NEAT & SIMPLE LIVING with Ariane Benefit, Organizing Coach

My Summer of Seeking Simplified Sustainable Success! : )

Dear Readers,

I'm just dropping in with a brief update to let you know why you haven't heard from me for quite some time and what's in the works.  Since I started this blog about 3 years ago my personal life and health has become the victim of serious "scope creep"!  In my passion and enthusiasm for helping people I found myself saying "YES" to so many new clients and new ventures like guest blogging, pursuing coaching training and the very intensive Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization program, press interviews, writing a column, joint ventures, group coaching programs and much more that I found myself working 12-18 hour days, 7 days a week for the last 6 months since I got back from our Thanksgiving vacation.  I didn't even take holidays off.  The results have not been pleasant to say the least.

Not only have I exhausted myself and my husband, we also have several family events that are requiring a lot of attention.  In addition, a storm blew threw our town early this week and took down over 200 trees including 4 on either side of our house.  We have a huge cleanup job in front of us.

As a result of all this chaos, I've had to step back and take a long hard look at my commitments and see how I can carve out the time I need to not only fulfill my most important commitments but also work on a plan to get my life back in balance.  This past month has required much soul searching and making many VERY painful decisions to say "NO" to activities that I REALLY LOVE, but have to stop for a while so that I can "sharpen the saw" as Stephen Covey says.

Since this is a blog about keeping life NEAT & SIMPLE, I thought I'd share with you my current plan taking a "Summer of Seeking Simple Sustainable Success".  After all, it's not success when everyday becomes painful to get through. I'm using a model suggested by my friend Dwayne Melancon of "Genuine Curiousity" :  It's called Stop, Start, Continue.

I have made a list of Activities that I will stop or finish up, some that I will start, and some will continue.

STOP (Some may restart again in September or October)

• Cannot accept any new clients until probably September or October.
• Cannot accept or initiate any New work-related Projects until a current project is completed or unless I delete a  current project.  This is going to be REALLY HARD!!!!
• Put a hold on all "non-paid" writing activities like blogging and my monthly column (I already miss this)
• Stop reading all blogs for the summer at least
• Stop doing in-home residential organizing work and also will no longer have any organizers working for me.  Instead I will refer all residential work to others.

START

• I will be refocusing my business to individual and group coaching, teaching, blogging and other writing.  This transition should be completed by October and I hope to start blogging regularly by then.
• Create a master time schedule with time blocks that ensure I make time for family, social life and friends, volunteer work, home, self-care, professional development, and time off.
• Simplifying home maintenance and garden to take up less time and energy.
• Focusing more on my health this summer.

CONTINUE

• Working on NSGCD certification program assignments and complete all the Book analyses and other time consuming assignments this summer.
• Reading and studying for my ADD specialist exam in September
• Preparing for NSCGD Conference in September.
• Working with current residential organizing, coaching, and business consulting clients until I reduce my client hours to 16 per week and phase out all residential clients or transition them to coaching for maintenance. 
• Complete 5 major projects I committed to work on for clients that have been suffering and dragging out due to my overcommitment.
• Working on a sustainable master plan and calendar to take my blogging to a whole new level and to continue the AWESOME joint ventures underway, and the new group coaching work I've been doing.  I can't wait to tell you more about the new vision for Neat & Simple and for me.  

As much as I love everything I do, there is a point when even doing things you love can run you into the ground.  Letting oneself become exhausted and melting down is NOT a sustainable life strategy.  Periodic reviews like this are what help keep me sane.   

So for now, I'm putting this blog and all other online life on hold, but I look forward to returning in the fall with a renewed spirit and the capacity to focus on the coaching and writing work that allows me to serve more people and that gives me a sense of meaning and purpose that I can't even begin to describe.

Thank you all for reading this.  I hope you will continue to subscribe to this blog and stay tuned to see how my "Summer of Seeking Simplified  Sustainable Success" turns out : ) 

I wish you all a wonderfully simple and satisfying summer that renews your spirit!

Yours in seeking the simple life,

Ariane : )

Innovative Time Mgt Strategies: Outsourcing, Email, Voice Mail and more

Check out my new page on Innovative Time Management Strategies! 

If you have a super unusual, creative and effective strategy for saving time, or a link to a great post or blog that gives great tips or online resources for any of the following:

EMAIL - Ways to really save time on EMAIL like using auto-reply templates

AUTOMATING Your Work Flow

OUTSOURCING

BUILDING A SUPPORT TEAM - Personal and Business

Please leave a comment below or on the page so I can add YOUR contribution to the list!

 

HELP! I HATE FILING!

My friend Dr. Amie Ragan, author of the brilliant "Psychology of Clutter" blog, recently invited me to answer one of her reader's questions about how to get over your hatred of filing and even make it more fun. "Fun" is a lot to ask when comes to filing!  But believe it or not...it's possible!  With a few adjustments you can learn to appreciate and even LOVE your files! 

Check out my Guest Post where I answer Mack's question about how to make filing less of a pain on the Psychology Of Clutter blog!

RELATED

Also check out Dr. Ragan's post on the Myths about Adult ADD.  I love her encouraging and supportive stance.  Here's a quote: 

"If you have ADD, remember most of what you have been told is wrong. You are smart, motivated and stable given the right circumstances. Everyone has to deal with something and this is yours. Kick ADD in the butt and stop letting it run your life."

As an Organizing Coach specializing in working with Adult ADD who also has ADD, I can tell it is absolutely true.  You do not have to be a victim.  Designing your own unique lifestyle and an environment that supports you makes it possible to take charge and learn to love yourself again.

Read more on Myths about Adult ADD.

Making Your Natural Adrenaline Moments Work For You!

This morning I was coaching a client with ADD and she had the neatest breakthrough that I thought you might like.  In my ADD coaching training I learned about a phenomenon called  "Completion Chemistry."

Essentially it means that many people, especially those of us with ADD, are more motivated to work on a task when we need to FIND something.  For example, we may hate to file or put things away while we are in midst of doing other far more interested things.  But when we really need to find something, we get a burst of adrenaline for the "hunt".   

My client was teeling me about her successes of the week and mentioned how she had needed to find something in the box of papers she had gathered up while organizing last week.  The box had been sitting there for days and she had had no motivation to work on it.  Suddenly when she needed something in that box, she got a burst of "energy" and become motivated to finally sort out some of the papers in that box.

What a perfect example of "Completion Chemistry"!  I let her what a great strategy that was and explained how she could use it more often and she LOVED it!!!  She felt so validated that she already had an effective strategy and now she could consciously work with it and harness it more often - without feeling guilty about the time she let pass before she got around to organizing the box. 

She even came up with her own name for the strategy  - "Riding the Wave" 

We talked about other ways she could apply this and came up with the idea of using the energy of a deadline to help her "activate" for other tasks by leaving extra time before the deadline and she is goign to try this...instead of seeing the task of having to take her daughter to  a 4:30 appt every day as an interruption, she is going to start getting ready to go an hour before use that hour to "scan" the first floor and do any little tasks that need doing, like sort the mail, return a couple calls, put things away etc. 

I'm leaving at 5:00 tonite to go to the regional NAPO conference in Washington DC so I'm going to ride my adrenaline wave to get packed and ready to go and then answer as many emails as I can, return  calls, and tie up other "loose ends" as FAST as possible!   

How do you "ride the wave of completion chemistry" in your daily life?  What new situations can you apply this concept to?

Organize Your Financial Papers To Make Tax Time Less Stressful - Part 2

See Part 1 Here:

Organize Your Financial Papers To Make Tax Time Less Stressful - Part 1

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STEP 4 -Decide if you Need to Establish Sub-Categories

If you use a tax preparer, just separating INCOME, EXPENSES, and STATEMENTS may be enough. Ask them how they want the documents submitted.

If you are doing your own taxes, you only need sub-category folders for those categories that have a lot of paperwork.  If you have a lot of tax deductible expenses, I highly recommend using some kind of financial record keeping software to keep a running total for you throughout the year.

If you need sub-categories for INCOME OR EXPENSES, I recommend using a financial filing system with categories that reflect the categories you had entries in on your tax return last year.

1. Review last year's return and note which expense and income categories were used.
2. Use those sub-categories as the basis for creating a MASTER FILE LIST to guide you in creating a file structure.

For example, if you deduct expenses related to rental properties you own, and you have a lot of expense receipts, create a folder called Rental Property Expense receipts.

A sample MASTER FILE LIST structure may look like this.

• INCOME

o Salary & Wages (Include all your W-2s and /or 1099s here)

o Commission

o Interest & Dividends (1099s and Year end statements only, you don't need the whole years worth of documents to prepare your return.)

o Rental Income

• EXPENSES

o Donations

o Property Taxes

o Mortgage Interest

o Medical

o Childcare

o Job-related Moving

STEP 4 - Choose a Final Home for Your Papers

Once you have it all sorted out, you can see how much paperwork you have and choose an appropriately-sized container. With fewer than 12 or 13 categories, an accordion file could be a perfect solution for organizing your tax - related paperwork. Keep it in a handy location so that as you receive tax documents, you can immediately file them. In doesn't matter where, as long as it is near where you process mail and pay bills, easy to access, easy to use and easy to put away.

STEP 5 -Submit / Prepare Return

By mid - February, all your 1099s should be received and organized. All you have to do now is take them to your tax preparer to do the rest! Or, if you prepare your own return, consider using an web-based or software system such as Turbotax to simplify the job. It stores your past returns and pre-populates this year's return. I find that with Turbotax, I get my refund much faster and as a bonus, It's Deductible is included free. Last year I got over $1000 back just because I kept track of my donations and used It's Deductible to determine the value of the donated items. The values they give are IRS approved and actually more than I would have guessed. So for $1000 it was worth the half hour it took me to keep track of and enter the items into It's Deductible. How else would I get paid $2000 per hour?

STEP 6 -Get Ready for Next Year - Archive Your Paperwork

Instead of creating a whole new system for next year, empty the system you created this year, put all your documents in a single envelope or folder labeled Tax Documents - (YEAR). Create a separate folder for your final Tax Return as well, and archive them in a safe, out-of-the-way place. You will keep the tax return forever, but after 3 - 10 years, you can shred the backup. here are only a few documents you should keep forever and those should filed separately - never put them with your backup. For example, paperwork related to the purchase or sale of Real Estate should be kept forever.

STEP 7 - Celebrate and Relax!

Now you can celebrate and congratulate yourself for a job well done! When spring rolls around, take your refund and do something fun as a reward for not waiting till the last minute!

NOTE: The tips in this article work for most people, but if you have a unique tax situation or are overwhelmed trying to decide what will work best for your organizing needs, consult a financial organizing professional to help you set up a simple, efficient, easy-to-maintain system and ensure a stress-free tax season!

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© 2008 Ariane Benefit, M.S. Ed, Organizing Coach, Neat & Simple Organizing Solutions

RELATED

• Organizing Tax & Financial Papers Digitally
• See my New & Improved A-Store!
• Check out my book on how to get your entire office including papers organized!  The"Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office"  Take a Sneak Peek Inside!

Organize Your Financial Papers To Make Tax Time Less Stressful - Part 1

It's that time again!

The barrage of catalogs in your mailbox is turning into a flurry of year-end tax statements. If you dread tax time and usually spend your spring stressing over getting taxes done on time, these tips are for you! The best time to prepare for tax time is the year before, but if you didn't do it last year, start now! With these simple tips, you'll get your taxes done EARLY and be ready to enjoy spring! And once you have your system in place, it will be even easier next year!

Set an Early Deadline To Submit Paperwork! - The first step to becoming the master of your own financial well-being and reducing tax stress is to FORGET ABOUT April 15! Make YOUR Tax deadline the end of February or Mid-March and start getting your paperwork organized NOW.

If you use a tax preparer, call right now and schedule an appointment for as soon as possible. If you do your own taxes and have difficulty setting a deadline, consider getting a friend, family member, or coach to hold you accountable to meet your deadlines. Once you have a deadline, it's time to organize your paperwork.

STEP 1 - Gather Financial Papers

If the paperwork you need to complete your tax return is scattered, gather all the papers you need into a single box, basket or other container. If they are already in folders or other containers, gather the file folders into a single file container and move on to step 2.

STEP 2 - Sort

Sort your papers into broad categories such as INCOME, EXPENSES, and STATEMENTS. You can subdivide STATEMENTS into BANKING, CREDIT CARDS, INVESTMENTS, RETIREMENT, but if your papers are all in a jumble, using 3 major categories at first makes the job faster and simpler and requires far fewer containers. You can always micro-sort and break down the categories later if needed. But, honestly, most people never go back to the past years records so why bother? My rule of thumb is to not over-organize things you don't use regularly. Keep it SIMPLE. Unless you deduct expenses on your tax return, you don't really need to keep your credit card statements anyway.

STEP 3 - Eliminate

Eliminate any unneeded papers as you go. Keep only receipts that prove your taxable income and deductible expenses.

Eliminate receipts that are NOT tax-deductible if they are ALSO for items that are:

• NOT insurable
• NOT under warranty
• NOT income to you

For example, you don't need to keep electric bills unless you claim a home office deduction.

SEE GREAT ARTICLE WITH DOCUMENT RETENTION TIPS at Money Central

To determine exactly what papers you personally need to keep and what you can let go of, ask your tax advisor.

SHREDDING: Be sure to shred any documents that contain information that could be used to steal your identity such as: social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc. You do not have to shred paper solely because it has your address on it. Your address can be found anywhere and everywhere anyway!

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PART 2 is coming on Wednesday!

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NOTE: The tips in this article work for most people, but if you have a unique tax situation or are overwhelmed trying to decide what will work best for your organizing needs, consult a financial organizing professional to help you set up a simple, efficient, easy-to-maintain system and ensure a stress-free tax season!

____________________________________________________________________

© 2008 Ariane Benefit, M.S. Ed, Organizing Coach, Neat & Simple Organizing Solutions

RELATED

• Organizing Tax & Financial Papers Digitally
• See my New & Improved A-Store!
• Check out my book on how to get your entire office including papers organized!  The"Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office"  Take a Sneak Peek Inside!
  

Prospering and Learning in 2008! Don't miss my Free Teleclass On "Organizing for the Creative Professional & the Chronically Disorganized"

I am so honored to have been invited to be a guest speaker in the "PROSPER YOUR PRACTICE" community hosted by Ellen Shapiro and offered FREE!  Ellen generously and expertly hosts free monthly "teleclasses with special guest experts to share their information and wisdom about different aspects of running a successful business."  Learn more about Ellen Shapiro here

In addition, she offers monthly "repatterning" sessions designed to help you incorporate the  learnings you "resonate with" from the guest speaker sessions into your belief system and empower you to put them into action! 

(p.s. I did a couple repatterning sessions with her and found them very helpful in refocusing me to take action on my healthy eating goals, which I'll be sharing with you soon along with big announcement : )

I'll be speaking on the topic:

"Organizing for the Creative & the Chronically Disorganized"

We'll be discussing what chronic disorganization is, why it affects so many creative people, and we'll also discuss some simple strategies & principles to help creative professionals become more organized using systems that are super easy and don't take a lot of time to maintain. 

Knowing me, I'll probably have some kind of neat freebie to offer people who attend...I've got tons of ideas floating around, but I think I'll just surprise you!

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Here's what you to do if you don't want to miss this!

1. If you want the chance to ask me questions live, Mark March 27th, at 8:45PM EST in your calendar. If you can't make it for the live session, you can listen to the recorded session later, but you have to register to the get the link to the recording!

2. Head on over to Ellen's site to register for the Prosper Your Practice group so that you'll be sure to get the emails with the teleclass info and the follow up link.

That's all you have to do! This is an easy, no-cost, no-obligation, no-spammy sales pitches way to discover what Repatterning is about, AND to visit with me live, and learn more about how to be more organized, even if you've never been able to do it before!

Hope to "see" you there!

JUST RELEASED! "Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office"

JUST RELEASED! I'm so excited to announce that my new book
"Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office" is finally here! Just in time to help you get a Neat Start to the New Year. Two years in the making, it now has 129 pages chock full of my best organizing advice. It will be published as a print book by the end of 2008. For now, it is an e-guide, which helps keeps the price reasonable.

Get more information including a Sneak Peek Inside!


Instant Digital delivery provided by E-junkie.com

"What's Wrong with Me? Why can't I manage my time?"

Q & A with Guest Author, Karin Vibe-Rheymer-Stewart, PhD
Time Management and Organizational Master
http://www.dailymastery.com/

I recently had an extensive conversation with Karin and was delighted to find that her approach to time management consulting is very similar to my approach in working with creative and ADD / ADHD clients to organize their home offices and paper.  I hope you enjoy this guest post by Karin.

Also check out Karin's unique Daily Mastery Holiday Survival Program which is designed to help you get through the holidays with less stress!  It includes emails, personal telephone sessions with Karin, Energy Healing Meditation Sessions with Cathleen Campbell, an Emotional Freedom Technique, Aromatherapy and Feng Shui practitioner.   This is a very creative package at an extremely reasonable price!  I highly recommend you check it out.

Also check out my newest articles on the Clutter Control Freak blog!
7 Neat & Simple Ways to Reduce Your Holiday Stress
Declutter Your Holiday Greeting Card List

Reader Question

What's wrong with me? No matter what I try, I can't seem to get organized enough to manage my time. I have all the right tools, (blackberry, a great computer planning system) but my schedule is in shambles.                                          

Sandra, New York       

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Karin's Response

Thank you so much for your question. In fact, most of my clients have the same issue! First, know that there's nothing wrong with you:  you just have different brain wiring than most and don't have the right tools for your style. 

During a quick conversation with you, you shared that while you have everything you are "supposed" to have (a blackberry, a great computer planning system) you still have trouble managing it all. You keep losing track of time, and never have a good sense of what your day is like. Even though you have a file drawer beautifully organized by your assistant, everything ends up in piles on the desk, competing for space with lots of post-it notes and other pieces of paper.      

These are all clues indicating someone whose right hemisphere tends to be the dominant hemisphere in your brain, a right-brainer for short. Typical right-brainers all share the following characteristics:

• "Out of sight, out of mind" is their middle name
• they don't have a very good sense of time
• they tend to be very creative
• they are great with the big picture, but details tend to evade them.   

Most tools touted as the standard in time management and organization are unfortunately made for the rest of the population, the left-brainers. As a result, right-brainers are often left to wonder if something is wrong with them. In truth, what's wrong are the tools recommended to them and how they're encouraged to use them.   

Discovering this is often a revelation. In Lauren's words (Lauren was a participant to one of my Daily Time Mastery programs), "finding out that I was a right-brainer was such a huge relief. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense, and I could select in the program the tools that really work for me." 

Here are some of the tools that worked well for Lauren and my right-brainer clients: 

• Use a paper calendar instead of an electronic calendar, so that you can visually see how your time will be occupied. For a right-brainer, the classic view on an electronic calendar listing all appointments in a row for the day is very confusing. The visual is the same whether appointments are at 9 am and 10 am, or 9 am and 4 pm, so it looks like they are the same. Also, writing them down by hand helps you remember them.
• Time Managmenet
• Store active papers visually (i.e. the things you're working on right now, or will handle soon). Use containers such as trays or magazine holders to store your active papers on your desk, rather than tucking them away in a drawer. Because of your "out of sight, out of mind" tendency, things in drawers disappear. That's why the papers accumulate on your desk: you want to make sure that they don't disappear. Keep only your reference file in file drawers. 

I hope this helps!

About the Author
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Karin Vibe-Rheymer-Stewart, Ph.D., Founder and President of Daily Mastery, a premier time management and organization services company, is a time management and organizational expert specializing in empowering clients to increase their productivity and create their ideal work-life balance. Karin combines 15 years of experience, professionally supporting others in organizing their lives, and personally as a business owner, manager, and mother to provide a unique perspective and proven tools to her clients who “want it all” in today’s 24/7 world.

Check out these Top Lifehacking, Productivity & Frugal Living Lists!

These are some of the best compilations of blogs covering Lifehacking, Productivity & Frugal Living!  Okay, so yeah.  I'm a little biased.  They all list Neat & Simple Living on them!  But that only makes them better lists right?  tee hee : ) 

Seriously, check out all the great blogs they list! You won't regret it!

From WhitePapers.org
Personal Productivity Required Reading List: 100 Kick-butt Lifehacking Blogs

From The Frugal Panda
Top 50 Frugality Bloggers

From Zen Habits
The Top 50 Productivity Blogs (most of which you haven’t heard about)

From Personal Development Demands Success
The Personal Development List

Update 9/9/07  - I'm reproducing the Personal Development list here by request!

It's extremely long so, click on the continue reading link to see it....

May all your productivity goals come true!