Joyful Jubilant Learning

5 Things I've Learned About "Managing My Time" in February

1. This month I learned something that has reverberated through my core like an earthquake:

"The mindset that ENABLES you to succeed, is not the same mindset
that allows you to REMAIN SUCCESSFUL and have a balanced life."

2. This month I learned that my paradigm of time was based on an old model. In my previous time model, my business was project to project and didn't involve any time spent on marketing and administration because it was 100% referral and projects lasted from 6 month to 2 years and I simply billed monthly.  I didn't own a home, and I wasn't married. I could "afford the time" to say YES to most things that interested me.  I had a mindset of "there is plenty of time" This month, when I missed a client deadline by 3 weeks, and showed up for an appointment an hour early, I became extremely conscious that something very deep inside me had to change.

3. Even though I knew this, it really LANDED for me this month:  I realized that no planner or other time management tool will work for me unless my paradigm of time is based in reality - there are only 24 hours in a day, and I've got a LOT of that time already on AUTO BILL PAY.  12-14 of those hours are spent in sleep and life maintenance. Another 5-8 are ALREADY spend on time WITH or FOR current clients.  That leaves me 2-4 hours for everything else.

4. Managing time is not really about "managing". It's not about scheduling (a word I really dislike.) That is a way too vague and meaningless way to look at time for me.  For me, I'm seeing that viewing my time as something very valuable that I invest is more useful.  So, lets suppose my time is worth $2 per minute. If I spend 20 minutes answering an email, I just spent $40. Was that a good investment?   Would I pay $40 for a loaf of bread? Investing my time is about constantly making YES or NO decisions on how to "spend" the valuable time I have available.  Everything I say YES to is something else I have to say NO to. 

The more successful you become, the balance of YES to NO has to shift.  In the beginning. you say YES to every opportunity.  To remain successful, it's all about the art of staying focused and figuring out what to say NO to even if they are great opportunities.  It's also about figuring out how to make sure there is time for your values of learning, sharing and generosity - which I personally believe are good investments of time if they remain in appropriate balance with  all your other values.  (This is why I'm still saying YES to Joyful Jubilant Learning and the awesome people who make up this amazingly generous and talented group, even though I can't give as much time as I would like to the project.)

Spending time is very similar to deciding how to spend money.  If you don't have your eye on your "available balance" in each of your "accounts" it is VERY easy to overspend and become "overdrawn" on your Time accounts or have to steal from another account.  My decision making criteria on what to do with the VERY FINITE amount of time I have must be based on what I currently need and value, as well as on how much time is available in each account. 

5. I learned that I can't make my time decisions based primarily on what other people need and want from me.  FEARING I will disappoint people and lose out on opportunities actually MANIFESTS more disappointment and fewer opportunities. To make effective time decisions, I need a model that works like a sort of Quickbooks.  I need a Chart of TIME ACCOUNTS.  Each Account must have a Monthly SPENDING LIMIT.  I need to know what my "TIME BALANCE" is at all times in order to make more effective decisions. 

If anyone knows of a model or tool that helps you know your balance at all times, I'd LOVE to hear about.  (I've already tried Covey, David Allen, Julie Morgenstern, and others - but I need more robust Time Account Balancing tools that can handle over 20 time accounts.)  Otherwise, I'm on a mission to INVENT IT!!!  : ) 

p.s.  Get my free ebook "100 Surefire Ways to Organize Your Busy Life!"

 Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed, is a Life Coach and Organizing Expert, specializing in how to manage ADD, overcome chronic disorganization, and design a lifestyle and home environment that supports you in getting the results you really want.

Ariane is the author of the "The Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office" the popular organizing blog, Neat & Simple Living.

5 Joyful January Learnings!

It is time for Rapid Fire Learning!

If you are new to Joyful Jubilant Learning, this is our monthly drill for all lifelong learners in the community: We post this shout-out asking about the first 5 learnings that come to mind for you, stream-of-consciousness, quick as you can list them --- What have you learned in January?

We do this every month on day 6 before month-end.  All of our JJL contributing authors take turn hosting our shout-out (see all past RFL (Rapid Fire Learning) posts here), and I'm up, so here's my review of the month's contributions to our theme of "Packing Your Bags for 2008" and my own 5 things I've learned with 5 days left!

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One thing for sure I've learned is that my co-contributors here are an amazing talented group of people!  The theme for the month was "Packing our Bags for 2008."   

Who knew there were so many creative and delightful ways to interpret that theme! I didn't have a chance to add to that theme because this is one of the busiest months of the year for professional organizers, but I was greatly inspired by the contributions of everyone here.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Rosa Say is "losing it in 2008" and taught us about  ma'alahi (just one Hawaiian word for a bunch of English ones.)  She's also packing up some great ideas to make waiting productive".
  
• Phil Gerbyshak is "packing in" his addiction to information and self-development (but thankfully he's not going to do that till AFTER he reads my new book  Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office)
  
• Steve Sherlock is packing his bags with cans.  No...that's not a typo!  Check out his 2008 challenge!
  
• Terry Starbucker packed his bags virtually for a move to a new "virtual" home.  Congratulations and thanks for sharing what you learned doing that!
  
• Karen Wallace is packing a smile and a clever little Black Velvet Purse!
  
  

  And now here are 5 things I've been learning a lot about this month....

1. Book self-publishing
   Since I finished my Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office  I learned how to get an ISBN number, sell digital books on-line with e-junkie, use on-demand print publishers:  lulu , booksurge, and instantpublisher Thanks to our very own Phil Gerbyshak for recommending these, and also vervante, recommended by Suzanne McLoone.  Now I just need time to layout a version of the book so that it will print right...and soon, you'll be able to order your own copy to pack in your bags for 2008! 
   
2. I learned how to set up Google Groups!
   I'm working on a Google Support Group for people who like me are interested in my number 4 learning: eating healthier. But I found out people can only join my group if they have a Google email address.  UGH.  I have a gmail address, but during my test of the group, nearly everyone I invited to join me in the group got hung up and did not want to get a google email just to join it.  So, back to the drawing board for me.  On to learning more about Yahoo groups maybe.
   (p.s. here's the link to the Neat & Simple Healthy Eating Group. http://groups.google.com/group/neat-and-simple-healthy-eating) 
   
3. Chronic Disorganization
   I've been doing a lot of learning over the last year and particularly this month about how to best help people who are chronically organized.  Here is an article I wrote this month that distills much of what I've learned about chronic disorganization.
   
4. How to organize to eat healthy even if you have ADD
   How can you eat well, if you are a creative person, or have ADD, and often forget to eat during the day like me? What about if you eat junk food a lot just because it's handy and you don't have to think? Well, if you don't organize to eat healthy and have a super easy system for having a variety of healthy fast foods on hand, I'm afraid you will continue to make the junk food marketers rich at the expense of your own health. This is something I've been working on for the last couple years and this month it came to the forefront for me when I started reading the book:  Pieces of a Puzzle:  The link between ADD & Eating Disorders. So I've been learning so much and am currently gathering my thoughts and ideas on this topic.
   
   Oddly enough, I got a call from SELF magazine last week to be interviewed on the subject of organizing for healthy eating!  I guess that's the laws of attraction at work!  I'm so excited about pulling together my ideas for the simplest, easiest ways to eat healthy and lose weight with NO calorie counting, NO structured meal planning, NO Food diaries, etc.  I even finally pulled together an A-Store devoted to 7 core books on healthy eating and nutrition. After reading these books, you won't ever look at food the same way again. How is all this related to organizing?  Because if you aren't getting the proper nutrition, or if you are eating foods that cause "brain fog" I guarantee you are also having difficulties organizing.  And if you don't organize to make it happen, you won't be eating healthy either. 
   
5. The Benefits of a Raw Food, Vegetarian Diet
   The more I learn about the philosophy behind Raw Food diets, the more I'm leaning toward it as a way of life. I am currently experimenting with eating only raw food during the day and I can honestly say it's improved the consistency of my energy levels, moods, focus, productivity and more. I've really started to notice that where I used to get "brain fog" rather often - it's very much correlated with eating cooked food.  The less I eat of cooked food, the more I notice it's negative effect on me.  I'm also noticing that eating cooked foods leads to far more overeating.  Especially at night.  I've always had issues with night eating and using food to help me sleep.  Far fewer problems with night eating when I eat raw all day, which I'm doing 90% of the time. 
   
   What started me down the raw food path?  Well, after 35 years of yo-yo dieting, I vowed never to diet again.  Never again to state losing weight as a goal.  (Even though I would be beyond thrilled to shed 50 -75 pounds.)  I vowed that every goal I set would be a positive lifestyle change - not a quick fix diet.  So my goal is to achieve optimum health via optimal nutrition - one habit and one belief at a time. It started with only drinking water about 10 years ago - no soda or juice.  Then no gluten (I listed what I would eat instead.) After a year of that I was strong enough to tackle sugar 2 yrs ago.  When I quit sugar, I didn't have that as my stated goal.  My goal was to eat mostly unprocessed, nutritious whole foods.  Guess what?  none of them have sugar and few have gluten!  : )  So it is with raw food...I'm not quitting anything, just choosing to eat raw, unprocessed, whole food - most of the time.
   
   I truly believe than when I've figured out how to eat healthy  and I've made it super easy to do - my weight will naturally become what it should be, and my ADD will naturally be easier to manage too.
   
   Here's the site by Angela Stokes that got me started thinking and learning about the raw food movement.

So what have you learned this month?

p.s. If you've read this far, you deserve a gift!  Please accept my free gift to you!
"100 Surefire Ways to Organize Your Busy Life!" plus two bonuses!

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Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed, Organizing Coach, specializes in helping people conquer clutter, simplify their lives, and create the homes & offices of their dreams! Ariane is the author of the "The Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office" the popular organizing blog, Neat & Simple Living.

Two Things It's NOT Easy to be Grateful For - But I have learned to be!

  Inspired by Rosa's Mahalo November theme of Appreciation, Gratitude and Thankfulness, I offer this contribution. I was going to write about 5 things I'm grateful for, but it got too long and too deep. I had to stop before I wrote a whole book!  Once again, Rosa, and the wonderful group of writers here at JJL have inspired and encouraged me to write more personally than I ever have.

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At this point in my life I have so many wonderful things to be grateful for -- My wonderful husband, comfortable home, loyal friends, work that I love, good health, and my 3 precious cats. These are the EASY things to appreciate.  But to get where I am today, I had to get through some really tough experiences. These are the things that are not only difficult to be grateful for, they were difficult to forgive.  It would have been easy to become bitter about them, and even now they are difficult to write about, but I'm stepping out of my comfort zone in hopes of inspiring you to think about how grateful you might be for the difficult challenges you have faced or may be facing.  Not that you would have wished for them to happen, but that you can find the positive learning in them.  So here are a couple of really difficult things I've learned to be grateful for because of how they shaped me into who I am today.

1. PAINFUL RELATIONSHIPS

Before I met my husband at the age of 40, I was engaged to be married 5 times! Most of these engagements ended because I caught them cheating on me. One I ended because of physical violence as well as cheating. Another I ended because of emotional abuse and cheating. One ended because he realized that he did not want to be married to someone who had a more advanced education or made more money than he did!

These were extremely painful experiences, but each time I somehow found the strength to forgive, learn what I had to learn about human nature, and move on.  I can't say I learned to "trust". It was more like I decided to accept the risk that bad things might happen again.  But, each time, I learned more about what NOT to put up with in a relationship.  I learned not to fall so easily for the "charming" guys.

Ultimately, I learned the best lesson of all, how to appreciate a man who had integrity, kindness, and loyalty - even if he wasn't the "suave" kind of guy I was used to.  I wasn't initially attracted to my husband because he was quiet, a little shy, and nervous around me. But we became friends and as I got to really know him, I found the most caring, loyal and kindhearted man I've ever known. He is an engineer and so secure in his own intelligence, that he actually loves that I'm as smart as he is and can beat him at Scrabble. With him, I have learned what it's like to truly "trust" and have faith in another human being. It was such a new experience for me. 

So yes, it was worth learning to forgive and even become grateful for all the painful relationships I've had.  Now, I can really appreciate the value of a "nice guy".  To make sure we don't forget how lucky we are, we make it a ritual to wake up and go to sleep every day expressing how grateful we are for each other, our home and all of our blessings. 

2.  PAINFUL CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

Painful may be an understatement for what I went through as the oldest of 5 kids growing up in the tough Boston suburb of Brockton, Mass.  My father was an alchoholic who regularly got physically violent with my mother, brothers and sister.  I'm so grateful that when I was about 8, he finally disappeared and never came back to harm us again.  My mother was a substance abuser who regularly took out her anger and frustration on my brothers and sister. I won't even get into the problems we had with the husbands and boyfriends she brought into our lives after my father finally left us alone. Most of my childhood was spent trying to make sense out of the chaos and trying to keep my brothers and sister safe. 

When I lived with my mother, we had to move so often it made my head spin. Eventually, I was in a foster home for a while when I was 13. I ultimately ran away when I was 14 and vowed never to live with my mother again.  For a while, I lived with my best friend's family and then I became a live-in nanny for a single mom who believed in my potential and was more of a mom to me than my own mother had ever been. Without getting into the details of all the places I lived as a teen, suffice to say I'm forever grateful to those who taught me that people can be amazingly kind and giving.

My college years in Florida were plagued with one crisis after another in which I had to take time out to take care of my brothers and sister on a regular basis. Somehow I survived those years in Florida, and then I moved to NJ in 1985.  I left from 89 - 92 to work and live in the Chicago area with Arthur Andersen, but starting over yet again proved to be too painful and I wanted to come back to the friends and "adopted" family I had in New Jersey.

My dream had always been to create a stable home for myself, and I finally did when I decided to put down roots in NJ in 1992 and STAY PUT!   I've been in the same community of Montclair / Bloomfield ever since.  I am so forever grateful to my husband, and to the friends and adopted family I have here for giving me the support and inner sense of security that enabled me to take the leap and start my organizing business.

I am also so grateful to my Grandmother with whom I spent as much time as I could as a child.  She taught me to value learning and to know the difference between right and wrong. She instilled in me a strong work ethic and strong sense of responsibility.  She made me believe I could achieve anything if I determined to do it and didn't give up. 

She was completely different from my mother.  From 1941 when her husband left her, she raised 9 kids by herself and owned and ran a halfway home for Veterans.  She was one of the strongest and smartest women I've ever known and probably was the greatest influence on me.  She helped me believe in myself by giving me lots of work to do in her business.  She taught me that I could overcome anything, and have the life I wanted, IF I wanted it badly enough and IF I worked hard enough for it. She instilled in me the desire to learn and become educated so that I didn't repeat my mother's life.

I'll save the rest of the details of my childhood for someday when I'm ready to write a book about it, but for now, I just want to express how grateful I am for how these experiences shaped my ability to forgive and to have extraordinary compassion for people living in chaos and depression. I can work with people without judgement, and with an empathy that can only come from having been through it yourself. I am so grateful for the strong intuition, street smarts, and self-confidence I developed because I was able to survive chaos and create the life I dreamed of so often as a kid.  It took me till I was in my 40's to really forgive and become grateful for my life, but better late than never! : )

I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I spent dreaming that someday I would find work that I could be really passionate about.  That I would be able to help people not be victims of their circumstances.  And now I get to do that every day.  I get such a profound joy every time I experience someone letting go of insecurity, resentment and anger, and learning to not only forgive but accept and appreciate themselves for who they are. I get such an intense sense of hopefulness every time I get to be part of someone's process of letting go of the past, reframing their sense of who they are, and learning to believe in their own ability to not only get organized, but to create the life they want for themselves.   

So yes.  I'm now actually grateful for my painful childhood and relationship experiences because it forced me to learn how to let go of my own rage, resentment and even the clutter I held on to to remind me of who I was and where I'd been. It made me tolerant, compassionate, able to inspire and motivate others to go for what they really want, and uniquely able to appreciate every little good thing I have in my life.  At Thanksgiving time and every day.

I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving with many blessings to count!

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Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed, Organizing Coach, is the founder of Neat & Simple Professional Organizers. She specializes in helping people create the homes & offices of their dreams! She is the author of the popular organizing and decluttering blog, Neat & Simple Living, and "The Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office" a book on home office organizing.

Please Welcome Ariane Benefit to Joyful Jubilant Learning!

Ariane is exactly the person we all need in our lives these days; a clutter-busting coach and professional organizer! Please join us in welcoming Ariane as our newest contributor to Joyful Jubilant Learning; in her very first post for us, she’s taken the gloves off and has bravely reached right in! Read, Things I Had to Unlearn Before I Could Let go of My Clutter.

Ariane is an Organizing Consultant & Lifestyle Coach, and she founded Neat & Simple™ to bring top quality organizing services and professional organizers to individuals and small businesses as well as corporations. Throughout her career Ariane has been known for finding creative, practical and efficient solutions to solve performance problems.

Anyone who has invested hours and dollars in places similar to The Container Store knows that buying cute cubbies doesn’t mean you’ve learned how to organize, and that the root of our clutter problems is usually found in the one thing we’re not buying an organizer for – us! So we’re thrilled that Ariane will be a regular contributor in our community, teaching and learning with us in our joyful and jubilant way.

In September Ariane celebrates her second year blogging at her Neat and Simple Living Blog, where you’ll find her passion to be in coaching us to clarify priorities, let go of clutter, acquire less and simplify more, organize what we keep, develop self-care habits, and live a life we love!

Ah yes, we so want those things in our learning too! Welcome to JJL Ariane.

Things I Had to Unlearn Before I Could Let go of My Clutter

Like many of you reading this, I have always had a tendency to hold on to things.  Especially sentimental things, books, clothes, furniture, gadgets and paper.  Okay, pretty much everything.  When I was 30 years old, I still had most of the clothes I had ever owned and I had over 1000 books.  Out of an questioned need to document my life, I was accumulating photo albums and souvenirs at an alarming rate. I had outgrown all my storage. In my journey to letting go of the stuff I'd collected I had to “unlearn” lots of habits and beliefs that wouldn't allow me to let go of things peacefully.  Here are a few of the things I personally had to unlearn so that I could experience the freedom of living with less stuff.

UNLEARNING - My need to take responsibility for the ultimate fate of the things I own – as if they were people and had feelings. This is what I now call  the “earth mother” syndrome.  I couldn’t let go of things unless I knew they were going to good homes where someone really needed them.  I couldn’t throw anything away that was still in good usable condition.  (Kind of like leftovers.  I couldn’t throw away food unless it was already rotten.)  Once things were destroyed, it was a lot easier to put them in the trash. 

I even kept a lot of broken things thinking I would fix them someday.  I have to admit, I still have broken watches and necklaces in my jewelry box but I'm working on it. : )

I unlearned this belief to some extent by learning how to donate and give things way like a pro!  But there are things you can’t donate, so I had to make peace with the fact that sometimes I have to throw away things that still “work” simply because no one wants them and I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE for the fate of all things.  Things do not have feelings and ultimately, everything has to return to the dust it came from. It's only a question of when.  Somethings have to be sacrificed so that I can have a home I love being in.

UNLEARNING - My fear that if I got rid of things I would never be able to replace them. This one was really hard to get over because some things truly can’t be replaced.  The solution for me was to question the fear itself.  I had to ask “So What?”  People and my time can't be replaced either! So what if an item can’t be replaced?  Does that mean I won’t be able to go on living?  Will my life be irreversibly damaged?  I will simply have to suck it up and get used to the fact that the item is no longer available and fill the need in some other way or just learn to live without it. 

It’s amazing how we as human beings can adapt to whatever life throws our way.  For me, I had to unlearn this belief that just because something can't be replaced it's importance is magnified. By practicing this thought process over and over, like an exercised muscle, I’ve gotten so much stronger. I still have thoughts like this from time to time, but now I stop myself, dismiss them quickly and let go.

UNLEARNING - My feeling that things I owned were a part of me and if I let them go I was letting go of all the hopes, dreams and feelings I had when I was still using those things.  It may sound weird but I honestly felt that by letting go of a book I had read, I would also be letting go of the experience of reading the book and in some weird way, what I learned from the book would be gone too.  In effect, I'd be losing a part of my identity.

In my defense, I actually do have a tendency to forget the past.  My personality type is ENTP - creative, sentimental, interested in many things, spontaneous and future-oriented.  A personality type shared by many people who are disorganized and have a lot of clutter. 

I’m always thinking ahead, and tend to take a long time to recall trivial things like the names of movies I’ve seen and titles of books I’ve read. Keeping things was a way of remembering what I'd done and staying connected to who I used to be.  I was an idealistic teenager of the 70's who wanted to make the world a better place and didn’t want to become part of the bureaucratic machine. I swore I would never lose touch with that part of myself. I didn’t want to grow up to be just another cog in the wheel of the machine of industry. 

What I finally realized was that, as you can see, that part of me was so strong I could never forget that. It IS me. After letting go of so much of the stuff, I realized that I will always remember the truly important things that shaped me and make me who I am today.  Whatever I do forget was probably not important anyway.  Keeping so much stuff actually makes it harder to distill your experience because you are so mired in the volume of stuff that the important lessons have a harder time rising to the surface! 

Eventually, I adopted a kind of “So What?” attitude toward forgetting!  We are designed to forget things for a reason!  Let’s face it, why do we have to have to remember every detail of our past?  Who really cares?  What’s really important to remember about the life you’ve lived anyway?  Is it really important what the date of that trip to Disney World was?   Or is it more important to become the best person you can be and make a contribution to society and the world?   

Clarifying my values and looking at my things with a fresh perspective required a lot of “unlearning” the drive to document every aspect of my life.  Not to say that I don’t still take photographs or acquire souvenirs when I travel, etc. But I do take far fewer photos, and sometimes my only souvenir of a trip is a postcard.  I no longer spend time creating a museum of my life.  Time that I could be spending learning, writing, traveling, helping people suffer less or even just relaxing. If I can spend contribute more to the world by writing.  Isn’t that a much more valuable legacy that a photo album or a collection of stuff? 

I hope you enjoyed my first post here and find this inspirational in questioning your own attachment to things that clutter up your space and drain your time and energy.

Many heartfelt thanks to Dwayne Melancon for his encouragement in writing this post and for introducing me to JJL!  And also to Rosa Say for her incredibly warm, loving spirit and boundless patience in waiting for me to finally post something here!

Wishing you many blessings and much peace.

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Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed is an organizing consultant who specializes in helping people create the homes & offices of their dreams!  She guides people in clarifying priorities and making the difficult decisions needed to conquer clutter, change habits, and take charge of their lives. She is the author of the Neat & Simple Living blog at blog.neatandsimple.com  and you can get her free e-book at www.neatandsimple.com!