords?

What works really well for you? What are you working on?

Share your insights and ideas! Your comments on your own process are welcome. I also request kindly that you not give advice to me or others unless it’s specifically requested. This makes exploring safe and learning possible for every reader.

Maybe you loved taking human biology in school – maybe you hated it. I was a fan, myself, until we reached the chapter about the brain.

The stomach? Got it.

The heart and lungs? Got it.

The filtering liver – a little mysterious – though comprehensible. But, to me, the human brain was a gray globby thing that made no sense at all.

The problem? The aforementioned “globby” part. I couldn’t see the mechanics. Studying neuron cell diagrams didn’t help one bit. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around how that tofu-like mass could made my body move, see, or think.

Now that I’m a more patient grown-up, I’ve dedicated myself to learning about the brain to include in my work. At Inspired Home Office, of course, we talk a lot about the brain since it has such a profound impact on how you concentrate (or not) and how you organize your stuff.

Ready for some nerdy stuff?

Some research circa-1970, discovered specific neurons in your brain that process the edges of objects. Object edges? Crazy. There are, in fact, even neurons that respond to the distance between and the movement of object edges, too.

Uneducated, but my guess is that this edge-noticing neuron helped our ancestors visually track prey and predators.

Even if you’re not hunting buffalo or running from an angry mastodon, this research is relevant to organizing your workspace.

Edges in your office

Take a good look around your workspace, and I’ll bet you’ll find object edges everywhere.

Your computer screen has them. Papers have them. Books, files, pens – you name it. It stands to reason that the more edges your brain has to process, the more likely you and your brain might get overwhelmed. All those edges!

Lumps

A lot of creative people, including many of my clients, like lumps. Compared to lots of scattered papers, for example, lumps of papers are soothing. Scattered papers have tons of edges. A lump, by contrast, only has one set of edges.

See where I’m going with this?

If you pile stuff together, you’re actually giving your edge-processing neurons a break. How cool is that?

The trouble starts when you can’t find what you need in your lumps. You can’t always see what’s in your lumps because, well, they’re in a lump!

Helpful lumps and woozles

With apologies to Christopher Robin and Pooh, if you like to lump, you can put your things into helpful lumps:

• Helpful lumps allow you to see things and not forget about them
• Helpful lumps allow you to mentally process as few edges as possible
• Helpful lumps take up less space than a regular lump

My favorite kind of helpful lump looks like this:

This type of stair-step file holder has a small footprint on your desk, but allows you to see everything at once. (URL added to photos for your convenience – I’m not a vendor for the companies that carry these products.)

Incidentally, I’m not crazy about the folders with clasps (in photo) since they’re hard to get into. But the black wire thing is awesome.

Other helpful lumps can look like this (Notice the lack of a lid? Definitely a good thing.):

Or this…

Mine?

Okay, I’ll show you. It looks like this:

Client files were removed for privacy – I’m not that neat. Oh, and don’t talk to me about the wallpaper. It’s a project, trust me.

Other ideas? Your helpful lumps don’t have to live in a folder. I worked with a client recently who was thinking about putting up shelves and giving each project its own basket on the shelf, like a little nest for each idea to incubate in.

Be creative with making more helpful lumps. Trust what you need.

Things to try

Do you have a bunch of randomly sorted items that make your brain process edges?

Play with putting them into helpful lumps using the examples above and see what happens. It can be surprisingly fun!

My computer is cluttered. I have no idea how to clear it out. What guidelines do I to use to figure out whether to let go of something or keep it?

Another reader sent me this message just yesterday:

I have a backlog of messages, some of which are stored in files, some not, that I need to go through and sort out.

So do you have any suggestions about how I should tackle this? Should I just set aside several hours and go through the whole lot (and try in future not to accumulate!) or should I do a bit of time over a longer period?

A third reader piped up with a book recommendation for The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage your E-mail before it Manages You by Mike Song, Tim Burress, and Vicky Habey. (I haven’t read it, but it sounds great!)

I’m delighted you’re asking for ideas about how the heck to get rid of this stuff. It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?

Your way is the best way

I got started organizing because I was painfully disorganized. I tried to read books about how to “do it right” and you know what? I never finished them. I made stern resolutions, but I couldn’t remember all the tips I’d learned – and things would fall apart and worse.

Because I’ve been there, I love sharing my ideas for you. But remember there’s a Wise Self inside of you. No one knows what’s right for you more than you do.

The magic question

What got me out of overwhelm and disorganization was learning to ask myself: “What do I need?” I’d get stressed or overwhelmed, I’d miss a deadline or forget an appointment. After giving myself some grace, I’d ask, “What is it I need so I can do this better?”

That is the magic question.

Once you ask this, trust. Trust what you need. You may hang on to email because you feel afraid of losing its valuable information. You may be ready and want to get rid of some of it. Wherever you are, read through these suggestions and then ask yourself, “Is this what I need?” You’ll find an answer that’s right for you (and if you don’t, let’s talk).

Things to try

1. Purge email when you want to:

If you have a full Inbox right now and you want to downsize it, congratulations. That’s progress! Hampster Revolution recommends choosing an arbitrary number in advance (like 42) and just get rid of that many emails in one sitting.

Set a timer for 20 or so minutes to make it less painful and possibly faster. Then set another time to do it again. Small chunks of time might be more palatable and productive. Personally, I’d rather have a root canal than clear out email for 8 hours solid.

If you want to archive emails that are taking up space on your computer, you can use a backup hard drive, USB thumb drives or archival quality DVDs to store them long term.

You might want to put a date on your archives. If you haven’t opened or accessed the information stored by the date you choose, you can purge them permanently.

2. Give critical information a place to live:

If you don’t know where it is, it’s harder to find.

Point 1: It’s darn-near impossible to sort through email to find what you need. So don’t use email to keep track of time-sensitive information, contact information, or other details. Instead, keep it where you’re going to need it eventually anyway.

I recommend having an electronic or paper calendar handy so you can plop in info you’ll need. When the appointment rolls around, it’s all there for you.

Point 2: Because too much Inbox mail is visually overstimulating, don’t store anything in your Inbox but new emails. No “to-dos” in there. No reminders to follow-up. Nada.

To accomplish this, let it live somewhere you’ll find it. Create a place to store the emails you need but that aren’t urgent.

One way to do this is with filters. They’re amazing! Filters automatically screen incoming emails and send them into folders you design. This feature is available in Microsoft Outlook and several other email programs.

This screen shot shows you the filter categories I’ve assigned in my own account. When an email comes in from b5, Gmail filters it and automatically pops it into the correct folder for me.

Then, when I feel like reading my 13 newsletters, I will. But they don’t clog up my Inbox while they sit waiting.

3. Grant yourself permission to not choose:

I really believe that removing clutter adds freedom and energy to your life.

However, I have a clutter-removing exception for email. If you use a free email program like Google or Yahoo that offers unlimited storage, you can let yourself off the hook.

Why force yourself to purge old stuff if you don’t have to? As long as messages aren’t gumming up your Inbox, you can breathe easy. See that little “Archive” button in the screen shot? It removes the selected email from your Inbox, but stores message forever.

I particularly like Gmail because it has a very powerful search engine so I can easily retrieve old messages by name, content, subject, date and more.

Summing up

If you’re loaded down with emails in your inbox:

– Start whittling away at old Inbox emails a few at a time
– Check out using filters to weed out what’s urgent and what’s not
– See if you have unlimited storage – and decide if it will help you