Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

We’ve all heard about simplification on a grand scale, from those who have pared down their possessions to a hundred, or those who have jettisoned everything and moved into a teeny living space. But simplification is more widely applicable to our lives, and here at SimpleProductivityBlog.com I like to simplify simplification.

Today I want to talk about simplifying my life by removing annoyances. These annoyances complicate my life because I either have to do unplanned work to deal with them, or because it increases my time on a task.

There are two recent examples of simplifications I have made.

The Trash Can

We have small trash cans in most rooms of the house, so that you never have to walk far to throw something out. The trash can in our office was becoming a problem, though.

Our adorable (and none-too-bright) beagle had taken to going through the trash can every time our back was turned. We’re not sure what she was after, and the first few times we just said, “Well, there must have been something in there she wanted to eat.” But it kept happening over and over, and every time we would have to pause on entering the office, stuff all the trash back in the can, and then go on with what we intended.

Not a big deal, you might think. But it was happening nearly every day.

So my solution? We moved the trash can between the wall and my husband’s desk at the corner of the room. The trash can is hemmed in by a wall on two sides, the desk on one and a bookshelf on the other. We can get to the trash can, but the dog can’t.

It simplified my life because I am no longer doing extra housework every day. All by removing an annoyance.

What Are Your Biggest Annoyances?

Do you have annoyances that cause you lost time? Can you do something to simply remove the annoyance? Here are some examples:

• Can’t find a pen by the phone. Tie a pen to a string and mount it next to the phone.
• You need to run out to the car but the keys are upstairs. Keep another set of keys (or the remote opener) near your door.
• Your cell phone is out of charge. Have multiple chargers in your house – one near your door, one at your desk and one next to your bed.

What annoyances can you fix with a simple solution? Share below.

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Most people try to cut down on energy usage because of economic reasons, green reasons or both. Electricity, heat and hot water aren’t free, and simplifying how you cut back on them can reap lots of rewards. Most people already know the basics, such as replacing bulbs with CFLs, turning off appliances and lights when you’re not using them, turning down the thermostat. But it’s easy to forget to do the things that require our active attention. Here are three ways that I simplify my energy savings:

Programmable Thermostats

I keep my house cool in the winter, and warmish in the summer. And when we’re not home, I like to minimize the time the a/c or heat is running. But I’m also terrible at remembering change the thermostat before leaving home, or remembering to turn it back.

Enter the programmable thermostat.

This inexpensive and easy-to-install device does the remembering for me. In winter, it turns the heat down to 63 from 11pm until 6 am, then turns the heat up to 68 until we are out of the house by 8am, then turns it back up before we get home. (The reverse is true of the air conditioning, with different temperatures). As a result, my heat goes up and down without me thinking about it, and I’m not heating unused space. As a side note, I don’t worry about the animals at home when the temp goes down to 63. They’re usually in a sun patch or under a blanket anyway, regardless of temperatures.

Smart power strips

Our entertainment center was always having something left on. If it wasn’t the Wii, it was the DVD player or the tuner. Even worse, these were behind a cabinet door, so we wouldn’t always know if they were left on.

I tried a smart power strip on this area, and it has worked beautifully. I plug the television (actually BOB) into the always on part of the strip, and everything else to the controlled plugs. When the power goes off on the television, everything else turns off.

Auto-off Appliances

Many appliances these days come with an auto-off feature where the appliance will turn itself off after a certain period of time. While I believe this was for safety originally (most of these appliances are also heat sources), it also works for energy savings.

Look for appliances that have this feature when it is time to buy. My iron and curling brush will turn themselves off if they are left on, and this minimizes fire risk, and saves me electricity.

Timers

More generalized than the programmable thermostats are my appliance timers. I use these not only to start appliances up, but to turn them off. My coffee pot is a good example. I like having coffee ready when I wake up, and I always forget to turn the pot off. A simple appliance timer takes care of both of these things.

There are other forms of timers or sensors that can help with safety lighting. Many of my neighbors have light-sensing fixtures on their outdoor lights that turn them on at dusk. We use an outdoor timer to control the safety lighting in our backyard.

Do you have any ways to help save energy or automate saving energy? Share below.

Photo by Caveman Chuck Coker

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I’ve written before about Facebook being a time sink (see my original article at Time Sinks, Or Why I Don’t Use Facebook). But more and more things are happening in the world that require us to be on social media. So how can one strike a balance with something that can suck up large amounts of time but may be necessary to use?

(Recently, my Girl Scout service unit started offering cookie training in two forms: in person, or online. The catch was that the online one is through Facebook. So I either had to set aside an evening to do cookie training at a session, or use Facebook.)

Here are my strategies for not letting social media take over my life:

Limit Exposure

Instead of having Facebook and Twitter up all the time, I choose when I will start them up. I use the Firefox extension Morning Coffee to bring up Facebook on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and Twitter on Mondays and Thursdays. If I don’t start the site up, I find that I spend less time checking it.

Filter

Facebook and Twitter both have built-in tools to filter what you are going to look at. I set up groups in Facebook to include the people I really want to follow, and I set up private lists in Twitter to do the same thing.

The filters allow me to see what I consider the most important first, and then as time allows, I can go through to the rest of the entries. It cuts down on wading through many entries to find a few.

Use Tools

Once I committed to using social media for the blog (http://www.facebook.com/SimpleProductivity and https://twitter.com/#!/@SmplProdBlog) I knew I would have to keep them up to date. I chose to use a tool called HootSuite, which allows me to schedule Tweets and Facebook posts from one interface. By paying a small monthly fee, I can also get analytics, and upload tweets and posts from a text file.

Use A Different Browser

If I find that I have to do a large amount of work in either Twitter or Facebook, I open up Chrome and go from there. The differences between Chrome and my usual browser, Firefox, are enough to be a constant and subtle reminder that I need to do what I need to do and get out.

By using a few strategies and tools I am able to manage my social media so that it doesn’t overtake my life. Do you have any strategies? Share below.

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Some of the largest amounts of time in our days are taken up by routine activities, such as commuting, household tasks, personal care and things dealing with sustenance. If we can streamline some of these activities, we can cut out wasted time and free up time to do other things. Just as cutting back on our inputs can free up time, we need to also cut out excess time in our day-to-day activities.

Analyzing the Routine

All of us have routine tasks. We just may not realize it because they are routine and they don’t catch our attention! After all, do you consciously think about brushing your teeth? It’s automatic, so you may be aware that you do it, but don’t have to schedule time to do it.

Most routine activities can be found in the following areas. Pay attention for a week and make a list of things you do on a weekly and daily basis.

• Housework. This includes things like cleaning, dishes, laundry, taking out the trash and caring for animals.
• Shopping. Grocery shopping and general errands.
• Self-care. Dressing, bathing, exercise.
• Food. Food prep, cooking and menu management.

Streamlining

Each of these areas has ways to simplify and consolidate. I will be going into detail on my tips and tricks in future articles, but here are some things to consider:

Housework

Combine. Combining tasks and batching them can save time in prep and execution. It is easier to vacuum all of the rooms on one floor at once than to drag the vacuum out for every room.
Automate. There are many tools that can help you automate household tasks. I use my Roomba to handle the vacuuming for me.
Go against convention. Grandma said you had to sort laundry by color and do separate loads. Not any more. Using color catcher sheets, you can wash darks with lights and not have to worry about bleeding colors.
Batch. If you feed your pets dry food (and they can be trusted to self-feed), consider a bulk feeder. You load it up, and they eat when they are hungry. (Note: this does not work well with dogs who are walking stomachs, such as my beagle who would eat herself to the point of exploding)

Shopping

Bulk shop. If you have the room, shop in bulk. Buying bulk staples such as toilet paper and soap can save many little errands
Plan. By planning a two week or month menu, you can shop for the majority of it all at once, and cut down your shopping for the rest of it. I do all my food shopping every other week.
Outsource. There are many options for personal shoppers. One local grocery store will pull my order and bring it to my car for a $5.00 fee. I also used a personal grocery shopper for many years.

Self-Care

Combine. Consider using combination products, such as conditioning shampoo, or by combining activities, such as brushing your teeth in the shower. (Although I admit I can’t bring myself to do that).
Simplify. Bring your wardrobe to simple things that require no ironing or fuss. Get a haircut that does not require much more than a wash.
Multitask. In a good way, that does not require using the same resources. Listen to books while you exercise, for example.

Food

Use appliances. Use a crockpot, bread machine or other modern appliance to simplify your meal cooking. If you resist because you’ve never had food that tasted good from one of these machines, find other recipes.
Shortcut. Not all food has to be cooked from scratch with fresh herbs and served like something out of a fine restaurant. Find suitable shortcuts, like a bottled spaghetti sauce that you add some seasoning to.
Plan. Having a plan to follow can cut down a lot of time that would be otherwise spent figuring out what to do last minute.
Bulk prep. We may not have sous chefs to call upon, but we can food prep in bulk. If you know you use chopped onion in 75% of your recipes, chop up a bunch and put it in the fridge to use over the week. Or make extra of something to be used in another recipe, like doubling a batch of mashed potatoes.

By streamlining my routine tasks, I can free up a lot of time. This time I can use for pursuing special projects, or just relaxing.

What are things you could streamline in your routine activities? Share below.

Photo by neilbetter

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One of the best ways to swamp yourself is to have too many things coming at you from too many directions. If you were in a canoe and the waves started coming at you from all sides, it is guaranteed you would go for a swim. It is also the same with the information we take in.

Why streamline inputs? Besides being a way to free yourself up mentally, you also free up time. And with extra time, you can tackle other things that may have significant impact on your life. If one of the things it took to pursue a lifelong dream was to eliminate 1000 emails, wouldn’t it be worth it?

How Many Inputs Do You Have?

This exercise is based on one that David Allen sets forth in Getting Things Done. The goal is to figure out where the information is coming from and how to minimize it.

How many inputs do you have? Here are some categories, and my list of how they fit into my life:

• Email: email is everywhere, and it can be accessed from everywhere. The last time I did this exercise you had to be at a machine. Now with smart phones, email follows us everywhere. I have multiple email accounts: blog, personal, Yahoo (used for mailing lists) and work. I access the blog and personal emails from all my PCs (home, work and netbook) as well as my iPod Touch. Yahoo and work email I access only from my home and work PCs.
• Mail: I currently get mail in two places: my home and the PO box I maintain for my blog. I check my PO box once a week.
• Phones: I currently have access to four phones: home, work, cell and Google Voice.
• Voice mail: all of my phones have voice mail.
• Texts: I receive text messages through my cell phone and Google Voice
• Magazines/newspapers: I have three magazine subscriptions, and our family gets the Sunday newspaper (of which I read the comics)
• Online reading: I have 176 feeds in my feed reader right now. Not all are active.
• News: this would normally include television, website and radio news.
• Oher papers: this would be the category of bills, receipts, school papers, appointment cards, etc.

Did you have a lot of inputs? More than you thought?

Reducing Inputs

The goal of reducing inputs is to have fewer places you have to remember to check. The more you consolidate, the less you will need. And you will also find ways to eliminate some of the inputs as well.

Another goal of reducing your inputs is to limit the time spent looking at something without taking action. I feel that this is overlooked. You may think it OK to scan all your emails once an hour, but if you do that for five minutes without taking any meaningful action, you will have lost 40 minutes over a whole workday!

Here are the ways I am consolidating my inputs:

• Email:
  • Work: My work email needs to be open all the time, so there is not much I can do as far as reducing the frequency. I do have notifications turned on so that I can see when a new email comes in. I make it a point that when I am processing email, I touch it once and complete it if it can be done in under 2 minutes. If it contains information to be filed, it gets filed immediately. If I need to respond, it gets done. Things that require more than 2 minutes are flagged and attended to mid-day.
  • Yahoo: My Yahoo email has been flooded with lots of email newsletters that come from the various lists I have signed up for. I have spent some time unsubscribing from these lists. I check this email once a day; nothing is ever urgent.
  • Gmail/Blog: Both my personal and blog emails run out of Gmail, so I have them set up so that the blog emails dump into my main Gmail account, with a label. Everything is in one place. (I also back up the whole mess to my home PC once a month, just in case.)

  I don’t see too much room for improvement, other than trying to cut down on the amount of junk I am receiving.

• Mail: I can’t stop the Post Office from delivering, so the only improvement I can make here is to eliminate the amount of mail I receive. Most of my regular bills offer online statements/bill pay, so that eliminates those. I have also worked hard on the Catalog Choice website to bring my mail to as low a level as possible, free of catalogs and phone books.
• Phones: My work phone can’t be altered. My home phone can’t be altered. My cell phone can’t be altered. Google Voice, however, can streamline everything. By giving my Google Voice number to people, they will reach me wherever I am. I have it set up so that during work hours it rings my desk phone and cell phone simultaneously. During non-work hours, it rings my home and cell. So I don’t miss calls, and no matter which of the phones I pick up, it is as if they are one.
• Voice mail: Google voice has also simplified my voice mail. (Although I have voice mail attached to the home phone line that simply says “call back”). When a person calls my Google Voice, it transcribes the voice mail and sends it to my email. I can also have Google Voice be the voice mail for my cell phone, which cuts down on one place to check.
• Texts: Texting on my cell phone is a recent addition for me, put into place after having a deluge of spam that I was having to pay for. I have solved the problem of multiple texts by giving my Google Voice number out, which sends the texts to email. Even my husband knows that if he needs a response, to go with Google Voice.
• Magazines/newspapers: The three magazine subscriptions I receive I read. All the others are now gone. I have not been successful in convincing my family we don’t need the Sunday news, so I content myself with using it for weed blocker in the garden.
• Online reading: When I examined my reading, I was shocked at the number of feeds I was purusing. Even worse, I had a category called “zzz” at the bottom, which I used to put subscriptions I was no longer interested in, instead of deleting them outright. Those 46 subscriptions were deleted outright. I also went through and purged the rest of my feeds. I had many stuck in a “probation” status, and more that I was just not connecting with anymore.
• News: I stopped readng the web news, watching television or listening to radio news a few years ago. If something important happens, someone tells me. And I find that I miss all sorts of distractions (such as I didn’t know what a Kardashian was until about a month ago, much less that one of them had a really short marriage).
• Oher papers: I confess I do a double-sort on these papers. The first time I determine if it needs to be dealt with before the next Monday. If so, I deal with it. Otherwise it goes into a folder on my desktop called “process” that gets worked through once a week.

Streamlining your inputs will free up and amazing amount of time and resources for you.

Are there ways that you cut down on your inputs? Or inputs I haven’t mentioned? Share below! I’d like to see how people handle this issue.

Photo by neilbetter

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I hate shopping. With a passion. So my solution to Black Friday is to stay inside and pretend like I’m snowed in.

This worked fine until my daughter started to be old enough to want to do things when she wasn’t in school. So here are my top five things to do instead of shopping on Black Friday.

1. Visit the ocean. Or a park, or some natural place far away from the shopping malls. We live in a city that is near the ocean, so walking on the boardwalk is always a possibility for us.
2. Visit the garden. This year our local botanical garden is hosting an American Indian ceremony to honor the spirit of a bald eagle killed there earlier this year. We will be attending to watch the dancing and to see the beautiful attire on the dancers.
3. Craft. Now that my daughter is old enough, we can craft together. I will encourage her to pull out a craft kit from the closet and work on her craft while I knit nearby. Note: this will only work if you have the supplies ahead of time.
4. Make bird feeders. I like to make bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter and birdseed. This quick “craft” is fun to do and the birds (and squirrels) love them!
5. Read. My daughter is reading a chapter book (The Westing Game) I adored when I was her age, so we are reading it together.
6. Make gingerbread. It’s too early for me to make holiday cookies, but gingerbread is a welcome treat. This also gives my daughter practice in practical math and fractions, but don’t tell her that!

Do you have something you do as an alternative to shopping on Black Friday? Share below.

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. This holiday is generally celebrated with large meals with extended family. Between the huge amount of food, and many house guests, this holiday can be one of anxiety and stress. It doesn’t have to be, though. Here are ways to simplify Thanksgiving:

Ask For and Accept Help

Just because you are preparing a big dinner doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself! If a guest asks if they can bring something, accept!

Not only will you save yourself the hassle of making everything yourself, but you will find some wonderful culinary surprises. An engineer friend of mine makes pie crust to die for, and another friend came up with a glaze for a ham that was amazing.

Prepare In Advance

Not all food has to be prepared the day of the big meal. Assemble and prepare what you can ahead of time. For instance, make your pies a few days before. Assemble the green bean casserole the day before and refrigerate until time to bake.

Buy Pre-made Food

This is not cheating. Much.

If you have the opportunity, and the food is good quality, buy! This is particularly good if you are not skilled in certain areas. I have purchased rolls, cranberry relish and green bean casserole before.

If you want to go all out, there are stores who will make the whole holiday dinner for you.

Use Non-traditional Food or Methods

Just because it is Thanksgiving doesn’t mean you have to eat turkey or ham. If you feel like eating fried chicken, then do so!

It also doesn’t mean you have to prepare the food the way your mother or grandmother would. My Thanksgiving meal is done mainly in two crockpots (one with a boneless turkey breast, and one with stuffing). The oven doesn’t even heat up, and I spend most of my day writing. Grandma never did that!

Attend A Dinner or Eat Out

The ultimate way to simplify Thanksgiving is to eat in a restaurant or at someone else’s house. Little or no preparation, good food, and little cleanup. Of course, you won’t have leftovers.

Do you have any way to simplify Thanksgiving or other holiday meals? Share below!

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It dawned on me tonight that the holidays are almost here. Next week is Thanksgiving in the US – the start of the headlong rush into the holiday season.

Yet here I am, blissfully working on my National Novel Writing Month project – and not stressed at all.

It’s not that I don’t do a lot of things at the holidays. In fact, I merge multiple religious traditions and holidays into a busy month of activity.

Yet I am not stressed.

I figured out how to make the holidays manageable and stress-free: by simplifying. It’s not about stark holidays, either. It’s about doing things efficiently so that they are manageable and enjoyable.

I’ve released the 2011 updated version of my ebook Simplify the Holidays tonight. It contains information on how holidays can be made manageable and stress-free. Included are the forms that I use myself to make this a happy and joyous time.

More information can be found here.

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

We all know that to make a task more manageable you need to break it down. But how often do you not start a task because you think it can’t be broken down any further?

Recently I realized that I had been procrastinating on weeding and mulching the yard because I thought it all had to be done at once. You know, order a truckload of mulch, weed and move wheelbarrows full of tree bark for days. The way I broke this down was a) make the call b) do the work.

And I didn’t see that it could be done any other way. Leaving a large amount of mulch for more than a few days is asking for rain absorption and burrowing critters.

Redefine To Break It Down

I put this project off long enough that I realized it was never going to get done. I simply don’t have the time or energy to deal with that large of a project.

One afternoon I realized that I could redefine the project. The goal is to get the beds weeded and mulched. There is no reason it has to be done with a truckload of mulch. It just has to be weeded and mulched.

So I redefined the project: I would weed and mulch one section at a time, buying bags of mulch as I went.

Break It Down…

So is there a project that is huge but you can’t think of a way to break it down any more? Can you think of an alternate way to do the project that will produce the same results, but by different methods?

Think about it.

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Have you ever stood in your closet in the morning, losing minutes because you don’t know what to wear? Or because you can’t decide what cologne or eyeshadow to put on?

I wrote a few weeks ago about Eliminating Choices to Get More Done as a way to simplify your life. I took that advice to heart and streamlined my morning routine by eliminating choices.

Dressing

I am not particularly chipper in the morning. Hell, let me admit that I’m not even coherent for the first hour. Dressing can be a nightmare of indecision.

Solution: check the weather and pick out clothes the night before. This saves me not only the choice, but also allows me to see if I am picking something that needs to be repaired.

Toiletries

Every house, including my own, seems to breed toiletries. Even my husband, very much the simple grooming type, has three types of soap in the shower right now — because he doesn’t like two of them.

Solution: By getting rid of products that don’t work, you limit your choices, and you don’t have to think about which you will use.

Cosmetics

I like to try new looks. In theory, at least. In reality, I pretty much wear the same cosmetics every day: moisturizer, foundation, mascara, brown eyeliner and lip balm So why have 15 eye shadows? multiple eyeliners and lipsticks hanging around?

Solution: unable to throw them out, I put them in a box in the closet. I’ve only been in there once to retrieve something.

Just eliminating choices from my morning routine has cut my time getting ready in the morning from 30 minutes to 20 minutes. That’s enough time for me to savor that first cup of coffee out on the deck!

Photo by mueritz

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