There are times when getting organized is going to be easier. I call these Golden Windows.

Some Golden Windows are given to all of us - like January (new year), spring, and fall. The new year is all about starting the year off with a fresh start and achieving new goals. Spring and fall are both times of the year when there are big season shifts and you get a burst of energy. The spring energy lends itself well to planning and the fall energy lends itself well to productivity.

Common Golden Windows include:

• Expecting a child

• Moving or selling your home

• When your youngest child starts school

• When your youngest child starts middle school

• When your youngest child starts driving

• Milestone birthdays

If you want to hear a more in-depth definition of Golden Windows, listen to this podcast.

Today’s episode is going to focus on a question I get a lot - how long do Golden Windows last?

This depends on the type of Golden Window you’re experiencing. There are long and short Golden Windows. A long Golden Window is something you can anticipate. A short Golden Window is one where you don’t realize you’re in a Golden Window until you’re already in it. In a short Golden Window, you don’t get to plan so the energy fizzles out fast.

• An example of a long Golden Window could be pregnancy. You know you are going to have a baby so you have months and months to plan, re-organize, nest, and prepare.

• An example of a short Golden Window could be adoption. When we adopted Joey, we got a call at 5 pm, and by 7 pm we had a baby!

Each Golden Window, no matter whether it is short or long, is an opportunity not to be overlooked! And while the length of time that Golden Window will be open for you depends on a lot of factors (outside of your control) there are certain things you can do to get the most out of it.

Here are my three recommendations for making the most of a Golden Window:

1. Anticipate

2. Optimize

3. Extend

Understanding your Golden Windows allows you to get so much more out of these amazing bursts of energy. Listen in to find out how to anticipate, optimize and extend your Golden Windows for maximum impact.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Golden Windows Podcast

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution®

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Embrace - Self-Guide Retreat - now available on-demand

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Truly productive people are always producing due to systems and routines they have established; I call these trains. They have their trains humming along which allows work-life balance. And balance means motion. If you are riding your bike, you are in motion while balancing. But when you slow down, you may lean to one side taking you out of balance. The same is true in life. But truly productive people can spot that imbalance and pivot and iterate to get back to balanced.

It’s a lot harder to start a stopped train…

It’s a lot easier on your balance if you iterate, opposed to stopping and then trying to get the trains up and running again. Let me refresh your memory of March 2020 when all of our trains stopped. It took almost three years to get all the trains running again. Do you remember how much energy it took? Some trains slowed down too much and had to permanently pull into the station, going out of business.

And recently with CrowdStrike going down for the airlines. It’s just not easy to get the planes back up in the air. There is a trickle down stacking effect. The earlier flights didn’t go out so they needed to get those people on their way before they could accommodate current time flights. It took a lot of manpower to get those planes back in the air and caught up on their scheduled flight times.

And the next likely time we can anticipate our trains stopping is the election…EEK! You can choose to get tunnel vision and focus solely on the election and possible outcomes. And then get emotional for the few days that follow. You know what productive people will be doing? They will produce until election day, go vote, and go back to producing. Truly productive people recognize what is worth the investment of their time and money. They want to effectively and productively use their time.

What took me out of balance

There I was chugging along with my trains. I survived Greg’s surgery in December, the quest to solve Grayson’s eczema for a while now, and other family needs for my time. I prepared the trains for the time I’d be gone in England. We had a fabulous trip and I jumped right into work when I got back. But something funny happened. You know I have told you your house will feel off and that is when it’s time to iterate or reset, because organization and balance is a feeling? Well, I didn’t do my normal summer reset. By the end of August, I had to take time off just to get the house back to normal. Why had my systems failed me?

They did not fail me but I wasn’t accounting for how much my family had needed me, not to mention all the time I gave to the remodels of Joey’s condo and Abby’s downstairs apartment. I realized I was completely over committed. Productive people can look at their systems and routines and pivot due to recognizing something like being over committed. I started to lean towards home and needed to get back in balance. I made three big decisions to put me back in balance. I have altered some plans at work to allow more home time. I have decided to take one less class to again free up more time to give to my family who have been in a season of needing more of me. This will lighten my load and allow me to stay in balance. You have to know when to take some cars off the train and send them to the yard until you can maintain them again.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Golden Windows are periods of opportunity that are compounded with energy and free time that, if seized, can propel you into organization and productivity. They’re as divine as they sound! If you’re looking for them, or know when they are coming, you can empower yourself with the resources and community you need (like in The Productive Home Solution®!) and capitalize on the opportunity to organize your home and make it a true haven for your family and your life’s unique purpose.

I will say, however, there are times in life when this is nearly impossible. New babies. Depression or other illness. Temporary crises. Short-term monopolies of one role or the other. During these times, you need to snap into survival mode, control disorganization, and just do what you can to ensure everyone is fed and treading water until the chaos clears a bit and you can come up for air.

There are also times when organization (and the energy to do it) just comes naturally. It becomes easy, almost effortless, and you seem to make progress quickly. I call these times Golden Windows. There are three types of Golden Windows: Chronological, Situational, and Seasonal.

Chronological

These Golden Windows are based on your chronological age. When we are younger it’s on the 5’s and 10’s birthdays and, as we get older, it seems to be the beginning of the new decades. The most prominent and productive one happens around the age of 40. I’m not sure why, but turning 40 brings with it a sense of peace and confidence in women’s sense of self and place in the world. Around 40, women stop worrying so much about what everyone else wants them to be and start thinking about what they want to do.

How do I want to spend my time? What am I really meant for? How do I want to spend the second half (or more) of my life? It’s a general trend, of course, but I’ve seen it happen with women who are married, single women, women with kids, and women without kids

Situational

These will naturally vary based on your life and your different roles, but many women see at least a few of these Golden Windows in their lifetime. Some are full of joy and satisfaction, others are heartbreaking and burdensome. A few examples that I detail in this episode are: moving, new babies, children going to school, children moving out, graduations, weddings, divorce, and remarriage.

Oftentimes, when the youngest child goes to all-day school, a woman who has previously been a stay-at-home mom decides to rejoin the workforce. I say, if you can, wait! This Golden Window is prime time for home organization, re-prioritization, and productivity. It’s a huge family transition and a great time to capitalize on the little extra freedom. Getting your home organized during this time will set you up for this new phase of life.

Seasonal

Every one of us gets three Golden Windows a year. Each season of the year brings with it a new energy that we can funnel into organizing our homes if we choose. Now is the time, from August to September, that we get the most intense organizational energy. For the next 10 weeks in America, we have that back to school, huge transition, productivity energy. End of December into the new year and as school gets ready to let out for summer break, you’ll experience 2 more approximately 6-week chunks of a Golden Window.

Understanding your Golden Windows allows you to get so much more out of these amazing bursts of energy. I hope you seize your next Golden Window and take small steps to true organization and productivity!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution®

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Embrace - Self-Guide Retreat - now available on-demand

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Welcome to the 10 most productive weeks of the year! About 4-5 years ago, I was able to identify this natural productivity energy cadence in America due to the years of routine from school. Summer is relaxed but when we head back to school, September to December is fast and furious! And once we get into business, it’s the same because businesses are ready to get out of the red and into the black regarding profits, hence Black Friday.

Mindset

My family and other people have always given me a hard time about how productive I strive to be. I am happy when I am producing. I can’t stop and I don’t want to stop. I am where work comes from in Organize 365® and my home runs off my productivity. I do sleep and make time for my family, but my “normal” is being productive. And I have recently decided I am no longer apologetic for being productive. In fact, I’ve gone pro.

Going pro means being a truly productive person that is always effortlessly producing. It’s not that you are just going to run a marathon, but that you are going to finish that marathon. And when you go pro as the home manager, you and your family benefit. What is there to apologize for? I mean, if you hired an actual home manager, would you want them to sit around or would you be thinking, “The house isn’t going to take care of itself!” As a professional home manager, you give 100% effort and produce as a person striving for excellence not this pie in the sky idea or aesthetics of perfection.

Be A Scientist Observing Yourself

You can learn so much if you just track where you spend your time. If you are running your marathon and feel the need for more time on a specific project, I encourage you to be a scientist of your own life. In my observation, I have decided I will not be getting extra productivity time by staying up late or getting up early. So where else could I gain time? I realized the other day how much time I could save if I didn’t do my hair everyday. Bun hair days mean I get almost an extra hour each day. That’s an extra hour to be more productive. At the same time, I felt something was off. After observing where my time was going, it became apparent that I was spending too much time in CFO tasks. I decided to knock them out in one Saturday to stop taking time away from my weekly objectives. That is what truly productive people do! Observe and iterate.

Marathon Energy

I am a big fan of Jesse Itzler. Jesse does all kinds of crazy athletic challenges. When I know Jesse is trying to complete one of these challenges, man, I watch him like it’s my job. I am so impressed with his mindset. It’s not a matter of if he’ll finish, just how. Athletes are such a good example of someone who has observed their performance and constantly makes slight improvements. They account for all variables like the best weather conditions, energy they need to be in, court or track or pool conditions to result in their best performance. We applaud it in athletics and we should applaud it in our work and homes. We are in the thick of marathon energy right now. Capitalize on it! Get your Sunday Basket® in order so you can be present because you know every thought or idea is accounted for and planned. Now own that you want to be a truly productive person and focus on your marathon.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

How do we move from being a productive person who can get a lot done in a day to someone who can really set and achieve bigger goals that are going to make a marked difference in the world? The way to become more impactful doesn't come from productivity, it doesn't come from apps, and it doesn't come from digitizing things. It comes from increasing your organization.

In order to build the tracks for your work train, you have to establish work systems, processes and habits. In Workbox Planning Day, we talk about having a beginning of the day routine, a midday routine, and an end of the day routine. Then you can add in Friday Workbox® coworking time each Friday, and Planning Day every quarter. Now there will be the new Workbox Planning Day Implementation event that will kick off next week, and will continually happen every quarter. You have to build these tracks first so that you can move forward faster. Having these three routines each day gives you guardrails and allows you to task stack different things at different times of the day so that you have more capacity and more time to work on your purple projects and move new initiatives forward through the company.

Now you're moving faster because these habits and routines have reduced your decision making fatigue. You've task stacked as many of your green tasks into these bucketed times each day and week so that you have more free time to work on the other colors - pink, purple and blue. Now it's time to build the train cars. How you build your work train cars is very customized. What your train looks like throughout your career is also very customized. Interestingly, you can get your work train up and running faster than your home train. Typically it only takes a year - if you're an employee. If you're a business owner, it's a lifetime pursuit. You're never going to be done because you're always reorganizing the train tracks, moving around the cars or adding and subtracting them. It's basically one big game.

The first work train car will be the Business Friday Workbox®. This will teach you there are four different kinds of work; four different roles you play in your job. Everyone has four: pink, purple, blue and green. Once you figure out what those are, we're going to optimize those four kinds of work over the course of one year. The second train car are the Workbox Planning Days. Until you learn how to plan, how to use your Friday Workbox®, it's really just a pretty way of organizing your to do list. Until you learn to plan the work that's within the workbox, it's very reactive. You might speed up a little, but you will not have the impact that you want to have. How do you take the green work (administrative) and task stack it in as small amount of time as possible at regular intervals throughout the day so that you can increase the capacity you have for the pink, purple and blue work?

Once you start going through the Planning Days, you start to proactively and purposefully plan out what your initiatives are going to be in the next 90 days. You start doing less, but getting more in depth. You delete or delegate projects, you streamline your goals and stop overcommitting. You realize how cyclical work is and how much it's related to home.

There are other things that are going to slow down your train - like losing a team member, adding a team member, a new product, losing a product, and so on. Every time you pull into the station, you will go through every single train car. Every 90 days, every quarter. I would love for you to join me for the Workbox Planning Day Implementation event next week. It will be the 13th week of every quarter from now on, so you can add this into your coaching package in order to keep your train running. My job is to get you more productive and profitable so that you can avail yourself of all of those great coaches thereafter.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Business Friday Workbox®

Workbox Planning Day

Workbox Implementation Day

Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

TEN YEARS! You have been able to catch this multi-weekly, ad free podcast for 10 years. I am not so good at reflecting and patting myself on the back. But the team insisted because it’s not just my podcast journey or their podcast journey, but it’s been yours too. Cheers to 10 years! Thank YOU!

How did the podcast start?

You know the planner that I am, so how do you think the Organize 365® Podcast came to be? I was in direct sales before I started this company, right? So I thought I’d start a podcast and kind of feel out the process. I got to use my teacher skills to teach other direct sales consultants how to grow their businesses. Once I identified as a podcaster, I knew I wanted to start one for Organize 365®. When I start something new, I always ask myself, “On what level can I do this consistently for the rest of my life?” Yes, I am that intense. Consistency is important. So I made an intentional one year plan of episodes. Fast forward 10 years and here we are! I get so much joy from talking to you. It’s fun to look back at how my life was 10 years ago. We all change so much. Some listeners say they resonate more with the old Lisa because of the phase of life I was in then.

I was sitting in church one Sunday thinking about the number of people in attendance. After some rough math, I realized that most of the episodes get more downloads than people that were in attendance that day. It’s really incredible! I just kept taking the next step with the podcast over the years. Now there are 23 million overall downloads and we are in the top 5% of all podcasts! This podcast has enabled me to make such a large impact. You start something, keep improving your skills, you collaborate with others and before you know it, you get to do something bigger because others in that same space come alongside you and help you make that impact. That’s what we continue to do at Organize 365®. Thank YOU!!

We continue to iterate

Do you remember the SMARTIE goals? Well the I is for iterate. And at Organize 365® there have been many iterations due to the phase of business we have been in. We have produced series and some stay, some get put into private playlists for some of our courses, and some get retired. We currently have three kinds of podcast episodes.

Coffee Chats: This information is usually time sensitive, like an alert. Some of these episodes expire so we pull them when the content is no longer relevant.

Wednesday Transformation with YOU!: These episodes are members from our community who come on the podcast to share the transformation they have experienced by implementing some of the Organize 365® systems. **Please apply!! Please!!

Friday: I try to pack these episodes full of useful information. These episodes usually pertain to the energy for the time of year

Ways to win:

• Take a few minutes to figure out in your podcast player, how to leave a review and rate the Organize 365® Podcast. Note: Written reviews can only be left in Apple.

• Post one of your favorite episodes on Facebook or Instagram and tag Organize 365®. You can do this weekly!

• Post one of your favorite episodes on LinkedIn and tag Lisa Woodruff. You can do this weekly!

What you’ll win:

• Organize 365® Tote Bag

• Sunday Basket® Bookmark

• Bumper Sticker

• Organize 365® Colored Pencils

Good Luck!!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• SMARTIES Goal Printable

• Wednesday Podcast Guest Application

• Tag us on Facebook @organize365

• Tag us on Instagram @organize365

• Tag Lisa on LinkedIn @LisaWoodruff

• 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway Entry Form

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media.

How do you remember what you need to do for the people you need to do it for, I mean really? Information management is the organization that will allow you to make informed decisions for the people, appointments, and processes in your life. The Sunday Basket® takes care of active papers, but some papers you need to hang on to. There are no more actions to do with this type of paper, but they are critical for future reference. I have a binder system, within The Paper Solution, to help you manage all the informational papers.

Medical Binder

The Medical Binder has allowed me to have many informed conversations with doctors that have led to not needing tests they may have required otherwise or access to medications the doctor may not have considered. I wanted to try to go on Clonidine to help with my hot flashes due to a hunch I had. I had my medical history with me in my Medical Binder. You know why I had it with me? My doctor does not digitize my records. So there aren’t multiple medical records “talking to each other” or being updated. Being prepared for conversations with your doctor can elevate your conversations and the consideration your doctor gives to your concerns or desires. This worked to my advantage many times with my children as well while we tried to get them on a diet and medication that helped them to function their best. With the Medical Binder in hand, you can make critical decisions before you leave the hospital allowing you the best treatment. Let me tell you, you leave the hospital and change your mind? Your options are drastically different with higher price tags. This binder is a life saver!

Household Reference Binder

When we went to Europe, our smoke detectors went off. And Abby was going crazy so she called grandma, who called Joey. Joey really didn’t want to call us. But it ended up being an easy fix due to the Household Reference Binder. Had I not filled it out, there would have been a couple of annoying days or some expensive invoice from ADT to come out and change the batteries. The Household Reference Binder can also remind you when routine maintenance is due and where you can keep appliance user manuals. This binder can also work to your benefit in selling your house - interested buyers will have peace of mind investing in your home when they know you took care of it and that there’s a binder to help them take care of their new home.

Financial Binder

We just talked about being the CFO of your home. The Financial Binder helps to organize all the financial aspects of your household economy. You can file away all your insurance documents as well as taxes in this binder for quick future reference. I have shared before that I file taxes for Abby and Joey. So this is where I store their license numbers, issue date, and expiration date to save me time when filing their taxes. I don’t need it any other time of the year so it goes in this binder. This becomes a valuable binder when it comes to settling an owner’s estate. This shaves so many billable hours off an attorney and saves you time, too!

Household Operations Binder

How does your home function on a yearly cadence? The Household Operations Binder is like your family’s standard operating procedures (SOP’s.) You may find papers from this binder go into “active status” in the Sunday Basket® for a season and back to the Household Operations Binder until the next time. These papers remind us of facts about holidays or annual events. This binder is also where your family could find information and complete tasks normally they could not because it would all be in your brain. But because of the Household Operations Binder, you have externalized the process thus lowering your cognitive load and sharing those tasks.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!