Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Dangers of Going to the Doctor & The Best Ways to Get Organized

Episode Date: October 26, 2019

Do you know about The 40% Rule. It’s what Navy Seals use to be mentally tough – and you can use it as well. It just takes a simple change in thinking. http://lifehacker.com/cultivate-mental-toughness-with-the-navy-seals-40-perc-1745307249 Who knew going to the doctor or the hospital could be so dangerous? Sure there are a lot of sick people there so you could catch some weird disease but that’s not the big problem. It’s MEDICAL ERRORS. I was shocked when I heard the statistic that medical errors are the third biggest killer in the U.S. behind cancer and heart disease. Here to discuss this is my guest, Leslie Michelson who has been working hard to create a “culture of safety” in medicine and he needs all of us to help. He is the founder and chairman of Private Health Management, former CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation – and he is author of The Patients Playbook. (http://amzn.to/2hdUaf6). Since all of us will be a patient in the hospital at some point – this is essential for you to hear. Since you likely send text messages to people on your phone, you need to understand what adding punctuation does that change the meaning of what you are saying. It’s interesting – and it only applies to text messages. If you are a texter, this can keep you out of trouble. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215302181 How organized are you? If you could use a little help, I’ve got just the person. Sue Crum spends her life helping people get more organized though her coaching and consulting as well as speaking. She is also author of the book Clear Your Clutter (http://amzn.to/2hdWzGF) and discusses simple strategies to help you get more organized. This Week's Sponsors –Airbnb. To learn more about being an Airbnb host visit www.Airbnb.com/host Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, discover the 40% rule. It's what Navy SEALs use to squeeze every ounce of mental toughness out, and you can use it too. Also, going to the doctor or hospital requires you be on your toes. Preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States,

right behind heart disease and cancer. And that's something that you can avoid becoming a statistic from. Also, how organized are you? Probably not as organized as you'd like. You can remember back in school that there were certain children who had, oh, their pencils always sharpened, they were ready to go, they had their papers with their name on it being passed in just in time, and then the rest of us were looking for things, looking for the paper, looking for the pencil, looking to sharpen the pencil,

and that's most of us. And punctuation in text messages. It's tricky. A period in the wrong place can completely change the meaning. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know.

Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Isn't that a statistic that you just heard in the opening montage, that medical errors are the third leading cause of death? I mean, that just so astonishes me. And I'm glad we're going to talk about it today in just a moment

with somebody who can explain the problem and also what you can do to make sure you're not a victim of medical errors. First up today, the 40% rule. One thing that Navy SEALs are known for is their mental toughness. And one way they access their mental toughness is with the 40% rule. That rule states that when you think you're done, whatever it is, exercising, working, studying, you're really only 40% done. You can do more. In fact, you can do 60% more. We develop these mental blocks and these patterns over the years that keep us in our comfort zone, but the fact is that you can

run farther, you can learn more, you can resist your vices longer. We instinctively know this because when it really counts, we're all able to do it. We tap into that reserve. People do it running marathons or pulling all-nighters for the big test. When it counts, people can do it. The trick is to do it more often, not just in those big moments. And it seems that the more you do it, the more resilient you become and the more that that mental toughness becomes part of who you are. So the next time you feel like giving up, remember you've still got another 60% left. And even if that sounds too much, well, you surely have another 30% left. And that is something you should know. We don't really think of it in these terms necessarily,

but when you go to the doctor or the hospital, you're engaging in a consumer transaction. You're the customer. But we often don't approach it that way, and that, turns out, can cause big trouble for you as the patient. And here to discuss this is Leslie Michelson. He is the founder and chairman of Private Health Management. He is the former CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and he's the author of a book

called The Patient's Playbook. Welcome to the podcast, Leslie. Thank you, Mike. It's very nice to be here. So from what I see in the book and have heard you speak about, we have a problem in the world of medicine in this country that directly affects all of us as patients, so let me have you just lay out what the problem is. The problem is really straightforward and it deals with the inability of many people to understand how to use the consumer DNA that they use across the rest of their lives when it comes to getting the very best medical care for themselves and their loved ones. And as a result of what's happening?

Well, it's, you know, there are two things that happen. One's the downside, the other's the missing of the upside. The downside is, although we in America are able to provide people the very, very best medical care in the world, our healthcare delivery system does not do that reliably. Preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, right behind heart disease and cancer. And that's something that you can avoid becoming a statistic from if you learn how to become an effective healthcare consumer.

So that's avoiding the downside. And then the other part, which is exciting, is making sure that you benefit from the upside is everyone who reads the papers and watches the news knows we're in the golden age of biomedical research there are far better diagnostic safer and more effective therapeutics than anybody would have imagined possible even a decade ago if you become a savvy health care, if you learn how to harness that consumer DNA that you use to plan a vacation, select a school, rent a car, buy a house, all of those sorts of things, and you learn how to use that in healthcare, you can make sure that you

and your loved ones benefit from these remarkable advances. That is a stunning statistic that death from medical errors is the third leading cause of death. It stuns me as well. It's a big number, but it's been documented in study after study after study. And, you know, we all know that tobacco is a killer, and there isn't anybody alive today who isn't aware of that. We probably lose almost as many people from preventable medical error as we do from tobacco today. And part of my life's mission is to sound the warning siren with respect to that, to get people's attention on it. Because if we can, and we know how to solve this problem.

We've done it in commercial aviation. You know, commercial aviation is inherently dangerous, but we have a culture of safety in commercial aviation that works really well because on average, every year in the United States, we lose a couple of people to commercial aviation accidents. And that's not to say that those are unimportant lives. Every life is precious, but that's a very small number relative to what I'm talking about. And if we could take and recreate that kind of culture in medicine, if we could take the kind of culture that Apple has in terms of excellence in the production of their cell phones or Intel in their chips or even Zappos in their shoe delivery okay and bring that into medicine

there'd be a whole lot more people alive at the end of every year in the United States of America well as you say in Airlines and in the airline industry there is a culture of safety how would you describe the culture in medicine if it is not safety? What is it? Look, the provision of health care services is one of the most complex undertakings in our entire society. You know, human biology is even more complex than physics. We're beginning to really understand it, but it is remarkably difficult to do all that. The number of things that can go wrong in a human body is an extraordinary number, and they interact with one another.

So physicians and nurses are the most hardworking and dedicated professionals I've ever met in my life. They're all trying to do the very best, but they struggle because they don't always have the resources they need to deliver the routine quality care that they want to. There are changes and shifts in hospitals. There's the introduction of new communication technologies and electronic medical records that are kind of first, second generation. They need to be more advanced. They need to be more sophisticated.

And the reimbursement system doesn't help. The regulatory system doesn't help. The regulatory system doesn't help. Everything is focused on things other than making our national priority the elimination of medical error. And if we were to make that the cultural imperative, we will defeat it. We will win. I would imagine that within the medical community, there must be examples of places where this is already happening, right? Absolutely. There are what I call green shoots, where people have focused on it, embraced it, and do tremendous work with it. So for example, there's a fabulous institution in Northern California, in Fremont, California, called the Washington Hospital Healthcare System, which is a district hospital that serves the community in which it finds itself. It's halfway between San Jose and Oakland.

And they've got a tremendous visionary CEO there by the name of Nancy Farber. And Nancy has made safety and reporting and accountability an integral part of what they do. So they measure all the things that need to be measured. They report them to their community. They take every mistake. They regard it as a treasure, not because it happened, but because you can learn from it. And there are lots of other examples across the country of doing that. But, you know, you can only have so many priorities in an institution and when you're under economic stress from the reimbursement system and regulatory stress for disclosure and pressures from the unions from the doctors from the carriers you have the difficulty of putting in electronic

medical records and privacy rules the fundamental issue of safety isn't frequently the top priority. And it needs to be. So is this a policy problem that needs to change and a cultural problem that needs to change within medicine? Or are there things people can do to at least watch out for themselves? I think it's both. I think every participant in the system can alter what they do, and we're talking to regular people who ultimately all become patients at one point or another, and everybody can do things so that they don't become one of those statistics. So, for example, if you're an inpatient in a hospital, there's this paradox because hospitals are among the most extraordinary life-giving institutions anybody's ever created.

Yet, on average, each inpatient in the hospital, the data show, has a medication error a day. Most not significant, but some of them are. So what I encourage people to do if they're an inpatient is have somebody with them. Have an advocate with them who review their chart to make sure that everything on it is accurate, who review every medication to make sure that's the exact thing that the doctor prescribed and that every test has been thought through and that the attending physician has got principal responsibility. Be sure that that's something that needs to get done because as the patient, you're going to be disoriented.

You might be recovering from pain medications after surgery. You might be fatigued. You're going to be emotionally compromised. You need to have somebody with you. Well, I would want somebody with me. I mean, who wants to go to the hospital by themselves? But as you say, it makes good medical sense as well. Leslie Michelson is my guest.

He is the founder and chairman of Private Health Management and former CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and author of The Patient's Playbook. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntw wine. First while monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God. And we are not its favorite children. The heresies of red off punt wine, wherever podcasts are available. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And continuing our conversation about health care, I think sometimes people, well, I don't know what they're thinking, but I can understand people thinking, well, you know, this is the doctor's hospital. You know, these people that work here, they're professionals. They should know what they're doing. And I don't want to be a bother.

I don't want to say, oh, let me see the chart. You know, that I just let these people do what they're supposed to do because they're the professionals. And they are the professionals, and they are deserving of our enormous esteem and respect because what they do is so stressful and so difficult and so challenging and so consequential. But at the same time, if you handle it in a respectful and responsible way, my experience, and I've been doing this for over three decades, is that the doctors and the nurses will embrace you. Because every doctor, every nurse I talk to says, look, we're working as hard as we can. We just wish we had more resources to provide the kind of excellence and thought and time to each patient that we want to. So my view about that is let's tap into the 320 million Americans who at some

point in time are going to become patients and get that energy, that intellect, that care, that love to complement the doctor. So it's not a matter of looking over people's shoulders and doing gotcha. It's a matter of partnering with them. And across the entire service industry, if you talk to people who are lawyers, accountants, strategic planners, advertisers, the people that provide services, they will tell you that they can provide a higher level of service if they have a more engaged client. And that's what I'm suggesting people do with their physicians. Become engaged. Learn about

your disease. Go online to the responsible resources so that you understand the dynamic of your disease, you understand the treatment options, and that you can become a more intelligent and a more informed decision maker and participant. It will help your physicians, your nurses, your nurse practitioners do a better job for you. Since you've been doing this so long, where do you think typically the disconnect happens if there is one or two spots where that typically happens? Where are things falling apart?

Falling apart's a little bit extreme. I wouldn't use that, but here's the metaphor I would suggest. You know, accidents, automobile accidents tend to happen at intersections, right, where there's a traffic line. You know, the vast majority of automobile accidents happen at intersections. There's a stop sign, there's something going on. And it's at the intersections that we see a lot of breakdown in the coordination and communication. When somebody goes into the emergency room, that's an intersection. And they need to be prepared to make sure that all the

med techs and the emergency docs know who they are, what happened to them, what medications are on, what diagnoses they have, what allergies they might have. And it's too easy to make a mistake there. And then if you go from the emergency room into a floor, there'll be a whole different staff, and they may not have had everything transcribed accurately. Then when you get discharged from the hospital, you need to make sure that you have a discharge summary so that you know what diagnosis you have, what the medications are, what's the schedule, what you need to look for, and make sure that the doctors who are going to be taking care of you outside the hospital have all of that information with full fidelity. Are you seeing, as you have worked in this for some time,

are you seeing more and more patients doing this or not? Oh, yeah. We're seeing a groundswell of people learning how to become effective advocates for themselves and their loved ones, people understanding the need to do it, and a growing receptivity within the health care community so that our parents' or grandparents' approach to physicians was the doctor says and the patient does without question.

That's archaic. That isn't what the doctors want, and it doesn't get the doctors what they want, which is the best outcome for a patient, and it certainly doesn't get the patient the best outcome. So as technology is exploding, as baby boomers are becoming the principal recipients of care as they age into that zone, as doctors are learning how to partner with patients to be open and receptive to it, I'm seeing a very, very significant change on all kinds of fronts. And I think it's all for the good.

I think when people hear about medical errors, when they hear that term medical errors, they think about, you know, the guy that got the wrong leg chopped off kind of thing. You know, the stuff that makes headlines, that makes juicy stories, but that's not what, I mean, I guess that does happen, but that's not where the problem really is, is it? I agree with you. Very astute observation. That's the salacious stuff that gets to the front page, but it's generally much more subtle.

It's, you know, a physician doing a major surgery that they don't have the expertise or resources to do. And we saw this just the other day with a patient of ours who was in the hospital, had an allergy to penicillin, and was being about to be given a significant portion, a significant dosage of penicillin, which would have triggered a very substantial allergic reaction. And the patient's advocate was with her and said, wait a minute, my mother's allergic to penicillin. You've got to give her a different antibiotic. So it is those sorts of things. And once they happen, they can trigger all sorts of cascading effects that go down the road. So it's that subtle change that results in a cascade that can be ultimately, unfortunately lethal or result in irreversible stuff.

Sometimes it's a misdiagnosis. We have a patient right now who went to his ENT for five years, twice a year, with increasing pain in his throat. And every year the ENT gave him a scope to examine it and said, you know, you have reflux. And every year he gave the patient a stronger drug to take care of it and it worked for a little while and then the pain got worse. Well, it turned out after five years, the internist was scared because this should not be going like this, ordered some blood tests, found out that he had very high level of cancer markers and he had a head and neck cancer that had probably been growing for five years. Fortunately, I think we were able to defeat it,

but rather than having a two-hour surgery and a two-week recovery, he had to endure six months of chemoradiation and probably 12 months of recovery. That's what happens when doctors make mistakes. But that's a really good point because is that a mistake or is that a just, he read the symptoms wrong? I mean, you know, sometimes symptoms mask themselves. I mean, is it a mistake or is is it just no one would have caught that? I think, frankly, that his cancer was so large

that everyone should have caught it. Maybe not the first year, but certainly after. These things don't grow that fast. And this was something the size of a golf ball. I'm not talking about something the size of a pea. This is very sobering because when we go to the hospital or the doctor, we want to think that we're putting our health and our lives really in the hands of people who will do right by us and who know what they're doing

and that they're not going to screw up. No, it's very destabilizing. Because look, when you're sick, you feel very vulnerable. You have this psychological need to believe in whoever it is who's going to be treating you has the capability and is going to deliver the cure that you so desperately need. And when there's a notion that that might not be the case, it can be very destabilizing. But if that is the objective truth,

I believe that people need to know the truth because if that is the truth and people know it, there are things that they can do to dramatically reduce the probability that they become one of those statistics. We had another patient just the other day had three back surgeries, probably all unnecessary, was in debilitating pain,

and was being recommended by yet another surgeon to have a fourth surgery, which would have fused her entire back from the base of her neck all the way down to her tailbone. Probably the most complicated and severe back surgery one can do. We had a spine expert evaluate her independently. He came to the conclusion that all of her nerves were fine, all of her muscles were fine, the pain was being caused by one specific muscle, and there's an expectation that with six weeks of a very specific physical therapy program, she'll be able to get off of all of the heavy-duty pain medications that she's on, reduce her pain to something that is tolerable,

and then over another six to eight weeks, probably get it down to nothing by simply energizing and strengthening a very specific muscle. Well, this is all very interesting and sobering, and buyer beware. I mean, this is good to know because I don't think people know it or want to know it, but the truth is the truth, and I appreciate your time. They need to know, and that's my passion, and I'm very grateful for your interest. That's why I wrote The Patient's Playbook. That's why I am podcasting under No Mistakes Owned with Leslie Michelson. That's why I've got a website called The Patient's Playbook. There's lots of information available to everybody free of charge,

and I need to bring about a revolution here to save people's lives. Leslie Michelson is the author of the book The Patient's Playbook. There is a link to that book on amazon.com on the show notes page for this episode of the podcast located on our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net. Thanks again, Leslie. Thank you so much. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every

episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top ten lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I've always been envious of people who seem to be really organized. Not that I'm a slob. I mean, I'm pretty neat. Or I'm medium neat. But I know I could probably do a lot better. But it's hard for me. And I'm always looking for ways to be more organized and neater. And one person who's a real master at this is Sue Crum. Sue is a speaker, a trainer, and a consultant.

And she is author of a book called Clear Your Clutter. Welcome, Sue. And so what's your take? What is your take on this? Am I in the majority, or are most people a lot neater than I am? Well, my take is that the overwhelming majority of us are not born with the organizing gene. 88% of us, really. But you can remember back in school that there were certain children who had, oh, their pencils always sharpened. They were ready to go. They had their papers with their name on it being passed in just in time. And then the rest of us were looking for

things, looking for the paper, looking for the pencil, looking to sharpen the pencil. And that's kind of the most of us. So we have to learn strategies that are going to work for us. And it isn't one size fits all. We have to find, build on our own strength of what we're doing now to get to places on time, find important papers at home, and build on what those strategies are in other areas of our life. And what are simple ways to do that? We have to start with something small and successful. And it may seem kind of counterproductive if everything's out of control, but we have to take a really small step first, because then we'll see some success and we'll be able to build on that. When we start out too big and we go, oh, well,

today's the day I'm going to get organized, or today's the day we're clearing out the three-car garage, and we go out there by ourselves or with one other person at eight in the morning and drag everything out, well, we don't have a plan, we don't have enough people to work with us, and we haven't figured out what we want the garage to look like and where we want everything to live. So starting much smaller, starting with the junk drawer in a kitchen, starting with the trunk of the car, starting with a bathroom drawer, that's a much better place to start. Because that does what? It builds the success, almost the success muscle in us. And we go, oh, that wasn't so bad. Oh, I figured that out. Okay, I can do this. And I can keep this small space under control. It's not like a storage unit.

It's not like a three-car garage. It's just a small space. And I can take back control. And then you just build on that. You go to the next one. You build on that, right. And you look at really what are the gnawing parts of why we're in this dilemma. It seems we're really in this acquisitive society, acquiring things. So when we can't find something, we go and acquire another one because we know the one we're looking for is in here somewhere, whether it's a skateboard in the garage or whether it's a stapler in the house. But it's so convenient to just go get another one that that's what we do. So if we build on the small success of one junk drawer,

one part of the refrigerator, one pantry, one desk where we're doing our work, sometimes it's people, too, that we need to declutter from our lives, relationships that aren't going so well. It all is connected, and it can get us out of control. What do you think is the biggest problem people have? Is it paper? Is it people? What is it? It's paper. And even though they've been talking about the paperless society since 1970s, it's still paper. And it's paper because everybody now has their own office depot or their own Staples Center in their house, whereas years before that never took place. Everybody's got their printers and their cartridges and their own computers at home.

And so people are printing a lot more information than they ever did before. And then sometimes in the workplace, people are concerned if maybe the files are going to go down, so I'm going to make a backup or I'm going to just cover myself by getting CCs or blind CCs. And paper is still the number one pain that people have when they call me. And the solution? The solution, again, is to build on systems that have worked for that individual person. So for some people, they work okay with piles if their piles are of particular projects.

For other people, piles are no good because everything's mixed in the pile. So it's kind of evaluating what's working with that person and building on that. Thinking of your office space like a cockpit of an airplane and having what you need close at hand. I have a free e-book that I can give to your listeners if they contact me at sucrum.com, and it has some simple strategies for them to just start right now with some real easy tips.

And it's free at sucrum.com, and it's simple strategies you can do now to just start to clear back the clutter and take back control and give me a couple of those tips well one is really to start each day making the bed and it sounds real simple and silly but it really sets the tone for the day it's the first thing you can say you've accomplished for the day and whether you work from home or you work outside the home whenever you go back into that master bedroom space, it's like, ah, this is under control in here. And our bed is 80% of the master bedroom. So just that one activity of pulling the covers back into place and smoothing things down can give a sense of calm and control back to an individual.

It's a very powerful first step for people to take. Another one that's in my Simple Strategies You Can Do Now free e-book is closing the kitchen at night and announcing the kitchen is closed, even if you live by yourself. But you just get everything put away, sink is emptied, sink is cleared, and you announce, even if it's just to the cat, that the kitchen is now closed. And you're not running a 24-hour diner. So everybody's coming and going with plates and cups and bowls and dishes. So you just close that down. Because

then when you get out of the bedroom in the morning with the bed all made and you walk into the kitchen, ah, there's another sense of calm. So it's building more of those senses of calm. And everybody knows that, I think. Everybody that lives with clutter knows that when they do get it all cleaned up or even in one room, that there is that sense of calm and whatever that sense is in people that having things organized and neat gives you, and yet it's, for some of us, very hard to keep it that way.

Well, you have to go back and do little jiffy-loop tune-ups, is how I describe it to my seminar participants and my clients. I do virtual organizing as well as hands-on, but more and more virtual organizing by phone. And what I say to them is just because you've got now the master bedroom or your home office or your workplace office under control, it doesn't mean you're done. You have to be like slaying dragons. You have to be right on top of it and go, okay, I'm not putting it down. I'm putting it away.

I'm not going to make a pile. I'm making a decision, not a pile. And it's finding a home for all those things. So if we start to, you know, just like with our cars, we can't just drive them until they drop over dead. We have to put gas in them and we have to give them a jiffy lube tune-up or some kind of oil change. So with our own spaces and our own calendar and our own relationships, we have to do the same kind of tune-up. It doesn't take as long this time now because we've found homes for things, but we just go back and kind of tweak it.

Are there any things that people ask you about'd come up over and over again of things that uh you know if they only did this it would just save so much trouble and confusion and and and stress uh they have to sign homes for things so the stress that they get under is when there's no home for the car keys and any open counter will do so if there isn't any home for that, then one day they put them down coming in through the garage and they put them on the workbench, and another day they put them down on the kitchen counter, and then another day they have them in their pocket, and another day they're in their backpack. And so that adds tremendous stress because now they're going out the door rushing, usually, and they can't find which of those five areas are the car keys.

Whereas if you assign a home and the car keys are always going on the dish at the door, then that's where they live. And the same thing goes for mail. If they have a landing pad and every place that the mail comes in, it goes to this one place. But if one day one person picks up the mail and they put it on the kitchen counter, another day somebody else brings in the mail and they put it in their bedroom and somebody else brings it into the garage, through the garage, or into the family room, it's all over. And that's what adds the stress when you can't find things because it doesn't have a home.

Everything needs a home. You know, that's great advice, because I suspect that people who lose their car keys or can't find their wallet is because of just that reason, because there's no place that it is supposed to be. Exactly, exactly. That's why I love Dorothy's saying, there's no place like home, and I use it a lot when I speak and present, because, you know, our home is our sanctuary from the outside world, and yet our items need a home, and the reason that they end up out is because we haven't assigned it a home to live.

And that's what happens with the stress of trying to get out the door in the morning, whether it's car keys or a bill that somebody was going to mail or something that was being turned in at the schoolhouse. If it doesn't have a place to live before it launches out the door, then it's like, where is that permission slip? Where is that money for the field trip? They're just in a frantic state, and that doesn't start the day off really well for any of us. Right. Yeah, that's great advice. Well, good. I've got what I need. I appreciate

your time. Oh, great, great. Well, if anybody on the call is looking for some free tips to get started, they can go to sucrum.com, S-U-E-C-R-U-M.com, and they can get my free e-book. And then they'll get my monthly e-tips for energized and efficient people. Terrific. And the book, Clear Your Clutter, there's a link to the book on the show notes page for this episode of the podcast, which is always located on our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net. Thanks, Sue. If you send a lot of text messages, you should be aware that adding punctuation to text messages can change how people receive your message. And the general opinion seems to be that when it comes to punctuation in text messages, that less is more.

Research published in the journal Computers and Human Behavior showed that when you put just a period at the end of a text message, people perceive it as less sincere than no punctuation at all. On the other hand, an exclamation point at the end makes it seem super sincere. So, in response to an invitation, say, to go to dinner, for example, saying yes and putting a period makes you seem not so sincere and not so interested. Yes, with no punctuation, just the word yes, seems more sincere. And yes with an exclamation mark at the end seems extremely sincere. By the way, this applied only to text punctuation

and had little effect on how people perceived the message in handwritten notes. And that is something you should know. That's this week's weekend edition of Something You Should Know. Please share it with a friend and head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review. It'd be greatly appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community.

Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law Thank you. Kelly Marie Tran, and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate.

We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well,

including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.