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Time to plan out the next quarter of your work? Learn more about the Friday Workbox® Planning Day in this orientation replay.
Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation
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Time to your work? Learn more about the Friday Workbox® in this orientation replay.
Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation
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This week, we are continuing to look at the different kinds of work. Having labels for things like types of work allows us to see things differently and sometimes leads to better communication.
Prior to founding Organize 365, my entire life was reactive. Everyone else got to tell me what to do - the economy, my family, my stuff. I just kept reacting to what was happening in my environment. In 2011, I drew a line in the sand. Sink or swim, I am in charge of my life from here on out. I started by taking care of my home and began proactively attacking my life. Unless you actively decide to do planned work and work to create a life where the majority of your work is planned, you will remain in firefighting mode and continue to be reactive.
Until I read The Phoenix Project, I did not even have a mindset for types of work like this. I did not realize the two other kinds of work we are talking about today were a thing that existed. Last week, we explored proactive and reactive types of work. Today, we add in maintenance and change orders.
Work: Maintenance - maintenance is the repeating tasks that result in the care and upkeep of your home and life. Many people ask Organize 365 for a cleaning checklist or a home maintenance checklist. There are tons of them on Pinterest. However, if you are using the internet for a list consider how often you need to do the tasks. Are you sure everything you are doing on your checklist needs to be done (at all) or needs to be done as often as you are doing it?
Your standard and comfort level is unique to you. Maintain at the level at which you want to maintain your home. Make a list of the tasks you want to be done - daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly timeline. Make sure that the frequency you assign each task matches with the home you want to have.
Work: Change Orders - anytime things change, it creates work. When a person, assignment, or locations changes, you need to think through the new situation, and you need to do the work to make the change happen. Change is part of life - try not to add a lot of drama. Pivot, adjust, and keep making progress. Often, these kinds of change orders are reactive.
Tip! With meetings, book 5-30 minutes after them for your change order work meeting. Follow up as immediately as possible - adjust the agenda (maintenance), and then get your to do items into your Sunday Basket or Friday Box, make decisions, give approvals, or adjust deadlines. At home, you may need to adjust to new dietary requirements or adjust for your energy level or adjust to someone else (sick kid, spouse stuck late at work, etc.).
I have learned to proactively adjust my plans based on my energy levels. As I analyze my own patterns, I have learned that I need to have a certain kind of energy in order to be effective at content creation - writing books or recording podcasts. Other kinds of work I can do no matter what my energy level is at a given moment. I adjust my schedule each evening for the next day based on my energy level.
I am giving you permission to make your own maintenance checklists and your own change orders. Just because we have work to do in our own homes, does not mean that we need to do it at a certain time or in a certain order or on a certain day. I give you permission to loosen the standards you have set for yourself that are so high. They may be robbing you of your joy. Do what is right for you. Try it without worrying. There is no failure, it is just an experiment.
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I have recently been enjoying parable based books to learn new things and to gain confidence that my own analysis and plans are “right” in the world of business. Reading a fictionalized version of important information helps me to apply learning and see nuances rather than just read dry facts. Recently, I listened to The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim and learned how they describe four different kinds of work.
In this podcast, I will introduce you to the first two kinds of work. I then also share my thinking about how these kinds of work are also present in our home and household lives. By thinking about these kinds of work, we can get better work patterns and be more effective in the work we do.
Constraints - constraints are limits that are difficult or impossible to change - in this episode, I give examples of time, money, and space. When we do not have enough of these things, it can be a limit on our organization and productivity, and changing our situation can require a major effort.
Bottlenecks - are problems that can be analyzed and solved - in this episode, I give examples of time, money, and space. I explain how we are not using what we have effectively. It is vital to discern whether you are facing a constraint or a bottleneck - many times there are effective changes you can make.
Work: Firefighting - reactive work that has deadlines, stress, or feels like a crisis. This work shows up unexpectedly and causes us to pivot, iterate, and adapt rapidly. In the home, the Sunday Basket® contains and then puts out fires. Firefighting is reactive by its very nature.
Work: Planned Work - Planned work is proactive. When you plan your work, you use your time, money, and space more effectively. Organize 365 members accomplish large goals without stress, overwork, or being hurried. The 100 Day Home Organization Program focuses on planned work. Each day is planned out for you and you make progress in 15 minute chunks.
Try it! For the next 10 days, every evening I want you to write out your plan for the next day in the order you will accomplish your tasks on a notecard. Write down your appointments, any household tasks you need to accomplish (pick up a prescription or clean the oven or do laundry). When you write out a plan for your day in order, you can see if you days are smoother. Bonus: the evening before, also add to the index card what clothing you will wear and write down what you will eat. Spoiler alert - there are no perfect days and no perfect plans! The goal is to move from reactive to proactive. You can learn more about using notecards in Episode 310: Ditch Your To Do List with Notecards.
Listen in next week for the other two kinds of work!
Books mentioned in this episode (affiliate links):
Traction - Gino Wickman Lisa’s YouTube Review
Get a Grip - Gino Wickman and Mike Paton
The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
The Goal - Eliyahu Goldratt
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In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.
At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green.
Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication.
Today is Friday - It is a hodgepodge day for me with a little green, a little blue, and a little purple work, but little to no pink work.
On this Friday, I start my day with purple by talking to YOU live online about this week’s podcast episode topic. Because I record my podcasts so far in advance, by the time an episode airs, I usually have a little more to share with you. Another purple activity for today is a masterclass I’m teaching called “Your Most Productive Year Ever.”
I’m spending some extra time with the team today by having Thanksgiving lunch together. Many people on the team will be taking extra time off for the holiday next week.
Most of you probably do your Friday Workbox on Friday afternoons, as I counsel you to do. While I will do a deep dive into my email, I will wait until over the weekend to do my Friday Workbox. It sounds blasphemous, but I purposely do this so I don’t overwhelm my team with new ideas going into the weekend. I just tie up the loose ends from my email, handle anything left on my desk, and prepare for the very beginning of the week.
Then, I will spend 4-5 hours working over the weekend and during that time, I will go through my Friday Workbox®. I don’t talk much on the podcast about working over the weekend. I know many of you don’t want to work over the weekend, but this is what works for me in this season. This also gives me the margin to spend more of my Friday on social connections with my team.
I love the life I’ve created for myself, but by the end of the day on Friday, I’m ready to go home to spend time with Greg and snuggle Grayson.
In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday. Listen in to hear more about how I spend Fridays with my team, why we don’t do Black Friday sales, and how I use Google docs over email when possible.
How do you spend your Fridays? Do you do your Friday Workbox® on Fridays?
Learn more about the Friday Workbox® here.
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In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.
At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green.
Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication.
Today is Thursday - It is an all pink day for me.
It is important to both work in and on your business. Working on your business means taking time for your personal development, your growth, your mindset, your skillset, and thinking about where you’re headed in the future.
You need days like this when you can step back to work on yourself and dream for your business.
On Thursdays, I usually focus on myself. I spend time raising my lid so I can lead Organize 365® and the dream team to the next level. I use these days for coaching programs, conferences, webinars, podcasts, and books. Instead of joining a coaching program right now, I’ve instead joined a couple of round tables for C-level executives and for business owners in the Cincinnati area.
I have been spending my Thursday mornings meeting with other members of these round tables. On Thursday afternoons, I’ll often do things that I personally need to do like doctor’s appointments or clothes shopping. No one expects me in the office on Thursdays and I can do whatever I want!
In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday. I’ll share with you who I’m meeting with today, how I got a rare lunch with my husband, and how I handled some unexpected changes to my schedule.
What activities and resources are you using for your pink days to work on yourself and on your business?
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In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.
At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green.
Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication.
Today is Wednesday - it is a mix of purple and blue work.
Wednesday tends to have some departmental meetings and I use the rest of my time to focus on some purple work to meet end-of-year deadlines.
In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday.
Part of what I share is some different productivity habits I have slowly added in over the past 30 years that help me to be more effective and get so much done.
Listen in and I’ll share about my meetings with Amy, Mary, and Sue. I also share some of the details of how Organize 365® functions, how I make decisions, and how I go through my workday.
Sometimes, you need to do a whole bunch of different kinds of work on the same day. In many ways, Wednesday is a rainbow day for me.
What systems or tools do you use to keep your work organized during a rainbow day?
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Today is Tuesday, and this is a blue day. This is my most structured day of the workweek. It is meeting day.
Organize 365® is 10 years old, and we were a 2 million dollar company in 2021. We have 20 team members:14 in the office and several remote contractors. We also work with outside vendors and support companies.
I will be in meetings all day with the team. I’ll be working in the business.
How Organize 365® Keeps Meetings Productive
I have created the most productive way of communicating with the team with a weekly check-in to make sure we are on the same page. Communication is the number one obstacle to growth inside of a profitable company.
At Organize 365®, we have shared meeting agendas in Google Docs for every single scheduled meeting (and for some of our major projects). I put my own thoughts, questions, and ideas at the top. The team enters their questions for me in the next section for things that need approval, a budget, a signed contract, extra help, or other things to move forward.
Within the document, there are topics for the team discussion. Each team member types in a different color, and often we are able to resolve questions or collect ideas in advance of the actual meeting. If we are able to resolve things outside of the meeting, the team can move forward in their work.
As an organization, we very rarely email other team members. All projects are in shared documents and can link out to other files if needed. No one needs to comb through an email thread or hunt for an email.
I check all of the agendas a few times a week and add anything I can answer at the time. By keeping all our ideas and communication in one place, we make better and quicker decisions.
Today’s Meetings
Listen in as I take you along on my meetings with Vanessa, Shona, Stephanie, Pat, Monique, and Erin.
I used to fit my meetings into my calendar, but now I have dedicated a full day to the meeting necessary to keep the company running smoothly. I schedule every meeting to start at the top of the hour, and if we finish early, I fill in the time by making progress on other tasks.
When my meetings are done for the day, I use any time left to complete administrative work, review meeting agendas to find my actionable items to add to my Friday Workbox®, and deep-diving into some projects.
What can you do to make your team days more productive?
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In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.
At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green.
Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication.
Today is Monday, and Mondays are pink days in my work.
Pink work is about ideas and possibilities—new projects, new ideas, new partners, possible process improvements, and other future ideas that might become a reality.
Because I am the CEO and visionary of Organize 365®, I give myself two full workdays each week to focus on my pink work. I take time to think, to dream, to process, and to move forward about what might be in our future. I spend a lot of time and research exploring possibilities, and sometimes I put the ideas on hold, and sometimes I decide that we are never going to do a particular project.
In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday.
Part of what I share is some different productivity habits I have slowly added in over the past 30 years that help me to be more effective and get so much done.
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Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! Today’s Transformational Podcast features my conversation with Melissa S. Missy lives with her husband and 3 girls. This is the second part of our conversation. Today we talk about work, motherhood, and other organizational parts of life. Missy works in a family business with 180 employees that focuses on media and trade publications. She and Lisa share about how Missy uses a Workbox and Binders to keep all of her papers organized so she can be an organized business owner. They also share how the Workbox and Sunday Basket® help Missy plan her week and stay proactive rather than reactive! I hope you enjoy her story and find her as inspiring as I do! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday
For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:
Organize 365
The Sunday Basket®
100 Day Home Organization Program
ALL ACCESS
Workboxes
Paper Organizing Retreats
I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!
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See the show notes at organize365.com/redefining-work-organize-365-story-part7 This is part seven of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about how you define "work." As always, I want to share my mindset and thinking with you. I also want to share how owning a home or running a household can also be your work. In this podcast, I also share many of the words I use surrounding the concept of work that help me to be more efficient, productive, and effective. This week, I want to share my perspectives on work to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language. No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about work. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.
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In the current podcast series, I am sharing my conversations with members of the Dream Team while we are in the messy middle of some of our current transitions. In this four part series we will be unpacking the most commonly asked FAQs for different parts of the Organize 365® transformational journey. I want to keep you updated on changes and improvements as we declutter and organize before our 10th Anniversary in January 2022. We are not eliminating anything, or raising our prices on any existing products. We are simply doing some decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity. This week, I am sharing my conversation with Monique Horb. Monique is the Organize 365® Director of Business Development. We have spent most of the last year taking the Friday Workboxes to 110%. We have upgraded our Friday Workboxes into two overarching categories - Business and Education.
We look at work differently here at Organize 365®. For us, work includes anything you do for the majority of your hours from Monday to Friday. We want to help you organize the different kinds of work that you do so that you can get more life and spend time in your unique purpose.
Friday Workbox FAQ
What is the Friday Workbox™ and why might I want one?
At home, we are used to thinking about having paper. However, at work, it feels like we are always on a computer.The Business Friday Workbox™ is a physical representation of your work inside of a box. Our brain is not digital.This system will hold all of your ideas and actionable to-do in a single place where you can quantitatively see it. Printing your emails and other digitials items helps you and others see the quantity of work you are handling. What is the difference between a Sunday Basket® and a Friday Workbox™?
The physical components are the exact same physical tools as the Sunday Basket®. But, it goes deep because business is more complex and nuanced. For most of us, our brains make connections better when we are not in front of digital screens.
The Sunday Basket® is for anything related to your home, and the Friday Workbox™ is for anything related to work. Both help to eliminate your to-do list, and hold your ideas for future possibilities. Both help you to prioritize how you will spend your time and energy over the upcoming week. I understand how the Friday Workbox ™ can hold ideas, but what other things go in there?
As a leader of a company, it is easy to spend a lot of time talking about ideas. If you have a more traditional job, the systematic approach of the Friday Workbox™ will still work for you. It works for anyone in any kind of business.
Every job has four core components. Once you identify the components that relate to your job, you can optimize them and make your approach more productive. What colors are used in the Friday Workbox™?
Pink - anything that is only done by you
Purple - your assignment or job description
Blue - the team that helps you get your work done (direct reports and supervisors)
Green - financial OR administrative and repetitive tasks If I get a Friday Workbox™, how long will it take to work? What do I have to do for this to be useful?
This is not a one and done system. The Sunday Basket® takes four to six weeks to build the habit. The Workbox takes a bit longer to set up and build the habit. We ask you to give it a full quarter of the year; give it a full 13 weeks. You keep talking about planning. I don’t feel like I have the time or authority to stop my work and plan for my next quarter. How does your planning system work?
When I think about my planning, I realize that I am a teacher, and teachers always spend so much time planning. I’ve always been a salaried employee, not an hourly one. When I tried to limit my hours in the past, I had to plan a lot to be a really good teacher. As the owner of Organize 365®, I am spending at least 20 hours a week thinking and planning. The more prepared I am, the faster and easier the work is for the rest of the team.
For you, start with five minutes after each meeting. Go through what you have been asked to do, and add it to your actionable to-do list. See how much your productivity improved. Next, add on five minutes before meetings and review the notes from the previous meeting, write down any questions you have for the meeting, and then do your five minute post review. I know that a Friday Workbox ™ is the place to store the actionable to-dos and the Friday Workbox ™ Planner is the place to plan. What makes the Organize 365® planner different from others?
I was an unusual child and I have had a planner since the fourth grade. I love planners. Most planners sold are really more of a date book or calendar; they record dates. Our planners have actual education for how to plan your time. The front of the planner has pages to guide you in thinking about your goals in all four kinds of work. I then guide you through an audit of how you actually spent your time. Then, we realign your time decisions so you can create what you are trying to create. The calendar keeps track of your appointments, and the planner gives you the vision of what you are going to accomplish.
Planning and purposeful thought makes everything happen. Every single person is busy, but the goal in life is not to do more. The goal is to organize your time, thoughts, and energy so that you can make the biggest impact in the world. This system will increase your impact. Using a common language improves your communication tools. Improving your communication tools helps more people collaborate effectively without requiring more complexity. I have a lot of paper for my job. Does it all live in the Friday Workbox™?
Each slash pocket represents and holds the paper for a single idea or project. Lisa has multiple boxes of slash pockets — one at work and one at home. The most active ones live in an active workbox or portable bag for this quarter, and the rest tend to stay in one place.
Frequently accessed reference papers are printed and kept physically in binders, and they are also kept digitally. The binders are color coded to match the workbox and hold the reference materials for easy access when needed. The contents of each binder is reviewed quarterly to ensure they are up to date and to identify any decisions that need to be made on the contents. I have heard about a Friday Workbox™ Club. What is that and how can I join?
As a teacher, I know there are many different kinds of students and learners. They need different levels of support and tutoring to be successful. Organize 365® provides three different ways to help you be successful in implementing the Friday Workbox™ system. On demand dashboard training videos Friday Workbox™ Club - 90 minute virtual sessions in an online community for co-working and accountability Friday Workbox™ Certified Organizers - individuals who partner with Organize 365® and can provide 1:1 or small group assistance I have purchased other programs and not followed through. What support or access is there for the Friday Workbox™?
Organize 365® is an education company. When you invest in our programs, I want you to have access to the teachers, the community, and the support you need to achieve organization. There is a lot included in your initial purchase — we want you to succeed!
This is your professional development and an investment in yoru time management and productivity. It will multiply your time going forward, and we are not going to take it away from you. Is there a way to try this before I make a purchase?
Absolutely! Please go to organize365.com/workboxes and read all about the workboxes. A Masterclass is coming soon! And, there is a free five day mini course available to you. -
For our final podcast in the Friday Workbox series, I want to teach you how I am able to get so much done, so that you can use the same tools to transform your life. I am a naturally productive person. My productivity is the result of my ability to plan. One of my gifts is my orientation to time. I have always been good at assigning an accurate amount of time to a task. As I moved from my to-do list to mySunday Basket® and Friday Workbox™, I began to schedule time to complete tasks directly on my calendar.
Every week, I take time to work through my Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox™. As I do so, I pull out the tasks thatmust be done in the upcoming week, determine how long it will take, and schedule when I will do them. I can immediately see if there are conflicts between what I need to do and the time available so that I can prioritize and make decisions proactively.
Every seven days, I make new decisions about what I will take action on. The reason a Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox™ are so effective is because all of my dreams, ideas, research materials and goals are safely captured in my boxes. I may not get to those dreams as soon as I would like, but nothing is ever forgotten.
My secret sauce to productivity and success is the act of planning. I want to share with you how I use Planning Day andWorkbox Planning Day with every new season as the ultimate task stacking habit.
Home
At home, Planning Day occurs just prior to the new cycle of the 100 Day Home Organization Program. During that week, I look at how I will use my time in the upcoming 17 weeks, set new goals, and deep review through any 2.0 slash pockets that have been on hold.
Work
At the end of each calendar quarter, I deep dive into my plan for my business. On the 13th week of the quarter, just before my new quarter starts, I use the last week to reconcile expenses, set new goals, update the social media agenda, and do a deep review of every business slash pocket I have created. Then, I execute that plan for the next 12 weeks.
Win
By being realistic about what I can complete in the upcoming quarter, I am able to actually achieve my goals and finish my projects. Anything that I will not have the time, money, motivation, or energy to address goes back into holding. Those ideas and projects are ready and waiting for their right time to shine. I know all of those slash pockets will be reviewed at the next planning day, and I can take action on them then if the time is right.
The better you get at planning and improving your productivity, the more capacity and impact you will create. You will win at home, work, relationships, and in your community. You will learn to live with excellence, ease, and enjoyment. Planning is the key to unlocking your ability to achieve your goals!
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This week, I want to teach you all about the green slash pockets in the Friday Workbox System. Green slash pockets are for financial responsibilities and repetitive administrative tasks. At first, I thought green slash pockets were optional. I worked in direct sales for a long time, and I realized that most direct sellers did not look at the financial side of the business. We had a passion for the products and companies we were representing, but did not pay attention to the money. Unfortunately, many of us were not making enough sales to be profitable, and it was also easy to spend money faster than it came in on new samples and gifts.
Creative Memories introduced me to the idea of looking at my business finances on a monthly basis. By keeping my sales and purchases organized, I was able to know every month if I was making a profit or experiencing a loss. This simple financial organization was the inspiration for the Organize 365® Annual Income & Expense Binder. Money in the door isnot profit, and it is vital to update the financial situation of a business at least monthly to ensure your financial picture is realistic.
Not everyone owns a small business or deals with financial tasks as a part of their work. When not used for finances, the green slash pockets are repetitive administrative tasks that need attention on a regular basis. Tasks repeat at different intervals in different work settings, but consider what tasks you do over and over every day, week, month, quarter, and year. Creating checklists and systems for ensuring these repeating tasks are handled will improve your efficiency and productivity.
As you begin to reach your maximum capacity at work, I recommend hiring an administrative assistant or an executive assistant. These staff members can begin to take over these repetitive administrative tasks, especially those that are easy to explain and delegate. Training someone to handle your email, calendar, correspondence, and errands is an investment in leveling up your own capacity for your most important work. Having your checklists established helps ensure your assistant is cost-effective.
Despite having over twenty team members at Organize 365®, there are administrative tasks I must do every single week. I share more detail in the podcast, but I still need to ensure that every week I make time for email, errands and orders, checklists, and my Friday Workbox.
My Friday Workbox time is not optional. This is the time when I review all of my slash pockets and active projects, update my calendar, plan time to work on each slash pocket in the upcoming week, and update all of my meeting agendas. I need to ensure I move projects forward so our company stays healthy.
Effective and productive work is the result of good habits and systems. If you want to succeed at work, your green (administrative) work is not optional.
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Today, I want to teach you how I think about the blue slash pocket topics in my Friday Workbox. At first, blue is for you. Then, as your business or role grows, blue becomes the color for your team. In the Friday Workbox, the slash pockets build upon one another, and need to evolve in order, especially if you are the owner of a business. Pink possibilities become purple projects. Purple projects then inspire you to grow a team to help you meet your business goals.
When you first begin working, blue slash pockets are for your professional development, meetings, and your human resources records. You need to know and understand yourself first, before you can lead a team. In podcast episode 323, I shared how we partnered with Cloverleaf to give you access to three different personality tests. After you know yourself, you can learn more and better understand your family members and work team members.
Learning and developing yourself and your team can only make your work better and more effective. As you better understand who you naturally attract and how you best deliver your message, your impact will grow. As you reach more people, you will need to add people to your team.
If you are a female head of household, it is best and easiest to add housework assistance to your team first. This can be a housecleaner, laundry assistance, child care, pet care, or car care. Freeing yourself from household tasks gives you more capacity for your work. In Organization is a Learnable Skill, I tell my own story of growing a team at home and at work.
Growing your team at work, especially if you are directly hiring people, is a new skill set that you will need to develop. If you are a business owner, when you hire employees or contractors, you will have to generate pink and purple work for those people and you will want to ensure their efforts are worth the financial expense. Blue slash pockets will help you keep your team organized, and will provide reminders to learn about your worker’s styles for learning, feedback, and motivation.
As your team grows, your personal development should focus on growing your own skills in communication, overseeing workloads, and running meetings. Organize 365® also has some unique approaches to meetings. I share how we use one-to-one, daily huddles, department, and team meetings in the podcast - be sure to listen in to hear the details!
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On the last podcast, I taught you about how to create a plan for your work. In this next series of podcasts, I will be taking you behind the scenes and sharing how the Friday Workbox system was organically developed from my own experiences.Today, I want to teach you how I think about the pink and purple slash pocket topics in my Friday Workbox. I am the daughter of a salesman father and an entrepreneur mother. I also have been a classroom teacher, so when I look back on my own work history, I can see the ways I am different from other business owners. I am also highly analytical about how I work, and I am extremely productivity minded.
My earliest work included over twenty direct sales businesses. In observing successful direct sales leaders, they were good at selling their products, providing VIP customer service, and creating a team who also had these skills.
Because of my interest in productivity, I not only adopted these skills, but I focused my efforts on my most profitable customers. I had the same earnings and success with a team that was only 25% as large as the other industry leaders, and with only 20% of the typical customer base. I don't like to waste time, materials, or effort.
Throughout my working years, I am able to educate, sell, and support my customers. Over time, I have realized that I am successful in these things because I think of my business as having a total of four pillars. In this and upcoming podcasts, I will share with you how pink, purple, blue, and green colors correlate with different parts of your work and how they build upon each other.
PINK = POTENTIAL
When I turn to my Friday Workbox, all of the different ideas, dreams, possibilities, and potential goes into pink slash pockets. These are not commitments or goals, they are dreams and ideas. Sometimes, they become active right away, other times they take years to materialize. They are truly about potential; things that may happen in the future. Because the possibilities are endless, collect as many pink slash pockets as inspire you. By keeping my possibilities in pink slash pockets, I physically review them quarterly and update, add, dream, and rethink how they may apply to my business.
PURPLE = PROJECTS
In the Friday Workbox system, purple are the actionable, goal-oriented, deadline-driven, dollars-committed, projects. Once your pink item becomes an actionable project with a deadline, and other people become involved, it moves to a purple slash pocket. Most people can only take action and make progress on one to five slash pockets at any one time. As your team grows, you can increase your capacity by having other people complete purple projects at the same time and increase your impact.
Any kind of business or work requires both pink and purple working together. In some workplaces this is potential leads being upgraded to actual customers. In other jobs, this is article ideas turned into publications. Both together are required to sustain your business. Once you have a cycle of both, you can move onto the next step of work - blue. Check back next week for more on that!
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Throughout September, I will be teaching you how to proactively plan your work, control your work situations, and make decisions about what your work is going to look like, now and in the future.
It is time to plan our work. I have always been a non-traditional worker, so we use a very broad definition of work at Organize 365®. I want you to make a plan for your work and make thoughtful decisions about how to manage this part of your life.
No one will ever get everything on their to-do list done. Getting a system in place to manage your to-dos will allow you to optimize your work and have more time for your life.
What is work?
Work is whatever you are doing for the majority of your Monday to Friday hours. Your priority for the majority of the week in this season of life is your work. It can be volunteering, caregiving, working a traditional job, or being an entrepreneur. It can also include being a stay at home parent, or a homeschooling parent.
There are many different kinds of work. Work is a mindset about how you approach your activities, and may or may not be related to what you do to earn an income.
Where do you work?
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed where we work. Because of our new experiences, now we all can discuss in-person work, remote work, and hybrid work. Where each of us works will likely continue to change over the coming months and years. I started Organize 365® at my kitchen table, moved into a corner of my bedroom, briefly used a spare bedroom, had an office in a loft space at home, and then finally moved to the Organize 365® office.
No matter what kind of work you do, you need to consciously decide where you will do your work. Many homes do not have a dedicated home office. Some work requires working in different locations on different days. However, establishing where you work is vital to effectively getting your work done.
No matter where you do your work, you need a consistent place to capture your work papers, ideas, and to-do items. For your household, the Sunday Basket® handles all of your home paperwork. At work, the solution is the Friday Workbox.
What hours do you work?
I love working. I love creating impact through my work. I have never been successful setting work hours for myself, but I have learned to set non-work hours so that I have time and energy for my home and family. I set aside Sunday as a day when I do not do work, and I lavish my attention on my family. This is my approach, but yours may be different.
You may be in a season where your focus and priorities are on parts of your life outside of work. In those times, you may need to fit your work hours into firm boundaries. In this situation, determine when you will start and stop your work day. Be clear about what can be flexible and what cannot change. Try different approaches to your work hours and determine what is best for you at this time.
Where will your work supplies be put away?
No matter what your work situation is, you need to have a place where you can put all the parts of your work away. This is especially important if you are working from home or working from multiple mobile locations. Just like in kindergarten, at the end of the day, your workspace needs to be clean.
The Friday Workbox is designed to hold all of your active work papers, and to keep them organized so that you make consistent progress towards your work goals. When you have your Friday Workbox, a computer, and a phone, you can work anywhere. This is a system that is easy to grab, ready for you to easily access your work and take action, and safe for storing your work when you are done for the day.
As more people are working and schooling from home, it can be hard to be done working for the day especially if our work is out in the open. Putting everything into the Friday Workbox (including the laptop) and putting it away, allows your work space to return to the other functional purpose. Putting away things we are not actively using improves the family enjoyment of our spaces.
I am a multi-faceted, multi-passionate person. I know many of you are too. Over time, I have found that having a separate box to store the pieces of a project or job helps me to organize my brain. Prior to using boxes to store my projects, I had multiple unfinished projects in the open around my home. It was overwhelming, and I did not make as much progress as I thought I would by keeping these things visible.
At the end of each work session, develop a transition routine. Check your email one last time. Close your computer. Drop any notes for action items or reminders in your Friday Workbox. Put your papers back in the Friday Workbox. Put your Friday Workbox away and enjoy your non-working time with the others in your home.
If you need more help getting your Friday Workbox system started or optimized, we now have Certified Organizers who are specialists in the Friday Workbox System. They are specially trained to help you as an individual, or can help you get the Friday Workbox installed in your workplace. For more information, please check out our directory.
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It’s time to decide and make a plan. Last week, we talked about what is in your control. Control is about the decisions you make, how often you decide, and the impact of the decisions you make. These things matter much more than how many decisions you make. Today, we will talk about different aspects of decision making. Deciding seems so final. It’s really not. I will teach you about making deliberate decisions today, and then reassessing them when the information you have changes.
Almost a decade ago, I decided what to have for breakfast, and I haven’t needed to decide again. I just grab the same breakfast and coffee and I’m ready to go. Who thinks this much about breakfast? We all do! We just don’t realize how much effort we put into decision making if we aren’t actively paying attention to our decisions. When choosing my breakfast, I thought about calories, energy level, hunger, and how different food choices affect my energy level. I weighed all these factors and made a decision about what I will eat every single day.
I have shared about ways that other leaders make decisions once to avoid decision fatigue in podcast 271. Anyone can learn to make decisions about the little things like simple meals, clothing uniforms, or putting items into a Sunday Basket®. Deciding once spends more energy up front, but it reduces decision fatigue and exhaustion over things that do not really matter in the long run.
Another important factor in making good decisions is controlling how many decisions you need to make in a given day. In the past, I used to think it was a sign of success that I made all of the decisions in the company; everyone answered to me! Now almost all of the decisions at home and work are happening without me - this is growth and success that can scale and be sustained! Organize 365® uses a decision making ladder similar to Michael Hyatt’s Delegation Levels and the Phoenix Project Levels of Decision Making.
We all have a finite capacity for making decisions. It’s a physical reality. You can only make so many decisions. If you want to make more impact, you must empower and teach people how to make decisions the way you would make them. This means they can make decisions without you. Freeing up your own capacity and investing in your team furthers your mission and vision so much more than you can do alone.
One important lesson I’ve learned about decision making is that you can only make decisions about your own home, work, and life. Decisions become easier once you truly embrace that you only control yourself. Other people will make their own decisions. I can see the beauty in all of the decisions that people make. The decisions that others make don’t bother me. I love to learn how other people come to the conclusions and decisions that they make. You can’t make a decision to control another person. You can only decide how you want to work, live, or do life.
Very few decisions we make are permanent or irreversible. At certain times in life, and certain seasons of our lives, we will need to re-make our decisions. Whenever you get more information, you should reflect and reconsider your decision. Ask yourself: Does it still work in this season of life? What has changed and how should my decision adapt?
I now look at what decisions may need to change at the start of each of my mini new years (January, May, and September). I make my decisions at the beginning of each 4 month stretch, and then I see how it goes. I don’t mind taking 120 days to research and try new decisions, and the final decision tends to last five to ten years. I work on one or two big decisions each trimester; this system doesn’t work with 30 new decisions.
September is the most productive planning time of the year. Every year, I set aside a Planning Day for my home and set goals for myself, home, family, and finances for the next 120 days. I also set aside a day every quarter for myself and my team to do a Workbox Planning Day. I’d love to have you join me and make progress on your own decision making and goals!
