My first day back to the beach this spring and the weather was sunny and beautiful. I walked the pier admiring the sailboats on the blue Lake Michigan. Ducks walked among the rocks. A five-year old girl was running through the cold water screaming with delight.

I wandered over to the canal. As usual people were fishing. But, I saw something I had never seen before. A teenager fishing and playing on his phone. I thought fishing was the beacon of restfulness. A place to come back to calm. Instead, he had the pole set up against the rail to catch what goes by. On the phone he missed the quiet, the water, the birds, the lovely air.

Once that phone came into view I noticed more. A girl with a high-pitched voice was talking loudly about insurance. A mom is on her phone as her two kids play in the sand. A group of teenagers play on their phones instead of playing volleyball with the net next to their blankets. Two women text, presumably other people, as they sit next to each other in short beach chairs.

I don’t ever recall seeing that many phones on the beach. I think part of it for us in the northern hemisphere – we have been inside this cold winter. Technology kept us company. We didn’t realize we had been using it more and more. We got out the the habit of enjoying nature and hanging with friends just to talk.

Any technology habits you want to change this season.

My email was getting behind. My project turnaround time was growing. My husband ate pizza for dinner two nights in a row.

I was feeling very frustrated. How did it all get so out of control? I know there was more work because several program launches for clients were happening at the same time. I was also trying to get it all done before we went camping for Labor Day weekend.

But, I can usually fall onto my time systems. Into my head popped a conversation we had in my Project Class about email. Email is quick, fast and there might be a few easy to do tasks in there. Much easier than working on a daunting to do list.

So I was popping into email in between every single task. I’d answer some emails then maybe do an email task that was pretty easy. And back to email.

My projects and important work weren’t being touched because instead of following my to do list I was falling into the email trap.

Immediately I went back to my email processing schedule. Email processing, not email checking. Email checking without processing tends to waste time.

I answer simple emails during processing time and more time consuming emails I put on my to do list for the next day. Quickly I started to catch up on my backlog of tasks because I was no longer interrupting myself by checking email.

When I wanted to go into easy email, I had to remind myself to do what was more important.

Has email sneakily started taking over your time?

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You can learn about my time systems in my Change Your Relationship with Time class.

I’ve had quite a lot of emails saying they can’t remember the password to the calendar. Or to the chat room.

Each site has different rules – must contain a number, must contain a special character, must not contain a special character, must be at least 6 characters, must be a four number pin. Plus it’s not safe to have the same password for every site anyway.

I have tons of passwords to remember. I wouldn’t be able to if I really had to remember them.

I use Last Pass to keep track of my passwords. I have one master password and Last Pass remembers the rest. It even comes up with tricky passwords for places if it want it to. I like it because I can use it on my computer, my laptop and my phone allowing me to work wherever.

I also like to use it for filling out forms. You add your profile and it will fill out the forms at shopping sites, etc. No need to type it in each time. I love the time it saves.

Dashlane is a similar program if you want to try that one.

If you have passwords you need to share with a team, Mitro is a good option.

One of the most annoying things about making changes, trying to declutter and simplify is often we only see what still needs to be done.

And, boy, it can feel overwhelming.

If there is so much to do, how can we ever get to our goal?

One way to counteract this feeling is to notice your progress daily.

Some ideas for noticing progress:

• Check off your box on your declutter calendar.
• Whenever you finish a task, pause, look at what you did and smile.
• In the evening look at everything you completed on your to do list and add a few more than you finished. If you finished more than you didn’t it’s a win!
• Take before and after pictures.
• Concentrate on one area at a time until complete, rather than hopping all over.
• Make your expectations of how much you can do, be about a regular day, not an ideal day. If you never finish your list, put less on it each day.
• Use an app or program like Joe’s Goals.

How do you keep track of your progress?

As with anything else, having good tools makes simpler living easier as well.

• Calendar – I prefer Google calendar, but one you can take with you is ideal. But, that doesn’t mean you schedule something immediately. You still want to think before saying yes.
• The Declutter Calendar so you can take care of one small area at a time
• Quiet time space daily for silence and centering
• A labeler so everything is neatly labeled. Feels better than my messy scrawl.
• A money program that tracks your spending and updates at a click of a button. Mint.com is good.
• Automatic savings from your bank that moves money every paycheck
• A journal to uncover your needs and discover what is important to you
• Routines – so you don’t have to re-decide when to clean, pay bills, etc.

I’ve been using Workflowy for a few months now. It’s a to do list, project list and note list in one.

And it’s very simple.

You type. And if you want another level you tab over.

Here is what part of my workflowy looks like:

You can use this sign # to create tags. Most of my tags are days of the week. But, you can tag subject lines and other things for easy searching. So if I want to know what to do Monday I search #Mon and all those tags show up.

You don’t have to see everything at once. Clicking the plus sign next to the bullet let’s you see more of the tree. Clicking the minus next to a bullet, collapses the tree. As you can see with many of the bullets above, a grey circle surrounds the bullet. That means there is more to see if you click the plus sign. Hovering over the bullet lets you complete the task, add a note, share, export, duplicate or delete.

You can drag and drop bullets for easy re-organizing.

I love being able to break down a project into smaller steps. And then collapsing the project so I don’t have to see all the steps all the time. And it’s flexible. I can use it how my mind works.

Under Vision I have my goals and my planning checklists like weekly planning, monthly planning and seasonal planning.

I include someday lists under each category for projects I may want to do in the future. I only have a few projects going at once or none will get completed.

It runs in a browser, so anywhere you get the web you can get your Workflowy. There is also an iPhone app.

Here’s a little video on it:

It’s free for up to 500 items a month and $49 a year for the pro version.

You can check it out here: Workflowy

It’s easy now to stay connected to work on your vacation. More and more people work when they are on vacation. It’s the anxiety, that if they don’t check in they will be overwhelmed by the time they get home. Or they will miss something.

What would it take for you to take a vacation and leave work at work?

It’s great to have a list of current projects and where you are at with them. Any documents or any other person that knows about the documents can be out so you don’t have to be called.

Let key people know you are going to be on vacation ahead of time so you can do imperative things before you leave. And keep reminding them you will be gone.

Ask your boss what is most important for you to get done before you leave for vacation.

In your email vacation autoresponder share who else they can email while you are gone. Set that person up before you leave.

Make sure work knows to call you only in an emergency. Don’t give your cell phone to everyone.

Have a list of what you need to do when you get back that you make before your vacation.

If you can, leave the laptop at home. If you aren’t there yet with your electronic addiction, set 15 minutes in the evening to check your email. Don’t play with it on and off during the day. That makes it difficult to relax. Same with your phone. Return calls only at a certain time in the day.

Then relax and have fun in your vacation!

According to a recent study, Smartphone users check their phones every 6.5 minutes. That astounded me.

It means most phone users, not just a few annoying people, are checking their phones as they talk with people, as they eat, as they do most activities.

That means most  aren’t concentrating on something longer than 6.5 minutes before they need to relieve their boredom by checking their phone.

If that is the average, how much are the power users checking their phones?

Should we be concerned if we can’t go through a meal or a conversation plugging back into our technology?

After reading those stats, I am going to be more aware of how much I am checking my phone. How about you?

You don’t just start using the phone every waking minute. Technology creeps in. You start by having it in your purse. Then your desk. Next you get it out while waiting in the car or the doctor’s office. Soon it’s in the house during commercials. Or a quick text when you are out and about. Next thing you know you are one of those who spends all your time on the phone while out to eat with your family or visiting friends and relatives. Or walking with a friend while on the phone with someone else. You’ve lost all eye contact with people.

Or maybe it’s a tablet that was only to make life easier and now you can’t even watch TV or go to the bathroom without being connected. The cat tries to sit on it to get your attention.

It could be TV, video games or internet surfing. They began at an hour a day and now has grown to most of your evening.

Being so attached to the technology makes you more unattached to your body, people and your surroundings. We know why we like technology. It’s entertaining. It makes us feel connected. It gives us an adrenaline rush. In most cases it’s easier than dealing with people in your life, a messy home or a situation you are unhappy in. And since it is easy, we don’t realize when we have been spending way too much time with it.

Where has technology creeped for you that you haven’t noticed?

You can test your attachment, by going an hour without touching technology. Next week try 2 hours. What about half a day? Or scheduling a whole day?

Perhaps you decide once a week you will not go online. Or keeping your phone off the whole day. Maybe you will schedule your internet surfing or video gaming for a certain timed, time period.

It’s time to be intentional with how we allow technology into our lives.

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Photo by Gustav H

I cleaned up my email folders last week. This felt so freeing. Most of us have way too many folders and filters set up in email. If your email has a good search feature like gmail does, you don’t need all the folders. It’s rare you look into the folders unless they are action folders. It’s faster to search "Anne policy" rather than search in the Anne folder for that policy email.

I deleted folders of old projects or people I used to work with ages ago. Instead of having reference folders of all different kinds I have only a few.

My smaller folder list now. (A means action, R is reference):

• 3 Project folders for current projects headed by P for project
• A/Listen to – for audios I want to hear, usually on a break
• A/Waiting For – things I need a response from. I look at it weekly to see if there is anything I need to follow up on
• A/To Read – articles, newsletters, etc. that aren’t urgent. I have newsletters filtered there bypassing my inbox
• A/Action – for anything I need to do once it is on my to do list. Usually only if it will take more than a day to get to it.
• R/Accounting – for all my bookkeeping emails, important for tax season
• R/Clients – I use this to check up on old clients and keep in contact
• R/Registrations – logins and registrations for various sites
• R/Smily – emails that make me smile for when I need a boost

What email folders do you never look into that are cluttering up your email box?