So many organizing efforts are focused on containing items out of sight and out of mind.  There are, however, things that we need to make a point of acting on, that should NOT be hidden.  Quite the opposite.  We need things to stick out like a sore thumb to compel us to action.  Those are the compelements.   Here are some examples.

To do list
The old stand by.  Crossing stuff off the list makes us feel like we are getting a lot done, but we tend to cross off the easiest stuff first and the bigger, more important goals keep getting rewritten on subsequent to-do lists. Under the cover of a notebook, however, the to-do list is about as compelling as folded clothes in a drawer.
Smart phone
Setting  an alarm on your smart phone can be a great way to alert you to certain fixed events.   If you depend on this for everything, however, it’s hard to get a sense of what’s coming and many alerts may take you by surprise.  It may happen so often that you are not able to act on all the actions you are alerted to.
Computer  monitor
It’s all very well to collect your compelements as to-do’s on your computer monitor, but do they still feel compelling when you open another program or that screen saver pops up? Of course not.
Bulletin board
A classic compelement collector.  Problem is, if there a large collection of compelements all over the board, then NONE of them may have a compelling effect.  There is no focus with a bulletin board.
Post-It’s on monitor.
OK, I often see these compelements in my line of work.  In fact, I see them a lot.  The problem with these is they always take a secondary role to what’s on the monitor and often tend take up residence there for days and weeks, sometimes longer.
Task collector
This is my choice, one that I shared last week in The Weekly Round Up.  The task collector stands out, so you MUST notice it.  Tasks can be simply re-prioritized by moving simple Post-It notes around.  Long term projects can be broken up and worked into your weekly schedule so that they are remembered and realistic.  The task collector is a compelement that is as compelling as you need it to be.

What compelements work well for you?

Let me start by saying I do use paper clips myself.  I believe they have their place.  It’s just that I find they are grossly over-used.  Here’s why.

Paper clips are guilty of doing three things: bulking, concealing, and snagging.

1. Bulking.  Files get fat sometimes.  It happens, but when there are too many paper clips shoved in, these fat files become bulky and misshapen, causing them to be overstuffed OR to slide, even with hanging files.  When the contents of one’s file cabinet are a mess, one is less inclined to use it and that’s a bad thing.
2. Concealing.  Filing needs to be all about FINDING.  Many is the time I have found a tab concealed because a piece of paper has caught on a paperclip in the folder.
3. Snagging.  If the clip is not pushing the paper up to block the tab, then it may be snagging a loose piece of paper behind an unrelated pile.  When you go to look for this piece of paper, you can’t find it even though you KNOW you put it in this file.  It is critical that your file cabinet is a system you can trust.

Alternatives

1. Staples.  I get it.  You probably want to keep your active notes to review, edit, and process in a paper clip.  Me too.  It allows for flexibility.  The more active a file is, the more flexible it needs to be.  When a collection of papers gets filed, however, it’s a good idea to staple wherever possible.
2. Project Envelopes.  I like to collect ongoing projects in large clear plastic envelopes.  You can maintain that flexibility you need for processing and save desk space by storing them vertically in an incline sorter.
3. Weeding.  If you’ve got one of those giant winged paperclips, you’re more inclined to think “I might as well keep these loose papers ALL together with this.” If, however, you give yourself the limit of a file folder, you will be more inclined to ask questions like “Do I really need to keep the advertising that goes with this invoice?” or “Am I EVER going to read this fat prospectus?” Weed them out.  Limitations breed freedom.
4. File Jackets. If you’ve got a stack of handouts, those big clips can damage the paper.  I recommend file jackets instead.  The flat ones can hold about 35 sheets and the one and a half inch ones can hold about 150 sheets.

I have a feeling I am dipping my toe some controversial waters here, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the topic.

A dedicated zone is an area, as small as a drawer or as large as a room, that one reserves exclusively for one category.  The dedicated zone should be determined at the END of a purging process.  Unless you are clear on the quantity of a category you want to keep, in relation to the other categories you want to keep, it doesn’t make sense to choose the size of a dedicated zone.  Your choice will probably too big or too small.

Let’s take crafts for example.  Unless you look at all your craft materials all at once and make some choices about what should stay and what should go, it’s hard to know how much space to dedicate to them.

Perhaps you’ve started a home-based business and you need more space for an office and have less time for doing crafts.  After evaluating the balance, you may determine that you can dedicate only one shelf to keep your crafts.

If, on the other hand, your last child has left the nest and you’ve been looking forward to spending your newly-liberated time on your crafts, then it may make sense to dedicate an entire room to them.

Whether your dedicated zone is large or small, it is important to confine your category to it (until your lifestyle changes significantly.)   Always make a generous allowance for room to grow, but when you hit that limit, tell yourself, “OK that’s it.  Something’s got to go.”  The reason that this limitation is so important is that the overflow will start to encroach on OTHER dedicated zones.

In the home business scenario, if you find yourself taking on more crafts than you can fit on your craft shelf, they may start to take up valuable space in your new home office.

In the craft room scenario, if you store boxes of junk that doesn’t fit in your garage in your new craft room, then you start to lose something that is important to you.

The reason I chose the truck image for this blog is because it is one of the world’s largest land transports and someone has STILL found a way to push its limits.  Give yourself reasonable limits, then stay within them.  Limitations breed freedom.  That’s what dedicated zones are all about.

In the town of Amity there was a lot of politics and complications involved in fully assessing the scale of the local “shark problem.”  When you declutter, you don’t have those complications.  There should be no rush to choose a vessel for each category before you are clear on how big that category is going to be.

One of the questions I am most frequently asked when I start working with a new client is, “what containers can I buy?”  My answer is always to wait and see the quantity we are keeping before choosing the appropriate container.   The rule is QUANTITY DICTATES SYSTEMS.

It’s most helpful to be governed by your organizing needs, not by your organizing containers.  I’m amazed at how often a client will empty an old container and ask “Now what am I going do with this?” It’s quite possible you won’t have a need for an emptied container.  Many decorative little bins and baskets just tend to be clutter traps.  Do yourself a favor and scuttle these vessels.

In the sorting process, we use just cardboard boxes to contain the keepers in categories, then we are able to get clear on their appropriate amounts to keep and the appropriate containers to hold them.  We may find, for example, that we need a much smaller bin than we had originally thought.  We may find that we want certain items out on a shelf, we may find that some items should be in drawers, OR we may determine WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BIN!

-       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.

As a child, I couldn’t articulate what it was about that I didn’t like about rubber bands, but as a professional organizer I can.  Some kinds of containers help you GET organized and others help you STAY organized.  Rubber bands do neither.

Any of my clients will tell you, my favorite containers for GETTING organized are banker boxes and Ziploc bags.  The banker boxes are a good size for sorting, they are stackable, reusable, and you can affix a label to them.  Ziploc bags are great because you can see what’s inside of them, including a label to clarify the contents further.  Both of these solutions are designed to be temporary launch pads to proper systems.

Rubber bands offer no such launch pad.  The only things they can launch is themselves (and that’s not a bad idea.)  We may associate a flexibility with rubber bands, but the truth is, there’s a certain rigidity to rubber bands.  Take business cards, for example.  Once you neatly bundle them up in a criss cross of rubber bands, let’s face it, that’s the end of them.  The problem was that business cards were all over the place and the “solution” is that they are now under control, with rubber bands.  The rubber bands send the message that the business card problem has been settled.  It hasn’t.  It has been bundled up and, in some ways, the problem is worse.  The only card that you can see in the bundle is the top one.

If the intention of this bundle is to represent a FINISHED system, then the rubber band fails even further.  I’ve seen hundreds of organizing systems, good and bad, and there is always one consistent element that makes systems successful:  they’re easy! Unbundling, shuffling, and bundling business cards, to continue with the same example, requires effort, not a lot of effort, but effort, enough not to happen.

Big fat files that are bound up in rubber bands are especially difficult to use.  The resistance of the rubber makes these files difficult to slide in and out of the file cabinet and the bands cut into the files, leaving them in tatters.  One is not encouraged to use files like that, so one doesn’t.

Even for rolls of paper, I try to avoid the rubber band.  If you have a lot of large paper that matters, a set of flat files is well worth the investment.  For small amounts a portfolio is better.  Rolling paper up never improves it.

Finally, rubber bands are NOT so flexible because eventually they dry up, get brittle, and snap.  Granted, this takes quite a long time, but that’s not a problem for the rubber band.  Things tend to sit bound up for YEARS.  Why? Because there is never a plan for moving on from the rubber band solution.  It’s done, settled, and often a royal pain to unbind.

Oh, and it gets worse.  It’s not enough that these monstrosities snap as their bloated contents explode, they actually have the gall to adhere themselves to folders with an epoxy-like strength, rendering said folder non-reusable and non-recyclable.

Rubber bands have their place, on lobsters and broccoli, but unless you are actively seeking a DISorganizing tool, my advice would be to keep these little menaces out of your home office.

The reason this just won’t work is because there is no limiting factor to keep the quantity under control.  Before you can establish this limiting factor, you must first establish what a reasonable quantity of stuff is.  That is why it is so important to complete the process of sort-and-purge FIRST.

The approach to effective organizing is to take all the LESS important stuff out of the way, so that you can easily get to the MOST important stuff.  When we clear a shelf off, the client sees the open shelf as an opportunity. It is, but the real opportunity is all the excess stuff on the other shelves and throughout the room.

When you clear all the excess stuff from your room and divide the keepers into simple categories, you give yourself a huge advantage.  You are starting with a clean slate and seeing what’s important for this space in a whole new light.

In this new light, maybe you realize you can comfortably fit all your office supplies in a 5 drawer organizer on wheels.  Maybe you don’t need that bookcase at all.  Maybe the space it takes up would be better occupied by a small side table for processing all those papers that you had piled up on your floor.

It’s very difficult to see all these possibilities if you don’t first reexamine ALL your stuff and see what you really need and how much.  Let your needs dictate your systems.  Don’t rush to recreate systems in a structure that may be a bad fit for your needs.  Otherwise you will have no limitations to prevent the excess from returning.

Element 1: Single Focus. You may go to bed with a beautifully worked out plan for tomorrow, but of course stuff happens.  I won’t waste time on why you get distracted from your plan.  It happens to the most disciplined of us.  What’s important is that you at least DO start with a plan, a single page in a single place, so that you have one place to return to after your inevitable distractions. If your plan is divided your focus will be too.

Element 2: Fixed Events. To-do lists don’t work for several reasons.  The first is, they don’t take into account your fixed events of the day.  You’re not going to fit in all your tasks and projects if you don’t first block our your fixed obligations that are filling up your day.

Element 3: Flexible Tasks & Projects. Day planners tend not to work for the opposite reason.  While you can keep all your fixed events straight, there is not an easy system for working in all the tasks and projects you want to make a point of doing.  They require a certain amount of flexibility, because priorities change in an instant.  Priorities are harder to predict than events

Element 4: Easy Entry. There’s no getting around the fact that you must either type easily or write legibly.  Be sure your system goes with your strength.  You don’t want the difficulty of entry alone to discourage you from entering information as it comes to you.

Element 5: Easy Retrieval. You may be a wiz at entering information, but are you equally able to retrieve your information and act on it?  There is nothing compelling about a tiny note hidden inside a closed book, that’s still in your bag.  Give yourself the best odds of seeing and acting upon a to-do by making it bold and visible.

Element 6: Portability. Maybe you’ve got a big fat day planner that carries and does EVERYTHING, but is it so big that you’re often tempted to leave it behind? A good action system needs be portable enough, so that it is always with you to update as needed.

Element 7: Long Term Goals. The second reason that to-do lists don’t work is that we tend to cross off the easiest items on the list first and we keep rewriting the undone bigger projects on the next to-do lists.  The more items we are able to cross off the more productive we feel, but those long term goals keep getting put off.  Most systems don’t address long-term goals.

I like a combination of my computer calendar (iCal) for fixed events and paper for flexible to-do’s.  I print out a page for every day of scheduled events and add a little Post-It for every to-do, which allows them to be flexible.  I don’t have to rewrite the to-do’s I don’t get to. I just move them to the next day.  I carry the day’s plan in a thin clear folder with pockets for daily receipts.  Long term to-do’s go on small Post-its, which I keep in project corrals (#6).  I update all appointments as they come up in my iPhone, which is always on me.

That combination covers all elements for me.  I’m not saying my combination is right for you, but I do think it would be helpful to review how your system covers all elements on this list.  What combination works best for you?

I would add notepads to this list and exclude binders, which can be useful for reference material.  The problem I have with notebooks is that they tend to trap information in and there it stays.  There is no plan for retrieval and no way to organize ideas in a useful way.

The idea behind notebooks tends to be to capture ideas as they come to us.  A single notebook can include to-do lists, doodles, calculations, poems, phone numbers, brainstorms, quotes, floor plans, websites, and so much more.  Creative projects, accessible information, and action items all belong in quite separate places.  If they are all bound together, hidden inside that notebook, they will probably go no further.  You can kiss your creativity, accessibility, and activity good bye.

The notebook problem gets worse.  There is rarely just one notebook with current information.  Many notebooks leads to much confusion.  This confusion is compounded by the fact that there are often multiple categories represented on a single page.  It can be very easy to forget that you had written down the number for the electrician on that page of calculations and doodles.

I recommend collecting bits of information in an envelope labeled “information to enter.”  Then it becomes an action.  This action may involve entering the information from the business cards, scraps of paper, and Starbucks napkins into a database or an address book.  It’s also a task that is so straight forward that it can be delegated.

For action items I’m a big fan of little post-its arranged on your day’s schedule by priority.  I like the adjustability of them.  They are moveable,  visible, and useable, not locked  in a book.

Creative projects may make sense in a notebook, but it is much easier to organize the project if you use a loose leaf notebook.

Odds are, if your notebook is bound up, your ideas, information, and productivity will be too.

Am I wrong? Do you stay beautifully organized with notebooks?

I often find these large collections saved by busy moms, who are terrific at taking care of their family, but not always themselves.  Sure, there are valuable lessons to be learned from self-sacrifice, but there are also valuable lessons from rewarding yourself once in awhile with a gift, especially if it is a gift someone else has intended for you: a gift certificate.  Easier said than done.  I know.  Here are some tips.

Sooner than later.
Gift certificates are wonderfully easy to give, but not so easy to use.  The main barrier is time, especially for all those spa and salon certificates I see everywhere.  The giver is happy to think of you being pampered, within the next week or two, not after the kids graduate from High School! Don’t wait until you have a free block of time, because that won’t come soon.  It takes a little effort, but you owe it to yourself to squeeze in a little you-time.  Why? Because not only do you get to feel good from the pampering, but the giver gets to feel good when you tell him or her how much you enjoyed it and you get to feel good AGAIN when you have made the giver feel good.  Don’t let all this good feeling get lost in a pile!

Store near use.
If you can’t use the gift certificate right away, store it as close to the point of use as possible.  I keep a collection of gift certificates and coupons in a clear envelope I keep in my car door.  If I find myself at Staples buying supplies, I’ll check this envelope for rewards certificates.  A pocketbook might be a better answer, but I wouldn’t overload your purse with gift certificates. Keep them in a separate envelope.

Create a shopping file.
A shopping file becomes useful as we buy increasingly more online.  It’s handy to have one file to collect all online purchase ideas, coupons, and yes, gift certificates.  If the point of use is near your computer, then it makes sense to have your online gift certificates filed in your home office, not your car.

I can promise you that no one is going to award you self-denial points for all the gift certificates you collect, so you might as well enjoy these gifts and soon!