OK, So Let’s Get You Organized, Part I: How to Keep Track of Things You Need to Do

I keep hearing more and more and more about how people want to get organized, they need to get organized, they’d have time for being creative and making art and writing if only they could Get Themselves Organized. So I, in my infinite wisdom and complete organizational fabulousness, am here to help.

Snort.

Hee. I am, seriously, laughing out loud here. Cos you know the reason this is a topic I adore is: it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about pretty much my whole adult life, trying to figure out how to get myself Perfectly Organized so everything about my day will flow smoothly.

It’s something we all want, and it’s one of those things, like Diet Advice, off of which enterprising marketers (read: snake oil salesmen) make a TON of money.

OK, so I don’t have all the answers. Hell, I may not have ANY answers. But I also am not going to charge you any money, so what’s to lose?

The first thing you’re going to have to do is exactly what Roz Stendahl said you need to do when I talked to her, here. Remember? She said you have to know how your brain works. And that’s exactly right:  it’s impossible to figure out an organizational system if you don’t know how your brain thinks about things.

Do you need to be able to see  a day at a glance, in chronological order? Or do you need a list, down a page? Or do you need to see a whole week, or a month, or a year? Do you need a white board with a chart?

Do you do best when you have a big calendar grid in front of you? Or a To-Do list for each individual day? How does your brain like to have information presented?

What I need:  I need to be able to see a month at a glance, on one page. And I need a list for each day.

[Hell:  I need someone to follow me around with a clipboard, reminding me from moment to moment why exactly I came into this room carrying a roll of paper towels and hat.]

For that reason, I have calendar pages posted in various places around the house.

There’s this one on the refrigerator that The EGE and I can use for things we both need to know—like when the meter reader comes (we have to be here to unlock the door so he can get into the back yard), or when school’s out—stuff like that.

There are these calendar pages taped to the bathroom door that we use for keeping track of our weight, because we’re people who do that.

(I keep track of the days when I drop below 125, since I tend to get sick when that happens. Which is what has happened now. Duh. But at least I know this, right?)

Then there’s the main calendar I use for everything I need to keep track of:

Yes, I know it would be fun to read all this. I would LOVE to be able to read other people’s calendars. Alas, mine has names of people in it. Hence the blurriness. Sorry.

And the Moleskine Page-a-Day I use for To-Do lists:

Now, for next year, I’m consolidating these:  I spent The Big Bucks on this:

a leather page-a-day

that also has a section with each month at a glance.

I want to have everything in one book that I can carry with me. Forking out the money to have it in orange leather is going to guarantee that I use it every day. You betcha.

What I do is to sit in bed in the morning with coffee and go through these. I check to see what I need to do that day, and then I go over the previous day’s to-do list and cross off what I got done and move the rest to the current day. And then I add whatever I need to do that day.

The things that are vital—appointments, interviews, things with a specific time—those are put onto iCal, the calendar shared by the MacBook and iPhone. I set email alarms for two days before and the day before. I get email on the phone, the laptop, and my desktop PC, so, in reality, I get 6 email notices for every appointment, even though I actually read my email only at the PC.

I’ve got some duplicates there and have to work on getting that straightened out—still haven’t gotten the MobileMe and manual sync figured out entirely and am getting duplicates of stuff.

If something comes up—say I’m out somewhere and agree to meet someone the next day at noon (not something I’m likely to do, since I work during the day and don’t make appointments until after 4 pm, but let’s just say), I can use reQuall, with the voice recorder app on the iPhone, and it will email me a transcript.

I short, I realize that I have a lousy memory—I should realize this, as I’ve had it all my life, and it’s only getting worse—and have figured out ways to get around it. I like getting reminders by email—I check email many times a day, and this is the best way for me to be reminded of things. I’ve found the applications that will remind me that way, and I use them.

If you need some other form of reminder, you need to figure out what it is and then arrange to get it. If you need a visual reminder, perhaps you can do this:  whenever you make an appointment, at that very moment, write a reminder on a sticky note (either real or virtual on your desktop) and take it and stick it where you know you’ll see it:  your monitor, your briefcase, your bathroom mirror. Whatever you do, it has to be something that works for the way your brain likes to receive information.

Even if you’re young, you have a fabulous memory, you think you can trust your memory—if you find yourself double-booking, or realizing something starts an hour later than you thought it did, or whatever:  if you find that your once-perfect memory is overwhelmed by too much to do, too many people’s schedules to mesh, whatever:  do your brain a favor and don’t expect it to remember everything. The creative brain has other things to do besides keeping track of appointments and meetings. Figure out a way to remember those that works for you and give your brain room to do something more fun. Keeping track of meetings isn’t the sort of thing your brain was meant to do.

OK. It’s a place to get started, right? Think about it, make some notes. Next time we’re going to talk about organizing your day:  how to figure out when to do what. In the meantime, be thinking about the way Your Own Personal Brain likes to work with information.

 

Hey, Nona!

It’s past Friday, I haven’t heard from you, your blogger profile is private so I can’t try to get in touch. I know several people named “Nona,” so no clue there. Hello?

And The Winner Is~~

Man, this was tough. I read all y’all’s comments—TWICE. I went through and made a list of the ones I thought really need this book, but that didn’t help, because everybody Needs it. Whew. Y’all made me work.

Finally, though, I picked Nona as the winner. So, Nona, send me your address.

And I decided I’ll have to do another give-away of another copy of the book here soon. It won’t be next week, because I’ve got something else cool lined up for then. Well, hell—I’ve got several cool things lined up. But keep checking back (you’re going to be hanging out here with me anyway, right?), because there’ll be another book give-away soon.

And I realized what kind of suggestions I need to offer—ideas and tips and things for all you really busy people, and then other tips and ideas for those who have time but just can’t pull themselves up out of the chair in front of the computer. So I’m going to be working on those. If you’re doing Facebook or Twitter, you can hook up with me there—I try to offer little bits throughout the day. You can find the links over there on the right.

So. Thanks a bunch for the comments—the things you tell me give me ideas, and I think of ways I can maybe offer some support. I have no idea what it would be like to have a full-time job and kids and a partner who maybe wasn’t the most supportive person in the world and then an extended family who made demands and aieeeeeee! But I know what it’s like to be really busy.

Anyway, I’m going to try to put together a post about organizing—some of the things I do to organize my time. With photos, I hope!

In the meantime: Congratulations, Nona! And thanks again to everyone who came by and left a comment—y’all are fabulous!

XO

Desire & Determination

You’ll remember when I talked to Tom Braxton, who’s spent years in both teaching and music, and he explained that there’s desire, and then there’s determination. This distinction seems so important to me that I wanted to talk about it some more as it applies to creativity, goals, dreams, etc.

Desire, as Tom said, is the easy part. You want to be a musician. You want to be an artist. You can imagine the work you would do and the life you would lead, the happy hours on stage or in the studio. You imagine what it would be like to see your work in a gallery, to learn how to carve, to be so proficient at your craft that you’d be asked to write a book about it.

You dream about, oh, let’s say it’s painting for you. You dream about painting. You have books about painting. You go to exhibits of paintings and spend hours online looking at flickr sites that have photos of paintings.

And, sure, you paint. Whenever you have the time, you pull out the paints and work at it. You take a class whenever you can work one in, and you can see some improvement in what you’re doing.

Mostly, though, you dream. You dream, and you wish, and you desire.

Maybe you’re one of those people who believes, as many people do, in the power of Putting It Out There in The Universe—letting that vast, amorphous, sort of ethereal presence out there know that, gee, you reallyreallyreally want to Be A Painter. There are many, many people who believe this will work:  that you’ll let it be known that this is what you want, what you desire, and The Universe will set it all in motion for you.

Perhaps you let The Universe know that, gee, it would be really helpful if you had more time, and if someone else would clean the cat boxes and fix dinner, and if you might, maybe, win the lottery and have a studio built in the backyard.

Skylights and surround sound would help.

You have the desire, all right. You want to be a painter, you love painting, you try to make time to paint. All you need is a little help.

From The Universe.

What you don’t have, alas, is determination. What exactly is determination? It’s what keeps you forging ahead toward your desire, no matter what. Determination is what pulls you out of bed at 5 am so you can paint for an hour before you leave for work. Determination is what propels you out into the worst snowstorm on record in your little town so that you can attend the lecture about plein air painting being offered—for free!--at the college. Determination is why you give up your regular afternoon venti triple-ristretto caramel mocha frappaccino so you can save enough to take that workshop in the spring. (You’ll probably save enough for new brushes, too. Maybe a bigger house.)

Determination is what:

--keeps you from spending 3 hours every evening on the computer, surfing, chatting, IM-ing, checking up on the latest gossip.

--gets you into the studio even when you’re dog tired and don’t want to do anything but pour a glass of wine and check TiVo.

--makes you send out those slides even when your sister-in-law has ever-so-gently suggested that your last painting, the one you shyly showed her but now wished you’d cut off your right leg instead, looks exactly like what her kid, your holy terror nephew Ralph, did last week in kindergarten.

Determination is a lot like discipline, except that determination has as its root “determine,” which means “to fix authoritatively or conclusively.” Which means, in case that’s way too many words to think about right now, that determination is what sets the outcome of something. With “desire,” there is no end in sight. Nothing is guaranteed.

With “determination,” you’re determining what is going to happen.

Now. Does this mean that if you’re determined to Be A Painter, you will automatically become a famous and respected, very highly paid painter? Will you become, god help you, Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, and reap the rewards of unlimited marketing?

No. All it means is that determination will make you A Painter. You will paint. If you want to be a good painter, you’ll have to be determined to do that, as well.

Now don’t you DARE get all silly on me here and ask, “So, Ricë, does that mean that if I’m determined to fly, I’ll sprout wings? Snort.”

No. But if you’re determined to fly, you’re going to find a way, even if it means that you’re going to climb up on some cliff at some ungodly predawn hour and let your nephew strap you into a hang gliding harness and quickquick shove you off into space. What determination will do for you is help you find a way to get where you want to go.

Dreaming will tell you where you want to go.

Desire will ensure you want to get there.

Determination is the thing that drags you along the path, no matter that it’s sometimes rough and muddy and sometimes you just want to sleep in:  if you’re determined to do it, you’re going to do it or die trying.

Because here’s the deal:  some day you are going to die. It might be sudden, but it probably won’t be. You’ll probably have a while to look back over your life, kind of check up on what you’ve done, what you wish you’d done, what you remember most happily. What you do not want, in those peaceful days of lying in bed, surrounded by your loving family, is to be going, “Goddamnit! Why in the hell didn’t I paint more? And what are all you people doing in my bedroom?”

So think about it. Are you content to dream your life away, wishing for good things to come your way, via the generosity of The Universe? If so, great! You’re excused—you can go get that glass of Chablis and park your butt on the sofa.

But if you don’t want to be the one lying there when you’re 98, snapping at the great-great-grandchildren about how they’d better not waste their lives the way you did, then it’s time to sit down with a notebook and a pen and figure out how you’re going to determine your future. If you’re determined to paint, you will paint. And if you’re determined to get good at it, well—what are you doing still sitting here? Get up! Get busy! It’s never too early to start, and it’s never too late to get your butt in gear.

 

So What’s on YOUR Bedside Table?

I am so, so sorry for not bringing more to entertain y’all this week. I have lists of things I want to tell you, but, man! It is crazy busy here in front of this computer. I worked 12 hours yesterday and was up and at it again early this morning.

Anyway. So while I was sitting in bed making the daily to-do list (which just keeps on having most of its stuff moved on to the next day—the list is WAY longer than the days I have to whittle away at it), I noticed all this crap on the table beside the bed. Once upon a time, I had a nice little table, small and tidy, with a clock and a box of tissue. You know? Maybe a pen. A coaster for a cup of coffee. But that’s it! i swear:  it used to be A Tidy Place. Kind of like the inside of the mind of someone who gets all their “news” from talk radio and thinks of themselves as A Dittohead and so doesn’t really have a lot cluttering up space in there.

Anyway! Grrrrrr:  stick to the topic, damnit.

And the topic is:  stuff on my bedside table. Which is now a full-sized table, a round one that normal people would use for meals. Me? Oh, no:  it just barely holds all the crap I seem to believe I cannot live without WHILE I AM SLEEPING.

Good grief.

Check it out:

It’s one of the pieces of furniture that my parents refinished. It was white. Now, of course, it is orange. But you knew that already.

That lovely lamp is one my mother bought and intended to sell—she didn’t ever do that, but apparently she’d gotten some amazing deal and couldn’t resist but didn’t really like the lamps (there are two) and didn’t want them. I talked her out of them long ago—for some reason, I adore them. So totally unlike anything else I own, but there you go. I’m nothing if not inconsistent.

Snort.

OK, so here it is:

On the left, in the back, are the mugs with pens, pencils, highlighters, tons of bookmarks (some are things people have made, the edge of an envelope from my friend Karen, who used a ton of old stamps all along the edge—stuff like that that I love to find waiting for me in a book). Hanging behind them is the pair of Bose headphones I use with the iPhone when it’s on this charger dock with fabulous speakers.

Of course, the speakers and the headphones don’t work together, but never mind that—I use either one or the other or turn off the speakers and use it just as a charging dock. The speakers work really well, by the way. They are NOT Bose. I’m not enough of an audiophile to spend THAT kind of money.

Then one of the stacks of books, next to a little box I painted and stamped and colored many years ago when Rubber Stamping Was My Life. A carved Buddha on top of a cedar box with a little inlaid ivory elephant my father brought back to me from some trip in the 1960’s. An ancient green Japanese mug from an antique store in Fredericksburg, filled with felt tip pens:

 

Then it gets scary:  the planning stuff all stacked precariously on the edge of the table. I spend an hour or so with this stuff in the morning before I even LOOK at the computer, figuring out what needs to get done that day. On the floor, down there in the right-hand corner, you can see more Current Books.

You want to know what’s scariest about all this? I took these photos AFTER I cleaned this baby off, wiped the surface with a damp cloth (my version of “dusting”) and got rid of some stuff.

Yeah.

OK. So what’s on yours? Show us photos! We LOVE snooping around your bedroom.

(Well, OK, some of us do. Some of us just love snooping, period. Not that I’m implicating any of the rest of y’all or anything.)

I’d love to stay and visit all afternoon, but here’s the deal: I’m trying to eat breakfast while I’m typing this, but it’s not working. The Cheerios keep ending up in my lap and down the front of my t-shirt, and it’s almost 1 pm (because I was sitting out here working on the proposal for the next book and thought, “Huh, it must be about 10, and so I should stop and eat breakfast,” and looked up and said, “What the fuck?” because it was already after NOON. I think my studio is in some sort of time warp, and I’m going to have to go back and read my own book and see if any of the artists mentioned that little nugget and somehow I missed it, because there’s definitely something weird going on with the hours out here. Something is sucking them up like a big vacuum cleaner, and since I don’t even USE one of those, I’d better check it out).

Don’t forget:  send photos of your table!

XO

This Week’s Give-Away: Creative Time and Space

No, sorry:  I cannot give you actual time and space. Wish I could! What I can do, though, is give you a copy of my book so that you can get some of it for your own self. How’s that?

What you need to do is to post a comment telling us this:

How much creative time do you have on an average day?

(Whining is allowed; you’re among friends here.)

And you know the rest:  you mustmustmust check back on Friday to see if you’ve won. If you DO win and you DON’T check back on Friday, I’m going to send that irritated cat

to your house. And you know that wouldn’t be any fun. . . .

So go! Post a comment already!

XO

Kelly Rae Roberts Podcast

Yay! After a long, long day, I’ve finally published the long-awaited podcast with Kelly Rae Roberts, one of the fabulous contributors to my book, Creative Time and Space and author of her own book, the best-selling Taking Flight.

In just three years, she’s made a huge name for herself in the world of mixed media art, with a licensing agreement, a book deal, a wildly popular blog and frequently sold-out online shop. How has she accomplished all of this? Listen to her tell about it here.

Visit Kelly’s website, blog, and online shop here.

Thanks so much, Kelly! ♥

 

More Brian Dettmer Eye Candy for Your Sunday

I corresponded briefly with Aaron Packer, of Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago, when I was writing about Dettmer for Somerset Studio (click that link to order a copy of the 2008 issue, and see one of the spreads here), so now I get periodic email notices of exhibits. There seems to be a new one at the gallery, although I can’t find the dates of a show—so maybe it’s a permanent exhibit—anyway: if you’re near Chicago, you must go and report back! (please!)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dettmer’s work:  he takes old books, glues all the pages together, and then uses a scalpel to cut down through the pages to reveal the images inside. He doesn’t plan ahead of time, and he adds nothing—there’re no glued-in collage-y bits. Just what was in the book to start with. Amazing, amazing stuff.