Sometimes You Just Need to Get Away

After several months of child-induced sleep deprivation, a brutal week-long stomach virus and general day-to-day stress, I decided a break from life was in order. A few days in the mountains with a whole lot of doing nothing was exactly what my exhausted body and mind needed. The weekend basically consisted of a lot of lounging in bed, a few dips in the Jacuzzi, a much needed massage, venturing into town once or twice for a meal, followed by a little retail- therapy at the outlet mall on the way home.

It is often so easy to be excessively hard on ourselves and forget the absolute necessity of taking a break. If you don’t have a balanced mind, how can you have an organized home, or life for that matter? In an ideal world, it really shouldn’t take violent illness or massive bags under our eyes to force us into retreat. Why is it so difficult to take these needed time-outs before drastic things happen? The fact is when we become so consumed by our work or taking care of our homes, we neglect ourselves. Eventually it does become mandatory to actually leave your home to get some peace and relaxation.

My point to all of this? It’s ok to give yourself a break! Sometimes we need to walk away from routine every now and then. If you can do this in your own space, great! For me, I need a change of scenery and a new place to be where I won’t be tempted to do laundry or feel guilty for not cleaning and picking up. We aren’t machines, and while we are our worst critics, it’s so crucial to give ourselves some time off from all the “have-to” and “should be doings” of life.

Escaping for a little bit won’t make your issues or problems go away, but it will certainly put you in much more relaxed state of mind, giving you the opportunity to attack each day with renewed energy. It is my goal to allow the next “retreat” to come sooner rather than later, or at least before life begins to feel overwhelming again. Of course, there is always the ever helpful chant of "Serenity Now!"

Angering the Computer and Technology Gods

As I sit at my computer mortified by the amount of time that has flown by since my last blog, I realize that sometimes there is a frightening aspect of being too dependent on technology. Yes, it is here to help make our lives easier, but a majority of the time, it seems to do the opposite.

Everything seemed to be running smoothly on my computer systems, until all at once my desktop crashed, leaving me to rebuild the hard drive from scratch; my PDA decided not to accept daylight savings happening early, switching all appointments to an hour earlier at will; and my laptop wouldn’t recognize its own CD/DVD drive. Not to mention that on top of all of this mess, I managed to lockout my website and webmail from my home computers. Of course all I could think, as I screamed out several long lists of cuss words, was what have I done to anger the computer gods?

After taking many deep breaths throughout the two-week debacle, I realized I hadn’t angered anyone or anything; rather there was a lesson that I apparently needed to learn. And thus, today’s organizing tip: BACK-UP YOUR IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON YOUR COMPUTER!!! When you are done doing this, back it up again; and after that, at least one more time. It is so important to have you files stored in several different places. It doesn’t need to be every little thing on your computer, but the more you have stored in a safe place, the easier it will be to recover anything that gets erased.

• Make a list of files that you can’t live without (some of mine include all documents, photos, quicken accounts, music and website favorites).

• If you don’t have one, buy one or more external hard drives (Costco has great deals on little portable ones).

• Back-up data at least once a week. Financial data such as quicken should be backed-up daily or when new data is entered).

• Keep all program files and/or discs in an easy to locate place. These programs could include the Windows disc that came with the computer, or the Apple equivalent, MS Word, quicken, Photoshop, iTunes, etc. That way when you spend hours on the phone with your friendly computer techie, you will be able to locate these programs at ease if they need to be re-installed.
  

At the risk of sounding to Boy Scout-ish, always be prepared!!! I have had my hard drive erased twice now; the first time I didn’t have anything backed-up and the second time, I was ready for it. Lesson learned; it is much easier and less stressful to recover data when you know where it is and that is somewhere safe! Technology can be helpful as long as we still remember what to do when it fails us.

Time?!? Who Has Time for Time?

Here it is, January 31st, and I am pondering where exactly the month went. Somewhere between dance recitals, birthday parties, web designing, abandoned New Year’s resolutions and many, many more distractions, January has miraculously slipped away. I had set the goal for myself of blogging early in the month, because January is, or was, Get Organized Month. As organized as I am, it is still far too easy to fall victim to my ugly nemesis; procrastination. So, with one day left in the month (technically, I suppose this counts for a January blog), I figured Time Management was an appropriate topic.

Why is it so difficult to take charge of the day? The number one complaint I hear is, “I don’t have enough time to.... (you can fill in the blank).” Somehow the “to-do” list seems to grow exponentially, even after we are making progress crossing items off. Here are a few tips to help battle the “not enough time in the day” phenomena.

1. Identify your procrastination issues. The most common barriers are:

• You consider it low priority task (when it is not one)
• You don’t have enough information to finish the project or make a decision
• You did not set enough or a specific time aside to do it
• It seems overwhelming (if it does not break down into mini tasks)
• Something has kept you from achieving it (perfectionist personality)
• You don’t know what steps it will take to complete the task

2. Take a few moments to identify where your time is spent and discover where or who is sucking time away.

3. For one week, make a detailed calendar of exactly what you did and the times you did it. It is amazing how much wasted time ends up on this list. I know what you are thinking, “I don’t have time to do this!!!” Trust me; taking a few moments to make this list will really help you be more productive in the long run.

4. When making a to-do list, prioritize in order of importance. Try group activities that make sense to get done around the same time (such as errands that are close to each other). Always do the highest priority first. Even if it is the most painstaking item, it is the one you are most likely to put off. Once you get that big one over with, it’s much easier to fly through your day.


5. Finally, don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t get it all done. We are only human and sometimes you actually do need to sit back and read that trashy magazine just to gain some peace and sanity. At the risk of sounding too much like Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow really is another day.

I know for me, I plan to have a much more productive February, and hope you can do the same!