Habits | Organizing Goddess

Too Many Tabs

There is a great internet meme that has been floating around for a while: “My mind is like an internet browser. 17 tabs are open, 4 of them are frozen, and I don’t know where the music is coming from.” I think of this meme whenever I am working with a client who has a lot of tabs open. These clients may also have multiple Word documents or Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations open and unsaved. They are also likely…

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Carving Out Time for Yourself

When 2020 rolled around, I decided to keep track of how many books I read. I had no idea that we were about to get hit by a global pandemic and I would have more leisure time than ever before. When the year ended, I was delighted to see that I had finished 82 books! At the beginning of 2021, I wondered if I would be able to keep up that pace, as I expected things to become more “normal”…

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Coming Out of Hibernation

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve just emerged from a 16-month hibernation. When New York City shut down in March of last year, it was such a shock to have all of the hustle and bustle grind to a screeching halt. My daughter asked me how long I thought it would take before we were back to normal. I told her that the flu epidemic of 1918 lasted two years, so we should expect at least…

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Getting Out of Your Own Way

Raise your hand if you are good at making excuses to avoid doing something. (I would raise mine, but then I wouldn’t be able to continue typing.) If you’ve been reading my Organizing Tips for a while, you may remember that six years ago, I lost 40 pounds. You can find those details in “Lightening the Load“. Then I wrote about having kept the weight off for one year in “Keeping It Off‘”. Given all the wisdom that I shared in…

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In Praise of Routines

The word “routine” is often used in a derogatory way to describe repetitive activities that do not delight or inspire. But I’m a big fan of establishing routines. They enable us to free up our brains to concentrate on other things. After I finished graduate school, I moved into my first apartment and started a full-time job. During the first few months, I sometimes stopped myself on the way to the subway and went back home to make sure I had…

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