Simplified Organization Audio Blog: quick actions, organized attitudes

Season 7: Habits We are often encouraged to set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. It sounds great, and those goals do have a place. But when much of our lives is about developing people (ourselves and our children), we can’t put ourselves or others into such neat little boxes. We must treat people as people instead of as projects. So for many of our hopes for the future, we’d do better to focus on our processes – what we do today and tomorrow and the next day – rather than on reaching a particular outcome. Aim for the habits and the actions, not the outcome. Read the original post here: Humming Home Habits: Aim Recommended Reading

Season 7: Habits What does being productive even mean? It’s not simply getting more done, but getting the right things done, done well, and done cheerfully. Whether or not you want to do more in 2016, I bet you want to do what you do better – whether that means more consistently, more joyfully, or more skillfully. Me, too. Just because I write about productivity and organization doesn’t mean I have it all together. It just means I’m always paying attention and trying to improve. I write what I need to hear myself as much as what I’ve learned and what I do. If we can hone in on these practices, we will become more effective in and more satisfied with our work. Mentioned in this episode: Watch the free Work the Plan video on making vocation goals Read the original post here: 5 Habits for a Productive Year Recommended Reading

Season 7: Habits Rather than grandiose goals for a new year, we should be focusing on small habits that we can build upon. These new year habits continue giving, because they become automatic. So we can gain their benefit without expending much energy to do so. A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. Read the original post here: Start New Year Well: Keystone Habits Recommended Reading

Season 7: Habits Why make my bed? It is not so much the made bed itself that is the goal, but the “easy win” factor. By making my bed in the morning I set the tone for the day. It is a victory of willpower (because I’m pathetic and require willpower to make my bed) that doesn’t tax my willpower much (not, like, breaking a habit of eating chocolate in the evening – for a purely theoretical example). Walking in upon a room with a made bed is a reminder throughout the day that I am in charge, I am making progress, I am becoming a more orderly person. Read the original post here: January Habit: Making My Bed Recommended Reading

Organization podcast: Incremental change is the best approach, and keystone habits are the increments that have the biggest impact.

When we focus on those little things we do daily, we will build gradual, incremental change that will provide lasting momentum and real progress.

Season 6: Digital Planning Evernote is awesome. It is my digital filing cabinet. Instead of lugging around a heavy binder, or filing reams of paper, it all goes into Evernote. Not only does Evernote save my documents in an organized way, it even recognizes text – printed and handwritten – in images, pdfs, and scans saved there. This means I can search for documents when I need them instead of going through and looking in the right folder. I can type “Costco receipt” and up comes all the Costco receipts I’ve saved, whether they’re in the same notebook or note. With such quick retrieval, a huge database of saved records and notes is no longer daunting and useless to flip through. Read the original post here: Evernote for Homemaking Plans Become a paperless planner. More podcast goodness:

Season 6: Digital Planning with Evernote Because you asked… When you scan things to Evernote, is this time consuming? Do you scan it to a PDF file and attach the file? I’d be very curious as to what this process looks like for you. I tried with a manual the other day and it seemed to take forever, and I had to try several different ways to get it to work. It’s fast and easy, I promise! Read the original post here: Is it easy to scan to Evernote? Become a paperless planner. More podcast goodness:

Season 6: Digital Planning with Evernote Evernote is simply my external brain. Everyone should have an external brain of one sort or another, and Evernote is mine. I keep everything corralled into one of nine stacks. These stacks are named after my vocations. Developing your own vocation categories and goals is part of Simplified Organization: Learning to Love What Must Be Done, so I won’t go into that here. The stacks are numbered so that they are ordered in the order I want them in and not alphabetically by their names. The “Records” and “Reference” stacks are like long-term archives – information goes in there when it’s no longer current, but I’m probably not going to need it unless I need to know something about what happened years ago. Read the original post here: How do you organize Evernote stacks? Become a paperless planner. More podcast goodness:

Menu planning is a pain. I am all about the tips and tricks to minimize the time and brain-power we pour into menu planning. It’s something we need to do, something we need to become consistent with, but it doesn’t have to drain us or take an entire Saturday morning. We can streamline things and make it simpler. One tool I use to streamline a lot in my life is Evernote. I heart Evernote. Here’s how it helps my menu planning routine. Read the original post here: Evernote for Menu Planning Become a paperless planner. More podcast goodness:

SO033: Evernote for Daily To-Do Lists

SO032: Evernote for Home Routines

SO031: Gratitude Makes You Productive

SO030: Frustrated No Longer

SO029: Realistic Expectations