The Productivity Question I Always Get Asked

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BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

A couple weeks ago I had a book signing for my new book, Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You. It was a great event and you can check out this video right here for a look at what it was like and hear from readers of the book about what they loved most! A big shout out to Micah Joel for shooting and editing this great video! 


My favorite part of book signings is always the Q&A. 

It gives me a chance to find out what listmakers are worrying about!

A great question that was brought up was what to do when you’re saying yes too much?  Read more

How are Listful Living and Listful Thinking Different?

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One of the questions I’ve been asked most often as I prepare to publish my second book, Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You, is…

“How is Listful Living different from your first book Listful Thinking?”

I’m so glad you asked! I even did a Facebook Live about this topic. 

I’ve had an eventful few years since I wrote Listful Thinking.

Exactly one year after it published — my appendix burst.

A very dramatic way to slow down and embrace a new mantra, “Rest is the New Hustle.” 

Then I started my own business as a media trainer and strategist and joined the entrepreneurial world full time.  Read more

Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You

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1440 minutes. That’s how many minutes there are in a day. How are you spending those precious minutes? Do you feel drained at the end of the day or look back and can’t figure out where the time went?

Productivity doesn’t just equate with being more organized  or ticking everything off your list, it’s about making your time  work for you.

That’s why I’m excited to share with you my new book, Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You. If you liked How to Get Sh*t Done, my first book Listful Thinking or Dot Journaling―A Practical Guide, you’ll love Listful Living.

Anyone can make a list.

But can that list make you a calmer, more mindful, super productive and less stressed version of yourself? It’s easy to become overwhelmed by to-do’s, bucket lists and goals.

The secret to success is not just about what you put on your list but what you intentionally leave off. Less is more. Leading with intention and how you’d like your life to feel is key.

Listful Living is the perfect book for list makers and life planners. Learn to:  

  • Tap into your own productivity style to get more done
  • Curate your list making to best serve the lifestyle you want to lead
  • Prioritize what’s truly important and be mindful of where you spend your precious energy
  • Create a roadmap to be less stressed

After I published my first book over four years ago, I’ve had my share of ups and downs. When my appendix burst I learned so much about the importance of creating time for myself and the value of doing nothing!

Leaving my full time job at FOX News to start my own business as a media trainer and strategist  has only emphasized those beliefs for me.

As an entrepreneur it can be difficult to separate yourself from your work, although it’s critical to force that divide in order to avoid burnout. It’s true not just for entrepreneurs, but for everyone to not allow one aspect of their life to consume the rest of it.

So how do you find the perfect balance for you and make it happen? I walk readers through a list-making journey to a less stressed version of themselves in Listful Living.

It’s a list-making journal and it’s available for pre-order right now.

If you’re inclined to pre-order I’d be very grateful. Pre-orders are very important for authors because it tells the publisher and the press that there’s interest in the book and it gets a buzz going.

I’m putting together bonuses for anyone who pre-orders the book but they’re not quite ready yet.

If you do pre-order – please send your receipt to tabitha@paularizzo.com and we’ll keep track of them so you get hooked up with the bonuses when they’re ready.

There will be extra special bonuses for anyone who orders 5 or more copies as well!

Creating The Minimalist Kitchen

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BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

As you know, I like to consider myself a minimalist, but there are certainly areas of my life where I am not necessarily practicing  what I’m preaching. In fact, Melissa Coleman, author of “The Minimalist Kitchen,” has shown me that when it comes to cooking and organizing, I have a lot to learn.

I first met Melissa when she was one of my private media training clients.

We got along straight away, as we’re both productive and practical people. Melissa’s speciality is helping you really think about the ingredients that your using as well as cutting back on an overflowing pantry. She’s like the Marie Kondo of the kitchen.

We spoke recently about all of her best minimalism tips in this video interview:

How it all started

Melissa had always been a competent cook but, after the birth of her daughter, things started to unravel:

“I had my daughter about … she’s five now, and the kitchen completely broke for me. I did not know how to get dinner on the dinner table. It was mind-blowing, and it got to the point that I looked over at my husband and I said ‘I’m going to either quit this space or fix it.’”

A big life change can often leave us having to re-evaluate the systems we have put in place.

What worked before will not always work forever.

So how did Melissa turn it around? She invented her own system.

“The Minimalist Kitchen was born. I love food, I love to eat, and so I wanted to preserve the dinner table. And getting back to the dinner table took a long time. It took making over my pantry. It took changing my shopping habits. It took convincing my husband to change his shopping habits.”

Of course, it’s important to not just find a style that works for you, but for those you live with too. Melissa saw her kitchen like a restaurant that needed to be managed.

“I’m the restaurant owner and I need to build the system for my employees. I don’t like that hierarchy, but just for an example. And it needs to work for my employees. Like, the snack bin for my five-year-old needs to be at a place she can reach it or she’s gonna scale the pantry and it’s gonna all fall apart.”

 

Fixing What’s Broken

When she was looking at what wasn’t working, Melissa started with her pantry.

“I had spilling bags of pasta and rice. I had every variety of rice, because different recipes call for different varieties.”

How many different types of rice do you have? How can you combat this? Melissa explains you have to pick just one.

“What you use most, or an ingredient that you really like how it performs. I imagine if you looked in your pantry there would be one rice that you pick up every time. Or when it runs out you replace that rice, even though you’ve got five other bags. Or, the same with pasta. There’s a bunch of different varieties of pasta, and I imagine that you go pick the same one.”

As much as I hate throwing stuff away – it’s true. There’s no point keeping things we never use.

Melissa recommends getting rid of everything at the back of your pantry and learning to work with what’s at the front – the items we use most.

 

The Concept of Negative Space

Melissa’s background in graphic design has inspired her minimalist quest.

“I am a graphic designer by trade and before that I was a painter. A technique or a philosophy or a tool that I always grabbed was negative space, and then when I became a designer they called it white space. I realized that what I’m doing now is what I was doing then. I am trying to minimize what’s around me in my physical space to create physical white space and mental white space. Just a space to breathe and think.”

Melissa also uses a lot of lists, like I do, in order to plan her meals for the week.

“I have to write down a meal plan. I have to not only write it down, I have to see it, so we have this huge chalkboard in our house that I write the meal plan on for the week. So as I’m going throughout my week, I see that list and then I make that list.I used to loathe dinnertime, and when I see that list, I know what to do, I know what to buy at the store. I just make dinner and it feels light. It feels easy and really doable, but prior to not having a list, trusting my brain, it was not working so well.”

If you feel like you need more help, be sure to check out Melissa’s book, “The Minimalist Kitchen”. It features loads of great recipes that all use the same core ingredients -the kind of stuff you already probably have lying in your pantry. So you can spend less time shopping and more time cooking! My personal favorite is the take-out cashew chicken.

Melissa has something special coming up in the New Year. In January, she’s launching a deeper pantry cleanse tutorial. It’s taking the same concepts of the book, but taking a deeper dive, doing worksheets, really making it so practical so that you can completely makeover your kitchen. I’ll keep you posted on that because it’s something I need to do as well! We can do it together.

BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

The Case for Becoming A Minimalist

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Since my book Listful Thinking has been published in 12 different languages I have been able to connect with list makers across the globe. In particular, I often receive messages from people in China and Japan who want to talk about their love of lists.

It’s become clear to me that while we may have different approaches and styles, being more productive without overworking ourselves is a common human goal. In fact, in my search for a more minimalist lifestyle, I have often been inspired by ideas from the other side of the world. If it wasn’t for a friend of mine recommending I checked out check out this excellent list, then the idea of minimizing may not have been as apparent as it is now for me right now. In our lives, there are many things we don’t actually need and a lot of things that take up a lot of unnecessary space.

As you may know I am a huge fan of Marie Kondo, who brings a simplicity to clearing clutter. She has you ask a simple question as you hold items from you home in your hand, “Does it spark joy?” It makes you really think about the stuff you choose to keep, not just in your closets, but in your life in general.

I’m not the only one who has been inspired by eastern minimalism. Raymond Tang felt overwhelmed by his fast paced technology driven lifestyle and sought change elsewhere. He was inspired by the classic poems of by Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher. These poems are thousands of years old, but as Raymond explains in his TED talk they offer advice that we can embrace today.

Lao Tzu encouraged people to act more like water, which fills the shape of its container. t doesn’t fight against the obstacle in anyway. In the same way, all of us can be more open to opportunities and rather then force ourselves to be a certain version of success, we can just go with the flow.

It’s easier said than done, of course and I struggle with this on a daily basis. I really like order and structure and when I’m in a chaotic situation it makes me anxious. But I’m trying to be more open to chance and circumstance.

Minimalism is big in Japan as well, where young people are trying to own fewer and fewer things. Inspired by traditional Zen Buddhism, they have reduced the amount of physical things in their life to free up time spent cleaning or decluttering to be used elsewhere. When explaining the difference between Eastern and Western styles one person said, “In the west, making a space complete means placing something there. But with tea ceremonies, or Zen, things are left incomplete on purpose to let the person’s imagination make that space complete.”

In that same article one Japanese man explained that he only four pairs of pants, three shirts and four pairs of socks. If that makes you nervous, it shouldn’t! There’s something really freeing about having less stuff.

When you think about you probably use the same clothes over and over again anyway. So why are you holding onto it?