Blog | Matt Baier Organizing.

Distraction Gear

29 Oct 2011

I don’t know when the modern tradition of bringing out championship caps and shirts during the celebration of sports victories began, but as an organizer I really hate it.

Before I start my rant—er, blog, I want to congratulate the St. Louis Cardinals on winning a very exciting World Series. I read online this morning that in late August, St. Louis stood a .02% of making the playoffs. The PLAYOFFS! Let alone the series. Then down went the Phillies, down went the Brewers and finally down went Texas. My good friend Blair is from Joplin, which was decimated by a tornado this year. Missouri really needed a sweet victory after such a tough year and their home team delivered.

But before we can celebrate this meaningful moment, let’s dress the winners up in un-meaningful grey shirts and caps. That bothers me because these garments are like late comers that just don’t belong in the moment. I remember watching Hank Aaron hit his 714^th home run to beat Babe Ruth’s record and I remember feeling the same thing when a fan jumped on to the field to circle the bases with him. That guy didn’t belong there! This is Hank’s moment.

My feeling is dance with the once who brought you. It is the Cardinal uniform that the fans saw all season, especially the home town uniform, that belongs in the photos and videos of this special occasion, not these late-comer shirts and caps.

These shirts and caps distract from the moment. Part of the excitement of baseball is that the batter and pitcher must be very actively involved in the moment. In a split second that strike pitch can turn to a ball pitch, if you’re not paying attention. The burdens of the past are gone. The future is unknown. Only the moment matters. Many definitions of happiness are about living in the moment. Organizing is about unloading the burdens from the past and setting up systems for the future, so that you can enjoy the now. What doesn’t help is adding more junk!

As an organizer, I look at these shirts and caps and think EXCESS. The players will be getting rings to commemorate the occasion of this victory. They will keep and cherish these rings forever. Do they really need these shirts and caps too? Again, wouldn’t the actual uniform shirt and hat, be more valuable?

In my clients homes I see ton of t-shirts and caps, and many of them are just for showing up at family reunions and corporate outings. They don’t actually represent an accomplishment. So as I see it, these late-comer shirts and caps that the champs must don, kind of cheapen their incredible accomplishment.

You might argue that the Cardinals get to wear these t-shirts and caps because they DID actually accomplish something, but so can ANYone else who didn’t accomplish anything, by buying them. So what makes them special?

That brings up my other problems with these shirts and caps, which is the blatant commercialism. It’s someone saying, “Hey, let’s cash in on the moment.” I don’t have a problem with a fan buying a shirt to commemorate the occasion, but I don’t like the idea of using this special occasion to push this product by using the champs as models.

Finally, I’m really bothered by the sheer waste that comes from this practice. You know there had to be a ton of shirts and caps printed up for the 2011 World Series Champions Texas Rangers. I’m sure these can’t be worn, which means they will go to waste, which I hate.

I suppose I could change my mind, if I learned that the proceeds from these shirts and caps went to a Joplin relief efforts or some other charity. It might even help to learn that they were manufactured in the United States, but until I learn anything like that, every World Series, Super Bowl, and Stanley Cup celebration will be cheapened for me by this distraction gear.

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Tags: baseball, distraction, excess, junk

Simple Can Be Harder

In: Systems

8 Oct 2011

steve_jobs_iphone “That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

- Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs’ passing represents a huge loss, but he leaves behind a tremendous legacy. One could go on for hours about that legacy, but today I just want to address Job’s quote above, because it has a lot to do with effective organizing.

Getting organized is always about taking the less important stuff out of the way so that you can get to the most important stuff. This is what I have been most successful at helping people with. The really challenging part, however, is setting up systems that depend on “focus and simplicity.”

We can establish organizing systems that start with focus and simplicity, but they fall victim to the old habit of adding extra stuff that just interferes.

This phenomenon can be illustrated by another cultural icon, Frasier. In Episode 13, Season 7 Frasier has to come up with a new jingle for his radio show. His father comes up with a perfect simple little jingle while brushing his teeth, but Frasier rejects it. He ends up renting a recording studio and a full orchestra for his little jingle. His brother Niles questions him saying, “I thought you said less is more.” To which Frasier responds, “I did, but then just think how much more MORE would be?”

Yes, I know Frasier is only a fictional character, but I believe more of us think like him than like Steve Jobs. One of the reasons finding true focus and simplicity is so difficult for us is that it runs contrary to our culture of abundance and overwhelming information.

It feels unnatural to get rid of old things and old ideas that aren’t serving us well. It may even feel scary, but it’s important because it brings focus to the innovative ideas that WILL serve us well. Getting to those innovative ideas can be hard work, but they don’t get any easier by bringing back the excess stuff.

People pay a lot of lip services to the benefits of minimalism these days (I suppose I’m one of them), but Steve Jobs walked the talk. His mantra of focus and simplicity really did move mountains.

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Tags: minimalism, organizing systems, simplicity, Steve Jobs

What My Headlines Look Like

In: Time Management

1 Oct 2011

A while back I described how to organize your to-do’s by comparing them to newspaper headlines. Today I want to share an actual model of what that might look like.

To summarize, the front page of a newspaper is made up of a series of short compelling headlines. Each headline may have a short blurb, but it always has a connecter to the full story inside. Much of the time, what piles up on our desks are full stories. What we need then is just a short action description (or headline) and a connector to the larger project.

There is no one right way to do this, but since a physical model might help, here is what my headlines system looks like.

headlines

Rather than having several different directions to focus on, I have just one. To the right of my desk I keep an upright clipboard with today’s schedule printed out. The part that is printed is what I refer to as FIXED time. They are mostly external commitments I have made to other people.

The problem with most time management systems is that they don’t take into account the FLEXIBLE time, internal commitments you make to yourself that are constantly changing. That’s what the little Post-It notes are for and THEY are the headlines.

One of the reasons traditional newspapers are dwindling is that the latest breaking news usually changes by the time they go to print. Newspapers just can’t compete with the flexibility of the online news services. The little Post-its allow you to adjust your priorities as fast as they change AND you don’t have to keep rewriting them as you would on a fixed to-do list.

The real story here is the size of the Post-It’s. It doesn’t take much to compel you to action. In fact, the smaller something seems, the more manageable something is.

As the old saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It’s helpful to make a distinction between projects and tasks. A project is an elephant and a task is a bite. Each Post-It represents a task. To continue with the newspaper analogy, it makes no more sense to write a task that says “create website” than it does to write a headline that says “China.” “Create website” is a project, not a task and “China” is a country, not a headline.

Part of what makes this system work is being able to find files RELIABLY. If there’s not a reliable connection between the headline and the full story, then the system falls apart. This connection is represented by a very simple letter on the Post-It’s lower right (the same spot as a page connector in a newspaper.) The “F” is for file cabinet, the “T” is for tickler file, the “C” is for car (a handy place to find coupons), and “R” is for what I call running files.

Running files are files you want to make a point of acting on. These are ongoing projects that need to be in front of you. You can see these running files right behind the headlines page in the clear, labeled envelopes. There is still a limited number of tasks and ideas contained within each project envelope. If I need bulkier elements I will find them reliably in the file cabinet or reference shelf.

To make my day’s headlines portable, I simply slip them into a clear folder, pictured to the right. I call this my Today folder. It has pockets inside for receipts and other items I pick up outside the office, but I have one very simple rule: what goes in the Today folder comes out Today. This way it always stays small and manageable. My Today folder lives behind the clipboard.

To stay on top of weeks and months I review my projects and calendar every Sunday and print out a week’s worth of day sheets. I pull tasks from the project envelopes, add new ones, and distribute them throughout my day sheets, around the fixed events.

You give yourself the best odds of getting your to-do’s to done when they are vertical, visible, and minimal. Minimal is particularly important and the headlines approach keeps your action minimal. Consider the opposite. If the front page of a newspaper contained all the stories, the type would have to be tiny and the paper enormous. The ability to focus on such a thing would be all but impossible. If you feel the same way about the piles on your desk, you might want to give the headlines approach a try.

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Tags: headlines, running files, system, to-do's

Hey, That’s Important!

In: Paper Management

21 Sep 2011

To get organized the word “important” needs to be used carefully.

If “important” is used too much then there is no distinction and the most important stuff can get buried in the less important stuff. Put another way, if everything is important then nothing is important.

If “important” is used too little then important is seen as a small category unto itself. Since it’s small, there’s no distinction between important things to act upon and important things to find reliably. Since it’s small, there’s no distinction between home, medical, banking, auto etc.

The reality is, this small category doesn’t stay small, just because we want to think of it as small. If something is important, we don’t want to have it hidden away in a drawer. We are more likely to trust the desk surface. We believe we won’t lose it if we can see it and we are more likely to act on something if it’s out where we can see it. So the items we must make a point of acting on AND the items we must find reliably pile up on what is actually our MOST important organizing tool: a clear work surface.

Another thing that can become indistinguishable, then, is the outlook of “everything is important” and the outlook of “important is a category.” They both represent equal treatment, which means our stuff won’t progress forward. Time marches on and the same item that we categorized as important two weeks ago can be rubbish today. Mixing all important items together makes for an unmanageable category. We may intend for the everything to be important or we may intend for “important” to be a small category. Either way, there will appear to be too many action items to act on, so we don’t.

Whether we are keeping everything because it is important or keeping all important items in just one category, we do it because we believe it makes us safe. It does not. What makes us safe is acting upon important items that require action and being able to find important items when we need them. Both of these things are compromised by hanging on to the excess that inevitably comes from equal treatment.

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Tags: action, category, important

Getting Your Papers in Shape

In: Paper Management

2 Sep 2011

paper-shapes-2 Are you flooded with paper in your home? BIG paper challenges require BIG steps. An easy way to be as aggressive with your paper flood as it is with you, is to start by sorting shapes.

The biggest deterrent to dealing with paper is making decisions. The vast majority of these decisions are easy, but we tend to tie them to the minority of difficult ones. The best approach, therefore, is to take the majority of easy decisions out of the way first. Here’s how.

Establish a dedicated sorting table, 2’ x 4’ is perfect. NOTHING but paper should go on this table while you are sorting. Get a black marker, some Post-it’s, and some empty boxes (10” x 12” x 15” is good).

Bring every box, bag, and pile of unsorted paper to one side of the room. Grab the first container of unsorted paper and just dump it on your sorting table and think only in terms of SHAPES.

This will seem counter-intuitive, because we are used to thinking of paper in terms of its value. What I’m saying is forget the value and just start with the shapes. What sort of shapes? For one, there’s the envelope shapes. Toss those in the empty box labeled “envelopes.” Do the same with magazines, newspapers, catalogs, files (paper already contained in folders), small bits (less than 8-1/2 x 11), and loose (8-1/2 x 11) paper.

You are going to be tempted to say “But I can see that this is mostly junk mail and I want to toss this now.” If it’s easy to toss now it will be even easier to toss in the next round. The reason to keep sorting is because you need to work up a momentum. It’s easier to move more quickly when you have a singular focus. At this stage, that focus is STRICTLY sorting.

Once you clear the table completely, grab the next bag and keep sorting, FAST! Before you know it, ALL your paper will be sorted by shape. The next step will be easier than you think because you will be in a singular mode.

Start with the catalogs box. That’s usually a quick win that brings a huge psychological boost. One heavy boxful GONE! Whew that felt good! Next Magazines. Keep a few of those, the rest, GONE!

Now the envelopes: toss the “definitely junk mail” and box the “maybes.” Grab a letter slitter and JUST slit the maybes. Grab the slitted “maybes” and JUST extract the contents. Grab the envelopes’ contents and JUST sort between “to file,” “to do,” and toss.

When you can focus on one singular activity at a time, you not only accomplish much more, much faster, you also work much more SAFELY. By taking the less important bulky stuff out of the way first, you are able to focus more on the smaller, more important pieces, that require more careful reading.

Sorting through paper can be torturous, especially if it is just one piece at a time. Working in focused stages gives you a real sense of accomplishment throughout the process because you can clearly see how you are advancing your progress forward.

I’m aware of the organizing advice of “only touch a piece of paper once,” but I disagree with it. These piles of paper have eaten up enough of your space and time already. It’s time for these piles to go, FAST! This starts with sorting by shapes.