Three organizing essentials

If you want to be organized, these three essential tips can get you headed in that direction:

1. Have energy. If you’re tired or deprived of nutrients, simple tasks like returning objects to their storage locations, taking the time to do a task properly, staying focused, and even making decisions are all difficult to do. When you get the proper amount of sleep your body requires and eat healthful meals and snacks you improve your chances of being on task and having consistent follow through over the course of your day. Taking care of yourself makes it easier to take care of the mess.
2. Own less stuff than you have space to store. When objects aren’t crammed into a space, it’s easier to find objects and return them after you’re finished using them. If your filing cabinet is overflowing, you can’t put new documents into it. When your entryway closet is jammed packed, you throw your coats over chair backs instead of hanging them up on hangers.
3. Write it down. The more projects, commitments, and worries you have floating around in your head, the harder it is to focus on your work, as well as remember all the stuff you have to do. Get all of your actions out of your brain and onto a to-do list or calendar.

Posted by Erin on Sep 19, 2011 | Comments

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5 comments posted

1. Posted by Amy - 09/19/2011

   Wow! Simple but so true. Thanks for the reminders

2. Posted by Dee in BC - 09/19/2011

   Great article. I beleive it writing it down. At work I process a ton of paperwork in a day I also deal with clients/ phone calls- read I am interupted many, many times. I have this quick system where I check off the required items as I do them on a scrap of paper. If I’m interupted I know I have finished the 1st 3 required forms but need items x & Y. So much faster than going back thru many pages of a file. I also started noting if we have the required support documents & where they are stored on the file cover. Much better than searching every year thru a 200 page file to see if we have form x completed. ( or getting caught in an audit without the required forms) I work in a hybrid office – about half the stuff is on the computer & half in a hard file. Locating info quickly can be a challange. I’m determined to make it easier.

3. Posted by PJ - 09/19/2011

   Frist time posting here :O) Yesterday finally cleared a lot of things that were cluttering my bedroom, I have a nightstand but it’s not cleared/cleaned every day so it piled up stuff… Wonderful website and will make it my goal to check it every morning to inspire myself to declutter… Next mission:
   When your entryway closet is jammed packed, you throw your coats over chair backs instead of hanging them up on hangers.

   Give away those coats I don’t ever use! Save the ones I use… Nobody likes to use the closet b/c it’s extremely jam packed: difficult to get a coat out and even harder to put it back in! I’m thankful for the abundance, but maybe it’s time to re-gift them! thank you!!

4. Posted by Gal @ Equally Happy - 09/19/2011

   I encourage all of my employees to take a good 20 to 30 minute walk during the work day. I believe it makes us all more productive and the time spent walking is actually time that people spend thinking through problems.

   I know it sounds counterintuitive to take a break in order to be more productive but it really works. It’s similar to your #1 item on energy. A break is just as important as a good night’s sleep when it comes to keeping your energy up.

5. Posted by Gemmond - 09/19/2011

   The bit about having the energy (mental as well as physical) is key. It doesn’t matter if something is on my To-Do list for a day if I’m not feeling up to it.

   As important, I believe, is not starting anything that you personally aren’t committed to in terms of organizing. Very few of us, if we’re honest, do well at stuff we feel forced into or that we’ve said “yes” to doing when we really meant “no” or “not now.”

   Sometimes the real motivation comes from the result. No, we don’t want to spend endless precious free time cleaning out attics, basements and garages. But we do enjoy the outcome and it is often that that propels us through the work. (and not a spouse or family members badgering us. If you’re the one doing the badgering, focus on a relevant reward for the worker bee you’re trying to motivate!)

   The sight of the loads of seasonal laundry (we have a textile-filled home and despite the work, I love it)does not thrill me. Nor does putting the curtains, etc. back into place thrill me. But having a look that we love and enjoy throughout the year is the incentive that propels me.

   If I didn’t like that look, I’d certainly be resistant to the work/upkeep involved in maintaining it.

   You have to “get” something at the end of your work. If you don’t, it won’t work. So for folks who really don’t like the idea of change or chucking things or even the process of going thru stuff (confronting the past, issues, etc. as some objects can generate), there’s next to no incentive to keep clutter-free.

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Great tips to unclutter!

Sometimes the best discoveries are the ones you aren't looking for.

There's a physicist in Washington today. That's not terribly uncommon, but Steve Gass isn't here to warn us of global warning, beg for research dollars, lobby for/against nuclear power, or many of the other common reasons scientists talk to politicians. He's here to save the fingers of countless shop teachers and wood workers with his invention called the SawStop. Words can't do it justice, so you'll have to check out the video above to see what the Sawstop does.

We featured Steve on Physics Central years ago because we thought it was cool that he would come up with something so useful, which really had nothing to do with his research. Even though it wasn't a physics project, Gass used the problem solving skills and lab experience he gained by studying physics to come up with something so impressive that Consumer Product Safety Commission is advocating that it be included as standard feature on all table saws. They estimate that it will prevent more than 4,000 serious injuries and severed body parts every year.

In case you have doubts about how well it works on anything other than a hot dog, the end of this video shows Steve testing it with his own finger.

Sawstop is only one of countless spinoffs that come out of physics labs. By spinoff, I mean any useful innovation developed by physicists, while not being the focus of a physics project. Here are a few more that come to mind . . .

Lung Flute

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a devastating disease that hampers breathing and leads to over hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, as suffers literally drown in their own lung mucus. Acoustical physicist Sandy Hawkins applied the physics of sound to develop a simple and elegant way to help people with COPD breath a little easier. The Lung Flute isn't a musical instrument at all - the tone it emits is so low it hard counts as a note - it's a prescription-only medical device.

Blowing on the Lung flute creates pulses in your airway and at a frequency that's just right to shake mucus loose from the hair-like cilia in your lungs, so that you can cough it up. Check out this video from an article about the device by Corey Bins in Popular Science.

World Wide Web

It's hard for me to even wrap my head around what it means to invent the World Wide Web, but invented it was - by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN. Nowadays, CERN is better known as the home of the Large Hadron Collider, which is hot on the trail of the grandest questions in physics. And while many of us want to know why the universe exists in the form we see all around us, the answers to such questions probably won't change your life much.

The Web, on the other hand, changed everything. I'd be willing to bet Berners-Lee wasn't dreaming of YouTube, Facebook, and LOL Cats when he was developing a new system to help scientists share data. The result was beyond the wildest imagination of just about everyone alive at the time.

Berners-Lee was knighted for his accomplishment. Maybe we should cut to the chase and make him a saint.

Medical X-Rays, Microwave Ovens, MRI machines . . .

Yep, these too were fortunate accidents derived from physics research in pursuit of entirely different things. The list goes on an on. But there's only so much time in the day.

Very neat new technology that could save 10 fingers a day, impressive. I have to raise my hat to the guts of the inventor.

I love that Netbeans RCP platform is getting used for application like this now. I actually wonder sometimes why it's not MORE widespread.

A very nice visit of the abandoned SSC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider) in Texas.

Funny stuff...

The Great White North shakes off its historical politesse and starts kicking ass, financial-style. Will the rest of the world listen?

My favorite quote: "So why don't we move back to Toronto, a place of great living standards and high culture? Because it's too cold, says my wife. And that's where the discussion usually ends."

Probably something I'm be looking to try with my phone. I hate switching to the music app all the time to control it while doing something else.

Me want... now! I don't want to wait until fall...

This is good to know, also worries about what's coming and how this could rebound in the next decade.

Interesting (animated) story of Howard Engel, the writer who could not read.

I don't know how I didn't find out about this sooner but this guy is just awesome. His videos are short and clear and focus on one topic at a time. He has thousands of videos by now covering all sorts of topics, from kindergarten level all the way to advanced math, chemistry and physics.

The best way I've heard it described is the American Way, the French Way, and the Cuban Way:
American Way: totally separate accounts, 50% / 50% of joint household bills
French Way: everyone contributes according to percentage of salary - i.e. if you make 70% of the total household income, you pay for 70% of the total household expenses.
Cuban Way: everything goes into one big pot, and household expenses & personal fun expenses are paid out of this common pot

I had never heard of it described as French, American and Cuban... pretty funny. It's Cuban for us I guess.

Nice and very unusual concept but I like...

Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak -- the real-life version of the film's eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Is this how tomorrow's computers will be controlled?

A good article from Lifehacker about "unitasking". In a world with so many distractions, it has become increasingly difficult to focus on one important task. Actually, I was about to start working on something but this article caught my attention...

Internet-enabled set-top box Roku has partnered with Ultimate Fighting Championship to bring all major UFC live pay-per-view events — plus access to classic fights, insider information and countdowns — directly to Roku boxes. The new UFC Channel will be available to users via the Roku Channel Store later this afternoon.

The new UFC Channel offers both live HD streaming of pay-per-view events, plus access to past UFC content via UFC Vault. Some of this content is free and more is available either à la carte or as part of a subscription.

Hands-On Verdict: Very Cool

We had a chance to beta test the new UFC Channel two weeks ago during UFC 113. Watching live streaming HD on an Internet (

)-connected set-top box — as opposed to a traditional cable box — was pretty surreal and the quality was great (though I’m not much of a UFC fan).

Some of the playback controls are disabled during live events, but as soon as the event is over it’s archived in the UFC Vault, where you can access the full event for seven days after your pay-per-view purchase. UFC Vault subscribers have access to all past fights.

The purchase process was relatively painless; just sign up for a UFC account online, login to that account on the Roku box and select the event you want to purchase. When the fight goes live, you’ll be in on all the action and you can see host Joe Rogan talking about MMA and why certain fighters are such badasses, all in HD.

You do need to have at least a 2 Mbps Internet connection if you want to have a seamless live HD experience, so keep that in mind that if you live in an area with less-than-optimal broadband. My home connection is pretty snappy and it was just as good — if not better — than watching anything live on Comcast (my cable and Internet provider).

The Future of Television?

Roku is quickly starting to differentiate itself in the burgeoning Internet-powered set-top box market as a box for sports fans. In addition to UFC, Roku also has channels for MLB.TV and NBA Game Time. Of course, Roku is still best known for being the original Netflix device and the company is planning on rolling out an updated version of the Netflix Channel next month.

Internet-connected television devices continue to be big in 2010. In addition to set-top boxes like Roku, Boxee (

), Popbox and the upcoming Smart TV project from Google (

), Sony and Intel, more and more television sets and other consumer electronics devices like Blu (

)-ray players and video game consoles are acting as a gateway for accessing Internet content on a television set.

Although the majority of the content that these devices are serving are sourced from online services like Netflix or YouTube (

), more traditional commercial content, like UFC and MLB.TV, is starting to appear as well. What this ultimately means for cable television is unclear; I personally think that cable companies will simply start to adapt and embrace IPTV services within their own products. Still, it is a big step toward actualizing the “connected living room.”

What do you think of IPTV? Are you excited about watching live events via devices like Roku? Let us know.

For more entertainment coverage, follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter (

) or become a fan on Facebook (

)

Roku is picking up speed... It evolved from a simple Netflix movie box at 99$ than many people didn't notice and now you can stream pay-per-view events live, watch ball games from your favorite club and much more.

The hockey gods are laughing now. They snicker in the still of Pittsburgh, chuckle in the dark corridors of NHL offices in New York and bellow in the wild streets of Montreal. They kept quiet for so long, so long that fans must have wondered whether they departed for good.

From left, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta, Glen Metropolit and Mathieu Darche celebrate as time runs out on the Penguins.
(Gene J. Puskar/AP)

Had the sport changed completely, from team-first to star-centered? Were media-blessed stars like Alex Ovechkin(notes) and Sidney Crosby(notes) really able to take over and win on their own? Were the ghosts of the beautifully flawed old barns in Winnipeg and Chicago now chased away by fake noise in McArenas? Was the old NHL – the one so many grew up with – gone?

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Mais non.

The Montreal Canadiens have spoken, and spoken loudly, for the truly great aspects of their sport. They are the eighth seed, and the 16th-best team coming into the playoffs, cobbled together by good defense and great goaltending. They do nothing fancy, nothing breathtaking, nothing highlight-ready. Try making a Gatorade commercial out of this: They rush to the net on offense; they rush to the net on defense. That’s pretty much it. The Habs shove. They forecheck. They dump and chase. They clear the zone. Simple. Lovely. Pure. Hockey.

We’ll hear how these Habs evoke the storied squads from decades past, but it’s only because of the sweaters. These guys are far more underwhelming, and far more lovable. There are no Rockets or Beliveaus or Lafleurs here. Just a Gomez, a Gorges, a Gionta, and a Gill. The superstar scorer is a 5-foot-9 spitfire, Michael Cammalleri(notes), who played college hockey at Michigan. The coach, Jacques Martin, was not good enough for the Florida Panthers. The Quebecois, so enamored of all the French-Canadians who enchanted the Forum for so long, now dance in les rues for a team surprisingly devoid of francophones. In the age of the transcendent sports icon, the Canadiens started this season without a captain. The hockey gods must love that.

The hockey bosses, meanwhile, must hate this. Good luck getting ratings on Versus if the Habs face the Sharks in the Stanley Cup Finals. Even the people who learned Ryan Miller’s(notes) name in February won’t know more than two names in that series. Get ready for the NHL to be out-watched by women’s volleyball. Again.

But you know what? Too bad. True fans know the NBA playoffs never make jaws drop like the NHL has this spring. The NBA never has No. 8 seeds beating the regular-season champs and then the defending champs, back to back, led by a slow giant named Hal with 50 stitches in his leg. True fans are tired of trying to expand the brand. Sick of trying to follow the puck? Don’t know what the Halak is going on out there? Fine. Bye. Enjoy LeBron James.

The rest of us will eat this up. Montreal, winners of Canada’s last Cup way back in 1993, with its suddenly-slap-happy fans naming their first-born sons Jaro, might even face Boston and its Wrath of Rask in the East final. It’s the most unoriginal Original Six matchup ever. Unless, of course, the Flyers come back from a 3-0 series deficit to beat the B’s, in what would be an even more improbable storyline than Montreal’s. An 8 vs. a 7 in a conference final would make the coolest kind of history.

Canadiens fans in Montreal are sure to celebrate well into Thursday. Will the U.S. cheer on this super underdog?
(Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press/AP)

The good people of Broad and Newbury streets will be pulling for their teams in the Eastern final – actually let’s make that the Wales final – but how many Americans will be cheering for – gasp – le bleu-blanc-et-rouge? How many die-hard puckheads will be pardoning their French when La Sainte Flannel allows an easy goal? The Canadiens were once the most despised team in hockey, the Yankees of the ice. Now, with an AHL call-up named P.K. Subban(notes) and a chrome-domed Alaskan nicknamed Gomer, they are downright adorable. They could be the greatest dynasty in the sport’s history … and the greatest underdog champion in the sport’s history.

This year began with a bunch of plucky Americans going up to Vancouver and winning over some Canadian hearts. Now, three months later, the Canadiens have become America’s team.

Oh how the hockey gods must be laughing at that.

Award-winning writer Eric Adelson is a feature writer for Yahoo! Sports. Send Eric a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.

Updated May 13, 1:00 am EDT

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The *are* America's team... Go Habs Go!

Can't wait to try this...