I’ve had it with clutter! Well, you already know my whole business is about helping you live a clutter-free life—what I mean is, I’ve had it with the word “clutter”. If you say it fast, it morphs into “cludder”. If you enunciate the t’s then it becomes an oddly long self-absorbed two-syllable word “clut- ter”… It’s just plain awkward. Now take the short, sweet, too-the-point word: junk. Easy! Get that junk out of your head! Get that junk out of your space! Much more effective!

Speaking of junk, I heard a rumor that our little town of Nevada City is sponsoring a city-wide clean up—all residents will be encouraged to comb through their homes and pull out the junk that no longer supports them. A conversation with our City Manager turned rumor into fact. There will be a city-wide rummage sale on May 2nd (a somewhat dangerous opportunity to replace all the junk you just got rid of with new stuff), followed a couple of weeks on later May 16th by a city-wide pick up of whatever’s left.

Woohoo! It’s time for some spring cleaning workshops, click here for dates! Sign up to get inspiration, ideas, camaraderie, and to have some good clean fun (pun intended). And for those of you catching the spring cleaning bug outside Nevada County, I’ll be adding a teleclass date or two. No reason not to jump on the old-stuff purge train. Remember, one person’s junk is another person’s jewel.

And now for cookies, warm-ups, and freedom from the wild and wily thoughts running rampant in your head.

Let it be easy,

Shawn Tuttle
Head Simplifier, Project Simplify
Co-editor, The Simplifier

"Clarity of mind means clarity of passion; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what he loves."

-Blaise Pascal

By Shawn Tuttle

Imagine walking into your favorite grocery store with a cookie craving. You know exactly where to go—far end of aisle 3 on the right—Pepperidge Farms Mint Brussels ®, mmmmm. Hey, some coffee would be really good with these. Head back to the deli to pick up a 12oz cup of French Roast. Back to the 10-items-or-less-checkout line and you’re in and out of the store in less than 10 minutes.

Just think of how different your shopping experience would be if the delivery trucks just dumped their shipment in the middle of the store. No aisles, no shelves, just a big pile. Ridiculous, yes? Bad news: that’s how a big mess of jumbled thoughts in your head are organized (or not organized, as the case may be). Things to do, reminders, things to get, phone numbers, and other unresolved issues form an amorphous cloud that drain your energy during the day.

While it may not seem like that big of a deal, it does have a very significant impact on you. That monstrous pile of stuff in the middle of the store gets in the way of where you want to go. It makes it difficult to put your hands on what you need.

In terms of your mind, these rampant thoughts rob you of your good energy and have a nasty habit of leaving you open to distractions. This leaves you feeling brain-fried and wondering where the day went. Ugh.

Good news! Most of the thoughts stampeding across your mind can quite simply be parked elsewhere. The simple solution: You write down the random thoughts that pop into your head and then return your attention to the situation at hand. Your mind has the satisfaction of seeing it written down for future reference and lets you get back to work.

That sounds plenty easy, yes? But where are you going to write it down? This is the linchpin that makes the difference between a solid system or more disorganization later on.

The next time you walk into the store with a cookie craving, you head straight to the cookie aisle ready to fast track to check out—but no, the cookies you want aren’t there. There are the coconut macaroons and the Nilla Wafers… where are the Pepperidge Farm cookies?

You look all over the cookie section, maybe they’re at the end of the aisle. Nope, not there either. You check the next aisle, left and right sides. Ugh! where the heck are they?! You have an appointment coming up, you gotta go. Where are those cookies?! Where’s the manager!?!?!

For too long, we’ve let our thoughts drive us around silly. You can regain control of the driver’s seat by capturing those thoughts and consistently parking them in a retrievable place.

Let’s get practical

What you want is an easy-to-use, reliable method to consistently park your ideas and reminders. Cookies in the cookie aisle, zucchini in the produce section, and milk in the refrigerated area. Just as different foods have different storage requirements, different types of info can be parked in different places. Since there are a few variables and steps to consider, we’re talking about setting up a system.

The primary benefit of using a thought-capture system is that it relieves your mind of the burden of tracking thoughts that bombard you over the course of the day. No more loitering thoughts crowding the mind! You’ll have more creative energy for projects and problem-solving by simply clearing the aisles.

There’s a 2-point test for deciding where to write down your thoughts:

1. Is it easy?
2. Can you get right to the info you need, when you need it?

Walking across the house from your home office to the kitchen just to write, "Pepperidge Farm Mint Brussels – 5 packs" on the grocery list is not easy. Writing on post-it notes, scraps of paper, and the backs of envelopes is easy, however, it does not typically make for fast finding later on.

If you answer “yes” to both test questions then it’s a good place.

What about when you have a good storage place for your lists, like your computer, but don’t have it turned on or with you at all times? For this very reason, I strongly encourage you to carry a blank journal—notepad, planner, whatever you like—as long as you carry it with you always. Then download your collected reminders at the end of day during daily download time. (Your daily download time is for reviewing the day and provides the perfect opportunity to deposit info into its proper place.)

Your own personal parking garage

There are two sets of decisions to make when designing your own system:

1. What lists to use – Find the middle ground between too specific and too general.
2. Where to store them – A general rule of thumb is close to where you’ll use them.

Below is a summary of your options, including a brief description of my own locations and lists, to jumpstart your setup.

File folders are particularly good for the ones that are a response to printed materials like brochures, fliers, newspaper clippings, or magazine articles. I just drop the printed material directly in it, sometime with a note attached to reflect a specific idea that was triggered.
Examples: Local resources, speech ideas, travel ideas, art project ideas.

Spreadsheet is great for goals-oriented lists since you have the flexibility of cutting and pasting. I have one file for all of these. I park each list on a separate worksheet, and then name the tabs for easy reference. This can be replaced by online lists (ex. a Google spreadsheet/document) if you use multiple computers.
Examples: Current projects, upcoming projects, home repairs, marketing ideas, and the future year planning calendar.

The Notes section of the digital daily planner (for ex., Entourage or Outlook) syncs to my smartphone and thus I have them with me when I’m out and about. This can be replaced by your carry-around planner if you aren’t into the smartphone and sync technologies.
Examples: Movies to rent, groceries/things to get, and gift ideas for friends and family.

Online bookmarks (in your web browser) are especially nifty since you can group them by subjects. Your blog and news tracking can be tracked by RSS tools such as Yahoo or Google feed.
Examples: social media, podcast sources, financial, local resources, reference (ex. dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia etc).

Online reminders such as BirthdayAlarm.com which sends you an email reminding you of upcoming birthdays.

Digital voice recorders relieve you from typing or writing. Some people prefer, and my co-editor Lance swears by, the digital voice recorder. Remembering that retrieving the info easily is one of the criteria of a good system, digital is crucial because you get a multiple-folder feature (you can usually download onto your computer, too). For example, Lance has different folders designated for screenplay ideas, political essays, one for his current main project, and then one for quick reminders that gets cleared daily. As in his case, this tool is great for those, like writers, who have an abundance of extensive story ideas.

These suggestions represent a variety of formats to accommodate your work style and habits. To begin, you may want to stick with technologies you are comfortable with. Once your habits are consistent, you can look into other storage technologies if you are feeling limited.

There’s no need to expect all of your info to be organized in the same way. The goal is to get the info out of your head with minimum disruption and then for the info to be where you want it when you need it. As you regain your peace of mind, you’ll remember that you are driving the shopping cart of your thoughts, not the other way around. Now about your cookie obsession…

—
Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.

by Shawn Tuttle

When I begin a bike ride, the thoughts running through my head go something like this:

"Why am I doing this? This is hard! Ugh, where’s a cafe??"

After 20 minutes the theme of my thoughts change to something like:

"Ahhhh, it’s so good to be out and moving! I needed this! Look out hill, here I come!"

In other words, a 20-minute warm-up. This means that every time I stop to chat with someone and break the momentum, the warmup clock goes back to zero. Rough!

It’s the same thing with projects—you may need mental warm-up time. Take writing an article for the newsletter as an example. It takes about 10-15 minutes for me to settle in to the process and creatively feel the subject at hand.

What is your mental warm up time? Understanding that it takes 10-15 minutes to settle (or re-settle) into a project will help you fend off distractions because you have a better understanding of the real cost. It also helps you decide on chunks of time to schedule. For example, if you want to work on a project for 20 minutes add a 10-minute warm-up and you see that you need to schedule 30 minutes.

Paying attention to the idiosyncrasies of your workflow can save valuable time down the road!

Compiled by Lance Brown

Take Your Office Home (Jakarta Globe/Washington Post)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/bvphsc
You may have heard about Shawn’s recent foray back into the world of the non-home office, which appears to be going swimmingly. This is another instance where Shawn and I diverge. No matter how big any business I might run may get, I think I’ll always prefer to work out of my home. Or to live at my work. It doesn’t matter which, as long as the fridge is stocked with Coke, and I get to control the music and hang out with my pets. ;-) This article is loaded with practical tips about giving your work a place of its own at home. Kitchen desks be gone!

Get organized to save time, space and stress (colorodoan.com)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/dnmnfs
Maybe you’re not ready to save time and space yet. Or maybe saving space and reducing stress is more than you want to incorporate into your life just now. Fear not; this article lets you choose a la carte any one of the great triumvirate of simplification benefits, and gives you a handful of simple ways to reap the rewards of each.

Protect your job in difficult economic times – set goals (Examiner.com)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/djg3qf
I haven’t achieved a lot of my goals, but I’ve achieved a lot of goals in my efforts to do so. I don’t know if it was foresight or just luck, but I set so many outlandishly high goals for myself early on in adulthood, that the quest to achieve them has involved hundreds (or thousands) of little mini-goals, each of which has been satisfying in itself. And the bigger goals—we can call them dreams, really, but I’ve made them goals—have acted like a giant hot air balloon, providing most of the momentum as I continue my ongoing quest for that pie in the sky.
So I guess what I’m saying is I endorse setting goals. Yay for goals, go Team Goal, etc. Or, as the author of this article points out, “You’ll feel more in control and you can start to make positive changes right away.” That’s what I said, right?

If you know of something in the news that should be featured here, let us know!

Introduced by Lance Brown

Project Simplify is growing up, and part of growing up in the business world, especially in a people-based industry like simplifying, means dressing like a professional and having a professional office. And in a heart-based industry like simplifying, one also has to tap into the full power of visual imagery and the calming power of nature’s beauty.

In the interests of growing up, and growing into the hearts and minds of clients and potential clients worldwide, Shawn is taking all of the aforementioned steps toward business maturity.

Q: What am I taking a typically-long route to saying?
A: That in addition to the new out-of-home office digs, and the increasing (and increasingly colorful) blog posts featured in last issue and below, there are two other planks of maturity yet to be laid in the floor of Project Simplify. (So watch your step!) To wit, a new design for the website and the newsletter – both of which have been largely unchanged for years now. Both will be unveiled in the next month!

Here are some blog posts to keep you company while you wait with bated breath:

• The Great Nevada City Clean Up
• Loving books, abusing “and”
• Rest in Natural Great Peace
• Is it worth going to hell for?
• Next time on TV will be easier…
• Going places with the mobile place setting
• But I like my washing machine…
• One way to enter a difficult situation

Introduced by Lance Brown

Maybe it’s because I’ve had four different kinds of driving jobs, or maybe I had just had a long day that day, or maybe it’s the zany soundtrack music, but when I watched this driver-antics video, I laughed really hard. (Even as I winced with sympathetic pain for the unfortunate 4-wheeled klutzes featured in it.) And—this is how my mind works—even as I was laughing my tookus off, I was wishing to myself “Please, let no one get seriously hurt, so Shawn will let me use this in the newsletter!”

Fortunately for the slapstick humor lovers among you, my wishes have a tendency to control reality, and indeed, none of these pitifully-deficient drivers seem to suffer too much more than embarrassment and a broken car. (Been there done that, right?) So feel free to laugh – they’d probably laugh if it was you.

Here’s the address: http://www.flixxy.com/cars-and-drivers.htm

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