Don’t forget to say thank you.

What? I received a thank you note the other day from the chairman of a committee I am a member of. She was thanking me for the volunteer hours I spent on an event that was put on by the committee. I really appreciated it, because as a committee member she could have just expected me to do the work, therefore not thinking a thank you would be necessary. The thank you made me feel appreciated, which will go a long way when it comes to volunteering for other things.

So What? When a business, an organization, or someone has done something nice for you a thank you is in order. Business people appreciate receiving a thank you. It offers warmth to what can often times be a cold world. A thank you shows consideration and appreciation to people who may often feel overlooked or taken for granted.

Now What? A thank you note should be sincere, expressing appreciation, but without a lot of flattery. A thank you note should be prompt and can be brief. Clearly state what you are thanking them for. Basically, you need to say, “Thank you for this”, or “Thank you for that”. A long thank you may end up sounding like a sales letter in disguise, or you may fill it with unnecessary flattery which ends up losing the sincerity of the thank you. Your tone should be pleasant.

Tips to write a thank you note:

1. State clearly what the thank you is for.
2. Mention the appropriateness of what was received, and how you are using it.
3. Be sincere, brief, and pleasant.
4. When appropriate, offer something in return.

You can send an email as a thank you, but you may just want to do that until you can actually get a note written and sent. You may also call and leave the person a voice mail. If you forget, go ahead and send the thank you when you remember. You can acknowledge being late but send the thank you.

I personally use Send Out Cards and absolutely love the ease of getting a thank you card or any type of card out so quickly. I have to say since starting this service my business and personal correspondence has improved tremendously. Some people may think being computer generated it is impersonal. I still pick out the card, write a personal note inside the card, and the card is sent through the mail and to their mailbox…seems personal to me.

Stop the paper pushing cycle.

In my last article, I gave some easy things you can do at home to start living green. Today I have a few easy things you can do at work to help with all of that paper, and there is a lot of it out there. The average American consumes about 750 pounds of paper each year. Now, if you remember many years back there was lots of talk about the paperless office. We aren’t there yet, are we? The computer didn’t stop the paper consumption, it just added to it. How about we work on “almost paperless”.

* The greenest paper, of course, is no paper, so keep things digital whenever you can. The more you can do online, the less you will need paper. Keep files on computers instead of in filing cabinets. The new document sharing and document management web-based platforms like iPEP (interactive Productive Envrionment Platform) make storing things electronically so easy and finding them again a breeze. There are also many more benefits to storing your files and documents on a web-based platform…being able to access them anywhere with any device that has an internet connection, sharing them with others no matter where they may be located, and collaborating with others without having to be face to face. iPEP can even help you index and find your physical items as well as project management and oh, so many things to help you be productive all while living green. If you are in the Tampa Bay area, you can check out iPEP at the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s Business Growth Expo on May 13th at the A La Carte Event Pavilion. (Living Orderly/Custom Organizing booth)
* Read documents on screen rather than printing them out. Always think before you print. This not only saves paper, it saves you from having to file paper…saving you time and money.
* If you must print, consider Greenprint which helps eliminate blank pages, pictures, extra text from documents before printing and can also convert to PDF for paperless document sharing. You know how you want to print something from a webpage, and you don’t want a lot of the extra stuff, well, Greenprint helps you take away all of that extra stuff before you print. How many times have you printed an email just to get the first page, but you ended up printing five or six pages because of the conversation thread? I’m trying it out now with a thirty day free trial and will let you know what I think. I like what I see so far, but haven’t used it enough to give a real opinion. If any readers have used Greenprint, please comment on what you think.
* When you buy printer paper, buy recycled paper, but be aware the recycling logo doesn’t always mean the item is made from recycled materials. If the label says recycle or recyclable, it doesn’t mean that it contains recycled content. You have to actually check for words that say the product is made from recycled materials.
* Put a recycling bin/basket next to your trashcan, so you can toss your recycling just as easy as you toss your trash. If you work from home or an office that has paper recycling, you can take it to the real recycling bin when it’s full. If you work in an office that doesn’t have paper recycling, then maybe you can check into how to get it started.

Whether you are a one person office in your home or an employee at a small, medium or large business, I bet you can do at least one of these things. Choose one, do it and feel good about it. Try to get others involved, and then you’re doing more than just one thing!

Bein’ Green Can Be Easy

Earth Day was April 22, and Earth Month is quickly coming to an end, but living green needs to last 365 days a year. Getting started on living green may be difficult for people because they don’t see what their small contribution could possibly do to help. This is the same mindset some people have when it comes to organizing a cluttered space. All they see is the huge mess. They don’t know where to start, so they don’t. It’s my job to break it down into manageable projects and just get them started. That’s what people have to do with green living… just get started doing something.You don’t have to be fanatical about it. I think a lot of people have been turned off by living green because of the green fanatics or people who come across as “green know it alls”.

Living green is a gradual process. For instance, if you have cleaning products that are not green, don’t throw them out to buy green products. Use them up before you go with all green products. If you just can’t wait to start using green products, then buy, but use them maybe every other week for cleaning until the others are gone.

My favorite definition of green living is making conscious choices for better personal health and well being as well as for that of the planet. I like this definition, because it makes it personal. Once you start with one or two things you’ll find yourself becoming more aware of other things you can do.

Below I listed three easy things you can start doing to make a difference in your home. I found many other easy tips to living green on Good Houskeeping.com. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some ideas to help you work green.

* One very easy thing to do is take advantage of the curbside recycling service that is available to you. Become familiar with what your city or county recycles and get your family involved in tossing items into the containers instead of the trashcan. For more information on local recycling programs visit…Hillsborough County and Pinellas County. For information on recycling programs in other areas of the US visit earth911.com/.
* Use reusable bags for shopping. Over a lifetime, one person using reusable bags can save over 22,000 plastic bags. It takes anywhere from 15 – 1000 years for a plastic bag to break down. Now that’s real proof that one person can make a difference. After I unload my groceries, I put my bags with my purse, so that I remember to put them back in my car where I will have them when I need them.
* Set your computer to the energy-saving settings and make sure to shut it down when you’re finished. By plugging your hardware into a power strip with an on/off switch, your whole setup can be turned off at once (make sure to power down inkjet printers before killing the power—they need to seal their cartridges). You can keep printers, scanners, and other peripherals that you only use occasionally unplugged until you use them. And as always, turn off lights in rooms that are unoccupied.

Speed-Reading

One problem that all of my clients (and I) seem to have in common is having too much reading material and not enough time to read it all. People have work related, fun and informational/educational reading they need and want to be able to complete. One of my suggestions it to put reading material in all of the different places in your home that you would read, as well as leave some reading materials in your car for waiting times. How about speed-reading as another solution? In the book, Getting Organized, by Chris Crouch, he states that you can gain over three weeks of productive time each year by simply using a speed-reading technique. The technique he suggests — using your finger as a guide and keeping your eyes slightly ahead of your finger as you read. As children learning to read, we started out using our finger just like we learned to ride a bike using training wheels. And, just like our parents told us it was time to take off the training wheels and ride like a “big girl/boy”, we were told to stop using our finger and read like a “big girl”. It turns out by using your finger, you can double your reading speed. The gain of three weeks is based on the assumption that we all have about an hour’s worth of reading material a day at work with the typical work year being 260 days. By reading twice as fast, you can save 130 hours a year. Using your finger keeps you from backtracking and paces your reading better.

You can learn speed-reading by taking classes or doing a self-study course. Chris Crouch recommends two of his favorite speed-reading books: 10 Days to Faster Reading by Abby Marks-Beale and Quantum Reading by Bobbi DePorter with Mike Hernacki. These are both simple, easy to read books that will give you more techniques to help you double or quadruple your reading speed in a short time. Yes, it will take you time to read through the books, but you may find the two to four hours you will spend will actually gain you six or more weeks of time. Now, that’s a good return on your investment of time and money.

Productivity: Saving Time, Money and Stress

What: Recently the Tampa Bay Business Journal conducted a survey on: Is productivity in your workplace leading to staff burnout issues? The results showed 71% voted yes. Most of the comments, of course, brought up the fact that with the slow economic climate companies were trying to do as much if not more with less employees, and in some cases with employees whose pay had been cut.

So What: As a productivity consultant, I strongly suggest that companies bring in an outside consultant to perform an assessment of employee productivity from the top down. Ineffective ways of handling the information that’s created, acquired and maintained within a company, as well as, inefficient business processes and poor workflow can put a huge drain on everyone and on the company’s revenue. A huge amount of time is wasted looking for misplaced documents (paper and electronic), and we all know time is money. Forty-three percent of 504 Americans surveyed by David Lewis, a British business psychologist, described themselves as disorganized, and twenty-one percent said they have missed crucial work deadlines because of it. Nearly half of them said disorganization causes them to work late at least two to three times a week. Disorganization can have a huge effect on the bottom line of a company, large or small. What do you think disorganization may be costing your company? Click here, then click on the calculator to figure it out. Add to that employees who are stressed out and burned out from being in a constant state of disorganization or having too many responsibilities. Now you can start to get the picture of how employees, customers and profits can all get lost in the shuffle and confusion of a disorganized, cluttered work environment.

Now What: Employers cannot just tell their employees to work harder and expect them to do so. They must provide them with effective solutions to ensure that the time they spend at work is quality, productive time. Employers need to provide them with productivity training on how to be more focused and organized, so they will know what to do with all of the information that comes in during the day. Provide them with opportunities to lean how to improve their ability to follow up and follow through on assignments. Make sure they know how to recover from unexpected interruptions and offer them real relief to workplace stress and frustration. Employers offer employees all kinds of training to make them better sales people, better customer service people or whatever, but the bottom line…they need to know how to organize and retrieve the information they need daily to make it all work. On average, white collar workers waste about 40% of their workday, because no one ever taught them organizing skills to help cope with the ever increasing amount of workloads and demands.

To start saving your company time, money and stress find a productivity trainer or a productivity consultant by searching the directories at the Productive Environment Institute and the Network For Productivity Excellence.

Tampa Bay Professional Organizer’s Third Annual Shred-A-Thon

Got paper…just shred it, because nothing feels better than losing 20 pounds even if it is paper. Tampa Bay Professional Organizers plan to help the people in their communities do just that, all while staying green and giving back to the community. Donations will be collected for each box of paper shredded, and the money will be given to Children’s Cancer Center.

The Tampa Bay Professional Organizers (TBPO) Shred-A-Thon will be held April 10th, 2010, from 9:00a.m. – 12:00p.m (or until the shredding trucks fill up). Heather Lambie, owner of Your Home Editor said, “In past years, we have had such a huge response from the community that the trucks have been full in just two hours. So get there early!”

The Shred-a-Thon covers both sides of the Howard-Frankland Bridge simultaneously. In Pinellas, take your documents and papers that have been piling up in your home/office to Rutland Northeast Storage (898 30thAve. N, St. Petersburg) and in Hillsborough, go to the Palms of Carrollwood (13123 North Dale Mabry Highway, Tampa).

The event date was purposefully chosen to coincide with the tax season as well as the annual convention of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO—pronounced NAY-poh) which this year will be in Columbus, OH, from April 21 – 24, 2010. TBPO members hope the event will raise awareness about the importance of paper organization and purging. Tax time is a good time to do an annual paper purge, if you don’t already have a schedule to purge throughout the year. If you would like more information on what you can purge or how long to keep things, go to www.irs.gov

ProShred, a local shredding company in Clearwater, is donating two shredding trucks for the event. Shredders will be asked to make a minimum donation of $5 per banker’s box of paper they bring in, all proceeds benefiting the Children’s Cancer Center. There is no charge for the good feeling they get from helping the environment. “All the paper is recycled,” said a Pro Shred representative. “When the job is complete we will calculate the total pounds and provide a ‘green footprint’ for the group’s effort.”

For additional information on the Tampa Bay Professional Organizers Shred-A-Thon, visit www.TampaBayOrganizers.com.

Tip For Starting That Dreaded Task

What?
You have a large project to do and one week to complete it. Every time you think about it, you are filled with dread – but even worse dread with what will happen if you don’t get it done.

So What?
Break the project up into smaller steps (Action List) and this huge beast of a project shrinks down to a cuddly lap dog of a project and becomes easier to handle.

Now What?
Think of a project or task that you’ve been putting off because it just seems too big to handle. List the steps needed to complete it. The Action List can be as long and as literal as you want. You may even start your list with something as simple as turn on the computer. Now start doing the steps one by one, without looking or even thinking about the big picture. Tell yourself that all you have to do is a certain number of steps each day. Each little step will get you closer and closer to the end of the project. You may even find yourself doing more than you told yourself you had to do each day because suddenly it just doesn’t seem so huge. Don’t make it about perfection, but about progress one step at a time.

March Madness…If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Join ‘Em

Yesterday, I read, what I thought, was an interesting stat on the front page of MSN on March Madness. Experts predict the estimated cost of lost productivity during March Madness is $1.8 billion. It is no wonder with the internet within fingers reach. While at work, employees will be streaming games, discussing teams and games with co-workers, and participating in office pools. According to a survey of managers, they feel it is a good time to improve employee morale and use the office pool as a team building activity. While, I doubt there will be many who will allow employees to stream the games all day long, it seems the managers do see that the boost in employee morale will go a long way in future productivity.

This reminded me of the first episode of “Undercover Boss”. The COO of Waste Management went undercover doing the work of employees at all different levels in the company. He found that employee morale was low in several areas of the company due to policies that he put into place to increase productivity. The policies looked good on paper, but in reality, they were hurting more than helping. He quickly realized that positive changes needed to be made so that he had happier employees. Employers need to realize that their employees need to be in an atmosphere where they can thrive in order for them to be productive.

Hopefully your boss will let you get your school colors on for the next few weeks, have some fun with your co-workers, and maybe make a little cash on the office pool. If he/she does allow this bit of fun, then enjoy but get your work done, don’t take advantage, and let there be a next time. (Hmmm, I sound a bit like a mother here, but you know it’s true.)

You can bet I would be sneaking a peek at the scores during the day if my beloved UGA Dawgs were there, but maybe next year.

Are you signed up for your office pool? Better go check it out before it’s too late.

Good Housekeeping’s Still Got It Going On

Since 1885, Good Housekeeping has been the proverbial ‘domesticity bible’, providing how-tos, recipes and tricks-of-the-trade so fabulous that Roseanne Connor becomes June Cleaver with the simple turn of this glossy-coated nesting bliss. Still 125 years later, they have not let us down. The April issue arrived today, and as I flipped through the pages (dog earring and finger licking in full force) I came upon a little slice of heaven {cue the angles singing}, right in front of me on page 39, was written, in black and white (and green), the very reason why I started my organizing business, Living Orderly, in the first place. “Paper, Paper, Everywhere!” They went on to give us readers and homemaking wannabe’s 3 tips to “cut the clutter – and save trees in the process.” These 3 tips are so fabulously, perfectly, wonderful that I will simply give them to you verbatim and I will not waste my time attempting to be witty and cute, so without further ado:

1. Get off Junk-mail lists. Register with the Direct Marketing Association’s DMAchoice mail preference service (dmachoice.org), and you’ll see a significance reduction in mail after three months.
2. Permanently place a recycling box an arm’s length from your mail bin so you can toss any remaining junk mail pronto.
3. Pay bills online, or set up automatic check paying from your bank account. No envelopes, no postage – and no late feeds, if you’re on an automatic plan.

So there you have it folks, straight from the Mecca of domestic engineering, 3 easy ways that you too can become more organized. I could not have said it better myself, which is why I didn’t even try and thus I give credit to Good Housekeeping’s April 2010 issue.

Keep Your Heart Clutter Free

January was Get Organized MonthSM, and hopefully you spent some time getting rid of clutter and bringing order to your home or office. February is designated as American Heart Month, so now it’s time to remove the clutter from your heart. We think of men when we hear heart disease, but it is the number one cause of death among women. The great news is that heart disease can be prevented.

Some of the things the American Heart Association suggests you can do to keep your heart, clutter free are:

• Get regular check ups.
• Get moving: Become physically active at least 30 minutes a
day.
• Know your numbers: Cholesterol (LDL and HDL), Blood
Pressure, and Triglycerides.
• Limit your salt intake to 2300 mg of sodium a day.
• Eat a heart healthy diet, including more whole grains, fish,
fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Limit food high in saturated fats and dietary cholesterol.
• If you smoke, stop smoking now.
• If you drink alcoholic beverages, drink in moderation.

Managing the stress in your life is another big thing you can do for your heart. Believe me, I have personal experience on this one. I may not have had the other risk factors, when I had to have a stent put in to prop open one of my arteries that was 98% blocked, but I did, however, have stress. Thankfully, due to cardiac clearance for some minor back surgery, the blocked artery was found before damage was done. No one, though, is immune to stress, so you must be aware of how you deal with it and learn to control your reaction to it. When you declutter, let go of the physical and don’t forget to let go of the emotional clutter, too. I believe that by having order in your surroundings you can reduce some of the stress in your life.

When you get rid of the clutter, physical and mental clutter, you can begin to really focus on the people and things that are important to you.

The American Heart Association started the “Go Red For Women” campaign to bring awareness to heart disease in women and to help women take action against heart disease. You can support this effort by wearing your heart on your sleeve and wearing Red for Women not just in February but all year long! The American Heart Association suggests that you can Go Red anyway you want…eat red apples, cherries, or tomatoes…leave red kisses on someone’s cheek, or laugh so hard your face turns red. Go to www.goredforwomen.org to register for the “Go Red For Women Now” campaign and you’ll receive a free Red Dress Pin. Do it all for your heart.

The American Heart Association started the “Go Red For Women” campaign to bring awareness to heart disease in women and to help women take action against heart disease. You can support this effort by wearing your heart on your sleeve and wearing Red for Women not just in February but all year long! The American Heart Association suggests that you can Go Red anyway you want. Eat red apples, cherries, or tomatoes. Leave red kisses on someone’s cheek, or laugh so hard your face turns red. Go to www.goredforwomen.org to register for the “Go Red For Women Now” campaign and you’ll receive a free Red Dress Pin. Do it all for your heart.