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Most people see moving as a difficult project, a painful endeavor fraught with problems, sometimes even an overwhelming project. Moving doesn’t have to be difficult, though. Yes, it is a large project that requires some organization, but I’ve moved ten times in my adult life so far, and I can guarantee you, easy, pain-free moves are possible, provided you use the following tips:
- Plan ahead. A move is a large project, and the earlier you start, the easier it will be. In particular, make sure to start de-cluttering and purging your belongings as soon as you know you’ll move, even if you haven’t signed a lease or have purchased a house yet. Also, start packing as much ahead of time as possible.
- Double the amount of packing supplies you think you’ll need. In every move I’ve made, I found that even professional movers underestimate the number of boxes needed to pack everything.
- Plan on paper. Keeping everything in your head is a sure recipe for forgetting an important element of you move, such as a critical change of address or a utility cancellation. I personally make intensive use of checklists to help me keep track of everything I need to do.
- Plan for the move IN. Most people plan for the move OUT, i.e. pack, wrap furniture, etc., but don’t pay much attention to the move in, thinking they’ll figure it out or wing it. When I move, I know where every piece of furniture will go (and whether it will fit where I want to put it), and where the content of every box will be stored. Do the same, and you can be settled in in just 48 hours.
- Choose the right mover, and vet them. It’s your choice whether you want to move with friends, use 2-men-and-a-van type movers or go with professional movers. In any case, make sure to vet the moving or truck rental company, and always get several bids – but don’t necessarily go with the cheapest one…
- Keep all your valuables such as jewelry, with you, including your important papers. Boxes can be lost even by the most reputable movers.
- Pack an overnight bag that you’ll keep with you. You may not want to dig through several boxes to find your toiletries, bed sheets, medications or a change or clothes once at your destination.
- Have one box per room that is the “open first” box, and pack in it the absolute essentials you need in each room. This way, your new home can be functional for you within an hour of your moving in, and you can stop unpacking whenever you choose to. This box is also usually the last one to be packed, with the very last things you needed in your former home.
Follow these tips and you’ll have a much easier move than you expect. Want more information – and a detailed checklist – on how to organize a smooth and easy move? Check out the Moving Mastery teleclass.
A clear desk… It seems to be the dream of every worker, and it does have its advantages:
A clear desk leads to fewer distractions. It’s been shown many times, in various contexts: it is harder to stay focused when the environment is cluttered than when it is clear. Clutter affects concentration, distractibility and attention span.
A clear desk also projects a positive image. Rightly or wrongly, people associate a clear desk with a clear and organized mind, and a cluttered desk with a cluttered, disorganized mind. According to Brian Tracy, executives, by an 80% margin, are more likely to promote the person with a clear desk over another person with equal abilities and performance, but a cluttered office. Some even hinted that they might do so even if the person with the cluttered desk is slightly more qualified/performs slightly better. Perception is important.
A clear desk also provides you with more space to work on, which is convenient when you
need to see a lot of information at once.
Almost every day, you can see advertising for a liquid energy-booster that boasts to act for 5 hours and give you no energy crash afterward. I haven’t tested it myself, but, from the ingredient list, I have doubts regarding the no-crash claim. I also find it completely unnecessary to pay $3/dose to get more energy. There are plenty of ways to boost your energy for free or at extremely low cost. Here are five of them:
My son, like all children, knew the value of taking a break from intensive mental work. 
Historically, every worker took breaks throughout the day. Most of our ancestors were doing manual labor (from farming to sewing to cooking to building), and it’s been known since time immemorial that the body needs breaks on a regular basis in order to perform. Push it too hard and it will punish you with injuries and/or pain.
When we moved to the industrial age, people in factories quickly got those breaks too, and office workers soon followed suit. Coffee breaks and lunch breaks were the norm.
However, in the past 20 years, with the advent of the modern computer and wireless technology, which makes us available any time, anywhere and accelerated the pace of communication and work, the habit of the breaks during the day has eroded, to the point of often disappearing.
To-do lists (or task lists) are a tricky animal. When done right, they provide you with a very effective roadmap to your day, but when done wrong, they are completely useless, and can make you feel like a failure to boot, because you haven’t done them.
The difference between effective and ineffective daily task lists can be a question of prioritizing, but, often, the differences are simply a question of formulation.
At this point in my career, I rarely learn something from new books or articles, but every once in a while, something truly new, simple and effective comes along. The 10-10-10 rule is one of them.
A few years ago, I was reading an issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, when I came across an article by Suzy Welch (current wife of Jack Welch, mother of 4 and accomplished professional in her own right). In it she described a way she had devised to make decisions in cases where she had conflicting priorities and no easy way to determine which one was more important than the other. She called it the 10-10-10 rule:
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Many creative people think that submitting themselves to systems, routines and time management will hamper their creativity, because the routines hamper spontaneity.
This is a very common misconception. When we think “artist”, the cliché is that of a whimsical person going where their creativity and inspiration leads them, but the cliché is wrong, or at least ignores a very important part of an artist’s life. Study any of the great creators (artists or otherwise), and you see a very different picture emerge:
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Maybe the fact that I’m a time management specialist has something to do with it, but people love to share with me how strapped for time they are. “I don’t have enough time!” they say, then proceed to tell me how this manifests. And it is true that we have more to do than our parents had to do. It is also true that employers are requiring more and more from their employees, without giving them more resources to get the job done.
Here’s the thing, though: time is very rarely the real problem. In my experience, when people say “I don’t have enough time”, they are really saying one of the following:
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Last Monday, I made a mistake that cost me dearly. I had two major projects to move forward that week, one related to my website, one related to the 5-Minute Time Management Solution (I’m transforming and expanding it into a cool 6-week program that guides you step by step through my process to get you in full control of your time. Can’t wait to reveal it to you).
Instead of writing, as I usually do, Project – Specific Task, I just wrote “Website Update” and “5MTMS Edits”, without specifics as to which update or which chapter I would focus on that day. So my mind immediately went into “I have plenty of time” mode – after all those two projects have a whole week to get completed. And, feeling that I had all the time in the world, I meandered through the day, and didn’t get anything accomplished for my website or my program.
I link to other people’s work only when I find it to be truly outstanding. This article, A letter to my kids, really is. Here is the beginning:
Dear Kids,
I’m taking the time to write this to you today, years before there’s a chance that you’ll ever read it.
One of my reasons for doing this is simply because I want to affirm some things that I see you doing and some of the ways you are being before you forget them.
But also, I want to give you an example of how life is a never-ending journey that is filled with shades of gray.
So, although you’re not quite ready to hear me talk about all of the challenges in my life, hopefully what follows will help you understand that no one has it all figured out… even your dad.
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In the early days of my business, I had a 15 months old toddler and no regular source of income. My husband’s salary kept us taken care of, but I didn’t feel comfortable spending precious money for my needs when my then-fledgling business didn’t make enough for me to be able to have a babysitter on a regular basis. So I resorted to multitasking, and doing my business at the same time as I was taking care of my toddler.
I thought multitasking would be the way to allow me to do it all. Read the rest of this entry »
Interruptions seem a fact of life in today’s world. Email, phone, cell phone, the people around us, everything conspires to make it difficult for us to stay on task and stay focused. Yet, it is more important than ever that we do stay on task and focused, since the world has accelerated, and results are expected faster than ever.
Many think that this is not an issue, because we can multitask, or interruptions, while time-consuming, are just changes in the way we work: we just need to stop often what we are doing, and take it back afterward.
Interruptions however come at a very high cost in terms of time and quality of work, Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of years ago, I signed up to be an exhibitor in a trade show. It was the first time I did it, so I wasn’t quite sure of how to negotiate with the organizers and prepare for it, but I expected it to be a success, based on their say-so. In reality, the attendance to the show was much lower than I had been led to expect, and I was placed in a way that made it even more difficult to get people to stop at my table. To top it off, the table ended up being much larger than I had been told. I didn’t get many contacts, and I didn’t get any business, as a result of this show – it was $250 thrown out the window.
Once back in my office and over my disappointment, I asked myself the golden question: Read the rest of this entry »
I was sharing with a partner some of my experience around losing weight when I suddenly realized why so many people tend to regain the weight they’ve lost – and by extension why so many people revert to old habits after making lifestyle or “workstyle” changes: Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, a client called me for a session because he had trouble sticking to his goals. We talked about creating habits rather than goals. We talked about making the process itself enjoyable. We talked about motivation, and about keeping a symbol or picture of his goal in front of him at all times, to remind him of the why of his goal. He implemented all this, but it still wasn’t enough. It was hard for him to resist, on a day-to-day basis, the temptations of immediate gratification (or apparent gratification). It also was very easy to give in to the discouragement he felt when he apparently wasn’t making any headway, or had slipped up in his daily actions.
After some brainstorming, we found the problem: Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, I set out to change some of my habits, and create new ones…
Ok, I’ll be fully honest and admit publicly: I’ve decided that I want to be back to my fit weight. This requires some changes in my diet, among which tracking my food intake and doing some exercise every day. I set out, in accordance with the method I outlined for you on how to create new habits and change old ones, to make very simple changes to my routine to get started on that road. In my case, I started with tracking my food intake (no judgment, just tracking), and power-walking at least 15 minutes a day. I started to do this, and faithfully did it for a week or so. Then a day came when I didn’t do one of those simple things. Then another day, a few days later. It wasn’t so important, I was still doing my habits most of the time.
After a little while, I realized that putting in practice my small daily habits “most of the time” had come to mean “half of the time”. Read the rest of this entry »
I just came across this text in David Allen’s newsletter. It’s such a great way to put a final period mark on 2011 and open 2012 that I had to share it with you. (For those who don’t know who David Allen is, he’s a time management guru, creator of the Getting Things Done (R) system.) Read the rest of this entry »
My cat, Cookie, is a wonderful teacher of all things Daily Mastery (that’s her on the picture). She knows how to expand energy, but also how to relax. She knows how to not get stressed out about things. And recently, she showed us how to reach a goal, no matter how far-fetched it seems. Read the rest of this entry »
Hi everyone!
I was interviewed yesterday for a podcast by Time To Play founder Doreen Guma. It was lots of fun, and she coaxed me in revealing three highly valuable 5-minute ways to reclaim time and control. The podcast is available to everyone at this link.
Enjoy!
Karin
A client of mine, an accomplished professional who was working with me to get to the next level, in the course of a conversation, complained to me that resolutions, especially New Year’s resolutions, never work. Every year she was making new (or often the same) resolutions, start the year with a bang, but come February, she would usually have abandoned them. So she had come to the conclusion that they don’t work, and it’s better not to make any.
She was right. It is true that the vast majority of New Year’s Resolutions fail. Not because the people who make them are not motivated or smart enough – my client was abundantly blessed with both – but because resolutions don’t work. They don’t work because: Read the rest of this entry »