The idea for this tip came from a recent session with my mother. She was amazed when I minimized all the windows on the desktop down to the taskbar with one click.

What she doesn’t know is there is another way to do this as well…

Method 1: Show Desktop Button

If you are using the Quick Launch toolbar (see Windows XP: Display the Quick Launch Bar on the Taskbar for how to show it), the standard icon set includes a “Show Desktop” button. Clicking on this will minimize all open windows.

Method 2: Windows+M

If you are more of a keyboard sort of person, pressing the Windows key plus M will minimize all open windows.

Have A Lunch Structure

Most take-from-home lunches consist of sandwiches and accompaniments. However, you are not necessarily limited to those items. It is good to have a pattern for what you will put in a lunch.

In my husband’s and my cases, we may take leftovers for lunch or a healthy sandwich. In addition, there will be fruit and veggies, and for my husband, usually chips or a dessert.

My daughter’s lunches are less varied: mac and cheese on Mondays, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (PB&Js) the rest of the week. Each day has either a fruit or veggie, a healthy snack, and a small dessert.

I would like to point out that these are things that the consumers have requested. It is appalling to me to think of eating PB&J four days a week, but that is what my daughter wants.

Simplifying Sandwiches

The sandwich is usually the centerpiece of a lunch. In some cases, it is possible to make multiple sandwiches and store them in the refrigerator until they are used. I make four PB&Js at once on Sunday or Monday evenings and keep them in the fridge, pulling one out per day as I assemble her lunch.

For meat or filled sandwiches, this can be trickier. If the sandwich is just meat, cheese and bread, you can assemble it ahead of time. Beware of condiments, though! Mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup and the like will soak through the bread and render the sandwich soggy. One other way to get around this is to keep the condiment packets from fast-food restaurants and throw them into the lunch.

Simplifying Fruit

Most whole fruit is readily usable in lunches. Some fruit, like bananas and ripe pears will bruise easily, so make sure you cushion them with napkins.

Cut fruit can be a problem due to oxidation. To get around this with sliced apples, either dip the apple slices into lemon juice or sprinkle some cinnamon into the bag with the slices.

A favorite at our house is unsweetened applesauce. Unflavored comes in big jars, which I will divvy out into portions and store in the refrigerator. My daughter also likes the flavored pre-packaged cups: peach is her favorite, with strawberry coming a close second.

Simplifying Veggies

Fresh, raw veggies are easiest to transport. Easiest of all are baby carrots, which need no prep work. Sliced cucumbers, celery sticks and green pepper strips are next easiest, followed by broccoli and cauliflower.

Every Sunday I slice up veggies and package enough for the week for all three of us. These are stored in the refrigerator.

Simplifying Snacks

I love the idea of the individually packed snacks I see at the grocery store. I hate both the price, and the nutritional quality of those snacks. I have a simple solution: I make my own. When I get home from the grocery store, I package individual portions of snacks and store them in the designated “snack basket” in the pantry.

Simplifying Desserts

Desserts and sweets are a rarity for us, but when I do buy or make cookies, I package these up in individual servings, much like the snacks. The only difference is that the desserts are stored in a “sweets basket” that is conveniently out of reach (for my daughter) and out of sight (for me).

Assembling a Simple Lunch

To put together a lunch in the morning, I grab a pre-made sandwich, a serving of fruit, a package of veggies, and either a snack or a dessert. Within two minutes, the lunch is ready to go!

Photo by daveynin

I love traditional holidays. Not necessarily because of the traditions themselves, although they are meaningful, but because no one expects innovation. And no innovation means simple, because I’ve done it all before.

With the American Thanksgiving coming up at the end of the month, I thought I would share with you how I have simplified the big Thanksgiving dinner we have at our house.

One Holiday, One Menu

I love this part. Every Thanksgiving, my family knows exactly what to expect: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberries, rolls and pumpkin pie. Other dishes were tried and discarded. What remains are the family favorites. The menu stays the same from year to year, which leads to another simplicity: computerized recipes, directions and shopping lists.

Shopping Lists. A few years ago, I put the shopping list for all the dinner ingredients into my computer. Every year, I print out a fresh copy and I’m ready to go shopping. I print it out at the end of October and add a few on-sale items to my cart when I do regular shopping. That way I spread out the cost of the meal, as well as take advantage of seasonal sales.

Directions. The same year, I wrote down the timing for all dishes. I know exactly how long from when dinner will be served I need to start boiling potatoes, for example. This ensures that all the food makes it to the table at the same time, as well as nothing getting left behind (in the oven, for example, where it will turn into charcoal)

Recipes. All of my recipes for the dinner are in another computer file. When it comes time to cook, I just print out a copy. This saves time and effort on two fronts: I don’t have to hunt for recipes, and I don’t care if the recipes get covered in miscellaneous food substances during the cooking procedure.

Simplify Cooking

I have basted a few turkeys in my time. What a waste of effort! I discovered Reynolds Cooking bags. You stick the turkey in, stick it in the oven, and at the end of the cooking time you have a turkey that is moist and falls off the bones.

I also simplify in another way: I make what I can ahead of time. The pies, rolls and green bean casserole are made up the day before.

By doing the above, I make Thanksgiving as stress-free as possible. I can easily add guests to our table with very little extra effort.

Photo by scubadive67

Some oldies but goodies….

Over at Converstations, there is a good reminder (ConverStations: Finding Time for Change to Take) that there is no such thing as instant change.

Zen Habits boils down simplicity into its primary rule in “The First Rule of Simplifying: Identify the Essential (or, How to avoid the Void) “. Simply put (pun intended) it is: “The real goal of simplifying, and the First Rule, is to first identify what is essential, what you love, what is important to you - and then cut out all the rest that distracts you and keeps you from doing what’s important.”

Paawerfully Organized has a great article (Paauwerfully Organized - Hidden Clutter) on finding hidden clutter. I have used it to broaden my horizons of clutter awareness. Not all clutter is physical in nature.

Over at Get the Job Done Right: Focusing on One Task at a Time - Stacks and Stacks Clutter Control Freak Blog, there is a great nugget of wisdom for true productivity. “Make sure that you have all of the tools handy to complete the job.” If you don’t have everything where you need to use it, you are going to spend a large amount of time gathering materials. It is a key to efficient working.

There is a great summary of Getting Things Done over at Getting GTD Done : Getting Things Done. It gives very succinct points for those of you who may not have read the book, but want to see if the system is worth investigating. I don’t necessarily agree you need to buy the book, though. Check it out from the library if you feel that the above summary has warranted a look at the system.

Photo by sirispj

Last week in “Is Lowering Standards OK To Achieve Productivity?” I talked about lowering my standards, and how all the productivity methods out there seemed to be ignoring the mundane tasks of life. Maybe I don’t move in the right crowds, but I don’t know a single person who can ignore these tasks, like laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning. Nobody I know has a staff to do these things.

Why Try For Productivity?

It got me thinking about why I keep looking to become more productive. Why be productive at all?

For me, it comes from a sense that my time is limited, and I want to make the most of it. I never want to get caught in the world of mind-numbing drudgery that I see too many people get caught in. Yes, I may have to work for a living, and thus trade large portions of time for money. At the same time, I want to use the time that is my own to create a worthwhile life.

Looking at it from this aspect, it is easy to see that productivity systems would call to me.

The Downside of All Productivity Systems Out There

The second complaint I have about every productivity system out there…the ones that encourages me to use the system to turn my life into a super-charged spectacular ball of achievement…is that none of them have ever been able to help me determine exactly what I should work on.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People came the closest, having me list out all the roles in my life and decide what was important. The problem with that approach is that many of my roles have been thrust on me, and quite frankly, I have no desire to fill them. This has eased as I have gotten older, and now most of my roles are of my choosing. But there are still many roles I have not chosen. Homemaker and household manager are two of them. Should I embrace them? If I don’t choose them, must I excel at them? No book or system has been able to answer the all important question: what should I be working on?

The Duality for a Fulfilling Life

It seems to me that the life I am aiming for is to be both efficient and effective. Efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things. Most systems focus exclusively on the second as being the most important. Unfortunately, if you focus on the “important” things, it means you don’t focus on other things. And in my case, the things that got stuffed to the back were the things that I really did need to do because no one else was going to do them for me. None of the systems I have read have been able to lay out for me exactly how to determine, amongst the hundreds of things that capture my interest, what I should do next.

To me, a fulfilling life will consist of being efficient in the areas where the tasks must be done. This includes the mundane tasks of every day life. The second part will be working on those things that give life to my inner self: to investigate things I am curious about, to create, to build lasting and worthwhile relationships.

What This Means for the Blog

When I started this blog, I was really into Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. And as I grew disillusioned with it, the articles became fewer and farther between. It’s not that I abandoned all part of the system: there are good chunks of it that really do help me let less slip through the cracks.

But moving forward, I will probably be less focused on Productivity-systems-in-themselves-as-a-means-to-a-meaningful-life, and more toward figuring out efficient ways to handle the mundane, while deciding on the most important things to me, and using my actions to further those goals.

Photo by Dawn Ashley

Six Ways to Ensure a Good Morning

There are a lot of things that I do repeatedly on my computer. From text that gets typed over and over, to more complex actions that get performed daily or weekly.

Both Word and Excel come with a facility to automate these repetitive actions. These are called Macros, and you can program them using a subset of Visual Basic, called Visual Basic for Applications. (VBA)

VBA

I am fluent in Visual Basic, but VBA is only distantly related. The programming commands contained in each application are geared for those applications. The documentation is sparse, and guessing the syntax can be difficult. And if you’re not a programmer, it can be a daunting task!

The Macro Recorder

There is an easy way out, though. Both Word and Excel 2003 include a facility to record macros. What this means is you click a button, and it records all your mouse clicks and key pushes until you turn the recorder off. Here is the best part: you can look at the VBA code that the macro recorder produces.

Most people try to use the recorder to capture the entire long sequence of what they are trying to do, only to find themselves re-recording to fix typos or pick up lost steps.

How To Program Using the Macro Recorder

The easiest way to put together VBA code is to record little bits of what you want to do, then paste everything together into one Macro. Instead of trying to get everything, record bits and pieces. Then you can go into the code and put it all together.

By approaching Macros this way, you will save yourself time and trouble. You may also find yourself creating a little library of bits of recorded actions that you can use again and again.

Photo by tripleascholar

One thing that got me thinking: “Since when is it OK to lower our standards for an agenda (no matter how valid that agenda may be?)”

Lowering My Standards?

I will be the first to admit that I am a perfectionist. And I try not to be perfectionistic. It is difficult.

One of the things I loved about the productivity movement was the permission to not do something, or leave it to someone else. After all, I was told, if it isn’t moving my goals forward, why do it?

This always bothered me. There are certain things that must be done in order to live a reasonably comfortable life, such as grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning. None are high on my list of fun things to do. And none of them move my goals forward.

As I read both Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I was aware that these men were able to concentrate on being productive and doing the best work because they had people doing the other stuff for them. The majority of us, myself included, cannot afford cooks, secretaries and maids. So do I lower my standards? Or do I make having a reasonably clean house and food in the refrigerator a “project”? Do I make homemaker a “role”?

It’s Not About Productivity

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. It’s not about productivity for me anymore. It’s about doing the things I need to do efficiently so that I can work on things that make for a rich life. It is about not wasting time on unimportant things, but realizing that mundane does not mean unimportant.

Photo by TheTruthAbout…

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

In Unclutterer’s “When previous decluttering can come back to haunt you“, the author talks about the struggle to find all previous addresses. Apparently she had never compiled a list, and needed to know all of them. It would be very tough for me to do a list like that as well…I moved frequently during my college years.

At Stacks And Stacks Clutter Control Freak Blog’s “10-minute clutter hacks - Computer“, there is a nice starter list of things you can do to clean up your computer in 10 minutes.

Daily Writing Tips has a great article on writing thank-you notes: “Writing a Thank You Note“. I always get stuck on what to say, and this is a good overview.

Photo by wlodi