Your garage may seem like one of the hardest places to tackle during spring cleaning. It’s certainly one of the more overlooked spots from a home-organization standpoint, leading to clutter and mess. As a result, tidying it seems more daunting.

Rubbermaid has some suggestions about how to get your garage organized. 

There are 3 keys to a great garage organization system:

• Easy
• Versatile
• Expandable

Read more about their FastTrack systems and how they can help you: Garage Gains [Rubbermaid.com]

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This post talks about common problems affecting the “wired workers” (those who use a lot of technology) and a few appraoches to dealing with them.  Here are some highlights:

Common problems:

• Distractions / Lack of Focus - If you are having trouble focusing on what you need to do, go to a “single-tasking” mode.  So many people are prone to multi-task as much as possible, but when it comes to crunch time, force yourself to single-task until you finish what you need to.  You could also consider shortening your to-do lists to only list the three most important things you need to finish (at night, write 3 things you HAVE to get done tomorrow) and focus on those in single-task mode until you finish them.
• Information Overload - This is an obvious problem with anyone in touch with reality.  Between Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, your email, oh yeah, and your job, there is just too much information.  Set aside some time to unsubscribe from things that do not really matter and set up email filters to help you only see the information you really need to see.
• Repetitive Tasks - One word: Automate
• Backlog- You have so many things to do in a backlog of information (after a vacation or really busy week) and you dont even know when to start.  Instead of Inbox Zero, start with Inbox 0.5.  Stay at it, and you will get it all done.
• Interruptions - Just turn off the stuff that is bothering you.  Close your door, turn your phone on silent, and stop looking at Twitter for a while, and just focus on what you need to do.
• Procrastination - If you are still putting off the things you really need to do, ask yourself, “What is stopping me from doing this?” After that, take a deep breath, get past that spot, and just do it.
• Overwhelm - If you just have too much to do, try to take on less for a little while until you get caught up, and then slowly get back to doing more.

What are some things you do to overcome common productivity problems?

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Read the original article here: Reusable Solutions to Common Productivity Problems [Lifehacker.com]

In the informal world of e-cards, email, and text messaging, it is easy to get carried away with not being personal with greeting cards, especially birthday ones.  It has become so easy to just send someone an email telling them “Happy Birthday” or sending them a text message before you go to bed, but this really takes all the feeling out of wishing them that “Happy Birthday”.  There are even services now where you can enter birthday dates ahead of time and the web sites will send the e-card on the birthday, so you do not even have to think about it any more.

I think this trend has picked up for obvious reasons (some of the same reasons this blog exists), because people feel like they do not have enough time anymore and they want to make things as easy as possible.  The good news is that I have a great system that you can use to still be personal in birthday cards (or any other type of greeting or communication) without spending a lot more time and energy.

Lets say you are just bad at sending birthday cards, or even calling people on their birthday, I think there are probably 2 reasons this can happen:

1. You just forget about the birthday until it is too late
2. You are too “busy” to buy a card, write something in it for 30 seconds, and send it

Here are some simple solutions to each of those problems:

Read the rest of this entry »

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