Penelope Loves Lists: In Time Management from the Inside Out, you talk a lot about different calendaring system options. What is YOUR method? What tools do you use for calendaring yourself?

Julie Morgenstern: For my calendaring method, I use a Time Map, which is a tool that I have been teaching my clients for years. A Time Map eliminates your need to multi-task, and puts you back in control of your days. It helps you to become proactive amid the swirl of demands that come your way. Simply put, a Time Map is a budget of your day, week, or month that carves out distinct times for each of the key departments of your life. Instead of feeling that you have to act on every request the minute it crosses your path, your Time Map guides you, helping you determine whether you have time to handle an unexpected task, how much time you will devote to it and when you will do it. When you don’t have a Time Map, you have no idea what to do when. Every day is a total free-for-all. You just say yes to whatever screams loudest, with no perspective on how to prioritize incoming requests, and when you should be doing things. Of course, this is what leads to multi-tasking…just doing things as they come at you.

A Time Map provides structure to your day — carving out regular time for what is most essential to you. Rest assured that a Time Map can be adapted to your personal style, whether you thrive on routine or variety, whether you have complete or only partial control over your day. Built around your own custom set of priorities and personal style, your Time Map reflects who you are and what is important to you.

PLL: What are your “hot spots”? What are the physical places or work issues you struggle to keep organized? How do you handle them?

JM: I would say that like everyone, my systems become challenged when my company grows.  With each new service offering we develop, or for each division we add, my roles and responsibilities change, the information I need to track changes, and for a period of time, while in transition, my files, desk and even my schedule can become messy.  Until you know exactly what your new role is, and the information you need to manage a new aspect of your business, it’s hard to create a system.  So, with growth come periods where things are less buttoned down than I prefer to be.  But, those periods pass, and then a new system is born.

Julie doing some organizing

PLL: In what form (online, notebook, etc.) do you keep your daily To Do list?

JM: I view my to-do list as an extension of myself, so it is very important that I have chosen the right system. I prefer a paper planner. These work best for “visual/tactile” people (i.e. those who find physically writing things out pen to paper helps them think and remember more clearly).  Entering information into a paper planner is more instant than booting up an electronic device. Portability is essential for women on the go. Sometimes our work requires us to keep our schedules on the computer. If this is the case, combine these systems by printing out a planner sized version of your calendar each day, recording changes on the printout while out of the office.  Update your computer schedule first thing each morning.

Having a single, reliable to-do system puts me in command of my days by providing a complete picture of everything I need to do.  Prioritization is easier when I have full context.  And I am more confident staying focused on the moment, when everything is present and accounted for.

PLL: What’s your favorite organization tool?

JM: I use a tool that I designed called the “Julie Morgenstern Balanced Life Planner” to keep me on track and balance my time between writing, speaking, running a business, being a mom, spending time with friends, and still dedicating some time just for me.  This system gives helps me plan my days realistically so I feel excited, rather than overwhelmed, when I wake up. With this planner, I stay on track, create days that are meaningful, and connect my daily activities to my big picture goals.

Throughout my 20 years as a time management coach, I’ve found that there are certain key skills that make the difference between a day that feels in balance vs. out of balance.  And those are the skills I teach my clients in one on one sessions to create meaningful and fulfilling days.  In partnership with Franklin Covey, I wanted to design a planner that brought the coaching I do with my clients directly to you. The “Julie Morgenstern Balanced Life Planner” teaches you the 5 Gateway skills to staying in balance:

• Skill # 1-Time Estimating
• Skill # 2- The 4 D’s to streamline your to-do list
• Skill # 3-Group Similar Tasks
• Skill # 4- Creating a Time Map
• Skill # 5- Controlling the Nibblers

PLL: What does a typical Tuesday (or any weekday) schedule look like for you?

JM: On my Time Map, a typical day of the week is divided by distinct blocks of time. These blocks represent the key departments of work and my life. My schedule will generally look like this:

8:00 am – 9:00 am: Wake up, exercise, meditate, eat breakfast, feed my cats

9:00 am – 12:00 pm: Writing and creative time

12:00 pm – 2:00 pm: Touch base with staff and do media interviews

2:00 pm – 5:00 pm: Client Meetings

5:00 pm – 7:00 pm: Wrap-up and handle day’s requests

7:00 pm – 11:00 pm: Dinners out (business and leisure)

PLL: Are you working on something new? Can you give us a hint?

JM: I am working on some great new products that will help you stay organized. Stay tuned!

While we wait for Julie’s new products, let’s spend our time reading her latest book, SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck. I loved this book. It walks you through practical ways to break through whatever is keeping you from meeting your goals, whether it’s organization challenges or mental barriers.

I’m excited that Julie’s given me a copy of SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life to GIVEAWAY to one of you. To qualify to be the randomly selected winner, tell me in the comments what it was that you liked about or learned from meeting Julie over the past week.

Deadline to enter is Friday, 9/10/10 at 9am PST.

Related posts:

1. An Interview with Organizing Guru Julie Morgenstern: Part 1 – Up Close and Personal
2. How This Blogger Stays Organized: Meet Benita from Chez Larsson
3. How This Blogger Stays Organized: meet Jules from Pancakes & French Fries

If you asked me the one person I’d most like to meet, you might expect me to say something like Oprah or President Obama. And, surely, meeting either of those people would be life-changingly awesome.

But, for my little Penelope self, my answer would be organizing guru and bestselling author Julie Morgenstern. I love her style and every one of her books. She inspires me to be my most effective both at work and at home. In fact, I’ve written about my favorite of her books here. It’s literally one of my “Books to Live By”.

So imagine my excitement when Julie said she’d be willing to answer some questions for us. She was so forthcoming that I decided to split her answers into 2 posts. We’ll be in Julie Heaven this week, Penelopes.

In today’s post, we got to know her a little more personally, which is a huge treat for a fan like me. The next post will give us some insight into how she keeps herself organized, including the tools she uses on a daily basis. Oh, and we’ll also be doing a GIVEAWAY of her new book. Look for that post next Monday.

Here’s what she shared:

Julie Morgenstern

Penelope Loves Lists: Were you neat and tidy as a kid or teenager? What did your room look like at 16?

Julie Morgenstern: I grew up as an exceedingly disorganized kid.  My room was so messy, one friend recently told me she used to be afraid to visit me, because every time she did, she’d end up losing something in the chaos.

As a theater person and dancer, I collected everything, from costumes, props and vintage cooking utensils to old class notes, souvenir restaurant menus, and playbills. These were my treasures. But I could never find anything.

There wasn’t a day that you could see even a square inch of the floor. It was a nice floor, too — Congoleum, a jazzy turquoise and blue design I had begged my parents for and which they bought me in the hope that it would inspire me to keep my room neat and navigable. No such luck. Within a day of being installed, the Congoleum was covered in rubble, rarely to be seen again.

Every six months or so, my parents would “hit the roof,” and banish me to my fourth floor “jungle” for the weekend with a direct order not to come out until it was cleaned up.

Truth is, I wanted to be organized because it was almost as frustrating to me to have my room in such turmoil as it was for them to see it that way. I’d begin by dumping out all the drawers and emptying all the closets in an effort to decide what “junk” I could get rid of. In the course of sorting through this stuff, I would rediscover lost treasures I hadn’t set eyes on since the last time I’d attempted to get my room in shape. “Wow, this reminds me of that trip I took” or “Gee, I could really use this someday,” became constant refrains, slowing the clean-up process to a crawl.

The clock was ticking. Sunday night was fast approaching. Soon there would be a knock on the door. My parents ready for the grand unveiling! I would look around my room and realize that it actually looked WORSE than when I started. In a panic, I’d quickly gather stuff from every direction and shove it into drawers, closets, and under the bed with no rhyme or reason.

The knock arrived; my parents came in, saw the Congoleum, and applauded me for my efforts. The room was perfect. But I knew better. Sure enough, by the next day, the Congoleum would start to disappear again as the piles returned. I’d have spent sixteen hours of determined activity with no visible payoff for my efforts whatsoever; another marathon organizing session down the tubes! In six months I would be at it again.

PLL: How do your naturally organized or “Penelope” tendencies inform your role as “Mom”?

JM: Being a mom and an organizational expert, I have always known that it is important to avoid insulting and judging your child when it comes to organization. I feel great that I never told my daughter Jessi that she was disorganized…no matter how messy her room got (and it got messy!).  I always focused on where she was organized.   Within the piles, there were systems…her dance things, friends phone numbers and stuffed animals were always well organized.  And I just told her that when the other things started to be as important to her, she would organize those as well.  And she did!  Starting in junior high school, she began to organize her homework and school papers, then it was her clothes, and today she has a system for just about everything.

Every teenager and child is organized someplace, somewhere, in some way. I feel that one of the most important motherly jobs is to help them change their “hopelessly disorganized” self-image.  Eliminate phrases like “You’re such a slob” and “Your room is a pigsty!” Instead, concentrate on the positive — maybe your kid’s room is mess, but they always turn in their homework on time.  Maybe they have papers piled everywhere, but their photo albums and scrapbooks are in enviable order.  Recognize the ways in which your child is organized, and let them know you are confident in their ability to apply those skills to other areas of their life as well.

Julie working with one of her clients

PLL: What’s your best advice for maintaining work/life balance?

JM: People often make the mistake of dividing their lives into just two parts—work and home. That’s misleading—there are multiple elements to your life outside work, and it’s important to balance your time between all of them.

“Balancing your balance” is the real secret to being in control. You need to balance three categories of your personal life to give yourself true energy:

Physical Activity

Taking care of our bodies through sleep, exercise, a healthy diet, and regular medical check-ups provides the physical well of energy we draw upon to accomplish everything we need to do. Yet, this is often the first thing to go, when we are stressed.

Escapes

Hobbies and activities that instantly transport us to a place of joy provide one of the most efficient ways to recharge our batteries.  Reading, dancing, gardening, golf, playing Frisbee with your dog, or sauntering through a museum can get you quickly out of your head and into another world— renewing your spirit, and giving you the opportunity to come back to work with a new perspective.

People

When overwhelmed with work and stress, it’s very easy to take our relationships for granted or get disconnected. Keeping our relationships strong feeds our spirits, grounds us, enforces our identities and brings out our best selves, which is all very important in a time of transition, in which we can feel lost.  Spending time with the people who know and love you can remind you who you are, and give you renewed confidence for tackling your greatest challenges.

Together, these three categories form the acronym PEP, which is exactly what they will give you.

PLL: What’s the best book you’ve read lately? Or, your favorite book of all time?

JM: When I was trying to write my first book, I had the worst writer’s block.  Here I had a book contract and a deadline, and spent three months writing and rewriting the first three chapters. At this pace I would not have finished the book in time. A dear friend recommended Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, which is the most influential book I’ve read for my business.  Her wisdom cut right through my paralysis, and unleashed my voice.  I got the next 12 chapters done in the following three months, and my book went on to become a New York Times bestseller.  Five books later, I still draw upon the lessons I learned in Bird by Bird.

Again, The next post will give us some insight into how Julie keeps herself organized, including the tools she uses on a daily basis. We’ll also be doing a GIVEAWAY of her new book. Click here for Part 2 of my interview with Julie Morgenstern.

Related posts:

1. An Interview with Julie Morgenstern: Part 2 – How Julie Stays Organized – plus a GIVEAWAY
2. Interview with a blogger: meet Jessica from Lavender & Lilies
3. When Eight is not Enough…

I don’t read many books that would fall into the category of “self help”. I read lots of fiction, some business non-fiction and books about organization and time management. But self help, not so much. Not that there’s anything wrong with the genre, it just hasn’t been my bag.

Which is why, for a while, I resisted Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun”. I’d mis-categorized it in my mind. It’s not really self help at all. It’s a very personal story of Gretchen spending one year trying different methods of increasing her “happiness”. Not an easy goal, but an interesting one.

The thing is, Gretchen is a Penelope. BIG time.

I was hooked on her book when I read this line:
She says, with her Happiness Project, “I wanted to perfect my character, but, given my nature, that would probably involve charts, deliverables, to-do lists, new vocabulary terms and compulsive note taking.”

I get that, don’t you?

I flew through this book, taking from it several nuggets of interest, including some really useful, concrete ways to increase happiness in my marriage, in my role as Mom and in my blog. Good stuff and all written in Gretchen’s friendly, authentic voice. She feels like someone I could have coffee with, you know?

Given how much I love this book, you can imagine how excited I was when Gretchen agreed not only to send me a copy of the book to give away on the site, but to send and AUTOGRAPHED COPY. I have it here in my hot little hands!

To win this signed copy of the book, add a comment to this post (by 9am on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010) that tells us one thing you do that makes you happy.

The winner will be selected randomly on Wednesday, May 26th and announced soon after.

Until then, you should hop over to Gretchen’s blog, which is one of the best around in this Penelope’s opinion.

Here’s to more “happy” for all of us.

Related posts:

1. Big Ideas Notebook: a new favorite and our first GIVEAWAY
2. Why It Sometimes Sucks to Be a Penelope
3. Website I love: Booksfree.com – like Netflix for audio books

Most Mommy Penelopes I know think one of the biggest perks of having kids is that they get to share great books with them. I certainly felt this way when my kids were young. In fact, reading aloud to my kids is the single thing I miss most about their younger years. Screaming tantrums? No. Reading?  Yes and double yes.

In my experience, though, some books translate better to being read aloud than others. Here is my list of tried and true “read aloud” favorite chapter books. Note that I read these to my kids when they ranged in age from 5-9, but you should (obviously) make sure you’re making the choices that are the best for your young audience.

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
2. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
3. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
6. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
8. Tumtum and Nutmeg: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall by Emily Bearn
9. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
10. Matilda by Roald Dahl
11. Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace
12. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Why shouldn’t this time be as enjoyable for you, too, right?

Tell me: what are your favorite read aloud chapter books?

Related posts:

1. How Penelope keeps herself sane when the kids are out of school
2. More summer sanity solutions: three ways to get kids reading over summer vacation
3. Website I love: Booksfree.com – like Netflix for audio books

One of the most useful websites I’ve found in the last couple of years is Booksfree.com. The name is a bit of a misnomer, because it’s not free, but the service is such a value. At this point, I love it so much that I’d fight to keep it in my monthly budget. Actually, I might give up Netflix first, and that’s saying a lot. (And, just to be clear, I’m not an affiliate for this website or being compensated in any way for this post. Just wanted to share.)

Booksfree.com works for audio books just like Netflix does for movies: you add books you want to listen to to your queue and they send them to you in that order. You can choose to have 1 out at a time or more. The 1-at-a-time CD audio book plan is $22.49/month, but you can check out an unlimited number each month. They also have plans that enable you to rent books in MP3 files and actual, physical books, too.

I find that my car time is so much better used if I’m listening to a book rather than the radio, which stresses me out. By the time I get home, I feel relaxed, and even better, that I got some time with a good book. That extra time is hard to come by these days.

I’ve checked out over 40 books and have never received one that was broken or not playable. I’ve also rented books to listen to on long car trips with my whole family and listened to classic stories with my kids while we go through our daily routines. I’m considering giving a 6 month subscription to my grandmother (though you can cancel your subscription any time), who loves to read, but who’s eye sight is failing. She adores books on CDs.

For a book lover, this website is pure, mobile joy.

What about you: how do you spend your car time?

Booksfree.com website

Related posts:

1. Now that’s a Smart Pen: A pen that records audio as you write
2. Review: Menu Planning Website Relish
3. I love a tool that does it all

I realized a long time ago that being a working mom meant I had to work faster and more efficiently than my colleagues at the office. I simply had no choice. I didn’t have the luxury of working 12 hours (who knew that was a luxury, right?), I had to be out in 8 hours to pick up the kids, so that meant working fast and, more importantly, smart.

Luckily, I found Julie Morgenstern’s “Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work”. Julie’s always been my organization guru, but this book is easily her best. It’s filled with absolutely practical, change-your-work-life-right-now strategies that will make it possible to do 12 hours of work in 8.

My favorite tips include her advice to “never check email in the morning” from the title and the life-changing To Do List. Yes, I said it: a way of doing your daily To Do List that actually means the right things get done every day and you can feel you made real progress. Seriously.

So now, you hightail it out of the office at 5pm. You know, so you can go home and work your second job for the next 8 hours. Good times.

Related posts:

1. An Interview with Julie Morgenstern: Part 2 – How Julie Stays Organized – plus a GIVEAWAY
2. My To Do List Hates Me or, why your daily task list is defeating you
3. On my mind: being able to plan can be a pain in the butt