r u l y

My theme word for 2013, using another Marcia Francois idea to frame it for display. I use a 3-pane frame where my word goes in the center, my reasons for making this change in the top panel and my most common excuse in the bottom along with reasons to overcome the excuse.

Last year I was introduced to Marcia Francois’ one word yearly theme concept. In addition to whatever specific resolutions you have for a given year, you boil all of them down to a one word theme that encompasses your aspirations.

Last year, I chose “Energy” as my theme word and boy did I need a lot of energy in 2012!

I had so much going on that my blogging really suffered. But, in my personal life, I did some pretty energetic things like:

• taking a 3-week cross-country USA road trip with my family
• spending 3 weeks in Richmond, Virginia while my daughter participated in various summer camps (haven’t blogged this yet but should)
• completed a gut-job renovation of our master bathroom (*will blog this later this year)

This experience taught me to be very careful choosing the yearly theme word. Whatever word you choose, be ready for your life to test you on that concept. For that reason I will never choose “money” or “health” as theme words because I don’t want to be tested on those counts.

For my word this year, I am choosing . . . . .

Not a very exciting word to be sure but one that is a definite challenge for me. I am not a huge fan of “routines.” I like my life to be more loose and flexible. When I hear the word “routine,” my first thought is “boredom.” Apartment Therapy recently wrote a post on this sharing that the author used to feel that routines were the “death knell of the creative mind.”

Sometimes I feel like the only person in the world that feels this way. You often hear about people who just love to have a daily routine to fall back on. They find it comforting to know in advance exactly what they are going to do each and every single day. When you become a parent, people advise, “Children love routines.” I have found as a parent that it is not necessarily that the children love the routines but that the parents do.

So I don’t love routines at all and I am pretty terrible about following them. So why am I choosing this as my theme word?

Because I read a post somewhere over the past year (can’t remember now what it was) connecting money and time. The post basically said that managing money and managing time are very similar. I am pretty good at managing money so I thought, why not try applying lessons I have learned over time about managing money to managing my time better.

The organizational tool that has made the biggest difference in managing our finances has been Quicken. We document every expense, we run multiple budgets and automated savings programs. We have a system for doing all of this and it takes time each week to keep it going.

Our time is just as valuable as our money so my experiment this year is to try to take the same documentation approach to my time. I am hoping that if I learn to document how my time is spent, and spend more time looking ahead and planning, I will gradually become better and better at managing my time.

That’s where the routines come in. Just as a spendthrift needs a budget as a first step to getting money coming in to balance with money going out, a time-challenged person needs some kind of baseline routine to make sure all the necessary tasks get completed. My routines will never be the type where there is an hour-by-hour task list. (I would have trouble motivating myself to get out of bed at that level of organization.) But I am starting at least with a list of recurring tasks to get done each day.

I started off creating a chart for the month where I listed the tasks to be done across the top and the days down the column. I then check off whether I accomplished that task each day. I made one for myself and one for each of my daughters. If you want to try the same for yourself, here is a blank copy of my chart.

• January 2013 – Routine Chart

As of now, we are six days into the new year and how are things going?

Sadly, I have yet to have a single day where I actually accomplished every single item on my “routine” list. However, I do not feel defeated. At this point, I am still in the information-gathering phase. Since I am bad at planning routines (in part because I am a person who likes to try lots of new things all the time), I need to figure out what is realistic for our family. I also have to figure out how much extra time I need to factor in for various emergencies, errands, etc. So, I will keep attempting my January routine. At the end of the month, if I still can’t get everything done, I will tweak again for February, then March, etc. Hopefully, by December, I will have some repeatable, accomplishable routine that works for us.

Did you set a New Year’s resolution or theme word for 2013? Please share in the comments.

P.S. For anyone looking for inspiration on how to set up a routine, you can follow Apartment Therapy’s “January cure.”

My goal this month was to read and review Marcia Francois’ new book Live Organised and I am happy to report that I have succeeded!

I read the book yesterday despite an overfull schedule. The great thing about this book is that it suits its target audience perfectly. If you are an overwhelmed or disorganized person the last thing you want is a detailed tome with specific instructions and routines that will take a huge amount of time and effort to understand and implement. Marcia Francois’ book meets this audience perfectly. Her book reads very quickly and easily, packing in some insights about the psychology of organising as well as some organising tips.

Francois has a unique voice and is able to get to the high level importance of organization without getting buried in too many details. She also is very direct and honest. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book, made into cute little quote boxes a la the latest blogging trend. (I hope Marcia Francois isn’t too appalled! It wouldn’t be her style to do them herself but hope she can appreciate it when someone else does them.)

She also discusses two topics that are important to me personally about organising: perfectionism and environmentalism. Francois does not advocate a Martha-Stewart style approach and instead advocates a “just enough” organising strategy. Francois gives many creative suggestions for re-use of containers such as glass jars and cereal boxes in organising efforts.

At the end of the book, she also provides “15 Tools to Organise Your Home and Life,” in the form of several worksheets and checklist that help you do things such as set goals and create a travel checklist.

For American readers, there are some fun English language uses in this book. The first being the use of an “s” instead of a “z” in the word “organise.” Other word choices include “bin” (instead of garbage can or wastebasket), “costume” (instead of bathing suit), “plasters” (instead of Band Aids), and “lip ice” (lip balm?) but these in no way interfere with the comprehension of the overall message.

This book will appeal in particular to two groups of readers: those who are just getting started in their organising efforts and those who want a quick motivational reference to continue their own organising efforts. This book is truly a quick, accessible, not overwhelming, reference and packs a big punch for little reading effort. Watch Marcia Francois’ blog for details about giveaways and special offers to get extra value for your purchase.

Which is your favorite Francois quote? Please share in the comments.

On my to do list this month was to listen to and review Marcia Francois’ eCourse: “Break Out of Overwhelm,” which was provided as a gift with purchase of her new book, Live Organised.

My month has continued to be jam-packed with critical tasks and the feeling of “overwhelm” is definitely there. It was even a bit overwhelming to think about listening to a seminar on coping with being overwhelmed! I knew that the seminar would likely require me to do something and I just wasn’t sure I even had the energy to do that.

However, since I committed in writing on this blog that this was one of my goals, I decided to just get started. It was late one evening and I thought I would just put the audio on and replay it later if necessary.

To my great surprise, this audio course was not overwhelming, was easy to comprehend, had a lot of interesting things to say and had easy steps to start the de-stressing process. It is just over an hour long.

While I won’t go into detail about what is in the seminar, here are the topics I found most interesting:

• 3 organizing personalities (how to tell which one you are, what to do to focus yourself for each type)
• The first super-simple thing you should do when you are feeling overwhelmed
• How to decide which expert sources you should consult for organization, time management, etc.

I started following her advice and I have to say it is working already. No, things are not perfect and I still have far too much to do but I do feel more control over my life and more calm.

A few things I learned from this experience that are not actually in the seminar are:

1) If you are seeking meaningful change in your life/organization/productivity, etc., get in the habit of reacting to good information (making a plan, asking a question, etc.) rather than just passively reading or listening. I am guilty of this too. If you subscribe to Ramit Sethi’s emails for example, he is always asking you to do something with his information. I believe that is really the key to seeing change. It doesn’t matter whether you “know” the information; what matters is whether you “use” it.

2) Marcia Francois is a fearless delegator, which makes her quite unique. I am curious to learn more about her delegating methods.

3) Professional/life coaching is something we should all think about doing. Today’s workplace simply doesn’t have time to help us become better at our jobs, move up to better things, identify knowledge gaps or help us plan for upcoming employment shifts. But just because the workplace doesn’t give it to us doesn’t mean we don’t need it. If you don’t take the time or have the skills yourself to sit down and think about your goals and talents once or twice a year, hiring someone to help you do it is a great idea.

What is the first thing you do when you feel overwhelmed? Have you benefitted from coaching? Please share in the comments.

My 2012 theme word.

If you have been reading all of this month’s Ruly posts, by now you should have some good ideas about your goals for the year as well as an appreciation of the challenges you are likely to face attempting those goals.

Today, I wanted to share two ideas for organizing those goals. These tips were inspired by reading the blog of Marcia Francois, “The Organising Queen.”

So, say you have a bunch of goals for the year either in your head or written down. That’s a lot of words. Could you streamline it all down into just one word?

One word?

Yes! Marcia advises that you select a theme word for your year. You can read her compelling reasoning here and here.

Applying this to myself, my theme word for 2012 is:

ENERGY

As busy as I am and as many commitments as I have taken on, there are still more things I want to accomplish in any given year or improve how I am doing things currently. I fully realize that I can’t do everything but I feel that too often I give up on the attempt too easily because I tell myself something will take “too much energy” and I also know that I waste a lot of time too. Are there ways that I could get more energy in my life? Is it also possible that in order to get more energy, you have to expend more energy (eating well, exercising, implementing new organizing routines, etc.)? So, within that theme, I think of my goals/resolutions falling into the following subcategories:

1. Expend energy to get energy
2. Energize other people
3. Avoid energy drains
4. Recharge

The other very clever tip Marcia Francois shared last September on her blog was to frame your goals and put them on your desk/fridge, etc. where you have a beautiful, formal reminder of what you are trying to get done.

You could use this tip to frame up any of your other insights too. For example:

• If you did some thinking about what really motivates you by asking “why,” you might want to frame your core motivations.

• If you have a list of common excuses, you may want to frame those along with what you say to yourself to overcome those excuses.

• If there is a particular person who embodies your goals, you could frame up a photo of him/her or type up an inspirational quote from that person.

I found this great, but inexpensive 3-opening frame. I am going to put my theme word, my core motivations and my excuses in each of the openings and hang it by my desk.

When I went to frame my words, I was pleasantly shocked to see this note on the stock paper in the frame:

Almost every picture frame is made in China these days so the fact that this frame (or at least the plastic front part) was Made in the USA, plus made from recycled materials plus sold at WalMart for an inexpensive price was astounding!  Such a high achieving frame is a great backdrop for my own goals!

If you are doing this project for a professional office, you might want to be careful with how much you share publicly in your frame but you could always write your theme word in a hard-to-read artistic font, in a foreign language or in code so only you know what it means.

Aren’t these great tips? I am excited to know that Marcia Francois plans to publish a book this year and can’t wait to hear what the subject will be.

Do you have a theme word for the year? Do you frame or otherwise formalize a display for your goals? Please share in the comments.

P.S. I have no affiliation with Marcia Francois other than thinking she is incredibly clever and reading her blog.