We are pleased to announce that Linda Chu, Principal of Out of Chaos has teamed up as an associate with Kwela Leadership & Talent Management to offer a time management workshop.

Kwela is a Vancouver-based consulting company dedicated to developing business leaders and the systems that will achieve their strategic goals. They believe that leadership and organizational excellence are interrelated. Kwela works with businesses in Leadership Development, Team Development, Talent Management and Training programs.

Their Time Management workshop is designed for the business person to “Get Organized”. Learn how to develop effective workflow practices and sustain them in the long term. Reduce workplace stress and burnout. Focus your time on what is important.

Register for the next Public Program of Get Organized Time Management, on September 17, 2009. Join Kwela’s Principal, Russel Horwitz in this inaugural public program. Linda will look forward to seeing you there.

Moving can very quickly become one of the biggest stresses in your life, if you are not prepared and organized. Following a recent pack and move at a 5700 square foot home, our Vancouver-based professional organizers have some moving and packing tips to share.

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I love this time of year. Everywhere, it’s green and fresh. It’s a good feeling to be outside. But wouldn’t it be great to feel that rejuvenated and well-balanced at your workspace? It can happen with green organizing.

The reduce, re-use and recycle mantra of the green movement applies very well for organizations looking to reduce clutter and improve how their office is organized. In practice, these can mean:

• Reduce the amount of paper you use. Many offices are going entirely paperless, keeping all of their data in electronic format. Using less paper saves trees, and records kept in network databases or online can be easily sorted and archived using automated tools.
• Re-use office supplies, furniture and equipment as much as possible. Used resources cost less and don’t require the expenditure of any new resources or energy to manufacture brand-new things. Keep an organized inventory of all your equipment and keep a spreadsheet of maintenance schedules to ensure you’re re-using as much as you can. This will help boost productivity and save money.
• Recycle your office materials, equipment and clutter. There are recycling programs for everything from paper and bottles to books and computers. It’s not just recycling depots — think about thrift shops, second-hand stores and non-profit agencies that will accept donations.

For more tips about making your office green, check out the One Day site.

I like Post-it notes. Whether you use the colored-paper variety or the tech-savvy digital Sticky Notes, these little scraps of data come in very handy for organizing your stuff. They’re great for remembering your dentist’s appointment or business meeting, or just jotting down a name and number while you’re on the phone. They work just as well on your monitor as on your fridge or tucked into your pocket.

And I’m not the only one who likes them. This month, I have entrepreneur coach and mentor BackPocket COO, Cameron Herold share his winning Post-it secret for organizing success.

Take a Post-it note and write on it the five most important tasks you have to do tomorrow. Number them in order of their importance.

First thing tomorrow morning, look at item one and start working on it. Look at the list every 15 minutes until item one is done. Tackle item two in the same way, then item three. Do this until quitting time.

Even if you finish only one item, you’ll be working on the important jobs you need to get done. The others can wait. The point is that you’re making progress, maybe even getting all of your tasks done on your list.

“That’s it, it’s pretty simple stuff,” Herold adds. “But it made Charles Schwab a $500 million fortune 90 years ago and if it worked for him, it will for everyone else.” Using this method will also work to cut down your email down to inbox zero, he notes.

Do you have organizing tips that have helped your company become more productive and successful? Contact info@outofchaos.ca and your tips could be featured in the next Chu On This…

Business success can come from better organization, ensuring better workplace productivity. This month, I’ve called on Sean Simpson, Communications Director of Express Employment Professionals, the nation’s fourth-largest staffing company, which employs 350,000 people each year, to provide organizing tips that have helped his company achieve success.

“There is a belief that organization equals efficiency and it has the added benefit of being true,” Simpson says. “When you see a clean workspace, you can’t help but think that the worker is productive and gets their work done.” His company’s organizing tips include:

• Keep only your essential, frequently-used items on your desk. Your computer, telephone, inbox, stapler, note pad, and other items of that nature can be considered as essential. If you regularly use a printer or fax, keep those within reach.
• Throw out old materials. Don’t hoard old files that you haven’t used in years. Shred and discard these old materials to clear up space. Remember to double check files, such as financial records, before you toss them. Items like tax papers need to be kept for seven years.
• Tidy up before you leave each day. Make sure things are in order to ensure you can get off to a fast start when you arrive the next morning. People are a little more reluctant to tackle daunting tasks, but tidying up every day will prevent messes from growing too large and overwhelming.

Do you have organizing tips that have helped your company become more productive and successful? Contact info@outofchaos.ca and your tips could be featured in the next Chu On This…

The first month of the New Year is a great time to re-focus on your goals and start taking the steps to reach them. I’m feeling energized and ready to take on new projects, looking forward to upcoming events and speaking engagements for learning and networking.

But fulfilling those New Year’s resolutions and achieving their goals requires more than just good thoughts; in some cases, we may need to change our old behaviors that stopped us from getting what we wanted in the previous year.

The theory behind the GO System for organizing is that we have to rewire our brains by following better habits. It takes time, but the idea is to consciously use “good habits” until they take root. That way, even when you are stressed or tired, your new good habits will kick in automatically.

This applies whether you’re dealing with improving the energy in your residence, keeping your surroundings in order or organizing your workplace. Good habits could mean always putting new contacts in your address book immediately, making and using a new regular schedule for organizing and clearing your office files, or just taking 10 minutes a day when you get home to put things in order.

FreedomFiler’s self-purging filing system will forever eliminate the hassle of cleaning out and reorganizing files! Tested and proven by professional organizers, FreedomFiler’s easy folder names let you file and retrieve up to 20 times faster than typical home systems. Your kit comes with easy to follow pictorial diagrams. This product is a must-have for any home. Watch this video and see how the FreedomFiler can eliminate your piles. Contact us for discount code to save 15% on your purchase.

What are some habits that you’re changing in the New Year to be more organized and productive? Do you have a secret that has helped you change your bad habits and become a more organized person?

If you’ve got a success story, or know of a colleague who has successfully changed their old disorganized situation, leave a comment or email info@outofchaos.ca. Your answer could be featured on this blog or in the popular Chu On This… newsletter.

To ensure your home is a disorganized disaster in no time, follow these tried and true ways:

1. Buy clothes and never wear them. Put them away in your closet with the price tag on and find them 3 years later.
2. Enter every contest and subscribe to every magazine you won’t ever read. Just let them pile up on a corner of your table until ‘one day…’
3. Plan a weekly shop at Costco and purchase as if you were a family of 6, even though you are only 2 left in the house.
4. Don’t open your mail until you get a cut off notice. Leave mail and flyers in a pile in your entry-way so you can trip over them on your way in the door.
5. Keep everything because you never know when you will need that waffle iron that you got 25 years ago at your first wedding.
6. Bring back a souvenir from every place you’ve ever travelled because you can’t have too many shot glasses, ball caps, and t-shirts.
7. Downsize from your 4000 square foot home and bring absolutely everything with you to your condo apartment, including your lawn mower.

If mastering your disorganization is not quite the achievement you were looking to win the trophy for, you might want to consider some of these quick tips from our archives:

• Could Your Clothes be Worth Thousands?
• Clearing Your Clutter Without Cluttering the Landfill
• Sharing Through Clearing

What is the ultimate fail-safe product that will keep all your papers from conspiring into those endless piles?

Is there a magical secret process to keeping your desktop clear, preventing the mail from littering your kitchen counter, or remembering where you placed those season hockey tickets?

The secret to organizing is not a secret at all. It is truly about finding a solution that is customized to each individual’s needs. Although the dilemmas may be the same, the solutions may be as different as each person.
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You would think that a small space like your car would be easy to organize and keep organize.

The average Canadian spends close to 12 full days a year travelling between work and home according to a Statistics Canada study. The 2005 study found that Canadians spent an average of 63 minutes a day commuting.

I’m sure for some, it feels like a lot more when you are in the throes of going back and forth in traffic to / from work; ferrying the kids to / from school and all their extracurricular events and parties. In fact you feel like you live in your car.

It’s no wonder that our cars, like our homes are cluttered with evidence of life – empty food containers, CDs, sporting goods, kids’ toys, papers, garbage. Here are some tools which may be useful in de-cluttering your car and keeping you focused at the wheel driving and not distracted by searching for things you need.

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A poorly-functioning, disorganized office isn’t just a stressful place to work; it’s a health hazard.

And the costs are adding up. Starbucks spends more on healthcare than on coffee beans. General Motors spends more on healthcare than steel. Part of that big health care cost is because of work-related stress that can lead to health problems and workplace accidents.

That stress can affect personal lives profoundly. Twenty-five per cent of respondents to a Carleton University study said they had fewer or no children because of workplace stress and demands.
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How do you define value? In the case of holding onto clothing and personal possessions, often it is emotional. One day…What if… Consider for a moment, value expressed in terms of usefulness. So, if you have not used something as it was intended and it is just lying around taking up space, would that not be a waste?

What if a piece of clothing or accessory you have wasting away in your closet could be worth thousands of dollars?

Here is a charitable organization that you may not know about. This Vancouver-based initiative might be just the charitable cause and motivation you need to assist you in letting go of the “What If…” in your life.

Working Gear is as a non-profit society that undertakes the work similar to that done by Dress for Success. Dress for Success works with women of modest means who are unemployed, by providing them with professional clothing in which they can attend job interviews and start a new job.

Working Gear does the same type of work with a focus on providing support and help to men in the Vancouver downtown and downtown eastside. They solicit business casual clothing and construction clothing and redistribute them to men who are making a serious attempt to return to work. This is a free service provided in tandem with local employment service agencies.

As you undertake to loose those last 10 pounds (the same ones that you have been trying to loose for the last 10 years), you might consider a fresh start by donating your never and under-used dress shirts and ties, business casual clothing, or steel-toed work boots.

Doing so might create the opportunity for an under-employed person to start a new job – a job worth thousands of dollars in income – a job that might not have been accessible to someone because they did not have interview-appropriate or work-site appropriate clothing to wear.

We often keep things because of the value they represent in our lives, despite the space it consumes. Letting something go is easy to some, but for most, the ‘what a waste’ thought comes to mind as one imagines their precious goods lying in the landfill.

Our city recycling programs have come a long way in making it easier for us to recycle paper and plastics, but there are may items that do not go into the Blue Box.

If recycling or donating eases your conscience and allows you to let go of items cluttering your home and work spaces easer, you may want to consider the following alternatives.

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