Overcoming Overwhelm: How to Stop the Cycle
April 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Life can be overwhelming. Going through your day at a hundred miles an hour doesn’t leave much time for thought. When you are not thinking you are simply reacting to what happens around you. This anxiety causing cycle will cause you to feel as though you’ve lost control.
When you feel yourself spiraling out of control, you must stop. Stop, take a deep breath, and think about what you are doing. Stop to really think about the pieces and parts. What is the next step you must take? Are you doing things in an efficient order? How can you get control of the situation to avoid future anxiety-filled days?
Get it all out of your head and down on paper. Make yourself a list of tasks and then prioritize them. You might use a pad of paper or you could use index cards for each task. Then you can move the index cards around and prioritize them easily. Now when you get started again, you will be working on purpose. If you get out of control again, you know that you can stop, re-group, and get started again.
Break projects down into smaller pieces. Big picture thinking can lead to feelings of overwhelm. Often when thinking about projects, we think about the whole project. For example, you need to revamp your website. Well, break that project down into smaller pieces. Figure out what your very next step is and focus on that one piece. The first step may be to hire a website strategy coach. Contact someone and move on to the next step. Take one step at a time, one decision at a time.
Take frequent breaks or get away for awhile. There is only so much doing and decision making we can take. Give yourself some rest – even if you just drive around or take a walk around the block – it will help to clear your mind. Make sure that you are getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation can do serious damage to your ability to think straight and function properly. Get the amount of sleep appropriate for you and encourage your employees and family members to do the same.
Regaining control of the way you are spending time will give you a tremendous sense of peace. Remember, when you feel like speeding up, stop. Give yourself a breather and begin again refreshed and with purpose.
Happy Organizing!
Following Through with Your Intentions
April 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Why don’t we follow through on the things that we “should” do? In Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start by Steve Levinson and Pete Greider, the authors propose that we have two guidance systems: the Primitive Guidance System and the Intelligence-Based Guidance System. Each of these systems pulls us in different directions like a car with two steering wheels.
The Primitive Guidance System, PGS, has the most control and is based on instinct. The PGS responds to the squeakiest wheel…I’m hungry: Look for food. I’m bored: Look for something more interesting to do. In the meantime, your Intelligence-Based Guidance System, IBGS, has enabled you to make great plans…I should get my taxes done. I should eat more healthy food. I should exercise daily. I should, I should, I should.
The problem is that there is no connection between the two systems. Around April 1 your taxes become the squeaky wheel and your PGS will respond. You race the clock to get your taxes done. They may not have been done early, but they were on time. This is the way your guidance systems work. So you see, poor follow through is not so much a character flaw, but a flaw in the design of your mind and your guidance systems.
Now that you know why poor follow through occurs you can take steps to work around the design flaw. The key is arranging your environment so that your good intentions are the squeaks that get the powerful PGS’ attention. Here are a few of the suggested strategies to effectively follow through with your intentions.
Spotlighting – Your mind becomes distracted by many voices when you are trying to accomplish something: the ones that want to get the project done and the ones that just want to sit back, relax and not get it done. The trick in spotlighting is to make sure that you are paying attention to the “right” distractions or cues. Here is an example of a cue: You see a big, juicy hamburger on TV and then become hungry for a big, juicy hamburger.
Here are the steps involved in spotlighting:
1) Identify the right voices that urge you to do what your intentions are telling you to.
2) Identify or create a cue. Something that will stimulate the right voice.
3) Find a way to be sure you will be exposed to the right cues.
For example, a manager who also coaches a baseball team uses baseball theme to provide cues throughout his day. His intention is to coach his staff the way he coaches his little league team. He puts a photo of his Little League team on his desk, uses baseball themed notepads, and hung a baseball cap on the wall. All of these cues remind him throughout the day to do a better job motivating his staff. What behavior would you like to develop? What cue would work for you the way that baseball worked for this manager?
Going too far – Make the intention more meaningful or threatening by pledging to violate it in a big way. Essentially you make a deal with yourself. If your intention is to stop smoking, make a pledge that if you are going to smoke a cigarette, you must smoke two cigarettes at a time. You can’t just smoke one. To your Primitive Guidance System smoking becomes a threat rather than just satisfying a craving because you HAVE to smoke two cigarettes.
Right Before Wrong – With this strategy you make a deal to do the right thing before the wrong one. For example, let’s say you decide to start eating healthy snacks, but find yourself reaching for something unhealthy instead. Make a deal with yourself to eat a healthy snack first and then eat the unhealthy snack if you still want it.
You have been introduced to three strategies to help you follow through on your intentions. Try these strategies for yourself. I am very interested in hearing about your results. As you go through this, keep in mind that we are talking about your mind here. If your mind fails, you think that you screwed up. If your heart failed, you would not think of yourself as a failure. It typically takes some time for habits to change. Give yourself a break and give yourself time to fully integrate into the new behaviors.
I would love to hear what you think. Do you have trouble following through on your intentions? Have you found ways to get around your PGS?
Grab your Youtube Channel
April 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Businesses are using YouTube for marketing, education, communications, product information, technical instruction and inspiration.
Here are 5 steps to create your own Youtube Channel:
- Decide on your Youtube Channel Name. This name will entered as the USERNAME in the account creation process.
- Go to Youtube.com and click Create Account.
Username becomes Channel name. For corporate branding, you will likely make the username your business or brand name.For personal branding, the username should be your first and last name. - Develop your profile.
Enter your website, company name, first and last name. Fill your profile with details about the contents of your channel. Consider how people will search for content like yours and include those keywords in your profile. Always match your text content to your video content. - Develop Your channel .
Customize your channel by entering a Channel Title, Description, keywords and colors. - Post your first video! You can use existing professional video, create one with a webcam or utilize a simple camera like the FLIP.
Grab your Youtube Channel now even if you aren’t ready to post video. You don’t want to lose rights to your branded Youtube Channel URL.
Information Overload…Are You Keeping Too Much?
April 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Because of my recent involvement with TLC’s series, Hoarding Buried Alive, I’ve given a lot of thought to hoarding issues. Often visions of homes filled to the brim with a variety of things come to mind. However, many professionals and entrepreneurs deal with collections of a different kind.
As I was working with a small business owner to clear out stacks and stacks of paper from her office, she remarked “I think I may be a paper hoarder!” The issue is all too common for individuals who are experts or specialists in a particular field. We tend to collect massive amounts of information related to our topic.
It’s easy to hide this type of collection since we can tuck papers away in file cabinets and amass volumes of information on our computers. But how useful is all this information we’ve collected?
In the earlier years of my career as a professional organizer, I did this very same thing. I scoured the internet for information on productivity and organizing. I bought every book and information product I could get my hands on to help educate me on my chosen profession. After a while, my bookcases were overflowing and my file cabinet was filled. Now, my information was well organized, but I had to ask myself what was the value of having all this information?
The primary issue that we deal with is that we feel the information we’ve collected has some value to it. There is good information in there that you might use someday when writing or teaching. It can be very difficult to let go of this type of information because sometimes it also involves letting go of a project or idea.
I took a good look at my research habits and the truth was that I rarely accessed any of the information I had collected. I was using Google and finding fresh information. Aside from a few choice white papers and training manuals, I let it all go. It wasn’t quite as easy as I made that sound, but it was very liberating once the process was complete.
My client went through the same process. She realized that she wasn’t using most of the information that she was holding on to. In fact, in many cases, the information was outdated and completely irrelevant. Another realization was that she could find just about anything she needed to know on the internet and didn’t need to keep everything in hard copy form.
So, how about you? Can you identify with this business owner’s struggle? If you are struggling with paper and information clutter, here are some tips to help you get started downsizing that collection.
1) Clear off your desktop. A clear surface will help to clear your mind and enable you to make better decisions
2) Create a plan for downsizing. Decide what types of documents you might be able to let go. If you have trade magazine collections, you may decide to pull out certain articles of interest.
3) Get started! Begin sorting your collection. Be sure to have plenty of trash bags or the recycle bin close at hand.
Happy Organizing!
Ellen
