Today… we’re going completely random on you! We have a bunch of short, unrelated topics that have been simmering for a while or just been on our minds and we figured it was time to put them out there. So we figured that maybe a few short bursts of ideas or tips might be helpful. A lot of these things we’ve been wanting to discuss but they aren’t something that would fill our usual topic segment length. But, we still wanted to get them out there. So, Vanessa suggested “Let’s do a completely random show and call it The Random Show!” Uh, OK…why not!

Random Show

Well, the cool thing for you is you get a bunch of random tips…all solid in their own right, but boiled down into a few simple points! It’s like a pot luck dinner! Read more…

Main Topic:

Dan:

It’s not the tools, it’s the work: Every once in a while I have to remind myself of a lesson I first learned long ago from my older brother, Kevin.

Our big job in the Winter time growing up in the Southtowns of Buffalo NY was shoveling snow.
Kevin always seemed to be getting lots more done than me!
We had 2 shovels, the long push-type shovel that plows the snow and the typical square type shovel for shoveling the snow.
Didn’t matter which one Kevin had, he always got more done than me.
I was convinced it was the shovel and always asked him to switch.
He always chuckled, but always switched with me. It didn’t make a difference.
What Kevin was teaching me was that it’s not about the tools, it’s about the work.
Occasionally, as a gadget guy, I have to re-learn that lesson.
Once it sinks in though I realize it’s my big brother teaching me the lesson again, 40 years later and 1600 miles apart. Thanks Kev.

Take Away: Next time you go to buy that new tool, that fancy new laptop, download that next app that will supposedly solves all your problems…consider whether or not you need a new tool, or just need to master something you already have.

It’s natural to nest…yes, even for guys. But it can easily get out of hand and then it’s time to draw the line. Eventually, it’s time to simplify.

So, over the years I’ve spent over:
- 2 years living in tents.
- I’ve lived in abandoned/bombed out buildings.
- About 6 months living in wooden huts.
- And 8 months living in a shipping container.
Each time, I and everyone that I lived with in these places, went through a bit of a nesting phase. I’ve seen guys/troops:
- Build complete dressers and nightstand sets out of MRE boxes.
- Leave extra stuff home so they could fit hanging canvas shoe organizers in their bags to hang up.
- Fight for foot lockers.
- Or meticulously pack their rucksacks to the point where the seams were ready to burst.
There was also a certain “hierarchy of needs” that Maslow might even find puzzling. Of course it differed by your job specialty, but the order of precedence I typically saw with my guys was this:
- Make sure combat gear was organized to grab and go (#1)
- Ruck/pack (#2)
- Evolve from sleeping on the ground to sleeping off ground (#3)
- Find a spot to hang your toiletry gear since you’ll be using that every day to wash your squishy parts or dangly bits (#4)
- Pogey bait, gedunk, lickey chewies (#5)
- Comfort/chill gear (#6) (music, cards, books, etc). Depending on how long it took you to get to your destination and the immediate tactical situation…this could go up as far up the list as #1!
We’ve talked before about learning to “embrace the suck”. I think that’s a skill that everyone should be able to call on any time they deem it necessary.
But like a pendulum, sometimes we overcompensate for those moments of suckage and let things get a little too comfortable.
I always force myself to remember that too much of any positive yields a negative.
Some of our parents and grandparents dealt with living through the Depression by saving everything for “Justin Case.”
Sometimes when we feather our nests too much we lose ourselves in the fluff.

Don’t let fear or pride get in the way when you need clarification.

I developed this techniques for myself…one of my favorite phrases to use when I need info about something out of my area of expertise is “Talk to me like I’m 3.”
Even if it’s a subject I do know a bit about, I’ve come to the point where I don’t want to blindly trust my assumptions.
So I tell the sales person, customer service rep, or whoever, “”Do me a favor, I want to make sure I completely understand you…talk to me like I’m three.”
Here’s why I think this works:
- It empowers the person you want to learn from.
- It gives them a sense of responsibility that they are teaching you something and in my experience they tend to be more thoughtful.
- Breaks down any pretenses of prior knowledge for both the sender and receiver.
- It instantly relieves me of any responsibility for “you should have known this.”

Take Away: So, if you find yourself not having as much of a clue as you think you’re supposed to have about a subject, try my “Talk to me like I’m 3” technique and I’ll bet it’ll work for you, too!

My last one is this: Given the option, I choose reductivity over productivity

Just like any other aspect of simplifying your life, first you need to edit.
It makes no sense to organize the deck chairs on the Titanic. That ship is going down!
Focus on the things that need to be done and work to eliminate the unimportant. That way your full effort goes to what IS important and isn’t spread out among myriad tasks.
Another aspect of reductivity for me is to identify the most important tasks first. For example:
- With our new website design at SimpleLifeTogether.com I wanted to go back and make some improvements to older posts and shownotes.
- I wanted to make them all in the same format.
- I diligently started at Episode 45 and started working backward.
- When I got to 30 I realized that it would have made a lot more sense for you…those who come to the site…if I had first started with our top 10 most popular posts! Those are the ones that are getting read the most.
- Plus, I have a widget installed on the site that tells me what the top 10 posts are and it even displays them in the sidebar of the site!
- Why didn’t I just start with those? I don’t know. What else am I just doing by habit? I wonder…

Take Away: So, once again, take some time to figure out what the most important or core tasks are for your big rocks. When you can, take care of those first!

Vanessa:

Can we change? I’m sure you’ve either heard the saying or maybe even said it yourself that: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

Well, I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately; especially as we try to simplify our lives.
While we’ve never pretended to be minimalists, I am very much drawn to the idea of becoming one….yet I feel so far away from reaching a point where I would even consider myself an “aspiring-minimalist.”
The reason I feel so far away from becoming minimalist is because I still struggle with fighting the temptations of buying and wanting things…which caused me to wonder…”Have I changed at all?”
I also started to ponder this question more as I worked with my clients that struggle with getting and staying organized.
As I started to feel like it was hopeless…I woke up from my contemplative haze and realized…wait a minute! Yes! Yes we can change….I’ve done it myself and I’ve seen others do it!
- Like with my fitness…that was actually a lifestyle change.
- I also changed my spending habits and improved my personal finances (mama doesn’t do credit anymore…and if she does…she pays the card off in full!)
- And of course, how could I forget my road to getting organized myself…I was a mess for the first 10 years of my adult life!
I’ve also seen change in others:
- Folks who were drug addicts or alcoholics and then became and stayed “clean”
- I’ve seen the faithless become faithful in different faiths.
- Even seen folks switch from being selfish to selfless…devoting their lives to charities and helping others…Scott Harrison the CEO of Charity Water is a great example.
- And of course I’m reminded often by my clients and loved ones of our ability to change like when:
  - Clients send me pictures or status updates of how they’re maintaining their organized spaces
  - Or when they proclaim their newfound love for their scanner and how they’ve transitioned from paper to paperless…a major shift for many of my clients.
  - And I definitely became a believer when my mom sent her first text message and FB post to me….that was huge coming from a woman who cursed computers for years and years (and now she has her own iPhone and iPad)!
So Yes! We can change, but we probably don’t appreciate the concept of change because it doesn’t happen as often or as fast as we’d like:
- One reason might be because change usually takes effort and quite honestly, it seems like mankind is totally opposed to effort some times! We will take the path of least resistance whenever we can…its our nature, if we have that luxury.
- Another reason might be because, changes that are worthwhile usually don’t happen overnight, which can be discouraging:
  - Take Simplicity for example…shifting from “wanting more” to “having enough”…or better yet….”wanting much less” is a huge mental shift
  - Or lets say Fitness…starving yourself to lose 10 lbs in a week is different than slowly losing that same weight and keeping it off.
  - I also liken it to the difference between graduating from high school vs graduating from college. Sure high school was an achievement but graduating from college and getting commissioned after working 30 hours a week, completing a 4 year ROTC program and going to school full time was a much bigger accomplishment for me.
- I also think one of the challenges we face with change, is that we fail to properly identify the core reasons for needing to change.
  - For example: wanting to lose weight to improve your health is a much different motivator than doing it because you feel pressured….by a loved one or society.

Take Away: If and when you want to change, you need to:

First identify the reason for wanting to change. Is it an internal or external motivator.
Also identify if you really need to change. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Realize that significant change takes time, effort and commitment. You’ve got to beware of hitting the easy button…it’s not always what it’s cracked up to be. And that’s my next topic!

Beware of the Easy Button! This may be why there isn’t a whole lot of change going on!

I usually ask “Can I hit the easy button” when I’m too tired, overwhelmed or not looking forward to doing something myself. These are some times I’m most susceptible to using the Easy Button:
- Dinnertime
- Work or home related tasks and chores
- When our daughter wants to play and I’m too junking tired!
I used to think that hitting the easy button was the smart thing to do….like knocking out tasks with little effort…or outsourcing things I didn’t want to do myself. But come to find out, the real reason I was hitting the easy button was because I wasn’t managing my time well or keeping my priorities in check.
But the easy button is so tempting….heck, that’s what consumerism is all about…how to make your life easy right!
We’re so easily drawn to things that are easy…or promise to be easy, but in the end it can be a waste or even detrimental to you in the long run. Some random ‘easy button” scenarios I thought of were:
- Instead of taking time to edit your possessions you put your excess in a paid storage unit to deal with “some day”. Well, “someday” rarely comes but the rental statements sure do!
- You know you should take care of your end of life documents, wills, estate, etc. but you hit the easy button and shove everything in a drawer with no rhyme or reason, leaving it for your loved ones to deal with.
- Caving into your children’s begging and letting them eat snacks all day long. Or doing the dishes, laundry and meal prep without getting them involved…potentially missing out on teaching them about independence and responsibility.
- Or my personal easy button…going out to eat instead of planning a healthy meal. This is usually a case of not prioritizing and getting wrapped up in other tasks. So what happens is we end of eating a fast food or unhealthy meal at a hefty price…GO MOM!
- And the list can go on and on…easy loans…easy diets…easy pay…easy online degrees….etc.

Take Away: Now, there are certainly times when it’s ok to hit the easy button, like hiring a cleaning service or lawn service, or using online banking and deposit mobile to save you a trip to the bank. Some things really do make life a little easier and it’s usually because the cost pays in the time you can devote to something else. So that’s why I say...we all just need to BEWARE of the Easy Button and be deliberate when we use it!

What An Organized Person Is…or Isn’t:

Someone posted a fill-in-the-blank question on Facebook the other day. It said, “An organized person is __________.” Naturally I had to check it out! And the most popular responses went something like this:
- An organized person is….calm,
- less-stressed,
- able to multi-task,
- a problem solver,
- confident,
- and my favorite response….”someone I desperately need in my life!”
I have to admit, I would agree with pretty much all of these assumptions about an organized person…in general.
But then I thought, what about asking the opposite of that question…what an organized person is not. I would expect some responses to be:
- An organized person is not late,
- stressed,
- messy,
- an adventure fiend,
- a procrastinator,
- very creative,(for some reason people equate organized as being boring)
- a total mess!
I can’t say that I agree with all of those…but I think they represent some actual perceptions about organized people.
So I kinda wanted to explore that further and thought, what if you asked that question to an actual organizer? Let’s say…ME! Here’s what I would say: An organized person is NOT:
- perfect,
- anal-retentive (well…not with everything)
- Martha Stewart
- boring
- a know-it-all
- a magician
- completely stress-free, or
- completely fearless
And the reason I mention this is because I think we give too much credit to being organized. I know that sounds like heresy coming from me, but I think this idea of being organized is somehow linked to being perfect…or too boring…or too difficult to achieve…it can be such an inhibitor.
I’ve actually witnessed this with clients:
- One woman desperately needed some help but thought that being organized would be too orderly and inhibit her creativity and flow!
- Another feared that having too many routines might be too militant for her kids.
- One thought the answer was buying a bunch of plastic bins to organizing everything…only to give up realizing it was going to be more work.
- And yet another client wanted me to organize an area that was already organized…but she didn’t think it was perfect-enough.
So you can see how these false perceptions of organized being boring, too strict or perfect can be intimidating. But the reality is, that while being organized is definitely a good thing, we need to have a better understanding of what it is and is not. Lets start with what it’s not…
- It’s not the answer to all your problems.
- It’s not going to make everything in your life easier…we all struggle in different areas of our lives.
- It’s not an easy process and can’t be achieved overnight.
- It doesn’t mean boring or predictable.
- It’s doesn’t automatically equate to simple.
- It isn’t just a bunch of gadgets apps and bins:
  - An organized calendar doesn’t mean you’ll be on time to every event
  - An organized To-Do list doesn’t mean it’ll all get done.
  - And even the most organized homes, there’s often still too much stuff to manage and care for.
So what is being organized? It’s definitely more than a bunch of labeled bins and color coded digital calendars. Instead of looking at the stuff, I think we should look at being organized as more of a tool for leading a simpler and potentially less stressed life. To me being organized is more of a of a feeling….as opposed to a picture perfect image of a space or person. It creates a feeling of:
- less stress
- control
- awareness
- confidence
- empowerment
- and being able to problem solve

Take Away: My point here is that being organized is definitely great, but that we should have a realistic idea and appreciation of what being organized is. It’s not perfection, it’s not always easy, and it’s not the answer to everything, but it can be greatly beneficial to helping you live a simpler life.

Question:

So, what random tips do have to share as you contemplate life? We always love hearing your feedback and ideas. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Thing Segment:

Dan’s Thing: Enjoying my kids realizing the benefit of their hard work! Sunshine rode her bike without training wheels for the first time, and The Boy and his high school marching band kicked butt in a statewide competition. One on the judges was absolutely blown away! You can hear his excitement on this audio clip. I’m so proud of those kids!

Vanessa’s Thing: Looks can be deceiving! We found a new diner/dive just 1 mile from the house. It looks a little sketchy from the outside, but the chow was great!

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