Tag Archive for: how to be more organized

An Organized Closet Organizes Your Mind

pantry I’ve already revealed the challenges that I had buying my first apartment and moving into it in New York City. However – one of the highlights was being able to organize the space from scratch so it works efficiently for me and my hubby Jay. He shares my affinity for everything having a place. Of course, looking for an apartment in New York City is a lot more straightforward than it is now and we didn’t really have coliving spaces similar to Urbanests to call back on.

When we were searching for an apartment we would get so excited when we found one that had really organized closets. So we vowed that when we got a place of our own we would do the same.

So one of the really great improvements we made during the renovation of our apartment was to go totally wild in The Container Store.

If you don’t know about this store — you must. It’s a staple for anyone who loves organizational stuff or simply needs a little bit of help keeping things together. They have a line of closet shelving called “elfa” and we used it throughout our home in every single closet.

Here are my highlights: Read more

Get a List-Making Makeover

makeoverI’m a sucker for the makeovers on morning TV shows.  I just get so excited and I love watching the transformations.  I always think “Will she keep up with that look? Her hair looks so cute!”

When I did my very first book signing last week it was a great opportunity to meet some of the readers of this blog and give them a little makeover of their own.  A few people brought me their lists to take a look at and help rework their list making techniques. Read more

Overwhelmed by Your Email? I Can Help!

emailAccording to this study, on average we send and receive 120 emails at work every day. It’s easy to see how some of us can spend an entire day just replying to emails. So if your feeling a bit overwhelmed, don’t worry, there are several ways to fight back against the email onslaught.

Here are some tips for tackling your email inbox:

Download Boomerang – This Gmail app can help you get your inbox back down to zero. There are several useful features like being able to schedule emails to send at a later date. I love this feature for when I’m up late getting things done but don’t want my email to get lost overnight.  I just schedule it to go out in the morning and off it goes.  This is also a great feature when you want to write emails right away about a subject but don’t want to send them right away.  Let’s say you want to remind someone about a meeting or a conference.  You can write up the email and schedule it to send the day before the event.  That way you get it off your plate and still get the goal accomplished.

You can also set an incoming email to be returned to the top of your inbox at a more relevant time. So if you get an email you don’t need to deal with until tomorrow, Gmail won’t display it in your inbox, until the next day when it’ll appear right on top for you to tackle.  The service is free for up to 10 scheduled emails but after that there are paid packages.

Read more

6 Friends Who Help Your Productivity

friendsFriends are great. They make you laugh, they listen to your problems, they help you when you need it.  But believe it or not — friends are also great for your productivity. Whether it’s a sounding boards for your ideas or projects or holding you accountable for your goals — there are lots of different things we can learn from our friends. They all help us be more productive in different ways.

Here’s my list of the types of friends and how they help you: Read more

3 Steps to Overcoming Your List-Writing Addiction

listsI got an email this week from a regular reader of this blog asking me for some help. She writes:

“What should I do if I’m spending more time writing out lists than crossing off tasks on those lists?”

Given that we make the most lists around holiday season I imagine a few of you might be suffering from this same problem, so I thought I would share my advice with you. Read more