Eliminate Chaos, Clutter & Overwhelm From Your Life

Do you have items in your out box that keeps whispering “Hey, don’t you need to take me somewhere?”

While there is a great likelihood that this little voice is going unheeded, there lurks a problem that actually goes as far as outright productivity sabotage.

Leaving items in your out box awaiting transport is likely having someone else’s in box tapping its feet with anxiety awaiting this information. By following my guidelines and taking just 10 seconds to manage your out box you will reduce chaos and increase your productivity.

It only takes an average of 10 seconds to return one of your files into its respective home in your own work domain, factoring in that the file’s home is even in your file cabinet, nine feet away. The problem is that you now have an hour (or hours) of ‘ten second’ filing to do. You always have 10 seconds, no matter how busy you happen to be; you don’t have hours.

Here’s a very likely scenario:

You are the sales manager who has been working with Gidget, one of your salespeople, on a very large proposal that Gidget will be presenting to the Board of directors of Acme Freight Company.

Yesterday you left the office at 5:15 P.M. At 5:30 Gidget placed the latest draft of the proposal into your in box for you to review tomorrow morning. Well, morning arrived and so did you. You reviewed Gidget’s work on this proposal, however immediately after dropping it into your out box, hell broke loose. Brushfires, crises, emergency meetings, phone calls, etcetera. You didn’t come up for air until the afternoon (even missing lunch!). You returned the proposal to Gidget at 3:30 that afternoon. Gidget was finishing up what she had been working on by 4:00 P.M. Now she was left with her portion of the proposal to complete.

NOTE- When you finally returned your input on the proposal to Gidget, she had four hours of work to do in order to have the proposal readied for her presentation at 8:00 A.M. TOMORROW MORNING! Recognizing that there was this four more hours of work remaining on the proposal, Gidget now gets on the phone—

“George, hi Honey, it’s me. I know that I had said this morning that we would all have dinner together this evening, however something has come up and I won’t be home until close to 9:00 tonight. By the way, is Margaret there? Please hand her the phone. ‘Margaret, I know that I told you last night that I would help you with your school project tonight, however something has come up and I won’t be able to after all. I apologize to you Sweetheart.’”

If you believe, even for a moment, that this is some fantasy that has been created, then we live on two different planets. What has happened is blatant sabotage which you, as Gidget’s sales manager, has done to not only her but to her husband George and to her daughter, Margaret. The justification of-“But I didn’t do this intentionally.” does not go far. (Like this is supposed to make you feel better!)

Question: Do you know what the difference is between voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter?

Answer: NOTHING TO THE GUY WHO’S DEAD!!!

To remedy this from any chance of you being either the “sabotagor” or the “sabotagee”, follow this simple guideline:

Just as you always have 10 seconds to put away a file, you have the minute, even with an emergency looming, to get the proposal to Gidget by 8:15 that morning. Had you done this, Gidget would have had the proposal readied by noon and been home for dinner with her family.

NOTE- This sabotage happens with failure to see what has been placed in your in box as well.

IT IS NOT THE AMOUNT OF WORK THAT GETS US CRAZY;

IT IS THE MIS-MANAGEMENT OF THE WORK OR THE LOSS OF CONTROL OF THE WORK THAT GETS US CRAZY.

Overwhelmed?

Inundated?

Productivity Issues?

Stressing Out?

Chaos bound?

Spending your time trying to “catch up?

Are you operating under the antiquated illusion that the panacea is just a matter of working harder. If this is still a belief that you are maintaining, allow me to give you some sobering information-

YOU CAN NO LONGER WORK HARD ENOUGH TO CATCH UP!

If you’re coming into work at 7:00 A.M., why not come in at 5:00 A.M.? If you’re working until 7:00 P.M., why not stay until 9:00 or 10:00 P.M.? In fact, just bring a cot and pillow to the office and keep a photo of the family nearby so that you don’t forget what they look like.

We have passed the point of “working harder” in the pursuit of staying on top of our work. While software is something that we cannot live without, most folks are under the assumption that it’s just that next piece of software that will get them into a long sought after “proactive” mode. Continue reading →

From a client who had promised faithfully to complete his assignments by 9:00 A.M. the next day:

Len,

I just had to change my schedule to call you tomorrow regarding my commitment to have completed the assignments. While I know that I am in chaos, I realize I will be in spin class at 9:00, acupuncture appt at 10:30 and an appt with my neighbor at noon to review a dinner party to be held this weekend. I hope to be available around 2:00, or so, and will try to call you then!

Tim

Tim,

It’s all about honoring one’s most important priorities, coupled with the self-recognition that resistance will always rear its head in the face of productivity, completion…and growth.

The “hope to be”, the “or so” and the “will try” are terms only used by those wherein there is an absence of commitment.

Len

So you find yourself sitting up at night writing out your infamous ‘To Do’ list. You jotted down twelve items that you want to knock out at work tomorrow. Now tell me, if this new day is a somewhat typical day, how many on your trusty ‘To Do’ list were actually accomplished…two, three, maybe four?

Not only does this lead to stress and frustration, it can be quite demoralizing. The truth be told, after a number of such experiences, it is not surprising that a person just stops making the lists altogether.

In its place we just go to work each day reciting the following mantra: “Dear Lord, please just get me through the day.” Not a very pro-active stance, is it? Continue reading →

I’m sure that you have heard the symbolic definition of the word ‘assumption’. This being-’Ass-u-me’ (deeper explanation hopefully not needed). Be that as it may, we have now moved into the era of the ‘Electronic’ assumption.

It seems that the world has taken on the belief that everyone now utilizes devices such as the “Crackberry”, oops, I mean “Blackberry”. Well, that is not the case. I, for one, still use my trusty Franklin book organizer. The last time I checked, it does not have plug-in, synching or battery features. Continue reading →

Calendaring your Pendings*

*Waiting for someone to get back to me; Awaiting a deadline to occur; Awaiting an event to take place

Picture this – you have just sent me an e-mail requesting something of me that you require. Now this is work for me to do (what we refer to as a ‘Turtle’), and what is it for you? If you said “Pending”, you got it.

Your having hit the ‘Send’ button (and being a diligent follower of the ChaosOver system), you immediately went to your ‘Sent’ file and, lo and behold, there at the top of your ‘Sent’ file (actually, according to our program, this should be the ONLY item in your ‘Sent’ file), is the e-mail requesting information from me. Continue reading →

The phrases above are intentionally unfinished because they are many times uttered either in a person’s last breath or certainly many times prior. The justifications are rampant having to do with such excuses as time, energy, time, focus, time, money, lest we forget-time.

The purpose of the ChaosOver Program is not really about being organized! You see, unto itself, organization has no intrinsic value whatsoever. While many consider organization to be an ‘end’, truth be told, organization is solely a ‘means’, a vehicle, to take us where “we say” we want to arrive in our careers; in our family lives; in our personal lives. Continue reading →

Let’s face it, there has always been stress associated with our lives. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that there are basically two forms of stress. We are all too familiar with the negative kind, however let us acknowledge that there is the positive variety as well. For example, remember the moment that you fell in love (interesting how we use the term “fell” to describe this feeling). Anyway, that was a stressful experience, albeit a positive one.

The very derivation of the word ‘disease’ is understood by simply placing a hyphen between the first ‘s’ and ‘e’, thus creating the term: ‘Dis-Ease’. Continue reading →

How often have how we heard the expressions of “What comes around goes around”; You reap what you sow”; “One good turn deserves another”? Yet, what meaning that does truly hold for any of us on a day-to-day basis?

While most people believe in coincidence, happenstance and such, I believe in the Karmic aspect of life. A goodly number of people believe that to mean, for example, by making a contribution to a worthy cause or individual, I expect to be somehow personally rewarded in some fashion. Does this really make it an unconditional gesture? Continue reading →

Are you one of those people who continually shift your tasks around doing the things you enjoy most first and putting off the ones you don’t enjoy until later…much later?

Do you avoid completing certain projects until the last minute when your back is up against the wall? Do you keep seeing the same items turning up on your “To Do List” day after day after day?

Are you one of those people who insists you work better under pressure? Then you are probably one of the millions of people in this country who suffer from procrastination and I do mean “suffer”. Continue reading →