term definition introduced in an individual's past and ... disorganization an individual's...

Control the Chaos and Clear out the Clutter Key Terms

Term Definition Introduced In

Chronic disorganization An individual's past and current attempts to become organized have failed, and therefore quality of life has suffered because of consistent disorderliness Module 1

Drag tasks A priority category that is of low benefit and requires high effort Module 4Fill-ins A priority category that is of low benefit and requires low effort Module 4Habitual disorganization An individual's tendency to be disorganized on a consistent basis Module 1

Historical disorganization An individual's disorderliness which was learned from the past; either from home, school, or early on in ones career Module 1

Magic box A file folder or other storage container to place miscellaneous information that does not have its own file folder and isn't ready to be thrown away Module 2

Major tasks A priority category that is of high benefit and requires high effort Module 4

Mini agendaAn abbreviated version of the same type of agenda you might use for in-person meetings in order to keep focus during phone conversations Module 5

Quick-win A priority category that is of high benefit and requires low effort Module 4Situational disorganization

An individual's disorderliness caused by a sudden overwhelming project or personal issue which eventually will be resolved in the short-term Module 1

SMART goals An acronym used to create effective objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives) Module 3

Social disorganization An individual's disorderliness which stems from a group environment and desire to look busy and important Module 1

Tickler system A time-sensitive system filing system for assignments that need to be worked on, but don't need immediate attention Module 2

CONTROL THE CHAOS AND CLEAR OUT THE CLUTTER MODULE ONE – CLUTTER AND DISORGANIZATION Male: Clutter and Chaos. Why? Why do we go through such a challenge

keeping things organized, keeping things under control? Why is there so much clutter

and chaos in our lives? We’re going to talk in a few minutes about types of

disorganization that contribute to all of this. But before I even get there, I want to talk to

another contributor to the disorganization, or the clutter and chaos in our lives these

days, and that’s the distractions that we have. We find it so much harder to focus

because there are so many things to draw our attention away from what we’re

supposed to be focused on. And what I’m referring to are things like drop-ins – people

just dropping by to say hi, phone calls, emails – all those have been around quite a

while. But more prevalent today are things that go beyond the drop-ins, the phone calls,

the emails. We now and texts, Facebook posts, Linked-In updates, Tweets, not to

mention every time you open up your web browser, do you have your home page

defaulted to something like CNN or ESPN or something similar to that where you’re

bombarded with all these different inputs from sports to news to economics to the

financial world? How are you supposed to bring up a web browser and not be

distracted by what’s on there? That’s the whole point to the page, was to draw your

attention to something. You might have just opened up your web browser to do

something completely different. So it’s these distractions that are keeping us from being

completely organized. And we need to find ways to filter these distractions out, to keep

them away from us. Because otherwise, we’re going to struggle day in and day out to

stay focused on what we need to stay focused on. And without the focus, we are stuck

with clutter and chaos. The other thing I want to talk to you about is remember the

disorganization that we feel, the disorganization that we go through, is both physical and

mental. We have the physical aspects of our lives, which get cluttered – paper and

equipment and all different things. But then we also have the mental clutter – the things

that are in our head that just don’t seem to stop, these stimulations that don’t allow us to

stay focused on anything. So now let’s get into the different types of disorganization

that have been defined. The first one is situational disorganization. What they’re

referring to here is an overwhelming project or personal issues. In other words, you’re

disorganized because of some specific situation, whether it be a project that is due

within a couple of days and is just overwhelming you, so you have a tendency to focus

on just that, and the other things have a tendency to fall by the wayside, thus creating

clutter and chaos; or personal issues. Maybe you have something personal going on in

your life that is keeping you from focusing on what needs to be done. The good thing

about this, though, is it’s situational. It will eventually be over and you will be able to get

back to getting things organized and in control. So that’s kind of a good one. Habitual

disorganization. This is just your habits. And this going to be a big thing we’ll talk about

throughout our time today is habits – bad habits. What I’m referring to here is that we

have a tendency to have some bad habits, like we avoid tasks that we don’t want to do.

Or we have a tendency to overschedule ourselves. This is something we do on a

consistent basis. It’s a habit. And those are the things that we need to change. Those

are the habits we will discuss throughout today on how to get those bad habits out of us.

Then you have historical disorganization, which personally I think is similar to habitual.

Historical disorganization is defined as learned. Whether you learned it from home, you

learned it from school, or you learned it early on in your career in the business world, it

is learned. But I really would draw a lot of parallels - a lot of similarities - between

habitual and historical because I think what you learn are bad habits. And then you

have social disorganization. Social disorganization is really a situation where you’re

affected by the social environment. So in other words, your desk is cluttered and full of

paper because in your mind, that’s a sign of a hard worker. It’s almost like a badge of

honor to those others around you to say look how hard I’m working. Look at how much

I have going on. To that, you have that concept of keeping up with the Joneses. This is

more on the personal side, I would say. But you accumulate a lot of stuff. And you buy

stuff that you really don’t need or want because you’re sort of trying to keep up with the

Joneses. You’re trying to keep up with your neighbors. You’re trying to keep up with

your friends. And you end up buying things you don’t really need, and it clutters up your

house. Then the last one that they define here is a chronic disorganization. Now this is

according to the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. The definition of

chronic disorganization is having a past history of disorganization in which self-help

efforts to change have failed and an undermining of current quality of life due to

disorganization and the expectation of future disorganization. In other words, you’ve got

a problem. And chronic disorganization, what they're basically saying is no matter how

much you try, you seem to always stay disorganized. And that is one that is very, very

difficult to get out of. So we’re going to focus more on the top ones. How do we deal

with the first four – situational, habitual, historical, and social. We’re going to look at

systems to break ourselves out of this disorganization and get us organized and in

control and get rid of the clutter and the chaos. Now keep in mind we have different

types of things that get cluttered. I mentioned this earlier. We have the physical items

that get cluttered around our house, around our offices. We also have digital

information that gets cluttered. Just like your office gets cluttered with files and papers,

your email gets cluttered with emails or with just the same type of information as pieces

of paper. Or your computer itself gets cluttered with Word files, Excel files, photos,

videos, all those different types of things. And I would also say that there’s a certain

amount of mental clutter – too many things you’re trying to keep up in your head; too

many things you’re trying to remember, you’re trying to deal with. And the way we learn

not deal with each one of those will help you figure it out. The techniques we use to

improve our physical environment can also be used for digital and mental. I just want to

go through some of the thoughts that stop us from being organized, that stop us from

being in control. One of them is you have no objectives or plans. You just kind of take

life as it comes. Basically life controls you; you don’t control life. Now I understand you

can’t control everything. I get that, and I’m not saying you should try. But what I’m

saying is that you should try to get some control. Rather than just let life control you

and dictate what happens, maybe you should try to create some objectives or plans to

try and have control over what’s going on. We also have - again we’re going to go back

to some bad habits. Here are things you may hear yourself either saying out loud or

saying right inside your own head to try and keep you from doing what you know you

need to do to be organized. I have to leave things laying around to remember to do

them. Think about that. I have to leave pieces of paper or other things laying around in

order for me to remember to do them. So I have to clutter up my office so that I

remember to take care of things. You need a better system. That’s what that means.

You need a better way to keep control of what you need to accomplish. I put things on

my to-do list and I still don’t do them. Okay, well you try and solve the first issue. So

you’re putting things on a to-do list, but then you don’t get them done. You know why

you don’t get them done? Because you don’t live with that to-do list. You don’t review it

on a consistent basis. Your to-do lists – your lists of tasks and to-do items – needs to

be reviewed yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily. And we’ll get into that in a lot more

detail later. But in the end, you should live with it. You should always be updating it all

throughout the day, and you should be referring to it all throughout the day. Or I can’t

get rid of this because it’s special. You ever get that? That happens I think more at

home than I think at work. But I can’t get rid of it because it’s special to me in some

way, shape, or form. Also, I can’t get rid of this. It costs too much. You don’t use it.

You don’t need it. You’re probably never going to use it. But you don’t want to get rid of

it because you spent a lot of money on it. I have to admit, I get caught up on this all the

time. I spent so much money on it. It’s hard to just throw it in in the garbage. But the

truth of the matter is no matter how much you spent on it, it only has value if you’re

going to use it. So keep that in mind. I can’t put it away. If I do that, I’ll never find it

again. That screams you need a new system because that means when you put it

away, you don’t know where you put it, which means you’ve got to design a better

system so that when you put things away, you know where you put them. Now we’re

going to move into the realm now of more being overwhelmed. I don’t know where to

start. I don’t know what to do with all of this stuff. And that, again, can be home, it can

be office, it can be either one. But the bottom line is you’re overwhelmed by the clutter

that is facing you. And rather than jump in and get started, you’re looking for an excuse

to not do it. So you basically say I don’t know where to start, so forget it. I’m not going

to do it. And that is a pattern, and that is something you need to break out of. And the

only way to break out of that is just a little bit of discipline and push yourself to just grab

a piece of paper, pull an email, whatever it is and start doing it.

[End of recording.]

CONTROL THE CHAOS AND CLEAR OUT THE CLUTTER MODULE TWO – GETTING STARTED Male: Getting Started. One of the ways that we need to get started is first by

setting up a place for everything. So we’ve got to take our environment before we can

clear up the clutter and get rid of the chaos, we need to put systems into place so that

when we start to clean up, we have places to put things. And we start with our first

concept and most important concept, which is you need a place for everything.

Whether it be cleaning up your house, cleaning up your office, getting ready with

paperwork, the bottom line is when you pick something up, you have to have a place to

put it. You need some system in place in order to put that item away. And we’re going

to start this off with probably one of the most challenging tasks, which is your office

paperwork. We seem to go through, even with computers – and supposedly we were

going paper free, remember that concept? Computers were going to make things paper

free. Well, it’s not. And we still need to figure out what to do with our office paperwork.

So we’re going to start right then and there. We’re going to start with our office

paperwork. And we’re going to start with a filing system. Everybody knows you need

some sort of filing system. It’s been around for so long that we barely even think about

it anymore. And that’s sort of the problem. Everybody just thinks okay, I’ll take out a

manila folder. I’ll write what I want to store in there, and I put it away. And I’m done.

The problem with that is you don’t think it out. You don’t plan it out. And just like with

so many other things in our lives like projects and goal and tasks, we don’t think about

what we’re doing before we do it. We just do it. And that’s one of the biggest mistakes

we made. We have to take a step back and look at what we’re doing and figure out a

plan for it. So when we talk about a filing system, we have to stop and not just start

throwing things into folders, and think through what we need to file and how it is the best

way to file it. And to do that, I’m going to ask the question this way – how will you be

looking for this in the future? So if I have a piece of paper in my hand, and let’s say it’s

an invoice from a vendor. Okay, great. It makes sense. I’ll just throw it into the vendor

file. Or maybe I just throw it in the invoice file. But that may not be the best way to do

it, and the reason for that is what if it is an invoice for something that was purchased for

a specific project? So six months from now when you start to evaluate the project, are

you going to be looking for that invoice? And are you going to have to look in all the

different invoice files or all the different vendor files to find all the invoices that relate to a

specific project? Well, that’s what you’d have to do. So the question is, how might you

be looking for this invoice later? And I know you’re probably going to say, well Michael,

I don’t know. Six months from now I could be looking for it based on vendor, I could be

looking for it based on project. And I agree with that. But you have to kind of do some

sort of – I’m not going to say guesswork, but you’re going to have to make some

assumptions. Statistically speaking, it’s more likely that I’m going to be looking for this

based on the vendor name, or statistically speaking it’s more logically I would be looking

for it based on project. And based on the answer to that is then how I’m going to set up

my filing system. And I don’t want to create more paperwork. But there could be an

argument made that maybe you make a photocopy and store it both in the vendor file

and in the project file. That’s a decision that you’re going to need to make. But do you

see what I’m saying? You’ve got to think this through and plan it out, just like you’d plan

out a project, just like you’d plan out your to-do list or your task schedules. You need to

take a step back, think about it, and plan it out so that way when you pick up a piece of

paper, you already know where that paper should be going. You’re not sort of making it

up as you go along, because when you make it up as you go along, you have a

tendency to forget what you did last week with that type of piece of paper, and then do

something different with that exact same type of information differently this week. And

then six months from now, you have no idea how you might have stored it, because you

stored it at least two or three different ways. So stop, think about it, plan it out, and then

build it. And building it is you have file cabinets, you have file drawers, you have

hanging folders, you have manila folders. And that’s the structure you should be

building from. Now in our digital world when we have digital files, whether they be

PDFs, Word documents, Excel documents – doesn’t really matter. How do we do that,

how do we design a filing system for digital information? And I would strongly

encourage you to mimic your physical structure with your digital structure. You build

your folders the same way you’re going to build your folders in your file cabinet. You

just build digital folders. Again, starting with a file cabinet or the initial level of folders;

then your second level of folder is the same as the fact that you’re going to have

drawers; your third level of folders is going to be the same as a hanging folder; and the

final level of folder should be your manila folders. I really don’t encourage you to go

much beyond that. The more structure you put in, the more folders you put in, the

deeper it goes. And we know in technology, I don’t need to stop at the file cabinet

drawer, hanging folder, folder level. I could go two, three, four, maybe even 50 folders

deeper. But is that really going to be effective? Am I really going to be able to find

anything? And that’s debatable. So I would encourage you not to get too deep in your

digital folders just because you can. And I actually would strongly encourage you to

match your digital folders with your physical filing system and folders. Now we’ve

designed this file system for the files that we know, or the information that we know we

need to store. But have you ever noticed that as you’re filing things away, again

whether it be digitally or physically, you always get left over with something, and you’re

looking at it going it doesn’t quite fit in my filing system. I don’t really know that I need to

keep this long-term, which is why I would put it in my filing system. But I’m not really

ready to throw it out. So what do I do with it? And what happens? It ends up sitting on

the corner of your desk in a pile. And the pile gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it

just starts to give the office an image of being cluttered. And to some degree, it is a little

bit. Well what do we do with those files? How do we make a system or a structure so

that we work with those files? And this is an idea that I’ve heard from others, and I think

it’s a phenomenal idea. It’s called a magic box. And it doesn’t magically make things

disappear or it doesn’t magically make things happen. It’s just a box that we store these

papers, these pieces of information that we don’t really know where to go with them. So

all it is, is very simply, you’ve got a box – a physical box, preferably paper-size. And

when you have a piece of paper like I just described where it doesn’t really fit your filing

system, but you’re not ready to throw it out – you’re just not sure what to do with it – you

put it in the box. And I would encourage you to put it in the box face down so that you

end up with a chronological order going up. And then what you do is depending on how

often you get these types of documents and how often you may need to review it, but on

a regular basis – whether it be weekly, monthly, or every three months, or every six

months, you take that box out and you flip it over so that the papers come out with the

oldest one on top and the newest one on the bottom, and you go through it. And you

make the decision whether or not it goes back in the box, goes into your filing system,

or goes into the garbage. Has it been taken care of? Do I still need it? You make that

decision at that point. And you do that on a regular basis. And that’s the way to clean

that out and not end up with piles on your desk because you put it in a box, and then

you put the box underneath your desk. Now what about the digital environment? Do

the exact same thing. You create a folder in your email system. You create a folder on

your desktop or in your file system. And you call it, if you’d like “magic box” and you put

the files in there and you do the exact same thing. You review it on an ongoing basis,

and you decide whether you keep it or get rid of it. And another thing I want to talk

about, another system I want to talk about is a tickler system. This is a time-sensitive

system. This is so if I come up with something that I’m not filing away for information,

I’m not putting it in my magic box, it’s something I need to work on, but I don’t need to

work on it now. It’s something that I may need to work on a few days from now, a few

weeks from now, a few months from now, or maybe a year or two from now. So I want

to do something with it that it reminds me at that time I need to work on it. So a tickler

system is this. First of all, you get 30 folders – one for each day of the month. I guess

for those months you have 31 days, I guess you need 31 folders, huh. And then you

need 12 folders for each month, and then maybe two or three additional folders for each

year. What you’re going to do is you’re going to take those 31 folders and you’re going

to number them 1 through 31. Anything that is due this month on a specific day, like the

15th or the 17th or the 20th you’re going to put in the corresponding folder. If it’s not due

or it’s not something you want to work on till. Next month or three months from now,

well then you’re going to put it in those monthly folders. And then of course if it’s not

due or not something you’re going to work on until next year, you put it in the yearly

folder. Then what you do is obviously the daily folders are what you look at each and

every day because in them have time sensitive information, or time sensitive items that

you need to look at. And at the beginning of every month, you take out the new monthly

folder. So if we’re in May, on June 1st I take out the June folder and I take everything

and put it in the corresponding days. Likewise on January 1st, I take out the yearly

folder and I put it all into its corresponding monthly folders. Now I mentioned that we

would put them into their due dates or the date you want to action them. I like the name

“tickler” because I would strongly encourage you to not put these items into the folders

for when they’re due, but put them in the folder for when you want to start auctioning

them. If it’s due on the 20th of this month, you may not want to work on it on the 20th.

You may want to work on it on the 15th. And that’s why I think it’s not just a due date

system. It’s a tickler system. It’s to remind you that you need to action it. But if you put

it in the due date folder, you’re not going to see it until its due date, and you may need

to be working on it before that. So think about that. And digitally, you don’t necessarily

need all the folders, do you? Because you can make things date sensitive. So if it’s

Word files or Excel files or PDFs, yeah, you may need to do the same folder-type

system. Just do it digitally. If you’re using email, then in Outlook, as an example, you

can flag something for follow-up. So rather than having to file it away in different

folders, I can have one folder, and then just mark that email for follow-up on the day that

I want to follow up. And that actually then saves me a lot of time because it will remind

me the day that I’m supposed to action it. And again, I emphasize the word “tickler”

should mean when you want to action it – not when your due date is. They should be

two separate dates. You’ll see later when we talk about tasks and to-do items, this

tickler date becomes even more prevalent. And you should have a tickler date along

with a due date. Okay, so now we’ve talked about office paperwork and office – not just

paperwork, but your emails, your files on your computer – finding ways to structure

them better. Another thing I want to talk about is the general space in your office and

your home. Again, we want to clear out the clutter. We don’t want so much stuff

hanging around. So we want to find a place for everything. So when you start

straightening up your office or your home, you’re going to start by devising places to put

things. And here’s what I want you to think about, though, when you do that. You need

to try and anticipate your future needs. I know it’s not easy to do. But if you are a book

enthusiast and you read a lot of books and you buy a lot of books, then buying a

bookcase and filling it up doesn’t make you more organized, does it? Because as soon

as you buy that next book, where are you putting it? And when you buy three books a

week, where are they all going? So you need to anticipate your future needs. And that

goes with your filing system we just discussed, it goes with books and bookcases, it

goes with trinkets around your home, it goes with pictures on your walls – it all adds

together in the fact that if you don’t anticipate some of your future needs, then you’ll be

clean and clutter-free today, but then you will be cluttered back up in a very short period

of time because as new things come in, you have no place to go with them. Some will

tell you to only fill up 90 percent of your space – leave 10 percent for growth, as I’ve

been talking about with anticipating your future needs. I don’t like this concept of 90

percent because it’s too structured. I like the idea that you think about the situation. If

I’m a book enthusiast, well then I need more than 10 percent empty space for my books

because I buy a lot. If I’m not a book enthusiast, or I use a Kindle, well then you know

what? Ten percent may be enough because I’m only going to pick up a book once

every couple of months. So you have to think about that kind of scenario. Same with

your filing system. You want to have more than 10 percent of free space to put files

away, especially if you’re in a company that still generates a lot of paper files. So think

about that. Think about finding a place for everything and anticipating your future

needs, and leaving open space for those future needs. Now do you do this one time?

Do you do it regularly? That’s your personality, I’ve got to be honest with you. Because

once you’ve designed this system, and then you’ve gone ahead and organized all your

existing stuff into this new system, well if you’re disciplined and you only touch it once,

which we’re going to talk about a lot in a little while, and if you are good at what we talk

about later and you really only touch it once – so as soon as you get it, you either, well

you do one of the four D’s, which I’ll talk about in a little while. But the bottom line is you

get rid of it. Either you got rid of it, you filed it, whatever you need to do with it. Then

you know what? You don’t need to regularly reorganize your house or reorganize your

office. If you’re like me where I have a tendency to not keep up on everything on a daily

or hourly basis, then what I do is I regularly go through and straighten things back up.

And what regularly means, it’s up to you. It could be daily, it could be weekly, could be

monthly – it all depends on you. But I do believe that no matter how good you are,

you’re still going to need a regular point where you go through everything, as we talked

about. You want to go through your magic box. You want to go through your tickler

system at least once a month and reassign things into the appropriate folders. Then

you really want to make sure that everything is put away.

[End of recording]

CONTROL THE CHAOS AND CLEAR OUT THE CLUTTER MODULE THREE – ORGANIZING OUR PROJECTS, GOALS AND OBJECTIVES, TASKS, AND TO-DO ITEMS Male: Organizing our Projects, Goals and Objectives, Tasks, and To-Do Items.

Let’s start with goals and objectives, which is the basis for project management. So we

want to define our goals and objectives. Why do we want to start there? Well, before

we can really get control over our to-do items – our tasks, things that we want to

accomplish – we have to know where we’re going first. Again, as I mentioned earlier

when we were talking about our filing system, we can’t just take a piece of paper and

say yeah, I should file it this way, because that may not make sense in the grand

scheme. So sometimes we have to, again, take that step back. And that’s what I’m

talking about here, is rather than just jump in and start doing my tasks and my to-do

items, I want to take a step back and look – what are my goals and objectives? What

am I trying to accomplish? So we have to define those first because once we define

those, then we can define the tasks that are needed in order to accomplish them.

Bringing order, bringing structure to what we’re trying to do, which will make us more

efficient, more effective, and really will clear out this clutter and chaos that we’re going

through. Now goals and objectives – they may be self-defined or they may be assigned

to you. What I mean by that is, depending on your role either at work or at home,

somebody may be deciding for you what your goals and objectives are. At work, your

boss may be giving you a project that has clear goals and objectives. Likewise if you’re

like me where you’re self-employed, you may be building your own goals and

objectives. The bottom line is, though, you need them. So whether they’re given to you

or you develop them, they should follow a standard measure. They should follow a

standard – an acronym that I call SMART. And it’s a very common phrase that’s out

there – SMART. What does it mean? For every goal and objective, it should be S –

Specific. What is it you’re trying to accomplish? You need to be clear on that. M – it

should be Measured. In other words, when do I know it’s done? Can I say it’s done? If

I say I’m going to build a 50-foot bridge, well it’s measured. Is it 50 feet long? Yeah.

Okay. It also must be agreed upon. And that doesn’t mean that I’m going to get a

bunch of people and we’re all going to say, yeah, we all agree that this is what we

should do. No. It should be agreed upon that we understand what the goal and

objective is. If your boss gives you a goal and objective, then the two of you must agree

what that goal is. Otherwise, you’ll be doing something different than what he intended.

So it’s got to be specific, measured, agreed upon, and then R – it needs to be

Reasonable. Can you actually do it? There are things that are unreasonable. I’m

going to improve sales by 500 percent in three days. Chances are real good that’s not

reasonable, depending on your business of course. But generally speaking, that’s not

reasonable. To say you’re going to increase sales 500 percent in a year or three or five,

that may be more reasonable – something that’s actually accomplishable. And then it

also must be Time-framed. There has to be a timeframe involved. It can’t be just an

ongoing process. A goal or objective has to be something that finishes. So again, it

needs to be SMART – Specific, Measured, Agreed-Upon, Reasonable, and Time-

Framed. If you use those to evaluate every goal and objective, you will find that you

have a better chance at achieving that goal and objective. When you leave off things

like time-framed, or you leave off something like it’s measured, well then you never

really know if it’s done. And you have a hard time if it’s not time-formed or measured,

you have a hard time getting people to agree upon what it is it really is supposed to be

accomplished with this goal and objective. Now once you’ve got your goals and

objectives, now you need to start writing up your lists – your lists of to-do items or tasks.

When it comes to goals and objectives, I like to call them tasks, not to-do items. People

use the two words interchangeably and I understand that. For our discussion today, I

want us to think of tasks as items for goals and objectives, and to-do items are

separate, and I’ll explain that in a second. So you’re going to take your goal and

objective, you’re going to take each one separately – each goal and objective

separately – and you’re going to write out the tasks that need to be accomplished to

achieve that goal or objective. And that’s going to be your task list. Then to-do items.

A to-do item for our discussion today I’m defining as something you need to do that is

not related to a goal or objective. There are plenty of things that we get every single

day that is not assignable to a project or a goal or an objective. It’s just a day to day

thing that we need to take care of. So I call those to-do items. So then what we want to

do is end up with a list of our tasks for our goals and objectives, and a list of our to-do

items. Then those lists get merged together. This is where computerized tools will help

you tremendously because if you’re writing this up freehand, then you have to rewrite it

all to put them all together. You’re going to find tremendous benefit with technology.

And as we move on to the next couple of steps, you’ll see how doing this longhand can

be labor intensive – almost too labor intensive. So now I have my list of my tasks and

my to-do items. And now I want to put together a prioritization sheet. What I’m looking

to do here is actually assign four different properties related to prioritization so that I can

eventually schedule these items to be accomplished. And the first thing we’re going to

put on there is a standard priority. Most systems, most people use some sort of priority,

whether it be 1 through 3, 1 through 5, 1 through 10 depending on who you’re working

with and who you’re interacting with depends on what the standard is. But you do need

to have a priority. And you really should work with those that you’re working with to

define what a priority 1 is versus what a priority 5 is. Or if you’re using a 1 to 10

method, what priority 1 is, what priority 10 is, and then everything else in the middle. So

priority 1 should be a standard thing. It should not be I assign something a priority 1,

which actually has a different meaning than my colleague who has a priority 1. They

should have the same basic concepts. Then you should have your due date. That is

the date that this is due to be done – not the date you want to work on it, but the date

that it’s due, the date that you have to turn this in by. And the next is the tickler date,

like we talked about earlier. This is the date that you want to action the item, that you

want to work on this item. So you need a priority, a due date, a tickler date, and then

here’s a new concept which is called a priority category. What this is, in your handout

we have a quadrant system. Along the bottom, we have effort, and along the left side

going up we have benefit. So it’s a correlation between how much effort do I have to

put into it, and how much benefit do I get out of it? And I have basically four quadrants,

or four priority categories. You should see this in your handout, but I’m going to

describe them anyway. A task or to-do item that has low effort and low benefit is called

a fill-in task. A drag, or a drag task or to-do, has low benefit, high effort. It means I

have to put a lot of time and effort into this, and it really gives me very little benefit out.

Then I have what I call quick wins – a quick win task or to-do. That is something that

has high benefit, but low effort. I don’t have to put a lot of time and effort into it. Then

we have our standard tasks, or our major tasks. Those are the items that take a lot of

time and effort, but also have a lot of benefit to them so when we’re doing this, when we

start to work on building out a prioritization sheet for each task and to-do item, we’re

going to end up with a priority, a due date, a tickler date, and a priority category. And

you’re asking, why do I need so many different ways to look at the same task or to-do

item? Can’t I just say what I want to do first, what I want to do second? Yeah, you can.

This is just how to schedule your items out more efficiently, more effectively. And what

you’re going to do is you’re going to look at these items, and you’re going to look at

them based on these four categories in different views so that you can identify those

items that fit best inside your schedule, and when to schedule these items.

[End of recording.]

CONTROL THE CHAOS AND CLEAN OUT THE CLUTTER MODULE FOUR – PLANNING AND SCHEDULING Male: Planning and Scheduling. Now that we’ve put our list together and we

have a list of our to-do items, our tasks, now how do we take that and how do we plan

that out? How do we schedule it? Because I still now just have a jumbled list of things I

need to work on and it’s a list that can still be very chaotic. So how do I now put that

into a schedule that puts me in control of what’s going on? And the first thing we need

to talk about is when to review the lists. What I talked about earlier, one of the barriers

to getting yourself organized, especially when it comes to to-do items and tasks, is that I

put it on my to-do list, but it never seems to get done. And that’s because you’re not

reviewing your list on a consistent basis. So when should you review your list? And I’m

here to tell you I think your list should be reviewed daily. That’s your task list. Your

goals and objectives should be reviewed along with your tasks both weekly and

monthly. So monthly you should take broader view of what do I want to accomplish?

Which of my goals and objectives are we going to get accomplished this month? And

then each week, you want to break it down further and say okay, which of my tasks of

my goals and objectives do I need to get done this week to maintain or stay on schedule

to get my goals and objectives accomplished for the month? Then every day, you’ve

got to work on those individual tasks. And you need to review the tasks that need to be

done and schedule them out. What does that mean, “schedule them out,” Michael? I

usually just have a list, and I’ve got my priorities, and I work on my top priority first, then

the second priority and the third priority, and I get that. And a lot of times, that is a very

difficult way to go about it. What do I mean by that? Well, you’ve got to factor in how

long it takes you to get things done. You can’t just do the number one priority because

then you’re going to spend hours and hours and hours working on your number one

priority while other things that may not be as high a priority, but still need to get

accomplished, are left sitting on the wayside. They become the clutter, don’t they? So

we have to keep our viewpoint on everything. So how do we do that? We do that by

sorting through our lists. If you recall in our last module, in our last section, we talked

about we’re not just going to give it priority. We’re not just going to give it a due date.

We’re also going to give it a tickler date and a priority category. And once I’ve done

that, now when I start to build out my days, as I now start to plan my days, it becomes

more obvious what I should be doing. Now one of the things that you may have thought

about was, well Michael you said apply the tickler date. Apply the priority category.

Sometimes that’s not as easy to do. And I agree with that. Sometimes the tickler date

is not something you can put in on a global level. Well, I’ve got goals and objectives

that reach out a year in advance. I can't take every task and put tickler dates on them.

No, I agree with that. And sometimes it comes down to a monthly review, your weekly

review, in order for you to start assigning those tickler dates. But it’s during these

reviews that we ensure that our priority codes are correct, our due dates are correct, our

tickler dates are either in there and are correct, and our priority categories are correct,

because now I’ve got my list, I’m comfortable with my list, I have all the information.

Now I need to start sorting through it to figure out what I’m going to work on. Now from

a monthly standpoint, the first sort I would do on a monthly standpoint is I’m going to go

and sort everything out by goal and objective. What does that mean? Well, my to-do

items are going to fall off, aren’t they? Yeah, because in this view, I’m going to look at

my goal – this specific goal or objective – and I’m going to look at the task associated,

and what’s my status? Where am I? Am I ahead of schedule? Am I behind schedule?

Am I making progress? Because on a monthly basis, I want to get a sense of where am

I with this. Do I need to change the priority on some of these tasks because I’m behind

schedule? Do I need to change their due dates? And next I’m going to sort it by due

date and priority. And that is a way also to help you set up your tickler dates because

based on its priority and based on its due date, that’s when I’m going to decide where

am I going to action this? When am I going to action this? When do I want to put the

first date that I’m going to start looking at this item and working on it? Then I may sort it

by the priority category so that I can reassign the tickler date. Michael, you’re starting to

confuse me. Why would you do that? Well think about it. If you have something that’s

a quick win, but based on its due date and its priority, the tickler date is set up for, I

don’t know, a week out, two weeks out. But when you sort it and you realize that based

on its priority category, then it’s a quick win. I could make someone real happy, and it’s

really not going to take me a whole lot of time. Well, I may want to change that tickler

date and make it a couple of days out rather than a couple of weeks out because it’s a

quick win. It’s a way that I can use a very little bit of time and get a large benefit out of

it. So that’s why you’re going to use those priority categories then to possibly reassign

your tickler dates. Then you’re going to sort it by the tickler date to identify when the

work is to be done, because now that I’ve gone and looked at my goals and objectives

and I’ve looked at my due dates and priority and I’ve looked at my priority categories,

basically now my tickler date should be the day that I’m going to actually work on this

item. Am I done? From my perspective, no. A lot of people, again, could just work

right off that priority list – that list that we’ve just done. And if you’re sorting it out by

tickler date, you now have a real good sense of what you should be working on on

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But now you have to fit that into your

schedule. Why, Michael? Well, you’ve got to make sure that the tickler dates that

you’ve assigned, that you have not overwhelmed yourself. You have not given yourself

more to do on Monday than you could really accomplish, or you haven’t given yourself

enough work to do on Tuesday. And then what happens when you don’t give yourself

enough work to do? And you say, well I get a break. Yes and no. There’s a school of

thought out there that says if you don’t push yourself to accomplish things, you won’t.

So in other words, if you under-schedule yourself, you’ll underperform, whereas if you

overschedule yourself, you’re going to overwhelm yourself and again, you’re going to

under-perform. It’s about trying to find a nice, delicate balance so that you’re as

productive as possible. You’re controlling your to-do lists. You’re controlling what’s

going on – it’s not controlling you. So the next thing I need to do is take that list, sort it

by my tickler date, and start putting it in to my calendar. Now once I start putting it into

my calendar, I’ve got to tell you. Your tasks, your to-do items, they’re not the first items

to go into your calendar. The first thing in your calendar should be your set

appointments, meetings, whether it be recurring meetings with your boss, whether it be

a special meeting on a project, whether it be a doctor’s appointment – these are date

and time specific events that need to be in there. They’re not movable. Others are

involved. That’s when you have to do those specific things. So you’re going to put

those in first. The next thing you’re going to put into your schedule is your recurring

items. And the first recurring item I’m going to encourage you to put in there is your

scheduling. You need to schedule time to schedule yourself. So you should have time

on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis to review your lists, review your schedules, and

adjust or assign as necessary. Obviously your monthly review or schedule is going to

take longer than your weekly, and your weekly is going to take longer than your daily.

Now when do you schedule these? This is completely up to you. On a daily basis,

some people prefer to do it the night before so that they organize everything for the day,

they think about what they’re going to do tomorrow, so when they come in tomorrow

they just hit the ground running. Others, like myself, would prefer when I get in in the

morning to reevaluate everything that happened yesterday, plan my day out and get

started. It’s a matter of preference. The next thing you want to schedule, the next

recurring item that I encourage you to schedule, is taking time to do your emails, your

voicemails, and your paperwork. Yes, you need to assign time to do that, because as

much as we talked about goals and objectives and tasks and to-do items, nothing of

what we discussed up to this point included the ability or the time that’s necessary to go

through all your emails, listen to voicemails, file paperwork and deal with paperwork, or

return phone calls. So you need to schedule time. And I would strongly encourage you,

do not underestimate this. And learn from your experience. If you schedule a half-hour

a day to go through emails, voicemails and paperwork, but it’s really taking you an hour

and a half, well guess what? You better start scheduling yourself an hour and a half.

Otherwise you’re always going to be late, and what’s the point? As much as you’d like

to get it done in a half hour, there may be just too much work. So schedule yourself

appropriately. Don’t underestimate. But like I mentioned also, you don’t want to over-

estimate. Don’t give yourself two hours to do something you know is only going to take

you about an hour. Schedule yourself appropriately. Now how do I handle the rest?

Well now, we’re going to look at my tickler date, and I’m also going to go back and look

again at my priority category. Why? Well think of it this way. Think of filling up your

schedule like filling up a bucket. I’ve put in my meetings. I’ve put in my recurring items

– let’s call those rocks. And now I’m going to put in my major items, my major tasks.

And those are going to be rocks as well, aren’t they? Because you’re filling up the

space you need to take because you need two hours or three hours to work on this

task. You need an hour or three or four to work on that task. These are the big items

that you really need to find joined time – time together. Because you don’t want to

spend an hour and then do something else, and then come back to it an hour later. The

productivity loss is great when you stop and start, stop and start, stop and start. So you

want to keep those contiguous. You want a task, and you want to work on it for two,

three, four hours in a block. So those you want to put in next. And then you want to fill

in the quick wins. If we’re going with the concept of a bucket, and we put rocks in, now

all the space in between the rocks is where I can put my sand. So even though a quick

win is not due for two weeks, when I get done putting in two hours for this project, an

hour for that meeting, four hours for this project, I might then have a half-hour here and

a 20-minutes there. And in those spaces, I can then take a quick win that maybe is two

weeks out, but I can get it done today or tomorrow. I can fit it in this week. So now you

want to take those quick wins and fill them in. And then the last one is the fill in tasks.

That’s like putting water in that bucket, because now I have my rocks, then I have my

sand, and I can still fit water in between all of that, can’t I? And those are my fill-in

tasks. Those are those little to-do items that don’t take a lot of time, don’t have a lot of

benefit, but they just sort of fill in the time in between everything else. And what didn’t I

speak about? I didn’t speak about my drag tasks – those ones that just drag along and

they just have little benefit, but they require a lot of work. I’m sorry to tell you, you have

to work those in. And I would work those in earlier on when you’re assigning your major

tasks. And you’ve got to be careful of these drag tasks because your tendency is going

to be to avoid them. And those are the ones that have a tendency to come back and

bite you because they don’t have a lot of benefit, so you lower the priority on them. And

they take a lot of time, so you lower the priority and try to avoid doing them. But then

those are the ones that end up coming back to bite you because you ignored them so

long, they become a major problem. They may not have a major benefit, but now

they’ve gone the other way and they became a major negative. So be aware of that

and make sure you schedule those in there as well. And again, let’s just go back to our

bucket scenario. If you put your rocks in first, then your sand, then your water - major

tasks, drag tasks, quick wins, fill-in tasks – you have a better way to make an efficient

use of that space in the bucket. And if you think about it, what if I put the sand in first?

And then I put the water in? Is there much room left for the rocks? Not really. Now the

rocks probably are sticking out over the top. You can’t find blocks of time good enough

to do those major wins and those drag tasks. Now related to that whole prioritization

situation, I would also encourage you don’t schedule 100 percent of your time. You

should not fill that bucket all the way to the rim. Why is that? Because whether we like

it or not, interruptions, as much as we try to avoid them, are going to happen. Your

boss is going to walk into your office. You can’t kick him out. You can’t lock your door

and not let your boss in. It’s going to happen. So you’ve got to schedule time, or not

schedule time. You need to leave enough free time around for you to be able to deal

with interruptions, priority changes so that you can adjust things, and you have some

space for you to be able to adjust. And of course fires happen, don’t they?

Emergencies come up. Situations arise that we need to deal with. And if we’ve

scheduled ourselves 100 percent, now we’re guaranteed to be late the entire week.

We’re guaranteed to have problems. And that’s why you do need to schedule or not

schedule some time to deal with interruptions, priority changes, fires, and your ability to

adjust to what’s going on. And in the end, I normally like to talk about avoiding

procrastination, but if you use this method, if you use this system, and you stay focused

on it – this is not something you build and then ignore. You’ve got to stay with it.

You’ve got to live with it. You’ve got to live with your to-do lists and your schedule. And

if you’re scheduled to do something at 11:00, you need to do it at 11:00. This should

force you to avoid procrastination because you’re supposed to start at 11:00. And it’s

clear if you’re procrastinating because you didn’t start at 11:00. Another thing you might

want to look at is if you’re struggling with this, and you’re always late, you may want to

start writing down a daily log. So if you’re scheduled to do something at 11:00, but

you’re doing something else, write that down. Keep yourself a log. One of the things I

do is I know a lot of people do it in a journal or a book or in the computer. It doesn’t

matter. But they have a log. What I like to do is I go right into my calendar. And if I’m

supposed to start something at 11:00, but I don’t start it at 11:00, I put into my calendar

whatever it is that I did from 11:00 to 11:30 that caused me to not start that on time.

And that way, I can look at my schedule and say, well I did that, I did that, I did that.

Well that’s why I’m procrastinating. Or that’s why I didn’t get things done. Or that’s why

I’m running late. And that’s what the goal of the log is, is to bring to the forefront, to put

right in front of your face why are you not getting things done on time? Why are your

tasks ending up late? Why are you constantly rescheduling everything? And then you

have to either do one of a couple of things. Then you have to either decide I need to

schedule in more free time because I’ve got too many interruptions and fires coming my

way, or I need to find ways to deal with these fires or interruptions in a better way, or I’m

wasting my own time and I need to stop that. So again, once we’ve got our list together,

we need to schedule. And I actually do believe that we need to schedule just about

everything.

[End of recording.]

CONTROL THE CHAOS AND CLEAN OUT THE CLUTTER MODULE FIVE – BETTER HABITS – DEALING WITH THE DAILY GRIND Male: Better Habits – Dealing with the Daily Grind. Now we’ve looked at different

systems, different ways to implement systems that would help us get better control over

the clutter in our office, at home, as well as the clutter of the to-do and the tasks that we

have to accomplish – the projects, the goals, the objectives. We’ve looked at systems

to put that all into control. Well what do we need to do day in and day out? Well you

know what? We need to follow it. We need to make these things habits. We need to

stay focused and follow our schedule. Now I know that’s easier said than done. I live it

along with you. It is not that easy to just stay so focused on these things – to make

them happen day in and day out. But it’s what we have to do. And we can do it. We

need to make them habits. Well, how do I make something a habit? Well the

conventional wisdom out there is if you do something for 21 days straight, it’s

considered a habit. And I’ve got to tell you, there’s a lot of sentiment against that,

meaning it’s not really 21 days. Where the 21 days came from was a doctor many

years ago published a book saying that it takes 21 days for somebody who lost a limb to

accept that they’ve lost a limb. And that’s really where the 21 days comes from. But

research that’s been done more recent – over the last five to ten years – has proven

that depending on the person and depending on the habit, it could take anywhere from

18 days to hundreds of days to make something a habit. The question is, how ingrained

is the bad habit, and how long is it going to take, then, to change that? So what I’m

saying to you is don’t just assume if you do it for 21 days, it becomes a habit. Done.

No problem. This is something, the question is how much of the new habit goes against

another habit – something that might be ingrained in you. Remember we talked earlier

about the different types of disorganization? And we talked about habitual and historical

disorganization? Well you know what? If you’ve grown up with a habit that forces you,

or this habit that makes you disorganized, it’s going to take a lot longer to change that

habit if it’s 20, 30, 40 years in the making than it would be if I’m giving you a new item or

a new habit that doesn’t really go against an existing habit – something that’s just a new

way to handle something that you’ve never handled before. That’s going to become a

habit a lot quicker. So you need to be patient and stay focused. Now that we’re in to

our daily grind, and we have our systems into place, how do I maintain this? And one of

the most important things that you need to think about along with this concept of

everything in its place is touch it once. Only touch it once. From a book called the

Power of Focus, they call this the Four D Formula. The Four D Formula says this – Do

it, Dump it, Defer it, or Delegate it, which is the same as touch it once. What do we

mean by do it? Do it, action it, however you want to phrase it – the bottom line is if you

get a piece of paper, you get an email, and you need to do something with it, just go

ahead and do it. So when I talked earlier about scheduling enough time to take care of

email, it’s not just reading the email. You should have enough time to action those

quick items that you can do. So if you have an email and you need to respond, and it’s

going to take you three or four minutes to respond, do it. You should not make that a

to-do item for tomorrow. So when you schedule your time to do emails, you should

schedule enough time to be able to action these types of items. So we have do it or

action it. And then we have dump it or file it. They say dump it. I like to add in file it,

because once I’ve got this email, I’ve got this piece of paper, one of my options is to

dump it – throw it out. That’s clearly an option that we should consider if we don’t need

that information. But if we do need the information, then go right ahead and file it.

Whether it be email, putting it into an email folder, whether it be an attachment to an

email that then needs to be saved to your computer, or if you need to put it into a file

cabinet, but do it. Don’t put it on another pile and say okay, I’ll file that later, because

really you’re just making more work for yourself, because then later, you have to grab it

and you what? You’re touching it again. Touch it once. Defer it. I’m not saying put it

off. Well, I am actually saying put it off. What you’re going to do is create yourself a

task or a to-do item to accomplish it. Well, when do I decide, Michael, to do it versus

defer it? It’s all about time. When we say do it, it has to be in the context of how long is

it going to take you, and does it fit within your standards? I have no rule that’s going to

help you do that. That is a rule that is so unique to your person, to your corporate

situation, to your home situation. In some cases, people will take and do something that

will take them five to ten minutes, and they’ll go ahead and do it. And they’ll only defer

something that’s going to take, I don’t know, 15 minutes to a half hour or greater. Some

people may only take care of things that will take a minute or two. Otherwise, they defer

everything else. It’s a matter of your preference. To be effective, I really wouldn’t do

the whole minute thing. If you can take care of something in five minutes, five to eight

minutes, then yeah, you should probably just go ahead and do it. If it’s something that’s

going to take you longer than that, then it makes sense to schedule that – to defer it and

make it go along with other quick wins, or other fill-ins. That may be your best bet. So if

it might take you ten minutes to do that, but you have three different items like that, well

then you know what? You defer it, and then you build yourself a half hour in your

schedule to take care of those fill-ins. But the bottom line is you’re taking this, and

you’re putting it on your task or to-do list. And then you’re getting rid of the email, filing

it away, whatever you need to do. But the action item has been moved out of your filing

system, out of email or a piece of paper, and on to your to-do or task list. And then your

last option is to delegate it. So if it’s something that’s not your responsibility, or if you

have staff that normally handle it, delegate it right then and there. Don’t wait. It’ll take

you two minutes to shoot them an email to tell them what they need to do. Again, if it’s

going to take you 20 minutes to explain it, well then you may want to defer it. But the

bottom line is you’re still going to end up delegating it. Now a side thing I want to

mention about phone calls, you know, when we do meetings – and it’s almost a

common practice to have agendas – here’s what we’re going to cover in our meetings. I

would encourage you to create mini agendas for your phone calls. Know what you want

to accomplish in that discussion before you start it. Write it down. Because the minute

you get on the phone, or the minute you walk down the hall to go see somebody, you

have an idle chitchat, you talk about a few little things, and you have a tendency then to

forget what your main objectives, or what the things you wanted to get out of that

discussion were. So create yourself mini agendas. It doesn’t have to be formal. You’re

not going to write up a whole document. Just jot down the notes of what you want to

accomplish in that discussion. So those are the things that we need to look at on a day

in and day out in our daily grind to try and maintain our focus, follow our schedule, and

keep things uncluttered and in control so that we are not in chaos. So let’s recap our

session today. In the first section, we talked about why are we cluttered and chaotic;

the different forms of disorganization; and how the distractions of everyday life just

constantly push us to be more disorganized and more chaotic. And then we looked at

getting started – building a system, whether it be a filing system or a home system – in

order for us to be able to take this disorganization, take this clutter and put it into a more

organized form. Then we went to look at our projects, our goals, our objectives, our

tasks, our to-do items. We looked at how do we build those in a structured way so that

we have control over what we’re accomplishing, over what we want to accomplish, and

how do we accomplish it? And then we looked at putting additional information along

with the basic information so that we can better organize our information, so that we can

then take it to the next section, which is then how do we take that information, how do

we schedule it? And we sort it based on due date, based on priority, based on tickler

date, based on priority category. And we would sort it in those different ways so that we

can then take those items and schedule them appropriately – schedule them so that we

are maximizing our time and being productive. And then we looked at the daily grind –

what habits do I need to change? What can I do on a day in and day out basis to make

this system work, whether it be our system of filing things away, our system of building

goals and objectives, tasks, and to-dos, or building out our schedule – how do we go

through the daily grind and make that happen?

[End of recording.]

term definition introduced in an individual's past and ... disorganization an individual's...

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