Get organized secrets

1. Tell yourself that no matter what, some level of clutter with a child is going to happen. 2. Begin with messes and clutter that you see every day. Get organize your kitchen, garage, and family room before your hallway closet. 3. Use drawer dividers for socks, underwear, lingerie, and tiny items, to keep them separated and organized. 4. Use this same principle to organize your silverware, with clearly defined places for every fork and knife, or drawers for ties and socks or, underwear. Think in this same way for every aspect of your home. This will save many hours of searching for things. It will dramatically cut down on the clutter of items left out "for now" or "until I find a place for it." Develop a new mantra: everything has its place and a place for everything! 5. Allocate everything in your house a place. This way your family will know exactly where to find it and where to put it away, when they searches for something they need. 6. Keep items that are used frequently in places where you can reach them without stooping or bending, and store them close to the place they will be needed. 7. Establish one defined place in your house for storing library books, and end a house-wide hunt when it is time to read or return them. 8. Hang hooks for your keys and purse at the entry to your home, so each time you walk in, you can hang them up. 9. Get rid of all junk drawers, or allow yourself just one that you clear out once a week or more. When you establish certain items are being used repeatedly, designate a drawer for those. 10. Enlist a new rule: throw out one old thing for every new purchase that enters your home. 11. Make a mental note to observe what things pile up in your house and where they cluster, and then come up with a place nearby that becomes the official home where those things will reside. For this purpose baskets, shelves, and folders will work well. Set aside one basket for you and your partner for incoming mail, bills, and receipts and letters. 12. Never go up or down empty-handed when using stairs. Always grab some items that belong to upstairs rooms and quickly put it away while you are there. 13. Create a number of brightly marked folders for discount coupons, invitations and directions, and other time-sensitive papers that just clutter your counters. 14. Things you don’t need any longer: · Expired medications. · Clothes you no longer wear. · Extra paper or plastic grocery bags. · Makeup and samples you have never worn. · Sunscreen that's expired or more than one year old. · Organize your coupons and throw out all that have expired. · Cookbooks you rarely use. Cut out your favorite recipes only. · Magazines you meant to read but have never taken the time for. · Stuff your crumpled plastic bags from your grocer inside a cardboard roll like a hand towel roll. Keep under your sink. You will free your mind to remember your daily chores by getting rid of your clutter and organizing your home top to bottom. Be vigilant about cleaning about once a month and you will find it much easier to keep up, week-by-week.

Making life easier with nlp chunking

You know, in psychology there is a rule, especially within the NLP circles that I work in and the literature that I read, it is quite a famous rule; 7 plus or minus 2 – this is the notion that the conscious mind can only keep track of between 5 and 9 discrete pieces of information at one time. Your unconscious can literally keep track of billions and billions of things at the same time aparently (clever thing that it is!), while your conscious mind is more one step at a time and it has a fairly narrow focus. WHatever the truth of this, it is a useful way to expereince your own thinking. Here are a couple of things that you can do to test the extent of your conscious mind: Without writing them down, blurt out now, straight away without thought; - As many brands of cars as you can. - As many film titles as you can. - As many pop groups as you can. Many people run out of steam when they get to ten, usuallly because of the 7+-2 rule. The bottom line is, when the conscious mind is presented with more than 9 pieces of information, it gets overloaded. So before you send me a very clever email telling me off for pointing out the limits of the conscious mind, would you like to know how you can use this to your advantage? Of course you would. When you bear the 7+-2 rule in mind, you can start to organise things so that you work with your conscious mind, playing to its strengths. For instance, if you have a to-do list. Many people that I have encountered have a daily to-do list with 20 or more items on it. This is a recipe for total overwhelm (at which point they often resort to looking for the easiest or funnest thing on the list to do.) The following ideas can help you get a handle on your to-do list really fast, especially if that list has things that are important for your goals and achievements and sense of well-being. Firstly, scan through the list, looking for items that can be grouped together into categories. For example, here is a load of the stuff on my list for this week: Write Adam Up. Bank cheques. Finish writing chapter for new book Prepare for client therapy sessions. Finish project on public speaking. Finish marketing material for new courses. FInish listening to current educational Audio set. Read through solicitors material regarding other business project. Write up script for new audio title. Send out follow-up letters for last weeks clients. Prepare for photo shoot for new Bio. Write up blurb for my new Audio release. Write new web-page copy. Review new CD covers Meet PR people Do proposal for new book for Publishers. Read e-book New course blurb Meet with prospective business artner for new project. Clear inbox. Have a life. Have fun...... The first thing on the list is ‘Write Adam Up’ – for me, "Adam Up" is one of my products, so I write ‘Product’ beside it. Next is ‘Bank Cheques’ – that’s part of our cashflow system, so I write ‘Systems’ beside it. Pretty soon, every item on my list is in a category: Write Adam Up. Bank cheques. Finish writing chapter for new book Prepare for client therapy sessions. Finish project on public speaking. Finish marketing material for new courses. Finish listening to current educational Audio set. Read through solicitors material regarding other business project. Write up script for new audio title: Products. Send out follow-up letters for last weeks clients: Systems. Prepare for photo shoot for new Bio: Marketing. Write up blurb for my new Audio release: Marketing. Write new web-page copy: Marketing. Review new CD covers: Systems Meet PR people: People. Do proposal for new book for Publishers: People. Read e-book: Personal. New course blurb: Marketing. Meet with prospective business artner for new project: People. Clear inbox: Personal. Have a life. Have fun: Personal. This is better! I have now gone from a list of 20 or so items (instant overwhelm) to a list of 6 categories which is well within even my 7+-2 limit. - Products - Systems - Training - Marketing - People - Personal This is what we refer to as chunking in my professional field, and is one of the most effective ways of dealing with any large or complex set of tasks (or set of anything else). You may say “Great, but I’ve got 200 things on my to-do list”. It doesn’t matter – the same principles apply. If you go through your to-do list or your goals lists; just get it whittled down from 200 items to 20 categories, that is better, it is getting it more manageable – go through the 20 categories and see where they group together. Group together goals for your own development; being a non-smoker, growing in confidence, creating wealth, reducing weight etc. The key is to have no more than 9 categories at each level – this way your conscious mind can keep track of it. Secondly, start to manage your to-do list by the high-level categories: You can use this in all sorts of areas to make things more manageable, for example: - To-do lists. - Goals you are working toward. - The filing system on your computer. - Your filing cabinet. - Any project you’re doing. One of the things this allows you to do is notice very quickly if there’s a specific area where you have not been taking much action lately – very useful for helping focus on what needs attention.