Focus essential,
eliminate distractions,
realistic goals.

Post originally published on 5/18/2007.

In the article, The Seven Essential “Stations” Every Home Should Have – lifehack.org, seven areas in the house are laid out for organization. I think that this goes beyond mere organization, and that having these stations will increase productivity by eliminating the time spent looking for things. I believe in keeping the tools for a task where I will use them, even if it means buying more. I am more likely to clean the mirrors if I don’t have to go downstairs to fetch the window cleaner, for example, so I keep window cleaner in all the bathrooms. This article deals with seven big ways to group things together so that the tools you need are in one place.

The human brain does not shift complete attention and focus between tasks instantaneously. This means that there is a period of time between the stopping of one task and the starting of another where the brain makes the adjustment between the two. Some people have referred to this as a fragmenting of attention.I believe that using these stations cuts down on this lag time from the simple fact that when we go to do something, everything is already in the correct place. Here are some examples of how I use these stations to keep us from searching for stuff:

Destination Station: This is where everything lands when people come in the door. Keys, mail, bags…everything stops here rather than be scattered across the house. Immediately beside our door to the garage we have a small flip top desk. Inside there is one large shelf with three dividers below. Below this is a large drawer and a cabinet with one shelf. Coming in the door, my keys go right into my mail slot. Mail gets sorted, and if it is junk, it goes into the recycle bin by the door, or into a “To Be Shredded” folder on the top shelf. At night, my briefcase goes next to the door, and my child’s school bag is packed and placed there too.

Communication Station Having one place to look for commitments, phone messages and household information means we never have to search for a phone number or calendar. We keep the calendar on the back of the door, within sight of the phone, and there is a binder of household information (including our personal phone book) next to the phone. Sports schedules get placed on the family calendar right away, along with any appointments. Everyone is responsible for making sure things are on the family calendar. If it isn’t on there, it doesn’t exist.

Donation Station: we have a bag in our spare bedroom that things get put into for donation. When the door-to-door collection people leave a note, I can then quickly gather up the bag and put it out. No fussing, no trying to remember where we stashed things for donation.

Gift and Shipping Station: I started this one by accident after my mother gave us a container for holding gift wrap. Now that container hangs in our office closet, with mailing envelopes in one pockets and all the necessaries for wrapping gifts in other parts (paper, tape, scissors, tags). Having it in one portable place means that I can easily move to wrap gifts in another part of our house and not have to stop to find any supplies.

Education Station: I hadn’t thought of our office space like this, but it does fit. We have one bedroom in our house that has been converted into an office for all of us. We each have a desk and chair, and all the reference books are in here. Everything is within reach, and often we will all spend evenings in the office together, rather than in front of the television.

Creation Station: The guest bedroom in the house serves double purpose as the creation station for me. This is where the textile arts and crafts get done. My child has a reachable bin in the area off the kitchen filled with craft supplies that can get messy. In either one, it is easy to get out the crafts, do what we want, and put things away. Before we moved to the house, we had plastic tubs holding our supplies that could be brought out to work on crafts.

Administration Station: This happens to be in our office as well. All bills get paid here, the records are filed here, and there is a phone and our computers. We also keep all warranties in this area and all maintenance records.

I really believe that having these basic stations set up in the home can make things run much more smoothly. And I encourage you to ask yourself how much time you have lost this week alone looking for things you needed to complete a task?

I had a professor once who used to toss a few easy questions onto a multiple choice test, then chide us: “take the low-hanging fruit when it is offered.” I was thinking of him recently during a staff meeting where our boss was talking about low-hanging fruit in our current project — those things which would return maximum value for minimum effort.

Both of these things made me look at the concept of low-hanging fruit in relation to other areas of my life. What are things that I can get maximum return for little investment in my life? Today I will look at low-hanging fruit in simplicity.

5 Low-Hanging Simplicity Fruits

To put together this list, I thought about the areas of my life where little changes would make the most difference. Focusing on managing stuff popped into my head first, followed by eliminating expectations.

1. Get rid of junk mail. If it never arrives at your house, you don’t have to deal with it. Opt out of junk mail using the free service from Direct Marketer’s Association or using a paid service like 41 Pounds.
2. One in, one out. Rather than accumulating things, I can tell myself if I bring something into the house, a like-item must leave. If I buy a new pair of shoes, an old one must go. This allows me to avoid clutter build-ups, and makes me think before buying something new just to have it.
3. Wait 30 days on purchases. I’m not any more immune to impulse shopping than anyone else. But if I find I want something, I tell myself I have to wait 30 days. Usually I will find I no longer want it, and save myself the expense of purchasing and storing something else.
4. Simple meals are good. Not every meal needs to be be a complex maze of recipes and flavors. Simple food saves me time in the kitchen, money at the grocery store, and feeds me just as well.
5. Say “let me get back to you” instead of “yes”. When someone asks me to do something, I can answer “let me get back to you” to give myself time to think about whether this activity serves a positive purpose in my life. My life is prone to complication due to other’s wants. It doesn’t have to be that way.

By changing these five things in my life, I can reap the rewards of simplify with little effort.

Photo by pizzodisevo

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Someone stopped me the other day and said, “I don’t get it. What do simplicity and productivity have to do with each other?”

It’s a simple answer: no waste.

Is Productivity Effectiveness or Efficiency?

Productivity boils down to two parts: effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness means doing the right things, and efficiency is doing things right. Some people argue that only one of these two is necessary for true productivity, but in the big picture, where we are trying to have a productive life, I believe we must have both.

The Need for Both Effectiveness and Efficiency

In our work lives, we may be able to pick and choose what to do to have the greatest impact toward our goals and objectives. But when you distill it down to our home lives, things change. Just because doing laundry doesn’t further your life goal of world domination doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be done. So efficiency comes into play: how to do the laundry in the most efficient manner so you can get back to other things?

At the same time, we still have to know what to do in our home lives. You may want a “clean” house, but your definition of clean may be radically different than your mother’s. (I know mine is!) My mother insists on scrubbing the walls down with harsh cleaners twice a year. That’s not effective for me, since as a non-smoker, my house doesn’t need it that often.

Efficiency: Eliminating Wasted Motion, Thoughts and Effort

Efficiency experts eliminate wasted motion and effort, and get people to do things more quickly. With our modern knowledge work, that means we need to eliminate the wasted thoughts: getting out of the rabbit trails we can get on with so much information at our disposal, and staying on task.

Effectiveness: Eliminating Stuff To Do

In order to be truly effective, we have to know what we are comfortable with, and what we can stop doing. Very few of us are in a spot to actually be able to hire help to do things for us, so it’s either do it, or don’t. But you have to be able to live with the results.

Simplicity: The Elimination of Waste

When people think of simplicity, they often think of people checking out of life, living in the woods, self-sustaining and lots of navel-gazing. While this does happen, what simplicity boils down to is eliminating waste. We don’t consume as much, so there is less packaging to throw out.

We aren’t slaves of our lives, on the great hamster wheel spinning endlessly around as we try to keep up with the neighbors. It’s about making conscious choices of what we want to do, and when.

So productivity and simplicity, for me, boil down to the same thing: no waste.

I’m not there yet, but I’m trying!

Photo by Stars*Go*Blue

In my quest for a saner and simpler life, I have come across ten blogs that I believe are must-reads for anyone interested in simplifying their lives. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Clutter Control Blog

Stacks and Stacks Clutter Control is a blog written by many organizers (including some of the ones I have listed as separate blogs!). It has some great ideas, but its strength for me lies in the comments that follow each post.

IKEA Hacker

IKEA Hacker is all about extending the products at IKEA. I am an IKEA addict, even though the nearest store is over 3 hours away. I love their solutions that encourage simplification. Great design, European-level consumption all lead to simplification.

Jeri’s Organizing & Decluttering News

Jeri’s Organizing & Decluttering News is another professional organizer’s blog. I like her take on things

My Simpler Life

My Simpler Life not only offers a blog chock-full of tips for simplification, Beth Dargis will also send you a monthly decluttering calendar to give you daily goals for getting the stuff out of your house.

Neat & Simple Living

Neat & Simple Living, Ariane Benefit’s blog, gives the great experience of a professional organizer, along with some off-the-wall things to make life a little bit neater and simpler.

The Simple Dollar

The Simple Dollar is about simplifying your expenses and getting out of debt, while still having a good life. What I have found is that although this is not about life simplification, spending less naturally leads to a simpler life because there is less “stuff” around to care for or pay for. The articles on this blog are clear, easy to read, and give good information. There are frequent book summaries as well, which means I can let someone else do the reading for me.

Unclutterer

Unclutterer is not just about “getting and staying organized”, even though the blog states that up front. I have found that Unclutterer is about what its title says: uncluttering, or getting rid of the junk that pollutes life. It also tackles storage and small spaces, with a great creative spirit. I love the Unitasker Wednesdays, where Unclutterer picks a gadget that are hilarious (for example, the recent electric paper plane launcher).

WiseBread

Wisebread is another multiple author blog, and focuses on money, but with some great lifehacks thrown in.

Your Life. Organized

Your Life. Organized. is Monica Ricci’s personal blog. A professional organizer, her blog covers not only organization, but simplification and added sanity. She recently tackled clutter free gift giving, and limiting children’s toys at the holidays.

Zen Habits

Zen Habits, Leo Babuta’s first major blog, is all about simplification in the name of a fuller life. His posts are long, but well worth reading, full of great and useful information.

Photo by yoppy

A few weeks ago I had someone who is not following productivity look over my site, to see what she would turn up. Her one suggestion (thanks, Mom!) was to make it easier to get started.

Consequently, I went back through the posts and figured out what I thought would be the best for a new person to see. Here are the articles. (They can also be found by clicking on the Getting Started category link on the side bar)

Articles In Getting Started:

• Getting Started With The Whys Productivity
• Simplicity: Getting Down To Basics
• What Are You Being Productive For?
• Do You Really Need to Get More Done?
• Single Best Productivity Tip: Simplify
• The Secret To Getting Anything Started Easier
• The Secret to Increased Productivity – Single Tasking
• Essentials to Productivity
• Why You Shouldn’t Finish Something That Has No Value
• Clutter and Productivity: Introduction
• The One Thing Everyone Should Know About Productivity Systems
• 7 Ways to Increase Productivity…By Moving Stuff
• Flylady and GTD: A Study of Similarities
• Flylady: What is It?
• Getting Things Done: What is It?

Photo by Matt loves kicks

Personal productivity has gone mainstream, and is riddles with jargon and abbreviations that are often hard to decipher. Here are some of the more common ones:

Common Abbreviations in Productivity

7 Habits

7 Habits refers to Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was a ground-breaking look at being effective, that is, doing the right things.

GTD

GTD refers to David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. This is where he describes his system of getting things out of your head and into a trusted system to be dealt with appropriately. This theory is partially about efficiency, but the effectiveness section is sketchy.

DIT

Mark Foster’s book, Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, at first glance looks like a method of procrastination. He takes a different approach to productivity in working with finite chunks of information during a given time period to eliminate the need for ordering tasks.

As I was considering this, I decided to write a series on the “Whys of Productivity”. Over the next few weeks, I will look at the similar basics to several productivity systems and dig down into the “whys” behind each method.

My hope is that this series will help people figure out what works and what doesn’t work for them for any given system, and why, so that each may form a system hybrid that works, instead of getting caught of the trap of looking for the “perfect system”.

I really believe that a good productivity system is the result of building, not of buying.

Photo by takomabibelot

That’s not to say that this is not a valid excuse; but when our houses become filled with single-purpose contraptions, we suffocate ourselves.

Lately I have taken to asking myself, before making any purchase, if something I already have will serve instead. Or if the purchase I am about to make will replace single-purpose items around my house. What this buys me is the satisfaction of knowing I am simplifying my life.

Photo by brewbooks

“I feel that much of what passes for productivity is simply ubercybersonic doingness dressed up in happy faces.”.

I have felt that at times. I get so much done. I have plenty of check marks on the to-do list. But WHY am I doing these things? I have to step back and line up my goals again

“Organization, accomplishment, measuring effectiveness-all those tools and systems are cool, but what if our doingness masks a hollow core, or gives us fuel for avoiding the life we say we’d like to be living?” Are there times when I am using doing-ness to avoid dealing with things? Absolutely. I think we all do. But at the same time, the more I use productivity systems, not just as a way to get more done, but as a way of clearing the slate so I can do more of what I want to do.

My change to part-time work was one of the things that came out of this. And one of the reasons I got such support from my client is because my productivity level at 30 hours a week is more than he gets from some of his full-time people.

I do believe the question needs to be answered, however. What are you being productive for? Is it so you can cram more of the same stuff into your life? Or is it so that you can follow your dreams?