Planning impacts on your health

Getting grounded in self-care

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When I give talks on Organizational Zen, I always end with a slide that says, “Take Care of Yourself”. It occurred to me recently to move this slide to the front of the pack because if you aren’t healthy, getting organized is the last thing you want to tackle.

“Take Care of Yourself” sounds simple, but we know it’s not. Are you careful about what you expose your body to? Are you getting enough sleep? How are you doing for exercise? Do you have quiet time each day to help manage stress?

How could I give this only one slide? 🙂

In this post, I’ll tackle my favorite part of self-care: Things you expose your body to.

Food
I’ll admit it: I’m a foodie. I read every ingredient label and agonize over the food I eat. Where was it grown? Does it include additives? Did anyone suffer from the collecting of this food?

Bottom line: Is it healthy for the planet, and for me to eat this? Continue reading →

Stand tall and get more done

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Does slouching contribute to procrastination?

According to a study highlighted this week in FastCompany, Erik Peper, PhD, says that when you stand tall, chin up, shoulders wide, your body relaxes into a safe and confident state. He says that when your body is erect, whether sitting, standing, or walking, you have more energy and more positive thoughts.

Conversely, when you’re hunched over, you don’t breathe as well, put pressure on your stomach, and don’t think as clearly.

“When you collapse, you signal to the body that you are in a defense reaction. Your cortisol goes up and testosterone goes down,” says Peper. “In our research, we have demonstrated that in the collapsed position, you have easier access to hopeless, helpless, powerless, defeated thoughts and memories, and it takes more brain activation to think of positive empowering thoughts than it does in the erect position.”

Peper calls depression a “sitting disease” and attributes it to too much time spent at a desk, on a couch in front of a TV, or hunched over a screen.

Let’s test out this theory. Continue reading →

Life is a game

organizationalhabits Building your personal brand, Changing habits, Meditation, Organizational Exercises, Planning impacts on your health, Tips on using a planner , , , , , , ,

Roll the dice. Draw a card. Move a colored peg around the board.

Life is a game with an unpredictable outcome, and the fun is in the playing. When you wake up in the morning, are you grateful to be alive? Do you feel energy in your gut anticipating the day?

What will you learn today? Who will you meet? What conversations will you have?

Back to the game. Draw a “Habit” card and see where it takes you…

Continue reading →

Getting started with meditation

organizationalhabits Baby steps to start getting organized, Changing habits, Getting started, Meditation, Organizational Exercises, Planning impacts on your health , , , , , , ,

If you aren’t healthy, it’s pretty hard to stay organized. Eating good food, getting outside, going for walks, and getting enough sleep help you focus on the tasks of the day.

And a big part for me of being grounded in a healthy lifestyle is meditation. I started meditating a couple of years ago after resisting for the longest time because I thought mediation was something you had to “do right”.

What finally got me meditating was a book by Lissa Rankin called Mind Over Medicine. The book isn’t about meditation – it’s about how powerful your mind is in helping you heal.

Here’s Lissa talking about this in a TED talk. Continue reading →

How “creative avoidance” messes with your obit

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Creative avoidance is the fun stuff you do to skirt getting to the big stuff. When you’re pondering a big, juicy project, it’s hard to get started for many reasons… And if you don’t have time, you have the perfect excuse!

“I’d love to get this done but I don’t have time.” Continue reading →

How to change a habit

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Want to change a habit?

A couple of months ago, FastCompany published a great article on ways to change the habit of exercise.

  • A control group was asked to exercise once in the next week. 29% of them exercised.
  • Experiment group 1 was given the same task along with detailed information about why exercise is important to your health (i.e., “You’ll die if you don’t”.) 39% of them exercised.
  • Experiment group 2 was asked to commit to exercising at a specific place, on a specific day at a specific time of their choosing. 91% of them exercised.

Continue reading →

Energy Audit

organizationalhabits Baby steps to start getting organized, Changing habits, Getting started, Organizational Exercises, Planning impacts on your health , , , , , , , ,

If you’re trying to get organized, it can feel overwhelming and it’s hard to know where to start. My recommendation is before you jump in, do an energy audit. If your energy is low your focus will be weak, and taking on organization may be too much to ask of yourself! So what’s draining your energy?

Energy Audit Exercise
1. Sit somewhere you are comfortable and have room to write. If you are at your desk and it’s messy, move everything except paper and pen to the floor. You don’t have to clean the desk, and please don’t clean the room! Just move your stuff off the desk for now so you aren’t distracted.

2. Take a deep breath and sent an intent: “I need to know what’s draining my energy”

3. Spend time visualizing each item on this list and decide: Does this part of my life raise my energy? Feel neutral? Or lower my energy? Next to each point, put a +, 0, or – sign. Continue reading →

Finding “flow” through focus

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When was the last time you really enjoyed yourself? Were you deeply immersed in a great book? Or learning a new skill – like painting, or skiing, or playing a musical instrument? Or were you having a great conversation, sharing in a passionate discussion with someone? Or were you creating something?
Blasket sun on water

Mihaly Scikszentmihalyi describes a complete focus on the task at hand as “a state of flow.” When you are in flow, time drops away. And as you work, you get ideas from everywhere. They descend on you in the middle of the night, while you’re taking a shower, and while you’re driving. You think of this work and feel your energy lift. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of this work – you are one with what you are doing.  Continue reading →

How to form a new habit

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The cool part about habits is that they’re your brain’s way of saving on thinking. When you try something new, your brain records what you’re doing and after you do the same thing multiple times, your brain says, “I’ve got it! You can run on auto-pilot now.”

That’s why you don’t have to think about how to drive every time you get behind the wheel of a car. And how when you take a shower or brush your teeth your mind can wander. How many of us come up with brilliant ideas in the shower? You can thank your shower habit for taking over giving you time to think.

A great way to form a new habit is to tie it into an existing habit. Then your brain can use some of the same cues you had for an old habit and re-purpose them into a launch pad for a new habit.

Let’s say you want to start exercising. What habit can you tie into to make this a successful launch? You have thousands of habits strung together that make up each day. What are you going to bump out or add to? Continue reading →