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.

Well, the bad news is that software alone will be never the cure-all. What is needed in not the added technology. The good news is that the answer lies in methodology. What is methodology? Methodology is dealing with the HUMAN SIDE of information management, teaching us methods that we have never been taught.

Just picture having ZERO E-MAILS in your In Box, Sent Box and Delete at the end of EACH AND EVERY DAY; just picture having all FILES…electronically-held and paper-based with INSTANT RETRIEVABILITY; just picture having FOLLOW-UP be where NOTHING (and I mean NOTHING), ever falls through the cracks; just picture never again WAKING UP AT 3:00 A.M. with thoughts such as “Harry never got back to me”; “I forgot to give Sally that report”. Just picture being HOME FOR DINNER with your family, on a regular basis, and getting more work completed than when you used to stay until 8:00 or 9:00 P.M.; Just picture your KIDS telling you that you’re more FUN to be with; Just picture your SPOUSE/’SIGNIFICANT OTHER’ telling you that you are MORE RELAXED than ever.

The hands-on, simple, real-world tools of the ChaosOver and Living Chaos Free programs will make this a reality for you as it has for over 78,000 people around the world.

Just picture…

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?

The unproductive approach of “Ready-Fire-Aim” is demonstrated by sitting down at your desk and jumping into which brushfire or crisis is seeking you. This is akin to being awakened in the morning with an air raid siren blasted into your ear!

In the CHAOSOVER and LIVING CHAOS FREE programs we train you to begin each workday by employing the ‘First Five Morning Tasks’:

By completing steps 1 through 4, you have taken what I promise is no more than six minutes before responding to your e-mail.

You have taken a macro look of your new day. You estimate the time of the meetings set (in and out of the office), the phone appointments and follow-up calls scheduled. What this has accomplished is a “reality check” on how much time remaining that you have to work on your stack of prioritized work (Turtle).

NOTE-When you had initially placed each item of work in your Turtle stack, you had taken the sixty seconds (literally) to fill in three spaces:

By knowing how much time you had remaining in your day, after the meetings, phone calls and e-mails awaiting you, you are able to REALISTICALLY determine the amount of items in your Turtle stack which can, and cannot, be completed today.

This process of “Self-Delegation” truly supports you transforming your life from reactive to pro-active. It removes from your life that “Ready-Fire-Aim” approach that had caused you such frustration and stress.

Lastly, because my programs have, since 1973, been dedicated to the FAMILY, this will have you far more often sitting down at the dinner table, at dinner time, with your family.

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’.

Insurance companies, health benefit consultants, major corporations, the medical community have now recognized that stress (negative) is the leading cause of illnesses and the astronomical cost of health care in our nation today.

Cardiologists, emergency room physicians and nurses will tell you that most heart attacks take place late Sunday night/the early morning hours of Monday. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. The worry, concern and stress begin building up for most by Sunday afternoon.

Stress in our family life and our personal life notwithstanding, we spend a majority of our waking life at our workplace. This has within it, the ‘First Generation of Stress’. Couple this with the fact that our incomes, which support our personal and family lives, are derived from our work. I refer to this as the ‘First Generation of Stress’.

Due to our country’s current economic condition there is, what I describe as, the ‘Second and Third Generations of Stress’.

This ‘Second Generation’ emanates from those many businesses that have had to downsize. One of my clients recently told me that, due to the slowing of his construction company’s business, he had to lay off two tenured staff members.

Even with business at this slower pace, the staff still had to pick up the responsibilities, duties…and knowledge…from these two ex-staff members. In my interviewing the remaining staff, each one told me how this has increased their stress levels greatly.

As if this wasn’t enough, the ‘Third Generation of Stress’ is the most damning. This is due to our nation’s employed getting up to go to work each day with their very first thought, “Is today the day that I am going to lose my job?”

In dealing with the ‘Second and Third Generations of Stress’, pep talks, platitudes and affirmations such as “This too shall pass”, “Worry is an insult to God”, while not to be discounted, do in fact require a great deal of faith and trust. It would be foolish to forget, especially at this particular time, that we do control our thoughts.

NOTE- This would be a good time to read (or re-read) my blog post  entitled ‘The Power of Intention’.

It is essential to remember just how many times, in each of our lives, we have looked into the face of impending doom only to discover that we did, in fact, make it through.

I fervently believe that this current economic situation we are all facing will ebb. Yet, we will still be left with the ‘First Generation of Stress’.

The ChaosOver “Live” Program, as well as the LIVING CHAOS FREE E-Learning Platform, are each dedicated to PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCEMENT (measurable) and STRESS REDUCTION (affecting our personal and family lives as well). Ironically these two results- the heightening of productivity and the lessening of stress- have been, for the past thirty-six years, my personal mission with well over 77,000 people around the world.

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”.

Procrastination has many negative side effects:

• It eats up valuable time
• It reduces productivity
• It sabotages others
• It lowers self-esteem
• It causes an enormous amount of stress…just to name a few.

Now you may be asking yourself, “If procrastination is so bad, why do so many people do it?”

Some of the reasons are:

• I don’t like doing that particular task
• I don’t know how to complete the task
• I don’t like the person who assigned me the task
• I don’t feel confident in my skill level at that particular task
• The task appears too large to tackle.
• There’s too much work involved
• ETC.etc.etc

Regardless of the reasons for procrastinating, the results are still the same. The task does not get completed in a timely fashion.

Our Information Management program at ChaosOver, Inc. is designed to facilitate you in eliminating FOREVER the habits and patterns that have not served you. Procrastination is one of those behaviors. So how do you eliminate it?

You do it by processing the tasks or projects you have been avoiding, one at a time. Let’s use an example to illustrate the process:

Let’s say you have to write a report on a topic that doesn’t particularly excite you and is going to involve a lot of research and a lot of your time. The report was assigned to you on March 1st and is to be completed by March 15th. Today is March 6th and you still haven’t started it. You know you are procrastinating.

First step in the process is to go through a series of questions:

• Do I still need to complete this task? If the answer is yes go to question 2. If it is no, toss it.
• Can this task be delegated to someone else? If the answer is yes, delegate it. If the answer is no, go to question 3.
• What are the benefits of completing this task? In our example above the benefits may be :
  • My boss will be happy with me
  • The client will be happy and we may get more business from them
  • Our company will make money on this
  • I may get a raise, promotion, accolades
  • I will get it off of my plate and stop stressing over it.

• What are the consequences of not doing it? Again using our example:
  • My boss will be very unhappy with me
  • I could get fired or, at least, reprimanded
  • I could miss out on a promotion
  • I could be sabotaging a co-worker
  • We could lose a client
  • Our company could lose money
  • I will continue to stress over it and feel badly

Now that you have answered these questions, the task has taken on some life, some emotion, and has the ability to motivate you to action. So what do you do next?

You break the task down into its various parts. In our example above that may look like:

• I do an outline of what the report is to cover
• I identify whether I have all the information needed
• I identify resources for obtaining the information I am missing
• I do my research
• I create a first draft with completed information
• I re-write until I am happy with the end report

Now determine how long it will take to complete the first step ONLY. Let’s say you decide it will take an hour. Go to your calendar, whether it be a paper organizer or a computer program such as Outlook, and book yourself an hour to complete this first step.

NOTE- You must treat this appointment as a sacred commitment the same as you would if it was an appointment with a client. (Knowing that you have a deadline for this project and it is going to take several hours to complete, be sure to book that hour as soon as you can into your schedule.)

When you have completed step one, do the same with the next step and so on until the task/project is completed.

If you use this process with ALL of the things where you would normally procrastinate over, whether they are business or personal, you will find yourself eliminating the problem of procrastination FOREVER as you create the new habit of getting things done in a timely fashion.

The result… you will be happy, productive, effective, self-confident, and far less stressed. So go get started….NOW!

In order to reduce the massive amounts of e-mail, the following procedure has worked miracles for many thousands of folks, allowing them to get to that magical number of ‘ZERO’ each and every day this way.

I am speaking about a time-tested and result-oriented formula to make this real for you. However, we need to begin at the beginning. The beginning for most of us is just how to deal with the hundreds, if not thousands, of accumulated e-mail that has created this loss of control and inability to manage it all.

You are being asked to do this in steps, steps that will work for you…if…you will subscribe, and commit, to the process. So, here goes:

NOTE- The format will be via Microsoft Outlook, however this can be done the same way with other e-mail providers.

Step #1- Be sure that your e-mails are in chronological order (this should be the way you find them). Scroll down to the oldest date. Now begin scrolling up from this oldest date and, WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE ‘SUBJECT’ COLUMN OR THE ‘FROM’ COLUMN, JUST BY DATE ALONE, and determine how many of these oldest e-mails on up you are willing to simply ‘DELETE’. The criterion should be based on your ability to sleep soundly having gone as far as you are willing.

NOTE- Let’s say that you began with 1,800 e-mails in your In-box. After step #1 you now have 1,440 e-mails remaining.

Step #2- At the top of your e-mail screen you will find the ‘FROM’ icon. Click on this and that will place your e-mails in alphabetical order. Scroll to the top. Now begin scrolling down looking only at this ‘FROM’ column. Look for groupings from the senders of three or more. (The ‘ones’ and ‘twos’ will be dealt with shortly.) By just looking at the names, see which groups you are willing to delete. There are 22 sent to me by Harvey Shmed. Harvey is not someone we do business with any longer and there is no need to file away his e-mails. Good-bye 22 e-mails. Again, the criterion should be based on your ability to sleep soundly having gone as far as you are willing.

NOTE- From this step you have deleted another 500 e-mails, leaving you with a remaining 940 e-mails.

Step #3- Scroll back up to the top. Keep your eyes once more on the ‘FROM’ column and begin scrolling down, however this time see what groupings (remember-three or more per name), can be simply placed into one of your e-mail folders. You come across 14 from Bob Bennett. Bob is our website designer. I have a folder entitled ‘Website’ therefore I can safely drag and drop Bob’s e-mails into my Website folder.

NOTE- From this step you have dragged and dropped 436 more e-mails, leaving you with 504 e-mails remaining.

NOTE A- I have seen countless times where e-mail folders are either few and far between or as disorganized as could possibly be imagined. However, for you, now embracing this training, e-mail folders are becoming terrific to work with.

NOTE B- I happen to champion the creation of as many folders are as necessary. This is to include ‘Sub’ folders and even ‘Sub-Sub’ folders. Why? Because this creates the shortest and most expedient artery to take you immediately to the specific information you are seeking. (Sounds like ‘INSTANT RETRIEVABILITY’ to me!)

NOTE C- Leslie has made her ‘CLIENT’ folder, yet she currently has 52 active clients. So, guess what? Leslie spent 30 minutes setting up 52 sub-folders.

Step #4- At the top of your e-mail screen you will find the ‘SUBJECT’ icon. Click on this and that will place your e-mails in alphabetical order via the names of the subjects. Scroll to the top. Now begin scrolling down looking only at this ‘SUBJECT’ column. Look for groupings of three or more. (The ‘ones’ and ‘twos’ will be dealt with shortly.) By just looking at the subject titles, see which groups you are willing to delete.

NOTE- You have deleted another 210 e-mails in this manner, leaving you with 294 e-mails remaining.

Step #5- Scroll back up to the top. Keep your eyes once more on the ‘SUBJECT’ column and begin scrolling down, however this time see what groupings (remember-three or more per name), can be simply placed into one of your e-mail folders. You come across 19 from Sallie. Sallie is our payroll clerk. I do not have a folder entitled ‘Payroll’, yet I do have an ‘Accounting’ folder. There is nothing to prevent me from making a sub-folder entitled ‘Payroll’ and dropping the 19 e-mails from Sallie into my new sub-folder.

NOTE- You have delivered another 180 e-mails out of your In box by dropping them into current folders and sub-folders (or making them newly), leaving you with just 114 e-mails remaining.

Step #6 (Final Step)- It would seem obvious that the remainder of your e-mails in your In-box are either ‘Turtles’, ‘Pendings’, ‘Library/Reference’, ‘Clients’ or ‘Projects’, ‘Archives’, ‘Personal’ or ‘ChaosOver Info’.

NOTE- Due to COMPLETION being a foreign entity to a vast majority of Humankind, bite the bullet and go through these 114 remaining e-mails, placing them each into either ‘Trash’ or the proper folders that are intended to be their ‘Home’.

CONGRATULATION AS YOU HAVE ZERO E-MAILS IN YOUR IN-BOX.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…Now you will want to do the same with your ‘SENT’ e-mails. The ‘Sent’ file is the place that many folks use as a ‘subterranean archival area’. The objective is getting this file to ‘ZERO’ as well:

Step #1- Click on the ‘Sent’ enabling all of your Outgoing e-mails to be in chronological order. Scroll down to the oldest date, asking yourself- “Without looking at the ‘Sent To’ or ‘Subject’ columns, just based simply on age of the Outgoing e-mails, what date am I willing to delete up to and still be able to sleep peacefully at night?” Then do that. (Of course, if your answer is “No, I won’t be able to sleep doing this”, then simply move on to Step Two.

Step #2- Click on ‘To’ and scroll to the very top. You now have the remainder of your e-mails in alphabetical order. Begin to scroll down searching for groupings of three or more sent to the same person. Without looking at ‘SUBJECT’ or ‘DATE’, simply by name, see how many may be deleted in this fashion.

Step #3- Click on ‘SUBJECT’ and scroll once more to the very top. Now begin scrolling down and looking only at the ‘SUBJECT’ column, seek out groupings and determine which ones can be deleted.

Step #4- It would seem obvious that the remainder of your e-mails in your ‘Sent-box’ are either ‘Pendings’ (in fact, quite likely), ‘Turtles’, ‘Client’ or ‘Project’, ‘Library/Reference’, ‘Archives’ or ‘Personal’.

CONGRATULATION AS YOU HAVE ZERO E-MAILS IN YOUR SENT-BOX.

And, last but surely not least, for that feeling of overwhelming joy…delete all of the deletes in your ‘DELETED’ file.

Welcome to the beginning of a whole, new way of life in dealing with your E-mail.
You will never again have to reside in “E-mail Hell”.

Imagine that you have been working for a week on a proposal to present to a prospective client. If accepted, this would be the largest contract ever brought into your firm. You have made the final touches on it this evening. Prior to leaving the office you place the proposal in your boss’s in-tray with a note attached asking for her review and blessing.

You clearly state that you need this proposal back in your hands no later than 9:30 the next morning as you will need to make copies to distribute to your prospective client’s management team in your meeting with them. You point out that your presentation is the next morning at 11:00 A.M. in their offices across town.

At 9:30 the following morning you come into your boss’s office to get the proposal, make your copies, and be off to your appointment. You ask your boss for the proposal only to hear her ask quizzically, “what proposal?” Looking at her in-tray, you are shocked to see that your proposal is still sitting in her in-box…with your note attached.

Upon walking into her office that morning, she had been hit with a barrage of crisis’s and brushfires, all seeking her immediate attention. Because of this she chose to deal with the contents of her in-box…later.

Now the crisis is yours. There is no way that you can get your proposal reviewed, copied and be out the door to keep the appointment across town by 11:00 A.M. In this scenario you have just been sabotaged…and your boss happened to be the sabotageur.

While you know quite clearly that your boss would have never done this to you intentionally, it is important to remember the answer to this question…What the difference is between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter? Answer-NOTHING TO THE PERSON WHO’S DEAD!!!

Let’s look at the other side of this-
You have been asked to review a document that needs to be sent to Bob. Once Bob gets this from you he needs to devote about four hours on this before day’s end as he will then need to give this to the C.E.O. of your company for a presentation to the board of directors the following morning.

It has only taken you a few minutes to review this and, once completed, you have placed it in your out-box at 8:45 this morning. However, you are swamped with work, phone calls, e-mails and meetings. Your out-box has been piling up and it is now 3:30 in the afternoon before you decide to disseminate the contents of your out-box.

Bob has finally received this from you. However, it is 3:45 and he has four hours of work to do in order to prepare this for the C.E.O. Bob will be working into the night. He calls his wife saying that “something has come up.” He won’t make it home for dinner in time or to help their son with his school project as he had promised. You have not only just sabotaged Bob, you have sabotaged his family. Did you do this intentionally? Of course not. However, of what difference is that to Bob (and his family)?

The reasons for either form of this sabotage are directly related to the mismanagement of information. This has little to do with software or systems. It has everything to do with, what I refer to as, the human side of information management.