Being Organised

Keeping a tidy and organized desk will improve your productivity and focus

by Yin on December 20, 2011

Some of us a naturally untidy people- even though after extensive spring cleaning, the desk quickly become a cluttered mess each time. And after a while, we just give up trying. 

Then one day, as again we are not able to find our stuff, this time an important document, we vow to tidy up our desks and put everything in their rightful order and files. So we dedicate about half a day just cleaning up. 

Things seemed fine for a while….and a few days later, the desk becomes cluttered again. 

Even though some may protest that they work better in a cluttered desk, the truth is, if we are disorganized, we really spend longer time looking for stuff and going through things. And at the back of our minds, something will always bug us- perhaps we forgot to do something important, and we find that on some occasions, we are right because we really forget because the important to-do list get buried in the piles of documents.

There’s something about clutter that messes with the mind- causing it to be knotted, stuck and stifle the flow of creative energy. No doubt, you can still complete our tasks but we would require more brain energy and more cups of coffee. We have to strain ourselves more- so we end up feeling more exhausted- even when we are doing things that we like. 

Once you start throwing away things you don’t need, or filling them away in their proper place (a process that takes you just a few minutes once you dedicate 5 minutes a day to doing it), you will find that your mind seemed to be more light and less cluttered. Ideas flow more freely, you will feel more focused instead of being chronically ‘overwhelmed’. 

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Tagged as: Being Organised, clutter, creative, declutter, stress, work

Bring a notebook and pen wherever you go to jot down ideas

by Yin on April 2, 2011

Have you ever encountered times when your brain are brimming with ideas when you are out and about when your computer is not nearby. Then few hours later when you find the time to finally sit down and write, you start to suffer from the writer’s block.

At most, we may just have the habit of scribbing information on bits and pieces of paper- and then when the information is required later, we scrambled around to look for it- high and low. 

Why not just spend a few bucks to buy yourself a small notebook, it can be even in a design that inspire you. It’s really a simple way to stay organise and to keep your information in one place. Wherever you go when you see something that you need to jot down- write it down in your notebook.

 There are times when our minds feel inspired and story or article ideas literally narrate themselves off our heads. If we fail to jot the ideas or storyline down, the idea would be lost.

Furthermore, when you write down things, it frees your brain from cluttered and the burden of having to remember to many things.  And you would be surprised that you will feel less stressed and less scattered. You can then use your energy for more important things at hand until you have time to sit down and write about it later.

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Tagged as: Being Organised, Blogging, creative, handphone, work, writing

Simple way to declutter your mobile phone number tel list

by Yin on March 2, 2011

Many people are more concerned about losing their contact lists if ever their mobile or cell phone goes missing or is damaged. And yet, we also want to keep all numbers in one place…so as we add and add in new numbers, we find ourselves with a cluttered phone number list.

The sign that we need to do housekeeping on our mobile phone’s contact list is:

  • we are unable to save new numbers because the tel number storage has maxed up
  • takes awfully long time to scroll down that list of phone numbers
  • there are 2 different persons with the same name and we no longer know who is who

Solution to decluttering the mobile phone:

Simple: Just buy a durable book- perhaps one that comes with alphabetical arrangement- and then jot down ALL the contact numbers there by alphabetical order. Never mind if the book does not come with alphabetical order. You can manually count the number of pages and allocate the alphabet yourself- as some alphabet tends to have more names and some less (example Q, X or Z)- and you can take that into account when allocating pages.

This will free your mind of the worry that you may one day need to call a friend whom you have not contacted in the past 5 years.

Hinode-notebooks

Just a few bucks to take away your mental worry

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Tagged as: Being Organised, handphone

Decluttering from the inside out

by Yin on January 27, 2011

People can tell a lot about us by the way her house is arranged. It is organised and tidy or it is cluttered and crazy?

If our minds are organised and under control, our surroundings would be as well. If not, even though we go through the painful process of decluttering, the chaos would built up again in no time.

However, homes and places that are ‘too clean’ and where the owner is too obsessed about even a little speck of dust also denotes a controlling personality, perhaps on someone who is afraid to lose control. It’s tough to live like that….and to spend too much of time cleaning and arranging things.

Still, you need not be too hard on yourself when you cannot control clutter. Clutter is just an outward symptom of a deeper inner issue. It could be that you are holding on and unable to let go (not of the clutter but it can be of ideas, opinions, views). Or that you are feeling overwhelmed or afraid to face something in your life. And the thing that you are trying not to face could have nothing to do with the clutter at all.

 It is not something that you can grit your teeth and just force yourself to clean up- if you forced yourself, you would find the experience very tiring and draining- both physically and emotionally. Your sinus or allergies may just act up- a subconsious sign to get yourself away from the task. And you may spend a lot time regretting something sentimental that you have forced yourself to donate away.

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Tagged as: Being Organised, clutter, declutter, decluttering

Decluttering- when you feel relunctant to throw away the memories

by Yin on November 14, 2010

New things cannot come into our life when there is no space for them to come in. One way to move on to a new phrase of life is to learn to declutter our surroundings. Instead of shopping for storage boxes so that we can put things away from sight, we should aim to remove those things that belonged to another time and place and no longer become a part of our lives.

Everything around us has energy- if we surround ourselves with too many things that remind us of the past, how are we to move ahead?

But it does get difficult to just throw away the memories to the dustbin. So, why not try another way…send them over to recycle centers.

In Klang Valley, we have been quite fortunate because a number of recycling boxes can be seen all around to make it convenient for people to drop items that they do not want. We can give away old newspaper, books, magazines, clothes, dolls, decorative items, etc.

recycle-for-charity

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Tagged as: Being Organised, clutter, declutter, decluttering

How to organise newspaper clippings that you want to read later

by Yin on June 21, 2010

Some of us like to preserve old newspaper articles. After reading, we feel that some articles may be too good for the recycle bin and so we set aside the article for ‘future reference’. 

As time pass by, these ‘useful’ articles quickly work themselves up to a little nasty stack in the corner. Effectively, they become an eye-sore and when we want to look up some articles, we are confronted by a huge collection of paper that are fast turning yellow. 

Newspaper clippings that I was saving for later

Newspaper clippings that I was saving for later

Stacked newspaper becomes clutter and is not a conductive item in your living space. Reason being is that they tend to attract dust, some insects, smell and well…stagnant and negative energy. I have even tried to cut them out and stick them to printed business prospectus- but after a while, they have a stale smell.

Even though you do not believe in feng shui or positive energies, just ask yourself, do you feel re-energized looking at that stack of paper each time? 

Untidiness and disorganized objects create chaos- and when we look at them, somehow it makes our mind more muddled and less confused. So I would like to make a suggestion for those of you who feel you must have some kind of record to store expired newspaper articles:

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Simple and effective way of organizing your bill payments

by Yin on March 23, 2010

We tend to get so busy in our lives that we miss out the simplest but the most crucial things- making sure our bills are paid in time.

The simple solution would be to come up with a simple checklist that will tell you to see at a glance what are the bills that you have paid and what is outstanding. I’ve made a checklist for myself and I’ve included a sample of the checklist in Word document. Please feel free to download and modify the file for your own payment. 

Download the file Checklist for bill due date

Else you can also draw the table in your organizer so that you can see it at a glance. I actually drew it on my notebook that I carry around with me all the time. 

You may arrange according to the bill due dates, or you can modify the due date to be between 3 to 7 days earlier than the actual date to ensure you pay on time. 

As for bills, you can assign standing instruction or direct debit so that either your banking or credit card account are automatically debited every month for the bill payment. 

However, I usually don’t autobill the few main utilities bill like Telekom, TNB or Streamyx because it takes time to set up the instructions- 2 to 3 months and equally long to  cancel or reassign to new card (which happens when we change credit card numbers due to lost or stolen card). These bills you can conveniently pay by online banking service or at ATM machines of selected banks- no need to queue at the post office and have to double park.

Setting up online standing instruction is probably a one time pain- but a lifelong convenient. Online banking enables you to pay your bills anytime the fancy hits you at the convenience of your own home. You only have to go through some initial steps of figuring out how their system works and setting up the online banking. 

The only thing you need to remember is never respond to any emails asking you for your online login and passwords. These emails are not sent by the banks but by hackers who wanted to obtain your login information. Despite Bank Negara, all banks and the paper issuing warning after warning, many people are still falling to the trap by providing the information. Once you get that straight, you are all set.

Tagged as: Being Organised, money

Declutter your bedroom and your life would change

by Yin on February 20, 2010

If our bedroom’s a mess, our life would not be much different from it. Because we spend a surprisingly huge amount of time (almost 1/3 in fact) on our bed sleeping. So the condition of our bedroom- whether it is dusty, dirty, cluttered with rubbish and papers or neat and clean would really influence our clarify of mind.

 Sort out internal issues that is making you a clutterer

If you find that the mere idea to clean your home or room drains you, you would seriously need to consider what’s inside you that is creating and keeping that chaos and disorder. Sometimes you brave yourself to clean up your room and throw out things, but you may have such deep regret for throwing out certain memories…. Or your room revert back to its original nest of chaos in a matter of days. 

Something inside you may be holding on tightly to the past. You are not ready to let go yet and that could be a possible reason that’s preventing you to have the clutter free life that you dream of. Perhaps those old sales draft and letter reminds you of the time which you prefer to be in than the one now. If that’s the reason, you need to have your insides sorted out….and when you are ready, the instinctive urge to be out with the old and have the new come in would occur naturally. Therefore, don’t beat yourself up when you cannot keep your home in order- instead- address the reason why you want to keep the chaos around.  Once the issue is dealt with, automatically you would want to declutter and throw away things that you no longer need.

Creative bedroom display at a local shopping complex

Creative bedroom display at a local shopping complex

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Tagged as: Being Organised, clutter, declutter, decluttering, inner peace, life, work

Use creative notebooks to overcome blogger/writer’s block

by Yin on January 9, 2010

I find that carrying a notebook (not a laptop but the physical books) comes very handy especially if I am outside doing research or if an idea hits me out of the blue. Whatever that is not written down quickly gets forgotten.

And instead of having it all in your head and burdening your poor brain, just jot your ideas down on a book and then forget about them till you have time to deal with the ideas.

cutenotebooktoinspirewriting

Cover of my most recent idea book

Everything is a matter of habit, even for the disorganised and undisciplined. I may be, well, a bit disorganised when it comes to filling my bills after I’ve paid them but when it comes to writing, I am quite disciplined in getting my ideas all at one place.

Initially it did not start that way- at first I wrote my ideas on bits and pieces of paper in my scribbled handwriting. And these ideas does not find themselves being converted into inspired writing. So the pieces of paper turned to clutter. Finally, I make the determination to get my ideas down on a hard covered notebook- I had bought it at a very low price from a store clearance sale but the notebook has cute designs on every page.

I carry a notebook with me wherever I go- a lot of my ideas became published blog posts because of this simple inexpensive, portable little investment. That was one of the reasons why I could come up with continous blog posts consistently.

There is no need of carrying a laptop with you wherever you go- because you have to worry about keeping the laptop safe if you are in the gym or going for shopping. So, carrying a physical notebook just to jot down ideas outline are just as good.

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Tagged as: Being Organised, blog content, Blogging, creative, writing

To multitask or do one task at a time?

by Yin on December 2, 2009

We are all expected to be able to multitask. Otherwise, how do one expect to complete so many things at once? Sometimes, we feel that there may not even be enough hours in a day.

But are we more productive if we were to multitask or do one task/job at a time?

In this post, I want to share on why I think focusing on one job at a time is better than multitasking.

In the past, I multitask a great deal, mainly from the training that I’ve gotten from my previous job:

  • talk on the phone and type on the PC at the same time
  • eating and reading- meal time is a good time to catch up on the news
  • when loading something on the net and when the PC connection is slow, I will attempt to complete other task

Also, if I am travelling on public transport or waiting for someone, I will always have reading materials and notebook on hand.

Do you think if you are good at multitasking, you will be more efficient and be able to manage your time better?

Perhaps you can. But how about your stress levels and that constant feeling of being a scatterbrain or overlooking something?

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Tagged as: Being Organised, slow down, stress, time management

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