The final keynote speaker of the SF Chapter of NAPO 19th Annual Conference (my original post here) was Judith Kolberg, whose book (co-authored with Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D.), ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life“ has been on my shelf for at least 2 years. She founded of The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. As soon as she opened her mouth, she proved to be the kind of speaker you want to kick back and listen to for an hour or two. A wonderful story-teller, she had me on the brink of tears laughing at one point.

I know it’s not so funny hearing that she was funny. Hmm, well, imagine walking into someone’s home as a newbie organizer, to find stalagmite of paper pushing up from the floor and stalactite dropping down from the ceiling. (My apologies if this is your actual situation. If it is, and you want to do something about it, give her a call–that is, if you want to clear it out. Call a photographer if you’d like to submit a photo to the Guinness World Records.)

As a specialist in working with people with ADD, she has a particular sensitivity for the client’s perspective. Helping our clients understand what they can expect of the experience can be calming information. For example, she reminded us to explain to our clients how their office would get worse in the organizing process before it gets better. This can serve to pop any glorification bubble that may exist (everything will be easy and perfect now that the organizer is here!)

She graciously ended her talk saying she was “honored and thrilled to have been your keynote speaker.”

I’ll end this post by saying that I was honored and thrilled to have been in the audience.

If you have more things than you know what to do with, or feel like you spend an inordinate amount of time rearranging too many things in your space, I highly recommend feng shui expert Karen Kingston’s book: Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui.

I feel the title is a bit misleading because she focuses on clearing your space in preparation of Feng Shui. Feng Shui is an ancient practical art for optimizing the energy flow of a space. I feel it helps with intention and really gets your space to support you in your endeavors. This book, however is about clearing your space before you make Feng Shui changes. Since Feng Shui can increase your intentions in areas, if you have clutter in an area that you want to focus on, say your professional life, or relationships, then Feng Shui will magnify the chaos. Not good!

She explains that everything in your space influences you on an energetic level. Something will either give or drain your energy. An item may do both, but very rarely will the item have zero effect on you. I especially like her book because she offers so many insights into why people collect too much stuff that you can’t help be inspired to start purging!

I’m a couple months short of 3 years with Project Simplify. While my focus is to help people do what they want and love to do by making their office & life management easier, I am also a strong supporter of full-life simplification.

Years ago, while living in Santa Barbara I was car-free for 3 or 4 years, choosing instead to bicycle commute. I rarely ate out, preferring to make my food. The same clothes would appear on my back for years, finally getting the boot to the local thrift store once the style was just too dated.

So what’s the confession? I still haven’t read Duane Elgin’s (now classic) book, Voluntary Simplicity (oh me gads!!). It’s on order. =)

I probably thought that I was probably already doing the stuff that he’d probably have written about… so why use up more paper and have another book on the shelf? Well, I just finished reading the first half of his report, co-authored with Arnold Mitchell, titled “Voluntary Simplicity“. It was published in 1977. the downloadable pdf is under
REPORTS & ARTICLES
2. Sustainability & Simplicity

OR you can get the (revised 1998–correction 7/10/07 to 1993 per book’s author) book, which presumably would have suggestions, ideas, and even some inspiration here:
Voluntary Simplicity,
Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich

What I found particularly interesting was that even 30 years ago, the authors understood that it would be the desire for inner growth that would provide the fuel to change people’s lifestyles, not the somewhat conceptual belief that we’d either be annihilated by resource depletion (or fighting over) IF pollution doesn’t finish us off first. And that “each person will consider whether his or her level and pattern of consumption fits, with grace and integrity, into the practical art of daily living” (from page 5 of the report).

This has translated to people with widely varying lifestyles and convictions:

• no car, 10 year old car, hybrid
• only grow my own veggies, buy them from the nearest market, only from a health food store
• no technology, phone and electricity, cell phone/laptop

Widely diverse, yet all chosen with personal consideration of “grace and integrity”. Each decision seeking to incorporate energy and material consumption, work, and personal growth “into the practical art of daily living”.

I look forward to reading the book!

This past weekend found me at Wilbur Hotsprings for a 3 day yoga retreat led by Thomas Fortel. SaWeet! Life condensed to the essentials: soak in hot mineral water, do yoga, eat, read, repeat twice, then bedtime. Do same the next day. Fascinating how quickly that lifestyle became the “norm”. How quickly the lack of 2nd brain (laptop) was forgotten.

Brain reprogramming. When my mind gets clogged up, spun out, freaked out, or goes into perma-monkey chatter brain, I know it’s time to hit the reset button—aka brain reprogramming. It’s like a looping program needs to get wiped out of memory.

I read Stephen King’s On Writing. Fascinating! While I don’t particularly care for his novel genre, I truly enjoyed this memoir/writing tips book—a storyteller to the core. He reveals quite a bit about his life and what led to his current popular fiction icon status. I was happy to read that he writes for the love of writing. For the love of discovering how a character will get out of a predicament.

Sounds to me like he has a love of the creative process and mystery—trusting that the story will work itself eventually and surrendering to that process. There is an implicit understanding that micro-managing will only get in the way or stop the process entirely. The only allowable control freak tendency being to sit his butt down every day to write.

And isn’t that why so many people don’t do what they claim to have a passion for? They don’t make the time for it? That says to me, “not enough passion” and that it’s time to re-evaluate what you think you want. That’s one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself. If you really want it, you’ll figure out how to make it happen.

Learn from the masters of writing, suggestions from Andrew Todhunter (my intro of Andrew), session leader at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference:

Guides & References

• Magazine Writing That Sells by Don McKinney
• On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William K. Zinsser
• The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by E.B. White and William Strunk Jr.
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Examples of fine contemporary non-fiction

• Essays of E. B. White
• Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
• John McPhee
• Tom Wolfe
• Joan Didion
• Michael Herr
• A.J. Liebling
• Hunter S. Thompson

The specifics of Permaculture are laid out in detail in Permaculture Pioneer, Bill Mollison’s, textbook style book, PERMACULTURE: A Designers’ Manual. A lot of it has to do with homesteading–working with wind and water patterns, tree planting layouts for windbreaks, working with different types of earth, etc.

At this point in my life, I’m mostly interested in the principles of Permaculture. The Introduction to Permaculture, also by Mollison, is shorter, and for me, a great source of inspiration. You can get your own copy of this great book by clicking on the book image below. (Note that Amazon reports this book as being out of print so I don’t know how easy it will be to find in the future.)

Let’s just call it a Stephen Covey Classic. Whether for your own professional and emotional development or to help you understand where your colleagues (and their mystifying behavior) are, this is a “must read.”

I just picked it up again and was struck by the intro concept of dependence, independence, and interdependence. The entrepreneur tends to be independent. As such, our goal is to make that transformation to interdependence. This book provides heartfelt understanding and compassion to keep us on this path.