6:30 AM: Alarm goes off.
6:30:01 AM: Kitty starts meowing because he either wants food or attention. It’s hard to tell which.
6:31 AM: Take my temperature. (Aaron and I use Fertility Awareness as birth control, so…)
6:35 AM: Get out of bed. Go downstairs to the kitchen to feed the cat.
6:37 AM: Almost trip down the stairs because of kitty.
6:40 AM: Actually feed cat. Look toward the basement and think about how good it will feel to use the exercise bike.
6:41 AM: Grab a glass of water and a book.
6:45 AM: Go downstairs and use exercise bike.

With this routine I can, with minimum resistance, accomplish two goals: get out of bed at 6:30AM and use the exercise bike daily. The reason this routine works is that my environment is well aligned with my goals.

Kitty acts as a cute, pitiful sounding alarm clock that sits outside the bedroom door and can’t be turned off unless I both get up and feed him. This is a huge incentive to complete the first goal: get out of bed at 6:30AM.

The location of the exercise bike helps me complete the second goal. It’s in the basement, and the stairs to the basement are in the kitchen. The kitchen is where I feed kitty, so the exercise bike is only down one flight of stairs. It’s easier to go there than it is to go back to bed.

Change these two things and the chances that I complete my goals drastically goes down.

If I fed kitty in the evening instead of in the morning he probably wouldn’t bother us at 6:30 AM, meaning I wouldn’t have my incentive to get up early in the morning. On the off chance that he did still bother us, that wouldn’t give me much incentive either. There’d be no specific task for me to do. He’d just be wanting attention. I don’t need to go downstairs to give him attention. Also attention is active. I can’t use the exercise bike while kitty’s wanting to be petted and played with. Feeding kitty in the morning is well aligned with my goals. Feeding him in the evening is not.

If the exercise bike was in one of the spare bedrooms (a legitimate place to put it) it’d be much harder to get me to use it. I’d no longer be choosing between an upward and downward stair-climb. The warm bed would be just as close as the bike. It’d be difficult to choose the bike.

Action for You! If there’s some goal you’d like to achieve, ask yourself if there’s any way you can rearrange your environment to make it easier for you to achieve it.

Chances are the first time you make a change it won’t work for very long. That’s OK. Just try something else until you find an arrangement that works for you. Eventually you will, and doing the things you want to do will be easy.

If you google at all you’ll find plenty of reviews about what Roomba can and can’t do, so I’m not going to repeat them here. Instead I’ll tell you about some indirect benefits of having a Roomba do the vacuuming and some tip or two about how to keep it in good working order.

Good Thing 1: No Clutter on the Floor
Sven can’t clean under the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. In fact he’ll get stuck in them.

This was the main reason I wanted to get a Roomba: I wanted a strong incentive to keep my clutter off of the floor. For the most part it’s worked. At the very least I’m quicker now to put away whatever it is that’s on the ground, since I’d like to let Sven be able to vacuum all the rooms.

Of course, the way around this is to pile your clutter on couches…

Good Thing 2: No Crumbs in the Kitchen
We cook a lot. And with cooking comes food prep detritus landing on the floor. Before Sven we’d sweep the floor after washing the dishes. I used to dread doing it. Now we can just put Sven in the kitchen and let him do his thing. It’s not perfect, but it goes a long way toward making our kitchen a more pleasant place to work.

Tip: How to Clean Your Roomba
The one downside with the Roomba is that it has to be cleaned fairly often, and unlike other vacuum cleaners the process has multiple steps. You have to empty out the bin and then clean off the brushes. If you have long hair the brushes will have hair wrapped around it. Both Aaron and I have long hair so we’ve experienced this firsthand.

Roomba’s fairly easy to clean except for the beater brush. For whatever reason, the part that gets lots of hair caught in it is a solid piece of plastic that can’t be removed. At least not easily. There’s no tool that comes with it either.

To clean out that roller we use a pair of Toenail clippers kinda like these. They aren’t perfect, since they don’t quite fit inside the clogged area, but they do a pretty good job. With enough patience I can usually remove all of the hair stuck in there.

Final Thoughts
Will the Roomba solve all of your clutter problems? No. You have to really want to not have clutter first. Roomba can only act as a final push to get you to keep it off. Also, I’d say you have to already be pretty enamored with the idea of Roomba doing the vacuuming for you. If you don’t think Roomba is the coolest thing ever, I imagine it’s affect on your life will reflect that.

Was it worth it for me? Absolutely. Will it be worth it for you? You’ll have to answer that yourself.

I used to use Quicken and Aaron used Mint.com, and while these tools are convenient and pretty, they don’t really work well for us. One annoyance is that these tools use credit card statements and the like to populate the tables. What do you do when you buy lightbulbs and groceries at the grocery store? Are the lightbulbs also food? You also probably didn’t keep the receipt so you don’t know how much they cost. Because of that, the graphs are never accurate. Another annoyance is that Quicken had a difficult time actually pulling my information from the different institutions. I got tired of it quickly and didn’t buy the next year’s upgrade.

MySQL to the rescue. Admittedly if you’re not comfortable with computers this maybe a bit scary to use, but if you want to be able to answer the questions you have about your finances and don’t care about a pretty interface it could be the right tool for you. This is what we use to analyze our financial data, and I’ll show you how to use it too.

MySQL is a relational database management system, meaning that data within it is stored as tables and the relationships between tables are also shown as tables. For this exercise the multiple tables thing isn’t important. What is important is that with RDBMSs you can ask whatever questions you want about the tables, as long as you form those questions in the query language. We only have one table, so this is how we’re using MySQL.

Step 1) Copy the Spreadsheet

You have your table in Google Docs. The first step is to make sure your columns are in the right format. MySQL will complain if they aren’t.

• Amount column values must not have a preceding $. (Notice the spreadsheet picture)
• Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format

Now that your format’s all set, copy the cells with the information. If you have a “Cleared?” column don’t copy that. Also, don’t copy titles. You’ll be making special titles soon enough. Throughout the rest of this tutorial I’ll be assuming you have the same columns that I do.

Step 2) Paste into Text Editor

I’m using a Mac, so I copied the text into pico in the terminal. Save it as a .txt file. Mine is called ledger.txt. Make sure you use a text editor and not a word-processor. Word-processors will add information to the text that you DO NOT WANT. If you’re using a Windows machine use notepad.

Step 3) Get XAMPP

The easiest way to get MySQL onto your computer is to use XAMPP. If you install MySQL directly you’ll have to do some configuration magic that is a pain, and really unnecessary for the task at hand. You aren’t setting up a production web server, so you don’t have to worry about security or anything. XAMPP is as close to plug and play as you get with this. It’s also free.

You can get XAMPP here. Follow the instructions on the site for how to install and get started for your operating system.

Step 4) Set up DB and Import Data

Open up a terminal (on windows: run –> cmd) and move to the XAMPP directory. Then move to xamppfiles; then to bin. The full path of the bin directory for me is:
/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin

The command mysql should be in this directory. Stuff in bold is stuff you type.

Open MySQL:

$ ./mysql -u root

“-u root” just means that you are logging in as the user “root”.

You should get the following prompt:

mysql>

Now that you’re in, the next step is to create your database and use it.

mysql> create database finances;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql>use finances;
Database changed

Next create your table. Again, this is assuming you have the same columns.

mysql> CREATE TABLE 'expenses' (
-> 'date' date default NULL,
-> 'store' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'item' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'tag' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'subcategory' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'amount' decimal(10,2) default NULL,
-> 'source' varchar(255) default NULL
-> );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.13 sec)

mysql> delete from expenses;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> load data local infile '/Users/mrio/ledger.txt' into table expenses;
Query OK, 30 rows affected, 7 warnings (0.05 sec)
Records: 30 Deleted: 0 Skipped: 0 Warnings: 7

Here’s an easy to copy and paste version of the Create table command:
CREATE TABLE 'expenses' ( 'date' date default NULL, 'store' varchar(255) default NULL, 'item' varchar(255) default NULL, 'tag' varchar(255) default NULL, 'subcategory' varchar(255) default NULL, 'amount' decimal(10,2) default NULL, 'source' varchar(255) default NULL );

In case you’re wondering what each command does:

“create table” creates the table into which your data goes.

“delete from expenses” removes any data which may have been in expenses before. Perhaps from a previous month?

“load data local infile” loads the data from your text file. Change the text file path to the appropriate one for your file.

Step 5) Query Query Query

Below are a bunch of questions you might want to ask about your expenses. In the code you’ll see how those questions are translated into SQL and how the answer looks for the sample data I intered into the table.

How much did I spend in each tag? I’d like the data in descending amount spent.

mysql> select tag, sum(amount) as mysum from expenses group by tag order by mysum desc;

 +-------------------+--------+

 | tag               | mysum  |

 +-------------------+--------+

 | Food-Normal       | 722.64 |

 | Food-Out          | 449.59 |

 | Wedding           | 205.21 |

 | Household         | 125.73 |

 | Recreation        |  76.63 |

 | Utilities         |  70.34 |

 | Medical           |  40.00 |

 | Food-Entertaining |  32.54 |

 | Car               |  27.72 |

 | NULL              |   NULL |

 +-------------------+--------+

 10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

How Much did I spend total?

mysql> select sum(amount) from expenses;

 +-------------+

 | sum(amount) |

 +-------------+

 |     1750.40 |

 +-------------+

 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

How much did I spend each week?

mysql> select week(date), sum(amount) from expenses group by week(date) order by week(date);


 +------------+-------------+

 | week(date) | sum(amount) |

 +------------+-------------+

 |       NULL |        NULL |

 |         39 |     1421.73 |

 |         40 |      328.67 |

 +------------+-------------+

 3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

How much did I spend in each category and subcategory?

mysql> select tag, subcategory, sum(amount) from expenses group by tag, subcategory order by tag,subcategory;

 +-------------------+---------------+-------------+

 | tag               | subcategory   | sum(amount) |

 +-------------------+---------------+-------------+

 | NULL              | NULL          |        NULL |

 | Car               | Gas           |       27.47 |

 | Car               | Parking       |        0.25 |

 | Food-Entertaining |               |       32.54 |

 | Food-Normal       |               |      722.64 |

 | Food-Out          |               |       34.42 |

 | Food-Out          | Work          |      415.17 |

 | Household         |               |       26.73 |

 | Household         | Garden        |       33.33 |

 | Household         | Hygiene       |       38.79 |

 | Household         | Repair        |       26.88 |

 | Medical           |               |       40.00 |

 | Recreation        |               |       10.00 |

 | Recreation        | Books         |       10.99 |

 | Recreation        | Music         |       30.00 |

 | Recreation        | Video games   |       25.64 |

 | Utilities         | Internet      |       70.34 |

 | Wedding           | Wedding Dress |      205.21 |

 +-------------------+---------------+-------------+

 18 rows in set (0.00 sec)

What percentage of my total spending did I spend in each category?

mysql> select tag, sum(amount)/1750.40 as mysum from expenses group by tag order by mysum desc;

 +-------------------+----------+

 | tag               | mysum    |

 +-------------------+----------+

 | Food-Normal       | 0.412843 |

 | Food-Out          | 0.256850 |

 | Wedding           | 0.117236 |

 | Household         | 0.071829 |

 | Recreation        | 0.043779 |

 | Utilities         | 0.040185 |

 | Medical           | 0.022852 |

 | Food-Entertaining | 0.018590 |

 | Car               | 0.015836 |

 | NULL              |     NULL |

 +-------------------+----------+

 10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

This is the same as sum by tag except I divided sum(amount) by the total spent which was calculated earlier. Here you have basically what you need for YMOYL summary.

How much did I spend at each store?

mysql> select store, sum(amount) as mysum from expenses group by store order by mysum desc;

 +---------------------+--------+

 | store               | mysum  |

 +---------------------+--------+

 | Kroger              | 524.61 |

 | Starbucks           | 400.30 |

 | Jo Ann Fabric       | 205.21 |

 | Co-op               | 141.74 |

 | Trader Joe's        | 105.63 |

 | Comcast             |  70.34 |

 | Rite-aid            |  40.00 |

 | English Gardens     |  33.33 |

 | Ark                 |  30.00 |

 | Rite Aid            |  28.49 |

 | Marathon            |  27.47 |

 | Carpenter Bros      |  26.88 |

 | Kmart               |  26.73 |

 | Target              |  25.64 |

 | Jersualem Garden    |  15.37 |

 | Amazon.com          |  10.99 |

 | Damon's Grill       |  10.52 |

 | Salvation Army      |  10.00 |

 | Zingerman's         |   7.25 |

 | Colin's Coffee      |   5.30 |

 | Coney Island        |   4.35 |

 | Parking 5th&William |   0.25 |

 | NULL                |   NULL |

 +---------------------+--------+

 23 rows in set (0.00 sec)

And that’s all there is to it. Not as pretty as Quicken, but it’s way more flexible in terms of how I organize my data and what questions I ask of it.

If there’s anything in this tutorial that doesn’t make sense or if there’s a question you’d like to ask about your data that isn’t listed here, leave a comment and I’ll update this tutorial.

I do have one big assumption: you aren’t currently making use of your in-between time. By in-between time, I mean the time spent waiting in line at the post office or while you’re driving to and from work or class or that five minutes between when you get home and your next scheduled task. These are the moments this techniques utilize.

I have another smaller assumption: you don’t have a deadline for when your system needs to be totally in place. If you really don’t have the ability to take a large chunk of time out in the beginning, you can’t expect to be off and running any time soon.

So, with that, here’s the technique.

Step 1: Day dream During those in between moments visualize what your system will look like. How it would make you feel to be using it. What elements will it have. Get excited about it. The more clarity you can get the better. You don’t need to write anything down yet, so you can do this anywhere.

Step 2: Read Getting Things Done This system is probably the best for the person who feels swamped. It’ll give you a method for doing things more efficiently so that you may have a few extra moments to do some long term planning. You can get the book from the library or your local bookstore in book form or audio form. If you get the book form, keep it with you at all times. It’s one of those reads that doesn’t take much to pick up where you left off. If you get the audio version you can play it during your commute or your run or whatever.

Step 3: Day dream Some more, maybe with a pencil Focus on clarity. What exactly do you want from your system. When you get the feeling you know what you want, take 10 minutes somewhere… anywhere… to jot it down. Set a timer if you have to so you don’t spend more time on this task than you want to.
The main question to answer here is, what supplies do I need to purchase?

Chances are you’ll probably need:

• A physical planner that holds 5.5inx8.5in sheets
• 8.5inx11in paper
• Three hole punch with movable hole punchers
• A paper guillotine (check to see if your workplace already has one)
• Nice Pen
• Nice Pencil
• Divider Stickers
• Heavier card-stock paper (8.5inx11in) for turning into dividers
• “Today” tabs

Step 4: Purchase items when convenient Keep your shopping list with you. Whenever you’re in the appropriate store where you could buy these things check to see if they’re there. Don’t make a separate shopping trip unless you have time to spare. Remember, there’s no deadline for getting this done. Do it when it’s convenient

Step 5: More day dreaming maybe with a pencil Same deal as before. Don’t spend too much time writing down what sheets you need for your physical planner. (Take as much time as you want to think, though. That isn’t wasting any time.) Action pages? Waiting for pages? Shopping list? Agendas? Figure this out. Then write down your list. Set a timer.

This might not be a bad time to browse DIY planner’s set of pages. Remember, you’ll want to print the 2-up version. It’ll save you a lot of hassle.

Step 6: Print, cut, and hole punch your pages Here you might want to set aside 20 minutes. But maybe you could combine this task with watching TV or something. You can also spread this task out over several days. Do the printing one day, cutting another, hole punching yet another. Again, there’s no deadline here.

Step 7: Fill in your planner during your in between time While you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, write down some tasks you need to do when you get home. Same thing when you’re waiting for a movie at the movie theater, or while you’re waiting for the all-staff meeting to get started. Use the minutes to empty everything stored in your head.

Step 8: If you can spare it, do a weekly review But maybe limit your time to 20 minutes. Only recopy pages that are mostly full. Or don’t even recopy, just add to it. When one’s finished you can get rid of it. Make it as sparse a review as possible. Using a timer’s a good idea to keep it from eating your day.

Using this method it’ll probably take you quite a while to get your system up and running. Maybe a month or two. But that’s OK because at least in a month or two you’ll have a working system. If you don’t do anything, 2 months from now you definitely won’t have a system. And maybe along the way you’ll find that you actually do have more time to spare than you realize. Maybe you’ll be able to get your system up and running way earlier than you expected to.

1. Organized People are Not Good people There are two things you need to do in order to be organized and stay your same sweet self. The first is to make sure organization/cleanliness stays as a means to an end. Using organization as a means to do the things you want to do keeps your mind focused on what’s really important to you, whatever that may be. Being organized is not the goal. Doing the things you want to do is.
   
   The second thing to do is to avoid identifying yourself as an organized person. If being organized really gives you an ego boost it’s only a small step to looking down on people who don’t meet your cleanliness standards.
   
   It’s really not that hard to do either of these things. When your projects are important to you, it’s hard to see organization as anything but a means to an end. And when you see it as a means to an end it’s hard to identify yourself with it. It’s like identifying yourself as a person who brushes her teeth daily. It’d just be silly.
2. People will make fun of you for having changed It’s true that this could happen to you, but does it really matter? Their discomfort with your changing is their problem, not yours. If you’re confident that you’re moving in the right direction, that organizing your life is the right thing for you to do, to hell with all of the nay-sayers.
   
   Once you’ve been living this way for a while, people will get used to it. It’ll be your new normal.
3. Identity Crisis The truth is people change. You will change. The question is not whether or not you’ll be you, but is this the right direction for you? Is an organized life more preferable to a disorganized one? If yes, then go for it. You’ll get used to your new skin after a while, especially since it’s something you develop for yourself. Your system will be uniquely you. How could that feel strange?
4. You can’t be spontaneous anymore If you’re following a rigid schedule, then I guess this would be true, but if you’re going to have a system that really works for you it’s going to have to be flexible. Few things go exactly as planned anyway. If you want to be go somewhere on a whim no organization system can or should stop you. It’ll just make you aware of the consequences of that whim and how to get back on track.
   
   A key aspect of a good organization system is the ability to renegotiate commitments you’ve made to yourself and others. If it’s for the sake of some random fun time, all the better!
5. You’ll have to face your limits Yep, you will. But is that bad? Knowing the truth of what you’re able to do right now is important for your personal development. If you can commit to the system, then you’ll have to exercise courage to say no to the unimportant. You’ll be a better person for it. And over time you’ll be able to do more of the things you want to do.
6. You’ll look funny You’ll look even funnier when you either have a hard time keep your commitments or do very little with your time. And after a while, you’ll get used to the weird looks anyway.
7. You’ll spend your whole day doing stuff you don’t want to do I used to feel this way a lot when I was still in school. If I made a schedule of things I was supposed to do or needed to do, I’d end up spending my whole day doing unpleasant things. I’d never get around to having fun.
   
   The truth is, the amount of unpleasant stuff you have to do is totally up to you. Also you don’t have to get it all done in one day. Spread the work out over several days. Don’t do mind intensive work when you’re tired and you’ll go a long way toward avoiding burnout. Or make fun things a higher priority.
8. You won’t have time to do what you want to do The solution to this problem is the same as above. Let your to-do list last over several days and only do mind intensive work when you have the energy to do it. When your brain is tired do something that you want to do.
   
   Of course, if the kinds of things you want to do are mind intensive–taking a leadership position in a club for instance–you may find yourself in a more difficult situation. But you’d be there with or without a planning system. At least with a planning system you can make a more realistic assessment of your ability to succeed in all the things you do.
9. Actually implementing the organization scheme will take more time than it saves When you first implement a new organization scheme, for the first few weeks it will take a lot of time to use. You haven’t come up with ways to streamline the system, nor is it set up to your satisfaction. There’s no getting around the growing pains.In spite of that, even in the early stages a good planning system will give you piece of mind. You’ll know what you have to work on, what stage projects are on, what stuff you’re waiting on, what you need to buy at the supermarket. That piece of mind, I think, is worth the extra time it takes to use the system. And in the end, once you’ve set it up to meet your needs, using it should take little time at all.
10. You don’t have time to get organized If you really believe this, then you don’t have time not to get organized. Seriously. There’s only so long that you can run on empty before you burn out. Things will slip here and there because your mind isn’t really meant for the task of keeping your life in order, and if you have trained your mind to do that task you wouldn’t be disorganized, would you?

So, as you can see, the excuses don’t really hold up to much scrutiny. (At least they don’t stand up to my scrutiny ) There is only one good reason I can think of to not implement a planning system, and that’s if your life is simple enough not to call for it. If you already know at every moment what you need to be doing, then you’re all set. That’s the main purpose of a planning system, after all: to confidently know what it is you should be doing right now.

Are there any reasons you have to not get organized?

Maybe what’s blocking you is in this list.

1. Organized People are Not Good people There’s a great episode of Wife Swap (which for the record I don’t usually watch) that swaps a new-agey mom with an uptight uber-clean mom. For all the faults the new-agey mom has, namely not keeping her house clean and not being on time to things, I’d much rather grow up to be her than the uber-clean punctual one. To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s a clip from the show of what uber-clean mom thinks of the value of meditating.When I think of many people who keep incredibly tidy homes I tend to see bits of this personality. That punctuality and cleanliness are the most important things in their life, even though it’s obvious that they aren’t really happy with where they are. Also, new-agey mom, for all her faults, comes across as way happier than uber-clean mom, and again, I’ve seen this in my real life as well. Of course I’ve also seen unhappy messy people too.It doesn’t take much to see how this could turn into a mental block. If leading a clean, organized, virtuous life means that you’ll be unhappy why would you ever want to do that to yourself?
2. People will make fun of you for having changed I’ve experienced this in my life. There’s always a whiplash from loved-ones when you make a change for the better. When I started to exercise I remember some of my friends and family asking “what changed”, and not in an encouraging way. Same thing with becoming vegetarian. Same thing with organizing.I think this happened to me because I used to be very antagonistic toward doing any of these things years ago. They’d try to get me to change and it wouldn’t happen. So now out of the blue I have changed and not because of their excellent persuasive technique. So it’s not really that surprising that they’re not entirely happy for me.
3. Identity Crisis Maybe you just can’t see yourself as an organized person. If you start living an effective life, if you change who you are, will you still be you? It’s a scary thought!
4. You can’t be spontaneous anymore If you know when you’re going to do everything in your life, how can you possibly go off somewhere on a whim? Do you really want to give that up?
5. You’ll have to face your limits When attempting to find a time for everything that’s important to you, you may discover that you can’t do it without some sacrifices. Prior to actually using a planning system you can always tell yourself, “If I got organized I could fit everything in”. That won’t work after you’ve done it.
6. You’ll look funny Carrying around a day planner is not what most people do. It’s not nearly as hip as an iPhone or a Blackberry and it doesn’t fit in your pocket. If you’re really using it, you’re going to end up taking it out in public, not just at home or in the office. People might stare at you.
7. You’ll spend your whole day doing stuff you don’t want to do When you’re in planning mode it feels good to think about getting all the necessary but unpleasant things done. Before you know it your days are full of Work, Laundry, and Taxes. Yuk. Looks good on paper, but not so good in real life.
8. Won’t have time to do what you Want Sort of a combination of 7 and 5, in order to do the stuff you need to do and really would like to do you won’t have time to do things that are just fun. Reading fantasy novels. Watching TV. Those are rewards you’ll never get to experience if you use a planning system.
9. Actually implementing the organization scheme will take more time than it saves Between all of the writing/rewriting of stuff in the planner and the weekly review, there’s no way you’ll be saving time.
10. You don’t have time to get organized In spite of needing to get on top of your life, right now if you took any time out of your day for it you’d be weeks behind. It’s too late for you.

At some point or another I’ve felt all of these things, and many of them have blocked me from successfully using a planning system. They, of course, are not actually good reasons to not use a planning system, and in the next post I’ll show you why.

Monique’s Vague Instant Oatmeal Recipe

The benefits of this recipe is that it’s easy to prepare at work, and you can keep the main ingredients in your cube without worrying about them going bad. Oh and it’s healthy and less work than deciding what you want to have at the cafe.

• An amount of oatmeal
• An amount of dried fruit
• A small-ish amount of brown sugar (1 spoonful of sugar for every cup or so of oats maybe?)
• An even smaller amount of salt (1 pinch per two cups maybe)

Put oatmeal in food processor. Use the chopping blade. Press pulse a few times. Don’t turn the whole thing to dust, though.

Combine all the other ingredients. Put as much or as little of everything as you like. Experiment!

Put contents in container for future use.

To prepare a bowl of oatmeal, use a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part oatmeal. Put in microwave for 1.5 – 2 minutes. Stop and stir if it starts to overflow.

Monique’s Dad’s Spartan Lunch

My dad’s been using this recipe for a couple of years now, and he likes to call it his spartan lunch (in honor of the Grecians not the Michigan State team ), so I’ve kept the name as that. Benefits are health, easy cube storage, and ease of use.

• 1 cup of mixed nuts (I like walnuts and almonds)
• Some easy to handle, no-need to refrigerate fruit (e.g. apples, bananas, oranges)

Enjoy.

Variation: Take some more perishable fruit to work if you feel like it. You’ll still probably want to stay away from messy fruit, though. Raspberry juice on the keyboard is no fun for anyone.

Oh, and in case you don’t believe I actually do this, here’s a picture of my healthy food stash:

Enjoy!

Read Your Favorite Stuff Management Book Twice

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to stuff management. Relationship books, personal development books, and fitness and music technique books are all the sorts of books that ought to be read more than once if you want to really implement their systems. The first time you read the book, you’re probably doing it to get a feel for the system. Does it resonate with you? Can you envision yourself using it? You get excited about the system, but you won’t retain everything in it nor will you know what does or doesn’t work for you.

The second time you read the book should be while you’re in the midst of implementing version 1.0 of your system. That way you can get ideas on how to improve it, and see what of the book’s system doesn’t work for you and why. Also reading about how to improve your life gets you excited about improving your life. It’s a way to motivate yourself to stick with the program until it’s second nature.

I first read GTD in March 2008. I read it the second time earlier this month. I definitely resonated with it the first time around, enough so that I started using the file folder system, but I didn’t use the whole system. When I decided to try using the whole thing, I thought I remembered the essentials of the system, but there was still stuff I missed. (That happens when you haven’t read a book for a year and a half…) For instance, I’d completely forgotten all of the chapters on project management, or that I could use my online calendar as a tickler file, both things I’ve found immensely useful. And, of course, reading the book during the first few weeks of implementation got me very excited about organizing my life.

Figure Out What You Want Your System To Do For You

After or during your first read of the book, figure out what you want the system to do for you. The book undoubtably promises a lot of good things for you if you use its system. Which ones seem the most enticing to you? You can do it in your head, but writing it down forces you to clarify your thoughts. The reason for this step is so that you can filter out the ideas that don’t help you achieve what you want.

Here’s the list of things I want out of my SMS

• Confidence that I’m keeping track of all my open loops
• Ability to keep schedule and things to do out of my head and in a place I can always access
• Greater Awareness of the status of my life
• Ability to be easily reminded of what’s important to me
• I don’t want it to be too obvious that I’m using the system. (i.e. planner can’t be too giant)
• Ability to use system on autopilot
• Ability to brainstorm anywhere

This list filters out some stuff. A legal size planner is right out. I’d need a giant purse to lug it with me, and as soon as pulled it out I’d feel like everyone was looking at me. It can’t be too small either, though, because I can’t brainstorm on tiny paper or an iPhone. The system can’t be too complicated, otherwise I don’t stand a chance at doing it on auto-pilot. And it can’t strictly be a series of to-do lists, because I can’t get the big picture with to-do lists.

What Do You Already Sorta Know You Want?

Do you envision yourself carrying a planner? Can you see yourself typing in your notes to self on your blackberry? Do you see yourself using your online calendar? What stuff do you already use? Can you make it better?

It’s best to use stuff that you want to use, since you’ll be more motivated to use it. (Duh!) If your SMS book recommends a paper planner, but you hate writing by hand, don’t get the paper planner! You won’t use it anyway. Similarly if you already use some tools, and like using them, why stop? Find ways to integrate those tools in to your new system. Find ways to make them better.

Get the Basics; Go for Adjustable

If you envision yourself using an expensive fountain pen to write in your shiny executive Day Runner planner, think about getting the expensive fountain pen and the top-of-the-line planner after you’ve been using your system for a while. Like a few months. At least. You may find out after a few days that you want something smaller that fits in your pocket. Or you may find that the pen is too cumbersome to carry around. You could have found all that stuff out without spending an arm and a leg first.

Instead in the beginning get a planning system that’s not too pricy and that lets you adjust things to your needs. If you’re never going to use the Goal Development pages, you shouldn’t have to have them taking up room in your planner. If you aren’t going to keep phone numbers in your planner, you don’t need those address sheets either. Similarly, you’ll want to be able to add to the system as you go. A three-hole binder type of paper planner is ideal. Simple expandable PDA programs are also ideal.

If you’re thinking about using a paper planner, the place for printing out your own planner sheets is definitely DIY Planner. You can’t get more adjustable than printing out your own planner pages. There are great basic forms there, and if something doesn’t quite fit they have templates you can adjust with Open Office Draw. Very cool. And free. (well.. except for the paper, ink, and time… but you know.) They have plenty of advice for setting up your paper planner, so I won’t repeat it here. I will say this, though, if you’re going to print out the sheets, use the 2-up version. I have a fancy laser printer that can print on 5.5 x 8.5, but it won’t duplex paper and that small and duplexing it manually jams the printer. Very frustrating. Much easier (and faster!) to print first and then cut the paper to size.

Commit to Sticking With It

Version 1.0 of your system won’t be quite right. Some things don’t work as well in practice as they do in theory. Some things you won’t realize you need until you’ve started using your system for a few days. Expect your system to undergo many changes before it starts to feel right. The fact that it doesn’t work right the first time isn’t an indication that you should quit.

In Version 1.0 of my system I had a bunch of sheets that I didn’t end up using. Goal planning… yeah not so much. Turns out my goal development was better done with simple notes pages. Same thing with the potentials list. Also a week or so later I got a stipend from my new job for a phone so I got an iPhone, meaning a lot of SMS options opened up for me. Voice memos while driving and keeping my notes in Evernote for easy syncing between computer and phone were things I hadn’t expected to be using when I started using version 1.0.

Bottom line is, I’ve been improving my system since I first started using it. A month later things are beginning to settle, but at the beginning it was really time consuming! And that’s normal. At the beginning it will taking you longer to use your system than it did before you started using it, but after a while you’ll get used to it and it’ll get easier. Trust that it will get simpler, and at the same time start thinking of ways to make the system simpler to use.

Also trust that the initial awkwardness will go away. I must say leaving notes to myself on my phone, while effective, made me feel like a second rate villain. Pulling out the planner in the farmer’s market to write down how much I spent was also weird, but most people didn’t care as long as I wasn’t in their way. Again, rereading your time-management book will help keep you motivated.

A Good Planning System Doesn’t Solve All Your Stuff Problems

But it can highlight some of them. If you’re overcommitted, you’ll see it as soon as you start scheduling time for your important things. If there’s stuff you’re procrastinating on, you’ll notice it since and item will be on your action list for a few weeks. Seeing it in front of you so bluntly isn’t fun, of course, but it is good for you. The trick is to guiltlessly reflect on it. What’s unnecessary that you can cut out. How can you improve your schedule; how can you better manage your energy? Why don’t you want to do that item? Does it need to be broken down into smaller steps. Is it something you should be doing a few months from now instead of today? You get the idea.

Any of you use a stuff management system? Which one? How well does it work for you? Any advice?

For those of us that do spring cleaning it’s often as much about organizing our stuff as it is about a general cleaning. When you open up the shed to find all of your tools in disarray or try to find your CD resurfacing device in your giant box of loose electronics you may think to yourself that this is the time to get this stuff organized. After all, it’s spring cleaning time. You don’t just want things clean, you want your place to look nice too. And nothing looks nicer than a well organized house.

In my house, the “electronics tub” has been essentially an odorless landfill. Have you ever thought about going to a landfill to find something you threw away? If the thought doesn’t fill you with dread, you aren’t thinking hard enough. You’d have to sift through piles and piles of rotting junk to find an object you aren’t sure is there. Take out the “rotting” part, and that’s pretty much how I felt about the tub.

Image by: Oskay

The picture on the right is smaller, more contained version of what the tub looked like. It was a giant plastic tub containing all sorts of wires (in knots), hard-drives, old video game systems, and much much more. The tub was also fairly deep, so if the item you were looking for was on the bottom… good luck. The thought of trying to find a headphone adapter in there made me seriously consider just getting a new one.

(Btw. If you ever think it’d be easier to buy a new anything than to find the one you have, something is seriously wrong with your organization system.)

Version 1.0: An Attempt

I first became acquainted with Aaron’s giant tub of electronics just after we started dating, and not long after that I felt compelled to improve it. I was probably trying to find something in it, and that combined with the fact that we’d just started dating I was feeling helpful. So I got out a giant bag of zip ties, and started bundling all the wires together so at least they wouldn’t get tangled up. Aaron soon joined me, and we started cataloguing the stuff in the tub in addition to separating out the wires, as well as tossing the stuff the we wouldn’t use and wouldn’t miss. It was a good first step.

But the organization system didn’t last very long. Zip ties are great as long as you don’t use the wires, but if you need to use a zip-tied object, you’re going to have to cut the zip tie holding it together. It’s very wasteful, so we were loath to wrap the wires up again once were done using them. Also, we didn’t feel motivated to keep up the inventory spreadsheet since there was no way to track what stuff was and wasn’t in it.

Version 1.2: Minor Improvements

A year or so later, we solved the zip tie problem by getting these velcro cable ties. Unlike the plastic zip ties, they’re reusable. We still use them, and I highly recommend them.

We also got a smaller, flatter tub to fit under the bed. That saved us some space, and made it a little easier to see what was inside, but it had it’s own drawbacks. If we wanted to find something we had to move the futon. Also there was limited light and limited mobility. If your item was on the far side of the box seeing and reaching it wasn’t easy to do.

Version 2.0: The Awesome

When we moved, Aaron had an idea for how to better organize the electronics tub. We implemented it a couple months ago, and it works very very well. All it requires is a bit of closet space, some closet organizers, and a labeler (semi-optional). A picture does the system more justice, though.

As you can see, we divided the cables up by category. There’s a slot for USB cables, a slot for firewire, a slot of random AC adaptors, a slot for power cabels, and every other loose electronic object we have.

Finding stuff now is a whole lot less painful. In fact yesterday I was trying to find a hard to find item, the AC adaptor to charge the battery for my digital camera. I don’t use my camera very often, and while I knew the charger could be plugged into the wall I thought I might have lost that part. Lo and behold it was on the AC adaptor shelf. I did have to pull out a few adaptors first, but it was nothing compared to having the pull out everything in order to find what I’m looking for.

With this system there’s no need to do an inventory, either. We’d tried the inventory system before so that we’d be able to tell if what we were looking for was actually in the tub. With the new system, checking to see if we have something is easy, so that problem is non-existant.

While the labeler is semi-optional, I highly suggest that you get one if you don’t already have one. It makes labeling one or two random things simple, and if you want to relabel something you can just put a new label on top of the old one. Can’t do that with a sharpie. It also looks a lot neater than handwritten labels. Getting refills for the labeler isn’t difficult or that expensive, either. The office supply store that carries your labeler most likely also has refill cartriges. They last a long time, too. I’ve had mine for a year and have had to change the cartrige only once or twice. I’ve changed the batteries about as many times. Being a choir director, I do quite a bit of labeling. I imagine both would last longer for the average person.

Don’t Give Up!

So that’s our system for organizing our loose electronics system. I hope you find it useful. And even if you don’t have this issue there’s another more fundamental message here: don’t give up if your first attempt at improving an area of your life doesn’t work too well. Keep trying, keep improving. Eventually you’ll find something that works well for you.

Have fun spring cleaning!

Other members of the synchroblog:

Spring Cleaning for Your Finances — Jason Fischer writes about how you can clean up your finances.

To solve this problem, six months ago Aaron and I catalogued our combined books, DVDs, CDs, and video games. We were moving at the time, so we had to uproot all of our stuff anyway. As of today our system still works, and is almost effortless to maintain. In this post I’ll share with you how we keep track of all our books and digital media.

Cataloguing The Books

To catalogue our books we use an online service called LibraryThing, and, let me tell you, it is an excellent tool. Signing up for the service is simple, and once you have your profile, adding books to your personal library catalogue is just as easy. Just type in the ISBN (or title or author or library of congress number) and search from a wide variety of book databases. I was able to find the vast majority of books in our library almost instantly. Once you find your book, just click on the title and the book will get added to your library. LibraryThing also lets you know if you’ve already entered that book in your library. Very useful when you’re adding a bunch of books. You’ll quickly find which books you have two copies of!

On the off chance that your book isn’t in some book database (and I have a handful that aren’t), it’s pretty easy to make a new entry for the book. There are a lot of fields, but you don’t have to fill them all out.

Once you have books in your database, searching for books in your collection is just as painless as adding them. Just type the title of the book (or the author name) into the search box on your profile-page and the books in your library that match your search term will appear. As a rule, I’ve found searching by author gives the best results.

The cost of the service is really reasonable. With a free account you can add up to 200 books, and the lifetime membership with no book-limit is all of $25. The value/dollar ratio here is very high. The system is very intuitive and reliable. I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

If only there was a LibraryThing for digital media…

Cataloguing The Digital Media

Alas, LibraryThing does not have a direct way to catologue other media like DVDs, CDs, and Video games. (I’ve heard that it’s possible to add non-books to your collection, but the system isn’t intended for it.) So for this stuff we just used old-fashioned spreadsheets. Google Docs is our spread-sheet system of choice because we wanted to be able to edit the same document simultaneously and we wanted the ability to view the spreadsheet online. Google Docs does both of these things fairly well.

We have a separate spreadsheet for each type of Media: DVDs, CDs, and Video games. The reason for this is that there’s different information we want for different stuff. For instance, we only rip CDs, so while there’s no need to track whether or not a DVD has been ripped, it is nice to see this info for the CDs. I won’t say what fields we have for each type, because it’s really up to you. We don’t care about cataloguing things by genre, but maybe you do. I will suggest you add one specific field for every item you have, though: the UPC. It serves as an ISBN for non-books. Very useful if you want to quickly check the going price on your specific edition of whatever you have. You can search by UPC at almost any online retailer.

Stickers

The most important thing about maintaining a catalogue of your books is keeping it up-to-date. Once you’ve created the catalogue, you’ll probably feel confident that everything in your library is also in there for a few weeks, but after that you’ll start losing confidence. You’ll buy a new movie and forget to add it to the spreadsheet, or your SO will get a book and put it directly on the shelf with out adding to LibraryThing. It won’t take long for you to lose faith in the completeness of your catalogue, and as soon as that happens you’ll stop updating it. I mean, what’s the point? You’d have to recheck every book in order to make sure it’s there. That’s a lot of time, and isn’t a catalogue supposed to save you time?

The way we combat this problem is with stickers. For every book, DVD, CD, and Video game that’s been catalogued we put a small removable sticker on the back. That way we can quickly tell which item has been catologued and which one hasn’t. New stuff doesn’t get a sticker until it’s been catalogued. Once in a while we’ll forget to put a sticker on a book that’s been catalogued, but checking one book isn’t nearly as bad as checking every book. With this solution it’s very easy to feel confident that the books on the shelves are also in the database.

Of course, once in a while you’ll put a sticker on a book without cataloguing it, and unfortunately the system won’t catch that. Chances are it won’t happen that often though. If you’re worried about accumulating these errors you could do a check-up on your collection ever few years. Verifying won’t take nearly as long as entering everything in, and you can find out just how error prone you were. Maybe you’ll find that you didn’t have any errors!

If you decide to go with this system I’d suggest you keep extra stickers on hand, so that you can enter new items into the database and sticker them at any moment.

So that’s our system. It works very well for collections of things that don’t get used up (wouldn’t work very well for food, for instance), don’t get washed very often (stickers wouldn’t work well for silverware or clothing), and are easily distinguished (How do you tell apart 8 identical white socks?). At some point I’d like to expand this sort of system to other things, but I’m not sure how yet. If you have any ideas, let me know!