Total, Relaxed Organization, The Blog

I recently received an ecstatic email from a client, Steve Leininger (Capital Performance Advisor at Thomas, Wirig, Doll & co.) who sent me this screenshot during his Total, Relaxed Organization training. Steve started out with 3,605 emails, he followed the TRO steps, and he reached the elusive landmark of email organization: inbox zero.

I never thought in my lifetime the inbox would be empty,” he wrote in his email. “This is the second time.”

There’s a sense of relief you get from an empty inbox that can’t be replaced. If you have to wade through tasks to email a reply, you are going to feel stressed—all those uncompleted actions will cry out for attention. This also makes processing stressful, which is why so many people struggle to clear their inboxes.

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Holiday decorations are a resource item. If the décor already has a home, put it there. If it doesn’t, make a home for it quickly. But if you can’t do it quickly, it is a pending action. “Collect” pending actions for your task list. (See here for details about “collecting.”)

Here’s one example: Your son gave you a painting as a present this year. Now it’s propped up against the desk, waiting to be mounted on the wall. Mounting it is a pending action. But you need to get a hammer and nail and mounting bracket first, so put “get hammer and nail” as the next step in your task list. Collect the task instead of doing it right now, and put that painting on an appropriate “Deferred” shelf in the meantime.

Here’s another: A Christmas wreath is hanging on your door. Now that the holidays are over, it belongs in the basement closet. Move it to the Christmas Decorations shelf in the closet and be done with it. Here, there’s no pending action.

Applying one of these two steps will help you recuperate quickly from the holidays, and get your house or office clean and organized for the new year.

Kevin Crenshaw is a time management expert, business consultant, and executive coach. As author of the blog ”Strategy in Principle,” he shares insights on productivity, management, and other organizational hot topics. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a company that helps you get an extra two hours out of [Click title for more…]

Do you repeatedly change, cancel, or (worst of all) miss appointments? These symptoms could mean you need a better time management system. But if you already have a great system and you still miss appointments, then your problem might just be a bad scheduling habit or two.

Each kind of bad habit demands a different solution. So, to help you recover from your particular ailment, we’ve listed 6 possible diagnoses and their cures. Refer to this list whenever you find yourself falling behind on appointments.

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Somewhere in our house, we’ve all got that “drawer” that we’re afraid to open. And I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean a literal drawer: a drawer so stuffed with random, miscellaneous items that we get tired even thinking about having to root through it. And if it’s not a drawer, it’s a cabinet or the top of your desk, stuffed with random things. If you can’t describe the “theme” of that drawer in 3 words or less, it’s not organized.

It came to be because every day, pieces of information fall into our laps, and these pieces of information have to go somewhere. So we began sticking the information wherever we could find space: in a filing cabinet, on top of the printer, in piles on the floor, on colorful sticky notes attached to our computers, or in a drawer where we didn’t have to look at it.

Until we do have to look at it.

This kind of “task build-up” undermines your ability to concentrate. Every time you open the drawer to get one item, all your other unfinished projects look up at you, forlornly—whining for attention.

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If you’re like most people, you know the basic rules of common courtesy, and you try hard to follow them at work. But what if someone thinks you were rude? What if they take offense when it wasn’t intended? Or what if you came across as angry or impolite on accident?

Usually, our first instinct is to defend ourselves. “I wasn’t rude,” we say, because we weren’t trying to offend anyone. ”Besides, I had good reasons to say that.” Sound familiar?

There’s a much better way.

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This really isn’t a gripe session. We hope that Rackspace will soon deliver the “fanatical customer support” they advertise for all its clients, all the time. It’s a great slogan, it’s a superb goal, and it is achievable.

Unfortunately, Rackspace isn’t even close yet. This business case study analyzes why companies like Rackspace fall short and—more importantly—what they must change to deliver the promise.

If you yearn for world-class support in any industry, read on. These principles are universal.

Click here to read more …

Organization helps you stay on top of your tasks, but for the sake of your sanity, it’s important that it be relaxed organization. Here are 8 easy tips for feeling more relaxed … and therefore more productive!

1. Clean up the clutter.

No matter what, you can’t be at peak efficiency unless your desk is clean and all your tools and tasks have a “home.” One study even shows us that people with messy desks get passed over for promotions. In the FBI, for example, they emphasize the importance of organization in each agent’s life–my cousin is an agent. Her house and everything about her? Immaculate.

But the bottom line is, you need to focus. And it’s hard to do that when you’re surrounded by mountains of unfinished tasks, screaming for your attention. They’re like massive piles of proverbial guilt.

For organizing your desk and life most efficiently, check out Total, Relaxed Organization.

2. Make it feel like yours.

When you walk into your office or work area, you want to feel comfortable. You want to feel good about it. Ask yourself what your first response is when you look at your workspace. Do you feel focused and at ease? Or do you feel overwhelmed? Or even apathetic?

Don’t forget lighting. That’s also important for ambiance. There’s no set rule about this – maybe you prefer natural light, or perhaps you prefer a dark room so you can focus! It’s up to you. Do make sure that [Click title for more…]

You may have seen recent Twitter comments about our email problems the past month or so.

Good News: The email is flowing regularly again (as far as we can tell). Many thanks to Rackspace and groupSPARK for getting technicians together 24/7 to resolve this. It wasn’t an easy issue.

Bad News: Emails were lost; we have no way of knowing which. If you emailed us and did not hear back, please resubmit. This applies to our online support form too, since that relies on email.

We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to responding to your needs promptly!

A TRO trainee pointed out a great service you need to know about. Remail.me saves you a ton of time when switching email addresses. It’s easy, it’s thorough, and it’s cheap. (You can read his forum post here. Thanks for the tip, Andy!)

According to Remail.me, “there are six steps to switching email addresses smoothly.” We agree. Here is what Remail does with minimal effort on your part.

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Client Question: Should I try Mark Forster’s new “autofocus” time management system?

Answer by Kevin Crenshaw, Priacta Head Coach and co-author of The TRO Field Guide:

Mark Forster’s new “autofocus” system is interesting, and Mark is a great time management experimenter, so we’re paying attention.

We believe even great systems can be improved, so we constantly look at other methods to enhance Total, Relaxed Organization. For example, TRO is based largely on David Allen’s GTD principles, and TRO uses some ”closed lists” like Mark Forster’s prior system, Do It Tomorrow. (TRO’s “Do Today” list is a closed list, and TRO relies on closed lists even more with certain tools like Remember the Milk.)

Overall, we see both good and bad in Mark’s new “autofocus” system. It could be great for some people but would probably fail in the long run for anyone feeling a lot of time management pain. Here is our reasoning.

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