Make it Happen This Year!

The New Year has been given a bad rap because of the terrible success rate of New Year’s resolutions. The data is there to prove it: Quirkology.com tracked over 3000 people attempting to achieve New Year’s resolutions and only 12% actually achieved their goal.

Before you give up – read on…

With my clients, I always stress the importance of breaking goals into smaller more achievable tasks. It is truly the only way to achieve what can sometimes seem impossible. In fact, there is scientific research that links neurological evidence to support this theory.

The neurotransmitter Dopamine is linked with motivation. Our brain rewards us with a rush of Dopamine when we achieve our goals. Therefore, if you achieve smaller goals more often, your brain will reward you on a regular basis, making it easier to make the long trek toward larger goals. For instance, if you’re planning on running a marathon, but your  regular workout routine in 2009 involved a remote control and a bowl of popcorn, it would be smart to break this goal into smaller parts for 2010.

If your New Year’s resolutions are truly going to stick, then you have the rest of your life to make them work. Get yourself a 2010 calendar and mark out smaller goals throughout the year. For an example of a success story, read this article.

Happy New Year and enjoy your Dopamine!

Instant Holiday Spirit

If you’re like most Americans,  you’re probably too busy to create the perfect Martha Stewart holiday atmosphere in your home. In fact, you might barely have enough time to grab some last-minute gifts and tack some stockings on the mantel.

If you’re short on time, create an instant holiday spirit in six steps:

1. Wear red. Everyone will say you “look festive.”

2.  Trick your nose:

a. Instead of slaving for hours in the kitchen, you can fill the house with the smells of scrumptious home cooking with scented candles in cinnamon, nutmeg, or vanilla.

b. You can also skip the Christmas tree fiasco and buy strong-smelling wreaths and pine-scented oils. (Hang some lights around the windows, and your house will fill warm and enchanting.)

c.  Bake a small batch of cookies (cut the recipe in half) – or make a loaf of gingerbread (from the box) – just for the smell.

3. Start a holiday tradition – but keep it casual. Have an ugly sweater party with your friends at a local hangout, and try to outdo each other with your hideous Goodwill finds. If you’re feeling ambitious, add a White Elephant Gift exchange – it’s the ultimate low-maintenance holiday tradition.

4. Stop expecting everything to be perfect, and start enjoying what you have. It sounds simplistic, but it’s actually difficult to do. Take a deep moment to breathe deeply. Look around yourself and notice the things that you are thankful for.

Play with Time, don’t “Manage” it

The age-old adage, “time flies when your having fun” was modified by psychologists Anthony Chaston and Alan Kingstone at the University of Alberta in Canada. They say “fun” isn’t necessarily the right word. Their research found that doing something interesting (and especially challenging) takes our attention away from keeping track of time. They found that people who were more engaged in their task, tended to underestimate the amount of time that had passed.

We often talk about “time management,” but don’t always discuss how to make time fly… or make it slow down. We’d like to speed up the boring times, and extend the fun times. We’d like our life to last longer, but we don’t want the seconds to drag.

The important lesson from this research is that time flies, not just when we’re having fun, but when we’re doing things to challenge us. We stop listening to the tick of the clock when we’re engaged in learning and challenging our minds.

Create your own time machine by spending each day doing things that you love, or work that is challenging. There are 31,556,926 seconds in a year – try to make sure that you aren’t aware of them ticking by.

Wasting time trying to save time?

I’m often asked for recommendations on time-saving and organizing products like iPhone apps, email programs, and PDAs. I even get the occasional question about day-planners (“is it okay that I still use one?”)

Don’t be fooled by electronic devices that offer to save you time – and end up costing you a day of sanity trying to use them.

Read this before you buy and app, download software… or even buy a day planner:

1.What already works for you? The best organizing product for you is going to be the easiest and most convenient to use. Think about it: you are wanting something that will save you time and make your life easier. Your life is already complicated enough. Keep this in mind when you’re looking for something to help you organize your life – make sure it doesn’t make you work harder than you already do. Look for an all-in-one package. For instance: the best phone/calendar is one that connects to your computer calendar. If you use Gmail, you should find a phone that can sync your gmail account with your phone email and phone calendar. Then (and this is the most important part), have someone “techie” set it up for you – call the help desk of whatever product you bought and don’t be shy about asking questions.

2.Keep it simple… and brainless Don’t spend 5 hours setting up a system that duplicates what you already do. For instance, I recently paid $4.95 for an iPhone app named Nubi Do. It has 4 stars, so it must work for many people, but not for me. I hunched over my phone and typed with my thumbs for almost an hour. I had to copy my to do list line-by-line into the Nubi Do rows because there wasn’t a way to import a document. All the while, I was skeptical whether it was a good use of my time… and it wasn’t.

3. List to calendar, and repeat The best organizational system is a list, a calendar, and lots of persistence. Carry a pad of paper or a phone with you at all times and be ready to add things to your list as soon as you think of them. We don’t always remember important to-do list items when it’s most convenient, so be prepared to sit down on a park bench or pull your car over in order to write it down before you forget. Then, take out your calendar at the end of the day, and write your to-do list on specific days and times. Keep trying this every day, and you won’t need any fancy electronics – just a big dose of persistence.

12-Step Program

If you keep finding your “To Do” list buried under a pile of old bills – and you’re having trouble getting things accomplished – you could use some age-old wisdom discovered by the ancient Egyptians. It’s over 5000 years old – but still pertinent today. It’s called a calendar.

In my Organizing businesses, clients often ask me if I have a formula to help get things done – and I do – but I always make a joke about this “mysterious ancient Egyptian formula” that can help them accomplish their goals.

The calendar is a great tool for breaking long-term goals into smaller, more “doable” tasks. Answer these questions below, and then follow them for 12-months, and you will achieve your goal for the year.

1. Grab a piece of paper and answer the question – what would you like your life to look like on July 2nd, 2010? Be as descriptive and detailed as possible – fill the entire page. Will you be living in the same place? Working at the same job? What would be the best possible situation? Keep it realistic enough to be achievable, but don’t play it too safe. This is the life that you want to work towards in the next couple of months.

2. Next, take the paragraph that you’ve written and underline the “active sentences”… choose sentences that contain goals that you can work toward. For instance, underline a sentence “I want to travel to Italy,” because going to Italy is a goal.

3. Next, make a list of the goals that you underlined, and leave space for numbers 1-4 beneath each goal. For instance:

Travel to Italy:

Then begin writing the smaller steps that you will need to take to accomplish this goal. With the “Travel to Italy” example, you can write:

Travel to Italy:
a. Calculate the total amount of money I will need for the trip and divide it by the number of months before I want to travel. This will be the monthly amount that I need to save.
b. Set up a separate bank account to save for the vacation with automatic withdrawal of the monthly amount that I want to save.
c. Buy a travel book about Italy.
d. Subscribe to a blog about Italy to stay current with restaurants and entertainment.

Once you get started writing the list – you’ll probably find many more than 4 bullet points!

4. Break your larger goal into 12 steps – one for each month. You will be surprised at how easy it is to accomplish one goal a month… and how fast the time flies!

5. Write each goal on the last day of each month on a calendar with a reward  for accomplishing it. Make the reward something that you never allow yourself to do. This will give  instant-gratification while you’re patiently working toward a long-term goal.

Send Mother’s Day cards today!

In the age of text messaging and email, nothing could be more touching than a Mother’s Day card sent through the regular-old mail. That is… if you can find an envelope and stamp.

I hardly ever use the US postal service anymore. I’ve signed up for automatic withdrawal for all my bills – and send emails to my loved ones. I only reserve the postal mail for very special occasions – Mother’s Day being one of them.

But the problem with the “real” mail is that it doesn’t leave room for procrastination. The mail can take 3-5 days in the US, depending on when you send it and where your destination is. So, to make sure it arrives to your Mother before Sunday May 10th, you should really send the card today… Wednesday at the very, very latest.

Next year, mark Mother’s Day on your calendar 5 days before – so you don’t wind up sending a last-minute ecard.