Goal 9: Getting Our House In Order

I haven't checked in with my 2011 goals in quite a while, but lately I've been all about goal 9: Getting Our House In Order. Matt and I spent the weekend before last cleaning and rearranging our living room, FINALLY finding permanent homes for the furniture we inherited from his mom and making it look a lot more orderly in here. And I can't even tell you what a huge relief it is not to have to navigate around that huge sofa (and all of the clutter that formed up on and around it) every time we walk through the room.

I didn't bother taking before & after pictures, partly because the before embarrassed me so much (it was pretty bad), but also because we still have all of the old hand-me-down and pre-fab furniture left over from our twenties. So nothing exciting happened decor wise (other than putting out some fall and Halloween decorations); we just made better use of our space. But even though Better Homes & Gardens won't be knocking on our door to do a photo shoot any time soon, the living room looks so much better than it did, and it's so much more comfortable and homey. We're actually hanging out in here instead of spending all of our time in the back of the house. And I'm thrilled that there's actually enough floor space for me to do workout DVDs when the weather turns too cold to keep up my walking routine.

Apart from that, I've been spending most of my time over the last week and a half cleaning and rearranging my office. I'll go into more detail about that over at my other blog, but I'll say here that I can't believe what a huge undertaking that turned out to be. I'm trying to get rid of about half of what's crammed in there, but right now "getting rid of stuff" means moving it to the garage until I have time to haul it off to the recycling place/the Salvation Army/the used book store/eBay/whatever, and I'm running into the problem that our garage is already filled nearly to the brim with my late in-laws' things, and I'm quickly running out of temporary storage. So one of my big goals for next year will definitely be to clean out our garage and deal with all of the stuff we had to bring over from their apartment. Also, to finally buy a ladder so we can access our attic, which I totally forgot we even had until the other day when my mom asked why we don't put some of their stuff up there. But the cord on the pull-down door/ladder thing is missing, and without a ladder, we might as well not have an attic.

Yes, we've been here three years now, and we're still getting used to actually living in our very own house. By the way, we also have a shed, but the doors don't close, so we don't keep stuff in there, either. Fixing that might also be on next year's goal list.

Meanwhile, I'll keep working on my office and being mystified at how two people can barely cram all of their crap into a three-bedroom house. As it stands I have no idea where we'll put a baby if we actually manage to have one.

Rainy Day Cleaning Spree

I cleaned my office today. Over on the left is the before pic of my work area, which is not really "before" so much as "twenty minutes in," after I took down and re-hung the sari-serving-as-curtain that was previously held up crookedly with binder clips. You'll just have to trust me that it looks much better now. You'll also have to trust me when I say that my desk isn't usually quite that messy -- my cat had knocked over a pile of mail and I didn't bother to pick it up before I snapped this pic.

I've been meaning to clean it up for a while now, in the hopes that I might work a little more efficiently if I'm not constantly having to clear a space for my laptop every time I sit down. What motivated me to finally do it today was a sudden desire to bring plants into my office, and to not have them be eaten by the cats once I do.

I don't actually have any plants ready to bring in yet, but I've started to propagate some cuttings from other plants in the house. They're currently hanging out in the little windowsill garden we've got happening in the kitchen.

Those plants are, from left: jade, cilantro, African violet, English ivy, and sweet basil. The ivy is what's being prepped for my office - it's my first experiment in trying to get cuttings to grow roots in water. If this attempt is a success, I'll try it with the violet and a begonia my Big Sis sent home with me yesterday (not pictured).

I'd like to eventually duplicate the windowsill garden in my office window. The only trouble with that is, all of those plants are toxic when eaten, and my office is a hangout for plant-eating cats. To that end, I've rearranged some things to start training them that the windowsill is off-limits. Which breaks my heart a little, because they love to perch up there and bird-watch. But seeing as how they knock over something on my desk every single time they get up there without fail, I'm cool with taking away their windowsill privileges.

And so, for now I've filled the sill with so much stuff that they can't get up there. I moved my writing & editing reference books up there, putting them within easier reach, which also freed up some shelf space for my growing paperback collection. Hopefully, the rest of the tchotchkes lining the sill can be traded out for plants once the cats are used to the window being off-limits. As for my desk, it's organized and clutter-free, and there's plenty of room for the cats to lounge while they're pouting about being barred from the windowsill.

Six Free Online To Do List & Project Management Tools

Last month I shared my Six Strategies for Getting Your To Do List Done. This week I thought I'd point you to six online tools to help you take your task list strategizing even further. While I'm more of an old-fashioned pen and paper kinda gal, sometimes online lists can come in pretty handy. They can't get lost or destroyed by cat puke or spilled coffee, for one thing. And there are days when the built-in e-mail reminders that come with some of these programs are necessary for my survival.

Let's start with the three I sometimes use:

1. When you just need a basic To Do list, Google Calendar's built-in task list gets the job done. You can assign tasks to specific project lists, and set due dates that are automatically added to your calendar. If you need a reminder, however, you have to manually create an appointment on your calendar to send you a reminder.

2. Another simple list is Ta-da List by 37Signals. It has a super-simple interface that goes a couple of steps beyond the Google option with sharing options and RSS feeds. It doesn't have any reminders, so if you need help remembering to get stuff done, this might not be the one for you.

3. Remember the Milk, on the other hand, has about all of the options you could ask for. List organization can be as simple or as complex as you require, and it has apps to interface with your Google calendar, your iGoogle home page, your iPhone, Android or Blackberry, or even your offline desktop.

Here's three more that I haven't tried, but they look promising:

4. Todoist claims to be the best. Features include, but are not limited to, a built-in calendar, Gmail integration, hourly data backups and SSL encryption for sensitive data. The interface looks relatively simple and easy to organize.

5. ToodleDo promises ease of use, collaboration, reminders and customization, among other features. They even offer a handy chart to let you compare them to the competition.

6. ZoHo Planner appears to be a simple project management and collaboration package. One thing this one has that the others don't is the ability to add images and file attachments. If you're looking for a free and simple collaboration tool, this might be the one.

Six Strategies For Getting Your To Do List Done

It's the end of a long and satisfying day. I got everything done that I wanted to, within reason, and I didn't even have a To Do list for the day, which is sort of the antithesis of this post; but even so, today was productive and satisfyingly balanced: I made headway on two separate client projects, spent some quality time with my mom-in-law, worked on cleaning up storm debris, and helped Matt grill some burgers on the back patio (and then ate them - mmm, chargrilled meat!), and now I'm capping the day off by spending some quality time with the blog (which also happens to kill the writing bird, so yay for that). All of that, despite taking time out to watch American Idol and Glee (Lee DeWyze was awesome! But not as awesome as NPH! Who was in turn not as awesome as the Idina/Lea duet! What can I say? It was a great night to be a fangirl).

As great as today was, the unstructured-yet-productive days are pretty rare for me. Even on structured days I tend to run into problems and don't get as much done as I'd like (as discussed last week, I owe a lot of that to my TV habit). With ADD, I find it difficult to focus and stay on task under the best circumstances. Add to that chronic hay fever clouding my brain and a wonky thyroid and sleep apnea conspiring to sap all of my energy, and keeping my butt in my office chair long enough to get work done without falling asleep (or falling prey to about a zillion different distractions) is just plain hard.

One thing that's (usually - today being a rare exception) essential to getting past all of this and keeping my day on track is the ubiquitous To Do list. But it doesn't really help me to simply write down the things I need (or hope) to get done each day. I've come to realize that there's a strategy to creating a really effective To Do list, one that has every item checked off at the end of the day and leaves you with a smugly satisfying sense of accomplishment and done-ness. Here are some tips to strategizing YOUR To Do list to achieve the best results.

1. Make a "priority list" for the whole week. Be selective and ruthless in your prioritization, leading with firm deadlines, things that MUST get done that week. Follow that with things that it would simply make your life easier to get done that week, and round it out with some personal projects. Then when you make each day's To Do list, you can refer to this list to help ensure that you're not forgetting to take care of the important stuff. Additionally, I also keep ongoing "Must Do" and "Wanna Do" lists to help keep track of both client obligations and personal projects, and I try to pull from both columns when making up my weekly list.

2. Only list the things you need help remembering to do. I used to have a bad habit (which I still haven't entirely broken) of padding my list with the routine things I do every day, bunching them all at the beginning to give myself a "head start" on crossing things off and get that boost from feeling accomplished at the sight of all those check marks. The problem with this is, as the day stretches on and my brain gets tired and starts looking for excuses to quit, seeing all those check marks gives it a false sense that it's worked really hard and deserves to be done for the day - no matter that the only things checked off are "eat breakfast", "get dressed", "brush teeth" and "feed the cats".

3. Keep it short. I read somewhere that seven is the maximum number of items you should have on your To Do list. The reason had something to do with seven being the maximum number of things that the human brain can process or remember without getting overwhelmed (which is why phone numbers are seven digits). I usually do pretty well by sticking to this rule. On days I attend church or am otherwise pressed for time, I'll even cut it down to five.

4. Be selective, and be realistic. Keeping a short list means hitting the priorities and sometimes letting go of the things that aren't as important. This is very important if you have ADD or suffer from "too many irons in the fire" syndrome and have a difficult time deciding what you should be working on at any given time. I have a tendency sometimes to fill up a whole page with things I hope to get done, but there's never enough time in the day to complete those lists. I've found it's better to keep it pared down to the things I actually have a reasonable shot at accomplishing in the time allotted.

5. Work in order. This is also related to the last two items. Only you can decide which order is best, but write down the tasks in the order that you plan to do them, and then stick to that order. This might mean putting the biggest or most tedious chores first to make yourself do them before rewarding yourself with the more enjoyable tasks. For me, since it's a lot easier to force myself to work on something for someone else than for myself, this means putting first the personal projects, like editing my novel or writing this blog, that I would otherwise most likely let slide after I got done with my client projects for the day. Speaking of which...

6. Make a balanced list. Try not to fill it up completely with obligations to others, but to leave a slot or two open for things you want to do for yourself. This is a good way to make sure you nurture yourself, whether it's by spending time doing personal projects, making exercise a daily obligation, or simply keeping your life in order by doing mundane chores around the house.

For me, a daily To Do list usually includes two or three client projects (or one big project broken down into a few manageable tasks if I'm under deadline), a household chore or two, a writing task, a personal or business development task, and some form of exercise. This usually makes for a pretty well-rounded day and leaves me with the feeling that I'm moving forward in every area instead of focusing on just one dimension of my life while the others stagnate. If I'm under tight deadlines, that changes, but I try not to let it become a rut that I get stuck in for very long.

Need more help? Here are Six Free online To Do List and Project Management Tools.

Do you have any strategies to add? What's your biggest obstacle to overcoming distraction and procrastination? Share your insights in the comments.

Let's set some goals.

It's hard to think about goals for the whole week on a Monday morning when your brain is rebelling against the entire concept of work and wishing it could go back to sleep for about five more hours. It's also hard, knowing I have a lot to get done today, to think past just getting through this day. But despite all of that, I'm off to a decent start, and hopefully this goal post (SCORE! \o/) will help keep the momentum going.

I think I have one more week of getting dressed every day before it officially becomes a habit, so I'll keep that in the Personal Goal column for this week. For the last half of last week, I also managed to get my fitness on before breakfast, and kept that up this morning with a solid 30 minutes on the stationary bike, followed by some push-ups and crunches. So I'll keep that on the list until it, along with getting dressed, becomes simply part of the routine.

I feel a nesting phase coming on, so I'm going to take advantage of it to get some stuff organized around here, beginning with my office, which has of late become a dumping ground for anything that doesn't already have designated storage. Between that and all of my Etsy and eBay wares, it's hard to even walk through there, let alone work in there. I made some progress yesterday by clearing a path, tidying the closet to make room for more stuff, and clearing a small mountain of junk off of my craft table. For the rest of the week, I'm going to work on clearing off my desk, organizing the afore-mentioned online wares, and possibly rearranging the furniture so that I can work at my desk without having the vent right there making my legs feel like they're under attack from Mr. Freeze. Hopefully, moving my work off of the couch and back into my office will go one more step toward helping me feel more professional, which will hopefully in turn help me stop playing Mafia Wars fifty times a day (and that's a goal for another week).

Professionally, I need to get focused on marketing and growing my client base. If I can find just two or three more steady clients like the ones I've already got, with the occasional short-term client to fill in any down time, I'll be set. I haven't really done any marketing beyond setting up The Task Wrangler, and while I've got some excellent word-of-mouth going, I need to step it up. So my business focus for this week is to tweak my business model and develop a marketing plan.

As for writing, I think I'm looking at at least three more weeks of editing The Hero Factor (and re-thinking that title in the process). Meanwhile, I need to start giving This Old Haunt some weekly attention again. I let myself skip posting last Monday, since I was looking at such a stress-filled week, and I admit I was tempted to skip this week, too, since so few people are reading it. But I realize that I need to treat my five readers the same way I would if they were 50, 500 or even 5,000--even if they don't ever comment and I wouldn't even know they existed if not for Site Meter *cough*. So I will do my very best to get the next episode up tonight.

Now it's your turn. What are you tackling this week?

My new boss wears stripes

This month continues to be insane. Between Fizzgigg, getting sick, and this week's visit from out-of-town relatives, my sleeping pattern is completely whacked out, and my motivation is nil. What I need more than anything is a long weekend of sleeping, novel-reading, and tequila-based cocktail (hee!) sipping on a secluded beach somewhere on the Yucatan to calm my frazzled nerves and reset and recharge my brain to then tackle everything anew (yes, my ideal vacation is a Corona commercial). But since that's so tragically far from actually happening as to be comical, I'll settle for a new system that removes the anxiety of decision-making from the question, "What should I be doing right now?"

Enter the concept of Time Striping, which might just be my sanity's salvation. I don't even have to worry about how to approach it, since the article's author so helpfully provided a downloadable form. All I have to do is think this one time about how to organize my work day, plug it into the schedule, and I'm done. Then my wheels start spinning at any given time of day and I start to suffer decision paralysis, I need only glance at the schedule, and it tells me what to do. It's 10 AM? I should be blogging! It's after 2? Time to file my inbox attachments! No guesswork! No guilt at neglecting twenty other things for the sake of another! I like this plan. We shall see if this plan likes me.

Rules to get work done by

1. No anything until I've written at least 1,000 words of novel (or run out of time to work on it, whichever happens first).

2. No blogging until I've completed at least ten actual-job-related tasks.

3. No playing until I've written at least three blog posts.

4. No whining. Shut up and get to work.

Coffee break

Yes, I'm having a third cup again. I'll try not to let this become a habit, but really, I can't be this busy without caffeine to propel me.

While I'm sipping I'm reading Lifehack.org, and they have an interesting collection of Ten Productivity and Organization Myths that, if subscribed to, are a good way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Also of interest is this list of ten negative misapprehensions about introverts and ways to correct them. As a textbook INFP, I gotta say, this list addresses a few peeves of mine.

Back to work.