Get Your House in Order

In This Issue:

• Main Essay: Get Your House in Order by Monica Day
• Resource Referral: The Most Boring Advice I’ll Ever Give You…But The Best
• Quick Life Tip: People Can Be Clutter, Too

Get Your House In Order

by Monica Day

In the last year, I’ve been able to tick off my fair share of stressful life events – including a separation that is hurtling towards divorce, buying and selling real estate, and moving both my home and office. All while keeping up a happy face so my children feel assured that everything is going to be OK.

I’ve handled it with the kind of aplomb that can only come with denial.

Seriously, I’m well aware of the impact too much stress can have on your health. I’ve done enough copy projects in the alternative health arena by now to practically be an expert in the field of stress management! It truly has been much more than I could reasonably handle. And getting stressed about it all wasn’t going to help.

Instead, I practiced the art of doing the things I could… letting go of the things I couldn’t…and letting that be enough.

But the gig is up. It’s been several months, and my client files are still in boxes around my desk. Bills are stacked in piles on the spare kitchen counter rather than filed away. Receipts are in haphazard little piles with no notes on them that will let me know at tax time if they were business or personal expenses.

“Don’t sweat the small stuff” – sounds like great advice when you’re drowning in too much big stuff. But it adds up. Until one day, the accountant calls and tells you it’s time to send him your tax information…and you have no idea where it might be. Your kid needs a permission slip signed or they can’t go on tomorrow’s field trip…and you can’t find it anywhere. The little things add up into yet more stress on your system.

I know I’m not alone in this. It’s hard to prioritize getting yourself organized. Everything else seems so much more important. And arguably, it is. But disorganization costs more than most people realize. And in two of the most critical areas in your life: your health and your wealth.

Your health suffers because a chronic lack of organization causes an increase in stress. The body responds to stress by increasing the amount of cortisol in your body – a chemical also called the “stress hormone.” In small, occasional doses, cortisol can be a good thing. It heightens your ability to cope with sudden stress.

But when it is released into the body more often and in larger doses, it causes a state of “chronic stress” – which is known to cause any number of health challenges, such as:

• Impaired cognitive performance
• Suppressed thyroid function
• Blood sugar imbalances
• Decreased bone density
• Decrease in muscle tissue
• Higher blood pressure and other conditions leading to heart disease and stroke.

Not to mention, it makes you no fun to be around.

And I’m willing to bet your wealth is also suffering, probably more than you know. Every minute you spend searching for something that you should have been able to easily locate could have been spent on an income-producing activity.

For example, I have to fill out a pretty elaborate form providing financial information to the private school my kids attend. It should have taken me no more than, say 2 or 3 hours tops. It took me three days. (I need their social security numbers? Did I put that with their birth certificates, their passports, or somewhere else?) I’m afraid to calculate how much it really cost me to fill out those forms – but I’m sure it was much more than I had to “spend” on them. It was the last straw.

Time steals your money, stress robs your productivity, and disorganization feeds off both. So how are you going to achieve that whopping income goal you’ve set? You’re not. Unless you do something about it.

So this past weekend I rolled up my sleeves to conquer the mess. While it’s not 100% done yet…by Sunday night I noticed a marked difference in my stress level. If you’re ready to dive in to your own chaos and make order out of it, here are the steps you’re going to have to take:

1. Feel The Pain: First of all, the denial has to go. It really is as bad of a mess as you think it is. It really is costing you dearly in terms of time and money. And it really is going to take more hours to clean up than you feel like spending on it. It might make you feel bad to face the truth. So what? Feel bad…and do it anyway. Surrender into it…let go of the resistance…and dive in. Do whatever you can do to take the edge off. Personally, I made sure I had a good bottle of red wine on hand, set up my favorite music, lit candles. You might have thought I was settling in to a nice long bubble bath…or having a romantic dinner for two. But it worked.

2. Make The Change: Don’t just put a band-aid on it. Take the time to put systems into place so that you never have to do this again. Spend some time at an office supply store – pick up things like colored folders and an automatic label maker. If organization doesn’t come naturally to you, pick up a book that will help (see Resource Referral for my favorite). When you’re finished, you’ll have more than just clean counters and pretty color-coded files…you’ll have a system that will just take you a few hours every day or week to manage. And you can gloat in the knowledge that life never has to get out of control again (well, at least not from a glut of paper work…)

3. Keep It Up: This last step will make or break you in the long run. The truth is, when I’m not wallowing in transitional life issues, I love being organized. It frees me to be more creative and more productive. But I made a key error six months ago that I’m paying for dearly now – I didn’t set up my systems right away when I moved. So by the time I turned my attention to the disarray, I had all but lost them. I practically had to start from scratch. The work you do today will reward you for years to come as long as you keep it up…no matter what curve balls life throws your way.

Resource Referral: The Most Boring Advice I’ll Ever Give You…But The Best

When you’re starting a new venture, it’s hard to know exactly how to organize it. You haven’t established patterns for how to do things yet, so it’s hard to put systems into place that will work. The resources I’m recommending to you today will help you get started as a freelancer on the right foot. Most of them weren’t available just a couple of years ago when I was starting out – I wish they had been. It took me two years to figure out on my own some of the things you’ll discover plainly spelled out on these pages:

The Writer’s Tax Guide for Freelancers: A Money-Saving Manual for Travel Writers and Other Freelancers: There are numerous tax breaks and benefits available to small business owners – but it’s up to you to claim them. Find out how with this handy guide.

Business In A Box: The A-Z of running your freelance business the right way from day one. It will save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars if you start out with these systems, rather than wing it.

AWAI’s Computer Basics: While this one isn’t geared towards managing your business per se, being efficient on your computer is another important way to be effective in your business. You should be able to manage your files, use shortcuts for routinely performed tasks, and keep your work backed up and safe. Your computer is the backbone of your business – know how to use it!

Organizing From The Inside Out by Julie Morganstern
This has been a very helpful book to me in my efforts to get organized. If you don’t have the kind of brain that easily compartmentalizes things, or easily sorts and streamlines…or if you have heart palpitations when you look at an unsorted pile of junk, Julie will lead you out of the woods!

Organizing for the Creative Person: Right-Brain Styles for Conquering Clutter, Mastering Time, and Reaching Your Goals by Dorothy Lehmkuhl
I’ll confess that I haven’t read this yet – just ordered it from Amazon myself. But I feel confident it’s going to fill in some of the blanks left by Julie’s book. As a creative person, I do feel sometimes like I have more resistance to getting organized than others. I would love to think it’s because my brain works differently rather than the other alternative: I’m just lazy! I’ll let you know – or read along with me and you let me know what you think, too!

Quick Life Tip: People Can Be Clutter, Too

Some people give you energy – others take it out of you. Even if you love them…you have to admit, it’s true.

When you are in hot pursuit of big goals and dreams, you’ll become keenly aware of who is helping, and who is holding you back. And just like the piles of paperwork on your desk – you have to find the right file for them. Or perhaps send them to the shredder…so to speak.

Of course, family and longtime friends shouldn’t be discarded. But you can certainly set better boundaries about when you’ll talk to them so they don’t suck the life out of your productive working hours.

And as far as new friends, fleeting romantic interests, chatty neighbors, and other people who are peripheral to your life – don’t let them take up too much space in your day or your psyche. Be nice, but firm. Set boundaries and keep them. Sooner or later, those people who need to feed off your energy to keep up their own will fade away of their own accord and find a more accommodating host.