It doesn’t matter how organized you are, doing your taxes means two things;

1. Taking stock of the year gone by in a purely factual way. How did it all add up, how did all the work, the effort, the dreams and the disappointments – how did they all add up and what do they reveal on paper? When you look back and reflect over another year gone by it is with feelings. Tax time forces you, as a business owner, contractor and artist to reflect on the past year as the sum of its worth. There is a terrific opportunity here – it might not have been the year you were hoping for but the perspective you can get when doing your taxes will give you insight into how to make next year the best ever.

2. Dealing with a lot of receipts of all types, shapes and memories.. and adding them up. There is so much paper to deal with when sitting down to “doing” your taxes.

Here’s the thing about receipts: You have to keep them, you have to categorize them and you have to add them up at the end of the year.  I think most people just stuff them in a really large envelope and at the end of the year pass them off to their accountant to have someone else sort them. But if you don’t do that, and I don’t, and I think it is an important part of taking stock of where you spend your money, how you spend it and where you could be spending it more effectively as a business then you will need a system of keeping your receipts so that when it comes to you adding them up, it’s not such a dreadful and boring ordeal. Here’s a solution that looks good on a shelf, is easy to maintain and was very quick to add up at the end of the year.

The Binder & Box

Get a binder and a nice box – maybe match it to the colour of the binder and the box should be no bigger than the binder – or deeper. Choose a large binder, 2 inches or bigger. In the binder you will put clear sleeves which are individually labelled by category (Research and Development, Travel etc). The idea is to put your receipts in the box at the end of the day/week. When the box is quite full of receipts then that is when you transfer the receipts into their categorized clear sleeves.

The reason I found this method to work personally was because the box means that there’s one place and one place alone where receipts are put when they first leave your pockets, bags and car. It is also portable so when you go to categorize your receipts in the binder you can take the box and binder and do it while you watch TV or chat on the phone. Some people keep their receipts in categories in the filing cabinet but I find means inevitably that the receipts never get put in. Categorizing your receipts is something you can do in your least productive times.

And the reason I have a binder to put receipts in a categorized fashion is that at the end of the year when you sit down to do your taxes it is the worst part of the whole process and you also forget what a receipt was all about anyway or it’s faded. It really does pay to do the categorizing during the year.

Hope this helps. Drop me a line if you have any specific questions.

Really it’s all about perspective; how we see or experience something is not necessarily the only way or even, at times (like for me yesterday), vaguely realistic. It can be very frustrating not to mention alarmingly confusing when we find ourselves not being able to figure out how to organize our home when we seem to be able to have a perfectly organized office. Or when we were single somehow everything found a place but now that we are sharing our life with someone we find it almost impossible to even find a place for our tooth brush! It’s very common.

Yesterday I had the perfect excuse to go for my first drive in a car on my own! I was so looking forward to it. I needed to pick up some supplies for a client in north Toronto and drop them off to her home in east Toronto and following that I had a meeting not too far away. It was ideal. I got into the car and made my virgin voyage odyssey. I drove to the store, picked up the supplies and then headed east to her house. I couldn’t believe how easy everything seemed with a car. I drove up her street, saw her driveway and drove up. I thought to myself “Wow, this is so cool!” I did a flawless reverse out of the driveway when I had dropped everything off and headed to my meeting. The whole day was perfect, blue skies, hardly any traffic – couldn’t have been happier. When I returned home I dropped my client a quick note saying I had left her supplies in her back garden on the glass table.

My computer made a sound informing me a message had come in… from my client marked URGENT. “How odd? I wonder what’s up?” I read her message. “We don’t have a glass table in our back garden” Blimey!!!!! Where the +%$#@ had I left her things! I mean I distinctly remember driving into her driveway. I am sure it was her driveway. Turns out it wasn’t. I had left all her things in a complete strangers back garden. The stranger happened to be a friend and neighbour of my client so all worked out well.

But here’s why I mention this: I had only ever approached someone’s house as a passenger or pedestrian. I had never driven up a driveway. Until yesterday evening all driveways looked alike to me. Of course I didn’t realise that all driveways looked alike to me but obviously they did or I wouldn’t have driven up a complete strangers driveway, unloaded my car and made the few trips back and forth to their back garden dropping strange boxes off onto their glass table. I have no idea what they thought looking out at my happy face.

When we take on a new role, be it as a parent, a partner, or entrapreeur – we think that everything looks and is the same. But our world has changed but we are still looking at it through our old eyes – and they don’t give the true picture. Organizing your office when you are now sharing it in the same location as your home and personal life does change everything. It means seeing things from a new and completely different perspective. A lot of my work when I first start with clients is about getting them so “see” things in a new way. Not trying to fit the new life into the old perspective. Your life changes regardless of whether you see it or not. It’s all about perspective and learning to “see” in a new way. I promise I will never look at a driveway in the old way again!

I am going to be leading a workshop in Toronto on April 8th on organizing your home office.

Paper be gone! Organize your home office now!

Address your own personal “hurdles” that keep you disorganized. Learn skills and techniques to bring greater productivity and calm to cluttered and non-functioning environments. Set up an efficient office space without spending a bundle

Cost $20 in advance, $25 at door

2nd Floor, 243 Queen St. W.
@ University
Toronto, ON M5V 1Z4
(647) 347 – 1899

For more details: Be The Change

I received a comment from Angelina regarding her son the other day. She had so many appointments for herself and her son that it was difficult to keep on time and she asked me if there was an application out there that would help her.

There is SOOOOO much out there! The difficulty is in making a choice and deciding whether you want to pay for it or not. I spent some time looking at what is out there. What I found is only a fraction of what is on offer. And a small disclaimer here: I am not personally recommending any app. – they look good, they have a good rep. and if they are not free they have free trials. Try them out and see what works for you.

I  love the name of this one! It’s free too. Get reminded, anywhere, locate your tasks, work together and share tasks, organize the way you want – lists or notes etc. Add tasks wherever you are.  It’s interface is clear and simple.

Life Balance

Life Balance is award winning coaching software that provides a dynamically ordered To Do List driven by the importance of your goals, your desired allocation of time and effort, and feedback from what you get done each day.

TimeGT is built to make life and tasks handling much easier and more accessible. TimeGT offers numerous ways to organize tasks, ideas and notes. It will suit a wide range of time management techniques used by different people: Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, important-urgent method by Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Things First by Stephen Covey, and many others.

Organize your schedule and share events with friends. With Google’s free online calendar, it’s easy to keep track of life’s important events all in one place. Share your schedule. Let your family and friends see your calendar, and view schedules that others have shared with you. Get your calendar on the go. Access your calendar from your phone using its built-in calendar or mobile browser. Never forget another event Get event reminders via email or have text messages sent right to your mobile phone.

Are you’re struggling with time, more specifically, the challenge with never having enough control over it and need to find a time management system?  In my conversations with clients about solutions to time management issues, it’s the selection of the system (because there are a lot of choices out there!) that is the first stumbling block.

What to Choose:

The two most effective time-management tools out there are;

1. Paper planner/calendar or

2. Electronic planner hand held/computer sync’ing device.

Desk agenda

It’s that simple. Seriously though what I mean in that statement is that you don’t have any post-it notes on the computer, magnets with reminders on the fridge, scribbles on napkins or multiple cute diaries and notebooks for each subject, room, briefcase or purse. One system, one tool. Effective time management starts with having it all in one place – your planner.

Paper or Hi-tech?

Think about your lifestyle: Honestly I think this is a very personal decision. You may not have a lifestyle that is full of meetings and appointments – your struggle with time is more about prioritizing than juggling. Or you may need both paper and technology. The trick is in defining what gets put on paper and what gets taken care of by technology. And remember when I say technology it’s not just whether you choose a blackberry, a palm or an iphone – it’s the applications you install on these devices that will really make the difference.

How many different aspects of your life are you trying to sync up? Are you juggling a busy career, family, hobby or higher education? If you have complex scheduling, particularly if it’s from different aspects of your life and locations then perhaps technology is the answer for you. On the other hand if you scheduling is not the problem but keeping track of what you’re doing and prioritizing then you may simply need an agenda.

Think before you choose: You need to think about how this piece of technology will work for you and how and where you will be using it.

1. How many people are involved in your scheduling network? Do you need a system that can be shared with others and different platforms? What is your major area of frustration when it comes to keeping your day on track? You need to look at your life before you look at how to schedule it.

2. Making time to keep on time. No system, whether it is paper or technology will work for you unless you routinely communicate with it, sync it with your computer and keep updating it. So, before you choose, think about the amount of time that you need to commit to maintaining it. If you are spending a lot of time co-ordinating your time and contacts then you might need to think about some kind of assistance – be it someone who works with you, or a virtual assistant.

3. Give it time to work! Give yourself time to really get to know all the bells and whistles that it comes with and invest that knowledge into how you use it and hang in there – it will take time.

4. Applications. The actual piece of technology you choose is only one aspect of getting on top of time-management. You need to also think about the applications (apps in tech lingo). You can do way more now than just send email, texts, keep contacts and have a calendar. There are a lot of apps out there and some of them are really cool.

I am visual, I scribble, take notes but until recently my scheduling was pretty simple so I had a desk diary/Notebook. I loved it. My lifestyle has changed now. I do a lot of traveling and juggling of my and my clients time. So, I now still have my paper desk diary which I look at every morning to get a “look” at the day and week (so that I can see the big picture). I also have a hand held piece of technology where all the addresses of appointments, contact information and times are logged. It also has a GPS so that I can have the map directions of where I am going. They are my needs and my priorities.

Apple iphone

A couple of my friends got the new Kindle as a gift this year. Wow, it really is a beautiful piece of  technology. My friend John loved his because he is a father and now he can put all his child’s books on the Kindle. Now, when they are travelling, he doesn’t have to carry a huge array of books for reading. But the other thing I learnt is that it is not just books but magazines that you can download onto the Kindle! That really excited me.

So many of my clients get professional and life-style magazines. They love them. The main problem with magazines is that they take up a lot of space and are really difficult to store effectively. The other problem with storing magazines is that most people keep them because they want the articles in them for future reference. Finding that article when it is 6 months or 1 year after you read it entails going through an awful lot of magazines and creating a huge mess as you do so. But not with Kindle:

Newspaper and Magazine Reading

Using Kindle’s 5-way controller, you can quickly flip between articles, making it faster and easier to browse and read the morning paper or your monthly magazine. Want to remember the newspaper or magazine article you just read? Clip and save entire articles for later reading with a single click. Newspapers are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle before they hit news stands.

Bookmarks and Annotations

By using the QWERTY keyboard, you can add annotations to text, just like you might write in the margins of a book. And because it is digital, you can edit, delete, and export your notes. You can highlight and clip key passages and bookmark pages for future use. You’ll never need to bookmark your last place in the book, because Kindle remembers for you and always opens to the last page you read.

I really think this is a fantastic solution for individuals who want to keep all their magazines and periodicals.

A great solution for keeping your magazines

Although what I mainly focus on with my clients is about how their home offices can work for them in a more efficient and productive way at the end of the day the space we create must look good, feel good and be the kind of environment that they want to sit down and work in. Particularly when you work from home. There are so many excuses to leave the “office” and pop a load of laundry in the washer… and “oh the mail has arrived, I must take a quick peak at my magazine that’s just arrived”.

My brother Eugene hosted Christmas this year for the family and extended family. All the children bounced, ran, rolled and laughed around the house in a constant hum. And it was really only the dogs who broke up conversations with their power struggles. The subject of home offices came up in conversation – mainly because yours truly was there and everyone wanted advice on their own home office. It got me to thinking about the design of the office as opposed to the functioning of it.

The home office goes in the space or room that is available. Sometimes, that is a corner of the kitchen, bedroom or living room, sometimes (if you are lucky) it’s got it’s own walls, and sometimes it’s split between different rooms.

I did some browsing on the web to see what’s out there on this subject. Most of the information I found assumed you had a room with walls and a door. Check out the following link from MakeUseOf.com:  http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/home-office-design-ideas-and-tips-that-every-web-worker-needs-to-know/  There are some useful tips and web resources in this article.

However, what if you don’t have one room for your office?  How do you even begin to design your home office when it has to be split up?  It comes down to defining the actions involved in your work and the environments best required for them to be accomplished and the time of day involved.

Computer and desk: Only put the computer and desk in the living room if you think you definitely will have consistant and scheduled time to be alone there. If you can’t control the environment then you won’t be able to control your work output. Think about when you work – daytime or evenings. Where you put your desk and computer is VERY important as this is usually the back bone of your work processing.

Paper/File Management: And if it is to be in your living room or bedroom then you will want your “office” to be invisable when it is no longer required as an office. I have found that having a drawer for “Action” (any bills you have pay or items you have to take action on) and a drawer for “Filing” (needs to be put in the filing cabinet) means that papers are kept from becoming piles or getting lost. Being in a drawer also means that they are hidden from sight and are quickly accessible.

Filing: Whatever your filing system – binder or filing cabinet – you will need to assign somewhere for it. The most important thing here is that you can get at it. If you are hiding your filing cabinet in the back of a storage locker then you will never do your filing. When papers get out of control your stress levels go way up. There are many attractive filing solutions out there that don’t look like ugly filing cabinets and can live in any room in any home without offending. A working filing system means that you can find any piece of paper in five seconds but if it takes 15 minutes to get to the cabinet you are kind of setting yourself up for failure. My filing cabinet is in my kitchen and no one would know.

Good luck and drop me a line if you have any specific questions on the design of your office.