What can we learn from the debt ceiling debacle? August 2, 2011

Bear with me, I know we’re all sick of the debt ceiling discussion, but I promise this post is not actually about politics.

While we’ve all been inundated with 24 hour news coverage of emergency meetings, late night sessions, and hastily written budget plans for the past several weeks, the truth is that the debt ceiling discussion began months ago. It just wasn’t treated with that much urgency until we were up against the August 2 deadline. Why is that? Parkinson’s law.

Parkinson’s law states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” On a related note, the Stock-Sanford Corollary to Parkinson’s Law is that “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.” I would add a further corollary that “If you wait until the last minute, and the project should have taken longer than that, your end result will not be as good as it could have been.” This is exactly what we witnessed happening in Congress. They took longer than was likely necessary to reach an agreement because the work expanded to take up the time up to the last possible minute. The end result was a bill done in that very last minute that everyone seems to either classify as “not good” or “barely good enough,” but very few, if any, of the people involved would classify as objectively “good,” let alone “excellent.”

It’s likely that you have been in a similar situation, even though chances are you are not a member of Congress.

Remember that last paper that you wrote, the one that you knew about from the beginning of the semester but waited until the last week of classes to complete? You hastily wrote it in three coffee-fueled days, and the end result probably wasn’t as good as it would have been if you had started work earlier and devoted more time to the project. If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do – but how much better would that paper (and your grade) have been if you had used the allotted time more wisely?

How about that pile of boxes in the corner of your attic? How long has it been sitting there? Maybe you go through a box or so, once in awhile, with no particular urgency. The work of sorting through those boxes continues to expand the time you have to go through them, because without a deadline you have an infinite amount of time to get the job done. That is, until you decide to move and the un-sorted boxes become an emergency.

Parkinson’s law and its related corollaries can affect anyone, sabotaging your projects and causing all sorts of stress, only to result in missed deadlines and inferior results. So how can you stop this from happening to you?

1) Set deadlines. Have a firm date in which you intend (or are required) to have your project completed. Even if you have to pick an arbitrary date, pick something, and stick to it.

2) If you can, set a fake deadline prior to the real one. Have a report due on Friday? Commit to having it done Wednesday. Leaving for vacation on Saturday morning? Pack on Thursday night.

3) Break a project up, and give each small part its own deadline. This will help keep your project moving along and prevent everything from piling up against the final due date.

4) Be realistic about how long it will take you to complete a project. There’s no point in giving yourself an unmanageable deadline. If your deadline is dictated by somebody else, and it is categorically unreasonable, speak up sooner rather than later. If you wait until the day before something is due, you’ll be accused of procrastinating (whether you have or not). If you speak up immediately, it’s more likely that the timeline can be reassessed, or you can enlist assistance to meet the deadline. Conversely, if you give yourself three months to complete a project that really only requires three weeks, you’ll spend the whole three months on it rather than getting it done sooner.

If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on with the debt ceiling debacle, it’s that it did not go well. Depending on your political leanings (and tolerances), there may be other lessons you can learn, but if nothing else, take it as an example of how NOT to get things done on time, well, and without panic.

Learning from the Tee Vee August 1, 2011

I’m facebook friends with Geralin Thomas, one of the organizers from Hoarders, and this morning she asked her followers what we’ve learned from watching Hoarders on TV. It seemed like a good opportunity to come up with a top ten list, so here you go:

1) There is a HUGE difference between hoarding and being cluttered/disorganized. Most of us have times in our lives when our stuff gets out of control, and it’s really just a matter of straightening up and figuring things out. We may call in professional help, but we call organizers, not therapists. Hoarders need organizers, but they also need therapists. There are larger issues at play. It’s not just about sentimentality, time management, or changing life circumstances. What they do on Hoarders is definitely not the same as what they do on Clean House, by any stretch.

2) Not everyone who is on Hoarders wants to be on Hoarders. I’ve seen quite a few episodes where it’s pretty clear that the person is only on TV to get help due to legal issues or citations, and if they had their way they would make no effort towards changing their lives. As a side note, Hoarders has given me a lot to think about regarding when we should intervene – at what point should the government or protective services get involved, and how much should we “live and let live?” in extreme cases the need for intervention is obvious, and clearly the milder cases will become extreme if left alone, but at what point is criminal or civil intervention appropriate?

3) Hoarding affects entire families, even when they don’t live together. The anguish and concern, especially of children of hoarders, is heartbreaking.

4) The anguish of children who live with hoarding parents, however, is far worse and far more dangerous. There have been some episodes where the show has called in child services, and quite a few where I’ve wondered why they haven’t. These kids have a tough road. Most of the time, they know that something is not right and their house is not supposed to look like that. Their environments are full of physical hazards and often toxic air. They live without utilities, without proper bedrooms, without private space, and without room to play. In some cases, they grow up without knowing any better and show signs of hoarding behavior themselves – they lack the frame of reference for making better decisions and living a cleaner life. They just don’t know what’s normal and what’s not.

5) Not all hoarders look like hoarders. It’s pretty common that I see someone on Hoarders and think, how do you keep yourself looking so put together when you’re starting your day in that mess? If I passed one of these people on the street, worked with one, or even went out for a beer with one, there would be nothing in their appearance or demeanor that would tip me off that they had a hoarding problem.

6) I don’t believe that hoarding is itself a discrete mental illness. It seems to me that it is a way that several illnesses are expressed, whether they are ADD, OCD, depression, reaction to trauma or loss, or PTSD.

7) Although people hoard for a variety of reasons, there seems to be common thread of inability to make appropriate decisions and assign appropriate values. We all know that many hoarders have trouble deciding what to get rid of and what to keep, but what I’ve found really striking is the inability to place appropriate value on things – valuing an item over the health hazard it presents, valuing a collection over the personal space of another family member, valuing the ownership of a pet over the ability to care for it. There was one episode where the therapist had to call child services, and the hoarder said that they would rather the show pack up and leave than place the call. No one wants child services called on them, but at the same time, the fact that the call is warranted is a sign that there’s a massive problem here and maybe the appropriate solution is to deal with it rather than ducking the authorities. These parents made it clear that they would rather continue their lives as-is (i.e. dangerous to their children) than take steps to remedy the situation. Or that family that had the bedbugs, so they slept outside in a tent rather than clean the house so an exterminator could get in. That’s not a good long term solution. The inability of hoarders to see the big picture is staggering.

8 ) It seems like a lot of hoarders have dysfunctional marriages. As a general but certainly not universal theme, the hoarder seems to have a very dominant personality while their partner is very passive and submissive. There have been times during the show when I have looked at my husband and said, “If I ever let the house get like that, just throw all my stuff out.” I have a feeling many spouses of hoarders have tried that, to explosive results. Many of these partners seem like the situation and the length of time it has gone on have really worn them down. They’re afraid to speak up, afraid to challenge the hoarder, afraid to assert the fact that they have rights in their own homes. They avoid their spouses, avoid their homes, make concessions, and try to ignore the problem in the hopes it will go away. Often, the hoarder seems to have shutting their partner up down to a quick science, usually through yelling and threatening. Sometimes the show is called because the partner has threatened to finally leave, or finally take the kids out of the home, and you can tell that just making the threat took every fiber of their being. These people are beaten down from living with a hoarder, sometimes quite severely. More than once, I have watched a spouse or partner interact with a hoarder and thought, “I hope she leaves him.” That’s a terrible and scary thing to think.

9) In extreme cases, hoarding can destroy your house. There have been a few episodes where even with the house cleared out, the structure remained uninhabitable. The damage from mold, leaking items, pests, etc. is still there, even when the offending items are removed, and it’s bad enough where the home is still not fit to live in until major repairs are completed.

10) Severe hoarding can also affect your health. There are a lot of hoarders who have underlying problems – disabilities, illnesses, etc. that are made worse by the hoard. Hoarded houses are dusty, dirty, moldy, and can have pest infestations. A lot of time the children in the house complain of asthma, allergies, and breathing problems. Plus, there’s the hazards of a hoarded kitchen – the expired or rotten food, unclean cooking surfaces, and bacteria-laden counters that make any food prepared or stored in the house potentially unsafe.

So there you go. Who says TV can’t be educational?

It’s not a meritocracy June 28, 2011

In my continuing series of things that are not exactly on topic, let’s talk about career advancement.

Whether you know it or not, you’re in marketing. You have a product to sell, and that product is you. You have to sell yourself to your boss, to his boss, and to your coworkers. Not in a “lady of the night” kind of way, of course, but in a “my work deserves recognition and compensation” kind of way. No one is going to do that for you. Your company is not going to pay you more out of the kindness of its heart. Your boss is not going to give you the best assignments just because you’re there. Your name is not going to get in front of the higher-ups just because you show up on time every day. You have to make these things happen. You have to market yourself.

We seem to have this idea that the workplace is a meritocracy. If we show up on time, stay late once in awhile, meet our deadlines, and periodically bring in cookies for the department meeting, someday, someone will notice and reward us. Most likely, that is just not going to happen. All that will happen is that you will get a nice performance review, you will get your cost of living increase every year (if you’re lucky), and everyone will say thank you for the cookies.

The workplace is not a meritocracy.

If you are the best performer in your company, if you beat your quota by leaps and bounds, if you put in more time than anyone else, if you implement a new procedure that saves 1,000 hours and $1,000,000.00, all your company is going to do is say, “thank you,” unless you actively tell them that you expect more than that. Doing your work well, even if you do it better than everyone else, is not enough to “get you noticed.” Stop trying to “get noticed” and make people notice you instead. There’s a difference. Dressing for the job you want is nice and all, but if you don’t tell anyone what you’re dressing for and why you’d be amazing in that position, all they’re going to do is compliment your shoes.

A couple weeks ago, someone left my department. She had been there a few years, a little longer than I have, and was by all accounts a good worker. She was well-liked and dependable, and did her job well. I am told, although I do not know if this is true or not, that part of the reason she left was that she was upset when I was promoted. Not so much that I was, but that she wasn’t. She had been with the company longer, did good work, and in her mind she had been passed over.

I go to work on time every day, I do my job, I’m well-liked and dependable. Same as her. So why did I get the promotion when she didn’t? Because I asked for it. I interviewed for a management position in my department. The position was eliminated before it was filled, so I didn’t get the job, but I was the only person in the department who interviewed for it. I was the only one who stuck my neck out and sat in a room across the table from all of the other managers in the department and said, “I can do this job, and let me tell you why.” When the end of the year came around, they still didn’t have the authorization for the management position, but they did get authorization to put me into an in-between spot. They actually created the position for me. They didn’t have to do that. So why did they? Because I marketed myself. And when the management position comes around again, I will market myself again, and I will get what I want because I asked for it.

With companies downsizing and looking to cut costs, many of us have taken on additional work, additional hours, additional responsibilities. Have we been compensated for them? Probably not. But, have we asked for that additional compensation? Most people are afraid to. Unless you have a really hostile work environment, though, you’re not going to get fired for asking. Last year I fought both my promotion increase and my merit increase. I lost the battle on both fronts – but I didn’t lose any money. I still had the original increases. I still had the respect of my boss, and hers, and hers, because I handled the situation professionally rather than ranting and raving. And I got a one-on-one meeting with our department VP (not easy to do since he’s based in Europe) in which I got to tell him all that I had accomplished in the past couple years, and all of the things I was working on. Now I’m on his radar, because I asked for what I deserve. If nothing else, I know now that he is watching my work, because he’s told me as much.

You don’t have to wait until review time for this conversation, either. If your company has mid-year reviews that generally don’t include salary increases, that’s a great time to discuss your responsibilities, accomplishments, and compensation with your boss. If not, set up a separate meeting. I know it can be nerve-wracking, but you’re smart enough to come in armed with facts and figures, right? You’ll have the supporting documentation to show your value. Even if you don’t get exactly what you want out of that initial conversation, it can lead to positive results down the line as long as you keep things calm and professional.

If you do nothing but your job, even if you do it really really well, the company will do nothing but assign you work and pay your salary. If you want more than that, you have to speak up. You have to market yourself. You know what you want, now let others know about it as well.

Preparation vs. Planning June 24, 2011

It’s pretty often that I read a post at Time Management Ninja and think, “Yes! Brilliant!” The other day I cam across this post and had one of those moments of awe.

Preparation vs. Planning. Of course there’s a difference, and one that people may not realize. I would wager that a lot of people plan their days but fail to prepare for them, and that’s why things go awry.

I am a big fan of both the calendar and the to-do list as tools to plan your day. I am also a big fan of taking time to plan. Whether you take the time to plan for the day in the morning or do it the night before, writing up your daily schedule and to-do list is crucial to getting things done, showing up on time, and meeting your commitments.

But the plan can only take you so far – you need to prepare for your day as well.

Preparation can take many forms. It could be laying out the most efficient route for your errands, or gathering the paperwork you need before you head out the door. It could be reviewing notes for a meeting or coming up with a list of questions to ask a contractor. The thing is, if you don’t do this preparation, even with the most detailed plan, you’re still just flying by the seat of your pants. Preparation may be the time when you realize you still need that last bit of information from a coworker, or that you have to go to the bank in the morning because they will close at noon, or that you actually do not have time to get everything that needs to be done that day completed and you need to ask for help.

Preparation is where emergencies are prevented.

Think twice before clipping that coupon June 23, 2011

A couple weeks ago, I watched a few episodes of Extreme Couponing on TLC. It was…interesting. To some extent, I can see why these people do it. The idea of getting $500 worth of stuff for $4 is pretty enticing. The thrill of the chase, the excitement of planning, the victory moment when you watch the numbers roll off your total as the coupons scan. I get excited when coupons get me $5 or $10 off my bill. Getting that much stuff for so little probably feels pretty cool.

Except, when you’re done, you have all that stuff. The people I saw had entire basements, garages, spare rooms full of their purchases. They had enough toothpaste for years. A lot of years. Possibly decades. Same for the canned soup, the paper towels, the cereal. In case of apocalypse, I want to be in these people’s garage. No way they’re starving out when the world ends.

Unless, of course, all of the food has expired by then. And it probably will, because no one can eat that much food before at least some of it goes bad. They may have saved a ton of money, but they’ve also created a lot of waste.

The thing is, a good deal does not make something a smart purchase. If you spend 50 cents to get six boxes of cereal that you will never eat, then you’re wasting your 50 cents. The same is true (and actually, probably more true) for non-food purchases. How many times have you bought something just because it was on sale? A sweater you only kind of like, but pick up anyway because it was 50% off. A kitchen gadget that you know deep down you will never use, but that $20 off coupon made it seem justifiable. If you don’t need the item to begin with, purchasing it is a waste of money no matter how much you are saving off the sticker price.

Coupons aren’t there to save you money. They’re there to entice you to buy things that you would not ordinarily buy. I’m 100% in favor of coupons, sales, and discounts – but only on items I was going to buy anyway. Otherwise, you’re just falling for a trap.

When did we stop paying attention to one another? June 22, 2011

I don’t know if this is completely on-topic for this blog, but we’ll call it a time management issue or something and say that it is. (These, my friends, are the benefits of not having an editor).

When, exactly, did it become OK for us to stop paying attention to one another?

I first started noticing this at work. At my first job, which was really not that long ago – less than 10 years – I had to go to a ton of meetings. Everyone would show up with a printout of some spreadsheet or report, and we’d sit around a table discussing it. No one brought a laptop or blackberry or anything like that. Everyone was focused on the meeting. As far as I can remember, this was true in both internal and external meetings.

Over time, I have seen that change. Now, when I go to a meeting, people walk in with their laptops or put their blackberries on the table on top of their agenda, and they check their devices – even responding to messages and emails – while the meeting goes on around them. People call in from their desks – even when the meeting is in the building they are sitting in – so that they can continue to “work” during the meeting instead of paying full attention to it. I get emails and instant messages from people I am in meetings with, while I am in the meetings, that do not relate to the topic of the meetings. People routinely use the completely transparent excuse that their phone was on mute when everyone knows that they didn’t answer the question because they were busy doing something else and have no idea what was even asked of them. When did this become OK? Why are we all in this meeting if we’re not even going to pay attention to the fact that we are there? I see this in internal meetings, external meetings, even small 2 and 3 person meetings. If the meeting is not the best use of your time, don’t go. If you have something more urgent to work on, decline or reschedule. What’s the point of sitting in a room if you’re not actually present? And when did behaving like this become acceptable? I’ve seen this behavior time and again, but I’ve never seen anyone called out on it.

I thought it was a work thing, but it’s growing. It’s like the blob or something. We walk into restaurants with friends and put our phones on the tables in front of us. We check our email during conversations with one another. We text from the passenger seat while talking to the driver. What gives? Am I not important enough for you to focus on me when I’m actually present in front of you? Why does no one object to this behavior? The only thing worse than seeing people behave like this is that we all let them get away with it, like we have a mutual understanding that we are not as important as the blinking email notification. Or maybe we just don’t notice because we’re too busy using our own phone to update our facebook status.

I read a blog entry once by a new mom who had a “moment of clarity.” for lack of a better term, when she realized that in nearly every baby picture taken of her daughter, the mom was in the background on the computer or with her cell phone. As in, not paying attention to her daughter. Not paying attention to the other person in the room taking the picture (someone who was, most likely, a visitor in her home). She was missing out because she wasn’t paying attention.

There’s a company that sells a cell phone signal blocker. You wrap your phone in it so that you won’t be distracted by it. The cover says “My phone is off for you.” That shouldn’t be something special. It should be common courtesy.

Maybe it has to do with technology specifically. We’d still think it was weird if someone pulled out a magazine mid-conversation, or brought a book with them to a family dinner. It would seem odd if someone brought an unrelated report to a meeting and started marking it up while everyone else was discussing something else. The phone, the laptop, the blackberry – that’s all OK, though. Why is that?

Maybe it’s workplace pressure. We think that if the company gives us a blackberry, we have to answer it immediately at all times. Really? Are you that important? Do you have to take the call from one colleague while you are in a meeting with another? It can’t wait half an hour? Is the fact that you are working on issue A not enough of a reason to let issue B wait until the end of your discussion?

Maybe we should start sticking up for ourselves and demand the full attention of the people we are talking to. Maybe we should expect that people we meet with are actually meeting with us at the same time, and not just killing time waiting for an important email to pop up, or working on some spreadsheet in the background. Maybe we should start calling people out on this. Maybe we should insist on full attention.

Maybe we should start noticing when we are the offenders. Maybe we should make the effort to prioritize the people right in front of us and leave our phones in our pockets. Maybe we should turn off our laptops once in awhile. Maybe we should leave our twitter feeds silent for a night and just enjoy our friends instead.

Just a thought.

In which I rant about “having it all.” June 12, 2011

I read a review of yet another book about work/life balance today. Generally these books either say that there’s no real way for women (and it’s always about women, and almost always about mothers) to “have it all,” or they say that we can “have it all” so long as corporate culture accommodates us (which, according to these books, it never does).

(If you’re not a woman, or not a mom, stay with me for a few more lines. I do have a larger point).

From what I can tell, having it all entails, at minimum:
-Being an ideal and charming wife with the time and energy to devote her husband and her marriage, while at the same time being able to go “toe-to-toe” with the men in the office.
-Being the kind of mom who is on the PTA board, always has time to make cookies for the bake sale, spends tons of “quality time” with her children (making crafts and doing educational things, of course) and always finds the time to chaperone the school trips and/or be the class mom.
-Never turning down an opportunity to volunteer.
-Eating a balanced diet, preparing healthy homemade meals for her family each and every night, and always finding time to exercise.
-Having a home that is well-decorated, clean, and organized at all times.
-Always looking well-dressed, well-maintained, and well-manicured, with perfect hair and in-style clothing.
-And being able to afford all of the above.

This brings me to my larger point: Who is defining your goals? Who is setting your priorities? When you picture your ideal life, are you picturing something that will satisfy your mother, impress your friends, or make an ex realize what they’ve missed out on, or do you picture what will make YOU happy? What are YOUR priorities, and are you living your life in a way that reflects that order of importance?

Who is defining your “all?”

My “all” doesn’t include the bake sale. It doesn’t include being a stay at home mom. It doesn’t include the PTA, and it doesn’t include backpacking through Europe. Not because these are bad goals to have, but because they are not things that I personally want. My “all” is a strong marriage, the feeling that I am raising my children with values and limits as well as love and laughter, the aforementioned organized home, and making ambitious and deliberate choices to move my career forward.

It’s a common recommendation for people who volunteer for a lot of causes to cut back to one or two causes that they can truly devote their time/money/energy to. The idea is that it’s better to give 50% of yourself to two causes than 20% of yourself to five. I think that the same principle applies to “having it all.” You can try to devote yourself to family, marriage, career, home, physical fitness, spiritual life, community organizations, and whatever else society decides to tell you is important this year, but chances are you’ll end up stretching yourself too thin and running yourself ragged to reach some kind of ideal image that may not even make you happy. Alternately, you can decide on your own priorities and devote yourself to what is most important to you. You can define your own “all,” find ways to accomplish what matters, and let the rest go. You can define and measure your own success without letting some author, teacher, boss, parent, etc. tell you what should be important.

And while we’re on the topic, don’t apologize for your “all.” You don’t have to justify it to anyone if you’re not interested in marriage, or children, or the corner office. If you choose to have the kind of career where you just collect a paycheck and go home, or you want to be a small business owner, or spend 20 hours a week training for a marathon, whatever – these are your choices, your priorities, your “all.” The fact that they’re not someone else’s, that they’re not in line with some cultural ideal – that’s someone else’s problem. Not yours. You’re not here to be some cultural ideal just for the sake of “having it all.” You’re a person, not a concept.

Don’t let someone else tell you who you’re supposed to be, what you’re supposed to want, what your goals should be, or how to measure whether or not you are a success. Define your own “all,” then go and make it happen.

Taking time to clean up June 3, 2011

In most cases, clutter doesn’t show up overnight. It slips into our homes in bits and pieces until suddenly we look around and are completely overwhelmed by the piles of stuff around us. At this point, it’s going to take a significant time investment to get things back in order.

So how did you get there? Is it because you didn’t make a significant time investment to keep things clean to begin with?

More likely, it’s that you didn’t make some very small time investments along the way. Now they’ve all been added together, and cleaning up will take longer. What are the small time investments that I’m talking about?

-Sorting the mail daily, as soon as you bring it into the house – trashing the junk, putting the bills in a central location, etc. On your average day, this takes about 2 minutes tops. A pile of a week or month’s worth of mail will take much longer to sort through, plus you run the risk of missed bills/invitations/notices.
-Putting things away after you purchase them. Do you have grocery clutter? Probably not, at least not the perishables. You come into the house and put those in the fridge immediately. Why don’t you do that when you purchase housewares, clothes, or other non-perishable items? Leaving these things in their shopping bags only allows the bags to pile up, you can’t find or remember what you purchased, and you end up re-purchasing because of it.
-When you get undressed, put the clothes you take off away immediately. Put them in the hamper or fold them up and put them in the appropriate drawer immediately rather than letting a pile of clothes grow on your floor.
-Take care of the dishes as you use them. Wash them after every meal or put them in the dishwasher right away instead of leaving them in the sink. A couple of freshly-used dishes are much more pleasant to deal with than a massive pile of day (or two) old ones.
-Throw things out when you’re done with them. When you finish your soda, put the can in the recycle bin right away. When you use a paper towel, put it right in the trash. Don’t leave garbage around your house with the plan of picking it up later. (And don’t leave leftovers in your fridge once you notice that they have passed their prime. Throw them out as soon as they’ve gone bad).
-If something is in the wrong place, put it away as soon as you notice it. Don’t leave that hanger on the floor of the closet or that pair of shoes in the hallway. Putting things in their proper location only takes a couple seconds.
-If you use something, put it away as soon as you are done. Put the scissors back in the drawer, put the hammer back in the toolbox, put the calculator back on your desk. This way you will know where the item is and not have to waste time looking for it later.

Each of these tasks takes up only seconds of your day, but they add up to a clutter-free existence and that means you’ll be far less likely to have to devote your time an energy to a big-scale cleanup down the line.

Simple Solutions May 12, 2011

There are a lot of really clever organizational products out there. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the functions, dimensions, appearances, and promises of everything designed to hold your stuff and/or simplify your life. I’m the first person to admit that I’m a sucker for a clever product. Sometimes, however, an organizational dilemma can be solved with a simpler solution.

Like most people, I have a small collection of measuring cups and spoons. They’ve been living in my kitchen cabinets, alongside my pots and pans. They get lost behind skillets, they’re hard to see, and I have to move a bunch of other stuff to get to them as they travel around the space. It’s not efficient, and on top of that, it’s annoying. So last night, I grabbed a hammer, some small nails, and my five year old son, and we did this:

It was a simple, fifteen minute fix that cost nothing since I already had the nails in the house, and it solves a problem that aggravated me on an almost daily basis. If you’re not so into the idea of putting nails in your cabinet doors, you can accomplish the same results with suction-cup hooks or adhesive hooks. The important part is that it keeps these small items together, easy to find, and easy to access.

deciding what “to-do” May 3, 2011

So I had a busy weekend. Family in town, chasing children, husband out a couple nights in a row, etc. It was tiring, but it was worth it.

Monday morning, I sat down and wrote a to-do list for myself. It was astronomically long. There were things I usually do over the weekend that had not gotten done, things that need to get taken care of on a daily basis, things that I usually do on Mondays, things that needed to be done this week, things that needed to be done to “recover’ from my house having three times as many occupants as usual over the weekend. The list was over a page long. I had no idea where to start.

I would imagine that I’m not the only person who has ever been in this situation. So when your to-do list has more than you can reasonably accomplish on it, how do you decide what to do first? How do you get through it all without getting completely overwhelmed?

Ditch the list and draw some boxes.

I’ve seen this type of chart used before in time management books and articles, usually related to workplace productivity, but it will work for your personal stuff, too. Take a fresh page and divide it into four sections, and label each like this:

Then divide up your list:

URGENT/IMPORTANT: These are things that have to get done first, and will produce unpleasant consequences if they are not done. “Urgent” in this case does not mean “emergency.” Washing the dishes may fall into this category – they’re piling up, you’re only going to mess up more dishes when you make dinner that night, you’re in danger of losing the ability to use your sink, the stuff on the bottom will get gross. “Urgent” may also mean time-sensitive – you need to pick up the dry cleaning today because you have an important meeting tomorrow.

URGENT/NOT IMPORTANT: These are things that are time-sensitive, but it’s not necessarily a big deal if they don’t get done. Taking advantage of a sale that ends tomorrow could be an example here. It’s easy to confuse urgent with important – a deadline makes things seem more significant than they actually are. The key difference is whether the outcome will be bad if the task goes undone.

NOT URGENT/IMPORTANT: These are things that need to get done, but can wait if needed. If you need to get to the grocery store, but you have enough food to get you through the next day or so, making the trip is important but not urgent.

NOT URGENT/NOT IMPORTANT: This is the household equivalent of busywork. Maybe you have a catalog you’ve been meaning to flip through, or you want to transfer information from an old address book to a new one. These are things you would like to do, but technically don’t need to do. They can wait, pretty much indefinitely.

Once you have everything divided up, tackle your list in the following order:

1) URGENT/IMPORTANT: These are the tasks that will have the greatest impact if left undone. If you get only these tasks complete, you will at least be treading water and heading off calamity.
2) NOT URGENT/IMPORTANT: These will become urgent/important tasks if left undone long enough, and have the greatest potential to become emergencies.

The rest, honestly, don’t matter. They’re not important, and you’ve admitted as much when you categorized them. These are things you can do at your leisure, when you have the time, if you get around to them. Focus on what’s important first. Get it out of the way so that you have time to focus on the unimportant (although possibly more fun) things on your list.