Organize 365 Podcast

If you and I were at a family holiday gathering together this week, the podcast today is the conversation I would start. I have always been inquisitive. Asking big questions and researching new interests is something I have always done. I see it in my husband, Greg, and our kids too. Whenever we wonder about something, we grab our phones and start to Google. It's a great thing really, the ability to question and get answers to your questions right away. Access to information has become a great equalizer and I find more and more of my friends have caught the questioning and researching bug that I have always had. The last two years have brought an unprecedented amount of change in every single area of our lives, and it is the pace of that change that is hard to comprehend. I do not have a big revelation, actionable plan, or solution to share. These are partly mindset shifts, and some observations, thoughts, and musings. Listen in and have a mental conversation with me this weekend. YOU are the person I would most like to talk to at the party.

What do you think of when you think of productivity? Remember last week when I said that when I am organized I feel like I can make forward progress on my goals and projects. For me productivity means doing MORE usually in LESS time or with less resistance. If you break down the 3 steps to getting organized: Decluttering = Removing. Organizing = Rearranging. Increasing Productivity = Moving forward faster. Let's look specifically at Increasing Productivity. Productivity comes from thinking and planning. Every minute you spend planning SAVES 4-5 minutes in executing your plan. Planning = TIME SAVED. While it may be hard to find time to plan your day, your meals or your vacation, you KNOW that when you do - everything goes easier and faster. Once again I have one caution... to be most effective, you need to have decluttered and organized the area you want to increase productivity in. These steps do need to be done in order. 5 Steps to Increased Productivity. Use the organized system. Plan. Refine and reorder. Evaluate / maintain. Execute. Get your FREE printable of the 3 stages of decluttering here!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week, I am sharing my interview with Sarah H. She is a physician and a single mom. She shares how she has worked to become more proactive even during an unpredictable phase of life. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: Organize 365 The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS Workboxes Paper Organizing Retreats

Get your FREE printable of the 3 stages of decluttering here! FINALLY! Don't you just want to jump right to the step where you get to go buy cute matching containers when you are organizing a space? ME TOO! BUT every time I do that... it influences what I keep and how I store things instead of my THINGS influencing those decisions. (In the podcast I share how I figured that out as a professional organizer.) First, let's talk about what being organized means. For me it means: Everything has a place. I know where to find things. I do not spend time LOOKING for things. I FEEL organized and put together. I can have friends over and feel great. My house looks good - not perfect - but good. I feel confident in my abilities. I don't have too little or too much. I have choices of how to spend my time. I am able to make forward progress on my goals and projects. Before I dive into the 5 steps to organizing I want to give you one caution... You will not get it 100% right the first time. Yep, no matter what you are organizing, your goal is to get 80-90% better. The last 10% comes in step 3. Which I will cover next week. Ok, so you know how you will feel and are not going for perfection, let's dive in! 5 Steps to Organizing Get a big picture plan for the space. Combine like items. Match your items to the space. Buy organizers. Clean and finish. Organizing feels amazing! But after a while... you realize something is missing. The last 10% is Step 3 of organizing — Increased Productivity. Links to things mentioned in the podcast: Try one FREE week of the 100 Day Home Organization Program - now available inside The Productive Home Solution.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week, I am sharing my interview with Kerensa P. She lives with her spouse and young daughter. She shares her story of how a medical binder helped in her infertility journey and helped her to grow her family. She also shares how much she has benefited from working with a Sunday Basket® Certified Organizer. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: Organize 365 The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS Workboxes Paper Organizing Retreats I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

5 Steps to Decluttering Eliminate all trash, food and broken items. Sell or consign anything of value you want to sell. Bag up any donatable items and deliver them to the donation center. (Including consignment items they wouldn't take) Collect everything that goes in another room and locate it in that room. Make a list of any spaces that need organizers, or items that need to be replaced. Decluttering feels good, but not finished. Step 2 of organizing needs to follow quickly to bring order into your newly emptied space. Try the 100 Day Home Organization Challenge free at https://organize365.com/try100/ Get your FREE printable of the 3 stages of decluttering here!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week, I am sharing my interview with AJ C. She lives with her spouse, two kids, and a pandemic puppy. AJ shares how she has made progress in her storage room, kids rooms, and how she has increased her capacity to handle more projects with less stress. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: Organize 365 The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS Workboxes Paper Organizing Retreats

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the US. It's a time my family uses to catch up with family and friends. Thanksgiving kicks off the busy memory making, holiday filled end of the year. Today, I want to share how thankful I am that I have been able to connect with you through this podcast for the last seven years. Even more mind-boggling, Organize 365® will turn ten years old in January 2022. Now that we are nearly a decade in, I am thinking about what Organize 365® will look like in another ten years. What do we want to take along as we move forward? What do we want to refine? The podcast is not going anywhere. The Organize 365® team is here to help you with your life transformation, and we want to be sure the podcasts we share align with helping you to achieve your goal. I am deeply exploring the question: Are the quantity and quality of the podcasts we share actually helping you transform? So much of our foundational teaching about the skills of organizing are buried back in the beginning of the podcast. The skills of organization are built on decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity. I want to really create some foundational podcasts that you can listen to on Fridays. They are concepts from older podcasts, but they will be refreshed for our new normal. There are a limited number of skills you need to learn to be able to get organized. Once you learn, then you need to apply the skills to actually create change! I am super excited about these curated podcasts we are putting together. I am looking forward to seeing their impact. What have you been running hard and holding your breath to get through over the last eighteen months? Where do you need to refine your own life to make it more sustainable going forward?

Monique Horb is back, and today is the day!!! Our community app is now live and available for download!!! Our old app with access to some of your dashboard has been removed from the App Store and Google Play Store, but we have a brand new online community ready for you. Today, we are launching our Organize 365® online community app. This will function similarly to Facebook, but it is private and less distracting. We have simplified everything to make this app more productive. There is nothing there to take you away from your organizational interactions. When you are in the app, you can enjoy the other members and a supportive community, but the distractions have been eliminated. You will have as much community as you desire, but you will also be able to stay focused on your own transformation and make progress along your own organizational journey. The app is directly connected to our website, so all of your specialized online communities will open automatically when you log in. We have been working behind the scenes for months to get ready to host this community. We built this specifically for you. We want to have one place where it is easy for you to find what you need, and where it is easier for us to get you news, information, updates, and encouragement. This new community will save you time, help you be more productive, and give you encouragement. We have organized the community app to match your organizational journey. There are only six groups in the app. News & Updates - will have all the current news about Blitzes, Masterclasses, and whatever Lisa dreams up The Sunday Basket® Club - everything from the Facebook group has moved here including the weekly Sunday Basket® Club live and the replays 100 Day Program - motivation, encouragement, and interaction for completing the 100 Day Home Organization Program tasks All Access Program - content related to the extra step of All Access including the Tuesday Binder tips, photos, planning day, and the new All Access Podcast by Lisa Friday Workbox™ Club - all the support and encouragement you need for maximizing your Friday Workbox™ including the Friday Workbox™ sessions and replays Certified Organizer Group - community support and interaction for all of our Sunday Basket® Certified Organizers, our The Paper Solution® Certified Organizers, and Friday Workbox™ Certified Organizers We hope that you jump in, make connections with the rest of the Organize 365® community, and continue to move along your journey! We are still learning about the amazing ways we can support and encourage you using this technology - please give us grace as we continue to increase the value for you. Things we do know the new app offers - badges to show what groups people belong to (including the Dream Team and Certified Organizers), direct messaging capabilities, and direct access to many of the printables. We are so excited about having a new community app. We would love for you to download it and come check it out! Please download the official mobile app through the iOS App Store or Google Play Store. You can also access the community on your desktop. When you create your account, please use the email address that is associated with your Organize 365® dashboard access. Once logged in, check out "Start Here" to learn about this new platform. Have questions? Please click here for app FAQs

In the current podcast series, I am sharing my conversations with members of the Dream Team while we are in the messy middle of some of our current transitions. In this four part series we will be unpacking the most commonly asked FAQs for different parts of the Organize 365® transformational journey. I want to keep you updated on changes and improvements as we declutter and organize before our 10th Anniversary in January 2022. We are not eliminating anything, or raising our prices on any existing products. We are simply doing some decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity. This week, I am sharing my conversation with Monique Horb. Monique is the Organize 365® Director of Business Development. We have spent most of the last year taking the Friday Workboxes to 110%. We have upgraded our Friday Workboxes into two overarching categories - Business and Education. We look at work differently here at Organize 365®. For us, work includes anything you do for the majority of your hours from Monday to Friday. We want to help you organize the different kinds of work that you do so that you can get more life and spend time in your unique purpose. Friday Workbox FAQ What is the Friday Workbox™ and why might I want one? At home, we are used to thinking about having paper. However, at work, it feels like we are always on a computer. The Business Friday Workbox™ is a physical representation of your work inside of a box. Our brain is not digital.This system will hold all of your ideas and actionable to-do in a single place where you can quantitatively see it. Printing your emails and other digitials items helps you and others see the quantity of work you are handling. What is the difference between a Sunday Basket® and a Friday Workbox™? The physical components are the exact same physical tools as the Sunday Basket®. But, it goes deep because business is more complex and nuanced. For most of us, our brains make connections better when we are not in front of digital screens. The Sunday Basket® is for anything related to your home, and the Friday Workbox™ is for anything related to work. Both help to eliminate your to-do list, and hold your ideas for future possibilities. Both help you to prioritize how you will spend your time and energy over the upcoming week. I understand how the Friday Workbox ™ can hold ideas, but what other things go in there? As a leader of a company, it is easy to spend a lot of time talking about ideas. If you have a more traditional job, the systematic approach of the Friday Workbox™ will still work for you. It works for anyone in any kind of business.Every job has four core components. Once you identify the components that relate to your job, you can optimize them and make your approach more productive. What colors are used in the Friday Workbox™? Pink - anything that is only done by youPurple - your assignment or job descriptionBlue - the team that helps you get your work done (direct reports and supervisors)Green - financial OR administrative and repetitive tasks If I get a Friday Workbox™, how long will it take to work? What do I have to do for this to be useful? This is not a one and done system. The Sunday Basket® takes four to six weeks to build the habit. The Workbox takes a bit longer to set up and build the habit. We ask you to give it a full quarter of the year; give it a full 13 weeks. You keep talking about planning. I don't feel like I have the time or authority to stop my work and plan for my next quarter. How does your planning system work? When I think about my planning, I realize that I am a teacher, and teachers always spend so much time planning. I've always been a salaried employee, not an hourly one. When I tried to limit my hours in the past, I had to plan a lot to be a really good teacher. As the owner of Organize 365®, I am spending at least 20 hours a week thinking and planning. The more prepared I am, the faster and easier the work is for the rest of the team.For you, start with five minutes after each meeting. Go through what you have been asked to do, and add it to your actionable to-do list. See how much your productivity improved. Next, add on five minutes before meetings and review the notes from the previous meeting, write down any questions you have for the meeting, and then do your five minute post review. I know that a Friday Workbox ™ is the place to store the actionable to-dos and the Friday Workbox ™ Planner is the place to plan. What makes the Organize 365® planner different from others? I was an unusual child and I have had a planner since the fourth grade. I love planners. Most planners sold are really more of a date book or calendar; they record dates. Our planners have actual education for how to plan your time. The front of the planner has pages to guide you in thinking about your goals in all four kinds of work. I then guide you through an audit of how you actually spent your time. Then, we realign your time decisions so you can create what you are trying to create. The calendar keeps track of your appointments, and the planner gives you the vision of what you are going to accomplish.Planning and purposeful thought makes everything happen. Every single person is busy, but the goal in life is not to do more. The goal is to organize your time, thoughts, and energy so that you can make the biggest impact in the world. This system will increase your impact. Using a common language improves your communication tools. Improving your communication tools helps more people collaborate effectively without requiring more complexity. I have a lot of paper for my job. Does it all live in the Friday Workbox™? Each slash pocket represents and holds the paper for a single idea or project. Lisa has multiple boxes of slash pockets — one at work and one at home. The most active ones live in an active workbox or portable bag for this quarter, and the rest tend to stay in one place. Frequently accessed reference papers are printed and kept physically in binders, and they are also kept digitally. The binders are color coded to match the workbox and hold the reference materials for easy access when needed. The contents of each binder is reviewed quarterly to ensure they are up to date and to identify any decisions that need to be made on the contents. I have heard about a Friday Workbox™ Club. What is that and how can I join? As a teacher, I know there are many different kinds of students and learners. They need different levels of support and tutoring to be successful. Organize 365® provides three different ways to help you be successful in implementing the Friday Workbox™ system. On demand dashboard training videos Friday Workbox™ Club - 90 minute virtual sessions in an online community for co-working and accountability Friday Workbox™ Certified Organizers - individuals who partner with Organize 365® and can provide 1:1 or small group assistance I have purchased other programs and not followed through. What support or access is there for the Friday Workbox™? Organize 365® is an education company. When you invest in our programs, I want you to have access to the teachers, the community, and the support you need to achieve organization. There is a lot included in your initial purchase — we want you to succeed!This is your professional development and an investment in yoru time management and productivity. It will multiply your time going forward, and we are not going to take it away from you. Is there a way to try this before I make a purchase? Absolutely! Please go to organize365.com/workboxes and read all about the workboxes. A Masterclass is coming soon! And, there is a free five day mini course available to you.