Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Macro versus Micro Planning - How knowing yourself can make you more productive | Clutterbug Podcast # 53

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

In this podcast, I cover how just by simply knowing yourself and your organizing style, you can become more productive than you ever thought possible.  The secret to productivity is planning...and planning for your unique brain type!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to talk again about micro versus macro organizing systems and visual versus hidden systems. So thanks again for joining me and I feel like maybe I've been beating this to death like a dead horse. But the crazy thing is I am seeing the. different organizing types everywhere lately. Everywhere I go, friends and families house, clients, house, people that I see online in my Facebook group, and just looking at magazines and pictures. It's so funny. I think I have it on the brain because I'm writing a book right now about the four different organizing styles that I am seeing it everywhere.

And a really good friend of mine, my best friend Jess, she actually is reorganizing her kitchen. and she sent me some pictures of her kitchen. And she's so excited because this is really, really working for her. She took all of her pots and pans out of her kitchen cabinet and put them on an open shelf, like just a wire shelf in her kitchen. That way she can grab the pots and pans. She doesn't have to like bend over and put them way in the cabinet. They're just there, easy to grab and reach.

And everything's sort of organized on this open shelf. and she's happy as a pig and poop. Me, I mean, I'm cringing inside because I would never want to see all my pots and pans. I would never want to see all my utensils hung on the back at the back splash, you know, the potato masher and the spoons and all of that type of things. But for her, she is a classic bee. For her, it's all about function. It's all about having things organized properly.

meticulous in a visual way where she can easily grab it and put it away. Function overrules everything else. For me as a ladybug, I need simplicity. I can't see my stuff. And for me, pretty overrules. It even overrules function. I want things to look, yeah, pretty. Pretty baskets are my thing.

And even if it's harder to get to than say just having it on a shelf, that's what my brain prefers to not see it and just have everything look, yeah, put away. And so I find it really fascinating and I've been thinking about it a lot and I've been definitely talking with different people and doing more research to delve deeper into the different organizing styles so that I can articulate it, so that I can write about it in a way that really, really makes sense. And so I'm curious about you. I mean, you're listening to this podcast and probably you've listened to other podcast that I've done so you know your organizing style. You probably know if you're a visual person or if you prefer your things out of sight hidden away. And if you like microsystems versus

macro systems. So if you are new to the podcast or YouTube or whatever, a microsystem is when you want to organize your things in a really detailed way. So you like having subcategories, you like things put way really functional. I think people who prefer this even sort of think this way. They tend to be more logical, analytical brain-type thinkers. So an example would be, I'm going to go with your spices. Maybe ideally you'd want to have all your savory spices together or you'd want to have, you know, all your baking spices together. Maybe that's a poor example. We can use the example again that I'm always using of your bathroom closet and your medicines having all your pain relievers together and all of your an acids together and all of your allergy medication together

subcategorized into these small categories instead of having one for medicine so that's called micro organizing the opposite of that of course is macro organizing which is having just one basket with medication and everything thrown together so the idea of that is just ease of use. And where the simplicity, where the fast ease of use comes in, is putting away. So yes, it's going to take you a little bit longer to find things in a macro system than it would in a micro system, but you're going to make that time up in putting it away. And for me, in my ADHD brain, like I so have ADHD, I don't have trouble taking the time to find the thing I need, it's putting away where I struggle. So if something's hard or difficult or even slightly

complicated for me to put away, I won't. I'll set it beside the basket or I'll leave it on the counter instead of taking those few extra seconds to put something away in a really proper way. And I see this mostly with paper, to be completely honest, and with my desktop as well on my computer. When I go to save a file, my husband saves a file by the date and the name, and then he stores it in folders, which have subfolders, in a really detailed, complicated way that he knows so he can find things again. I have a folder on my desktop called Rando Desktop Crap, and I throw everything in there. Sometimes I'll have one for photos, or I'll have one for like YouTube videos, But inside there, there's no, you know, getting any more detailed than that.

So yeah, how do you find things when everything's a hot mess like that? When I've macro-organized my computer, I find everything by searching. So I will search the title and hope like heck I've remembered what it is. I've tried so many times to get into micro-organization. I mean, I wish, ideally, I wish I could organize that way. But my brain just doesn't work that way. and it doesn't work that way outside of organization either. I am here or there and everywhere and on to the next thing.

I'm flighty, I guess you would say. I'm like a butterfly. A little bit here and a little bit there. When I paint a room, I don't start in a corner and work my way around back to that corner. I do a little bit at the top, a little bit at the bottom. I go across the room. I do a little bit here. That's just how my brain is.

So I need my organization system to reflect that. whereas my husband and a lot of other people who have a really analytical way of thinking who are really structured and have that executive function ability, they want a more structured and functional organizing system. So yeah, that's, and I know I've talked about this so many times, but I wanted to bring it up again because I am really seeing this all over the place. And I think it's important to know yourself and to know your own style and how you not only organize your things, but how you organize your thoughts as well. And why this is so important is it really definitely connects to your productivity.

It connects with getting things done, procrastination, and just saving yourself time and effort. And so you guys know that I used to never be a planner and I was late for everything and I was basically a hamster on a wheel, accomplishing nothing. And when I started taking the time to plan my day, my week, my month, I saw an amazing transformation in my life. I was way more productive, way more successful, just accomplishing so much more than I ever thought possible just because I started putting my random thoughts inside my head down on a piece of paper. And knowing my style, knowing my organizing style really helped me come up with a planning system that worked for me. I love the idea of using the happy planner.

I love the idea of having a beautiful planner that I can really get detailed when it comes to planning my day, my month, my week. But in reality, I'm never going to use it. They collect dust in a drawer. I need simple. I need fast. I need easy systems. and even though I'm a ladybug, I need visual planning systems.

So for me, a bullet journal really, really is effective, just where I can open up a random page and just start writing random notes, brain dumping, it's called, everything that's sort of in my head taking up space, throwing it down on a piece of paper without it having any sort of order or rhyme or reason, and then mapping that out and saying, okay, well Monday, I can pick this random thing I just dumped on this random piece of paper and do that. And yeah, it doesn't look really that organized. It doesn't, it doesn't look like those beautiful happy planners I see on YouTube. And I'm like, oh, I wish I could, you know, everything's highlighted and in different little categories and there's stickers. And that's amazing. But again, that's a more logical, functional,

analytical brain that plans like that. For me, the best plans that I have are when I just take a piece of paper, I dump everything I want to accomplish in that month, and then I have one that I dump everything that I want to do the week, and then one piece of paper where I dump everything I want to do that day. And scrap pieces of paper or having it on my one planner sheet and sticking it on the fridge or sticking it up up on my wall, that works for me. That just, I don't know why it works for me. My husband, who is a classic cricket, he plans everything in his phone or on his computer. So everything's planned electronically and, you know, he's having little alerts that go off and everything's done really detailed, but in a hidden way on his device. And that works for

him. He's not going to be a planner person either. My mother-in-law, she's, all about the planner. She loves having a visual, beautiful planner that's really, really detailed and she's really, yeah, having subcategories and doing it that way. So knowing yourself, knowing what your natural tendencies are before you even attempt to start planning your life, I think is really, really critical because that's going to set you up for success. I've had so many people tell me that they've tried planning in the past. They've tried meal planning or they've tried day planning or they've bought a planner and they just forget about it or they end up not using it. And I think that really goes hand in hand with your style. I know that I've tried and failed with other systems too, but because

those systems weren't made for me. They weren't made for my personal style. So knowing yourself gives you the ability to not only organize your home, your house, your car or whatever, but plan your day too based on your style so that's going to be my challenge to you if you're listening to this maybe you already you know are rocking your daily planning maybe you are a planner with a physical planner or maybe you are all about doing it in your phone or having it electronic or maybe you were like me and you've tried in the past to do those systems and failed miserably i want you to think and try again. I want you to get back on the planning horse and give it a try a different way. Maybe it is a bullet journal. Maybe it's a scrap piece of paper every day that you write and stick on your fridge. Set an alarm

every morning whatever time you have to dedicate five minutes every morning and I want you to plan your day. You don't have to stick to it. This isn't about being like some crazy person that plans every second of their day. This is about picking five things that you want to accomplish and making sure that those things are attainable. So not putting on your plan, organize my entire house or clean out the entire garage. Make them easy and simple five things. And if you don't get around to doing all of them that day, move them to the next day and put five more things. And physically check it off. if you've accomplished that, I want you to do a checkmark beside it or scratch it out because nothing is more motivating than scratching a task off your to-do list and moving on. So this is exactly what I do.

I brain dump every couple of days all the things I'm thinking of so I can make space in this crazy nugget of mind for new ideas and new things. And then every single morning I pick from that brain dump page five things, well about five things, give or take, five things that I want to accomplish in that day. And I put it on my fridge or I put it downstairs on my desk. And that's how I'm getting so much more done than I ever thought possible. So I want you to give it a try. It really is life-changing. And again, it comes with the importance of knowing yourself. So if you're a visual or a hidden organizer and if you like micro or macro organizing systems because when you're thinking about what your planner is going to look like it's going to fit into those categories as well

it's going to be a really detailed micro system like the happy planner or putting things into your google calendar or it's going to be a macro plan like a scrap piece of paper and there is no wrong and right way it's what works for you and your family so give it a truck today that is your challenge is to create a plan every single day for the next week i want you to brain dump today tomorrow's friday so when you're listening to this it's probably a friday doesn't matter when you're listening to it though give it a try so brain dump and then start planning the next seven days every day set your alarm whatever time it is in the morning maybe it's eight maybe it's eight 30 maybe it's nine five minutes to plan your day and you're going to see some

crazy miracle like crap happen in your life. I promise you. So thank you guys so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed and I'll see you next time.