This is the newest release (v42) of the “What’s Interesting?” feature, with my latest finds that inform, educate, and relate to organizing and life balance. These unique, inspiring, possibility discoveries reflect this month’s blog theme.

You are a passionate, generous, and engaged group. I am deeply grateful for your ongoing presence, positive energy, and contributions to this community. I look forward to your participation and additions to the collection I’ve sourced.

What do you find interesting?

What’s Interesting? – 5 Best Possibility Discoveries

1. Interesting Workshop – Mindful Organizing Possibilities

Are you tired of feeling disorganized and overwhelmed by the clutter in your life? If you answered “yes,”you’re not alone. Various studies suggest a significant connection between cluttered living spaces and feelings of depression, fatigue, stress, anxiety, or cognitive overload. But there’s good news - help is here.

If you are ready to see what’s possible, join me, Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™, Professional Organizer, for an engaging, transformative workshop – 7 Easy Ways to Practice Mindful Organizing: Discovering a Gentle Path Forward, on Thursday, October 19th, from 7:00-8:00pm Eastern. Together, we’ll delve into the world of mindful organizing and uncover the secrets of seven powerful organizing practices that have the potential to change your life.

During this one-hour Zoom workshop, you’ll come away with at least one practical strategy you can immediately implement to create a positive shift in your daily routine. Reserve your spot and register now!

2. Interesting Research – Better Sleep Possibilities

There is a lot of research about the benefits of getting quality sleep (between seven to eight hours a night) and the implications of chronic lack of sleep. Insufficient sleep can cause premature aging and health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, stroke, obesity, and heart disease. During a good night’s sleep, the body heals itself while improving cellular and tissue health, cognitive function, immunity, and energy levels.

Neil Paulvin, a longevity and regenerative medicine doctor, helps patients improve extrinsic aging through better lifestyle choices such as management of alcohol consumption, smoking, diet, exercise, stress, and sleep. He attributes the number one cause of aging faster to inadequate sleep. His suggestions for improved sleep include having a consistent sleep schedule, creating a relaxing bedtime routine, and making your bedroom a sanctuary.

In the article, “Why Are You So Tired? Your Sleep Schedule Needs a Reset,” Dr. M. Safwan Badr, professor and chair of the internal medicine department at Wayne State University, suggests the “3-2-1 rule.” He says to stop:

• eating three hours before bedtime

• working two hours before bedtime

• using electronics one hour before bedtime.

Dr. Emerson M. Wickwire, professor and head of sleep medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, says that clearing your bedroom of physical clutter can also improve the quality of your sleep.

What would be possible if you started your day refreshed after a great night’s sleep?

“Shifting your perspective from a fixed to a growth mindset will open up possibilities.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

3. Interesting Read – Boundary-Creating Possibilities

Do you feel pulled in multiple directions, overwhelmed by choices, or have difficulty moving forward? Do you find it challenging to set boundaries? When that happens, your possibilities perspective is inaccessible. My friend, Kara Cutruzzula, who recently interviewed me on her fabulous “Do It Today” podcast, has an excellent solution for you.

Hot off the press, her new Do It (or Don’t): A Boundary-Creating Journal helps you create and maintain clear boundaries, learn how to say “no,” and release those obligations and projects that feel oppressive. You will feel encouraged to write, clarify your thoughts, and flourish while appreciating Kara’s gentle support as she shares her wisdom with you. She says, “Our time is limited. Do you want to spend yours in a clear and intentional way?” If you do, learn more about her journal here: Do It (or Don’t).

4. Interesting Product – List-Making Possibilities

Do you have many tiny scraps of paper, partially filled notebooks, and random notes scribbled on documents? Are these calls, errands, purchases, and email reminders cluttering your desk, bags, and other surfaces? Are those working for you? If not, create better possibilities and outcomes with this terrific list-making tool.

My inventive frolleagues, Diana Quintana and Jonda Beattie, created My List Simplified, an 8-1/2” x 11” paper spiral-bound organization journal. It will help you easily capture your lists, plans, ideas, tasks, and appointments. It’s undated, so you can organize the journal by the day, week, or an extended period. For further details, click here: My List Simplified.

5. Interesting Thought – Positive Possibilities

Is your internal dialogue working for or against you? Do you focus on the negative? Are you consumed by what could go wrong or think in terms of what you can’t do? We’ve all been there. What happens when you reframe negativity with a simple, powerful phrase? Instead of thinking, “I can’t do this,” ask, “Why not?” How will that change your outlook and outcomes? Shifting your perspective from a fixed to a growth mindset will open up possibilities.

Do you have an interesting possibility-related discovery? Which of these resonates with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

Is it only me, or has your plate also become fuller since the start of the fall season? After returning from our last trip of the summer, reality hit.

There were workshops to create and make progress on. Interactions with new, returning, and potential organizing clients ramped up, and volunteer activities went into full gear. Add to these the holidays, upcoming conference travel, and my new Mindful Organizing workshop launching this week. These make my to-do list more intense than usual. This burst of activity pulses through my mind and body.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having a full plate, I am reminded of a mindfulness meditation practice I worked with a while ago. Using the Insight Timer app, I listened to Justin Francisco’s meditation, Drop Your To-Do List and Just Be. It was a message I needed to hear. After meditating, I added a note to my to-do list about using this idea for a future blog post. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

It was also helpful to understand the difference between Justin’s Just Be List and my To-Don’t List, which I’ve written about before.

Justin makes the case about the benefits of taking time to just be and do nothing. This seems more viable when we’re on vacation or have less going on. I get that. I am internally driven to accomplish and be productive, but I sometimes struggle to reconcile how much I need those deep pauses. However, I have experienced the value of stopping, even briefly, and recognize the tremendous benefits of taking do-nothing breaks.

What are you in the thick of?

• Are you overwhelmed with the clutter in your home?

• Are you frustrated with your organizing systems?

• Is your schedule overflowing?

• Are you trying to create a better balance between work and personal time?

• Are you working on new projects, which make it difficult to focus on anything else?

• Is your to-do list so extensive that you can’t decide what to do next?

“There are tremendous benefits to taking do-nothing breaks.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

Just Be List

When you have a lot going on, it may feel like the obvious first step is to take action and work more. While those will be essential to move forward, consider this alternative. When your mind is racing and you’re stressed, it’s more challenging to focus. This is an excellent time to pause and do nothing. You’ll return refreshed after your do-nothing break. You can mindfully. . . 

• Stare out of the window.

• Step outside to feel the sun and cool fall breeze on your skin.

• Sit and close your eyes for a few moments.

• Lay down with a cozy blanket and take a short nap.

• Plop onto the couch and stare at the ceiling.

• Notice the inhale and exhale movements of your breath.

• Listen to the sounds around you.

• Watch the flames flicker as you smell the scent of your favorite candle.

While doing nothing, do only that. No scrolling, list-making, or thinking about what you’ll do next. If doing nothing feels too challenging, set a timer. Give yourself 10, 15, or 20 minutes to disengage. When the buzzer dings, return to your to-list and select one small thing to focus on.

Notice how that felt. In which ways was your pause beneficial? After your break, did you feel refreshed? Were you more motivated? Could you more easily select and engage in that next small action step? How will you experiment again with just being?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

Professional development and education are some of my top priorities. I continually invest in learning to understand, nourish my curiosity, grow, and better help people. This past week, I attended the Institute for Challenging Disorganization’s (ICD) conference, celebrating its 20th anniversary. I’m an ICD past president (2014-2016) and have been a member of this stellar educational association for 19 years.

Due to the pandemic, the conference was virtual. Using the Remo platform, people attended from eleven countries around the world. We had four days of workshops presented by leading experts with networking time with colleagues new and old. Possibilities, hope, compassion, and a zest for learning and sharing permeated the sessions and conversations.

In my effort to assimilate a small portion of what I discovered, I distilled ideas from 11 sessions and 20 plus pages of my notes to share with you. I couldn't include everything, so I focused on sharing incredibly inspiring concepts full of possibilities. 

Favorite New IDEAS to Empower Possibilities

1. Power of Reframing

Our first speaker was Dr. Edward (Ned) Hallowell, an expert on ADHD, founder of Hallowell ADHD Centers, podcast host, and author of 20 books, including his newest ADHD 2.0. His presentation was so uplifting and poignant. I became emotional several times. He focused on the gifts accompanying ADHD, such as being creative, intuitive, curious, entrepreneurial, intelligent, and original. Dr. Hallowell has ADHD and has devoted his life to helping people with ADHD “develop a vision of greatness.” He believes that everyone is capable of more than they think they are, can combat negative self-talk, and develop good self-care hygiene.

He reminded us “what matters is the striving, not the doing or accomplishing.” The “victory is loving the game.” He spoke about the importance of connection and having supportive people to protect and believe in you. 

Hallowell shared the three defining hallmarks of ADHD, which are distractibility, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. He prefers focusing on the positive flipside- seeing distractibility as curiosity, impulsivity as creativity, and hyperactivity as energy. At 71, he said he was “happy to have a turbo pack on his back.”

When it comes to organizing and reaching his goals, he strives for “well enough organized.”

If you reframe your perspective, what is possible?

2. Living Your Strengths

As humans, we seek to understand ourselves and others. Dr. Ryan Niemiec, Education Director at the VIA Institute on Character, author of 10 books, and award-winning psychologist, shared that understanding your character strengths is essential for building your well-being, managing adversity, and increasing happiness. What would be possible if you lived using your strengths and appreciated the strengths of those around you?

In 2003, the VIA Survey of Character Strengths was created. The extensively researched survey emerged from the field of positive psychology. It focuses on 24 universally valued (cross-cultural) character strengths such as hope, curiosity, and gratitude. It has been taken by 16 million people and continues to be taken every 10 seconds. Click here for your free VIA assessment (it takes about 10 minutes) and discover your top signature strengths.

Niemiec made several key points: no strength is better than another, all 24 strengths matter, and they are in all of us. Your top strengths represent the positive parts of your personality, which can change over time. Our strengths reflect our identity, produce positive outcomes for ourselves and others, and contribute to the collective good.

I’ve taken the survey three times over the past ten years, and I’ve seen some shifts in my top five strengths. With the most recent survey, my top strengths are love, gratitude, perspective, appreciation of beauty & excellence, and humor.

I’d love to know more about you. After taking the survey, please share your top five strengths in the comments below if you feel comfortable doing so.

“What matters is the striving, not the doing or accomplishing.”

— Dr. Edward Hallowell

3. Designing Your Space

Andrea de Pavia, MA, architect, urban planner, author, professor, and founder of NeuroAU, shared her expertise and insights on NeuroArchitecture. This interdisciplinary field connects cognitive science, architecture, design, and urbanism, focusing on “the brain, behavior, and their interconnection with the physical environment.” De Pavia explained how our spaces affect our physiology, making changes in the brain and body. Her goal is to “make science-based choices to improve the environment” and not design solely based on creativity or aesthetics. 

With sensation transference, elements such as light and sound can affect how things taste, your perception of others, and your memories. Perceptual fluency relates to how easy or challenging it is to be in a particular space. In a “fluent space,” it will be easier to process and experience cognitive restoration. Our physical environment can affect stress levels and health. Lack of multisensory coherence can impair perception and attention, deplete mental resources, and impair decision-making. Imagine being in a cluttered space (whatever ‘cluttered’ means to you.) Notice how you feel. Are you calm, relaxed, anxious, or agitated? 

Our space can help or impair our cognitive restoration. De Pavia shared several ways to design and organize spaces to decrease stress and save mental resources, such as incorporating nature. Include pictures of nature, use natural light, add plants (real or not,) water features, and natural materials. This is known as biophilic design.

Don’t underestimate the importance of windows and natural light. Uncover the windows and position yourself closer or facing them. Seeing the sky (day or night) helps control our circadian rhythm, which affects our biological clock. It syncs our body with the environment and affects our energy during the day and quality of sleep at night. Natural light supports the production of serotonin, a hormone that stabilizes our mood, feelings of well-being, and happiness.

I often write about organizing homes and offices to support who you are and what you do. This science-backed research reinforces the importance of decluttering, creating calm spaces, and being in environments that allow us to restore, reset, and be productive. What would be possible for you as you imagine being in a cognitively supportive space?

Possibilities are all around as we look at ways to reframe our perspective, live using our top strengths, and create spaces that support our minds and bodies. So much is possible. Which ideas resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

Recently, I enjoyed savoring a beautiful book, Forest Bathing Retreat – Find Wholeness in the Company of Trees by Hannah Fries. There are captivating images, poetry, and prompts that invite you to appreciate the forest’s gifts. As someone that often walks in the woods, the contents deeply resonated with me.

Three ideas captured my attention because they opened my thoughts to possibilities. I imagined some of these in an organizing context and how they could inspire a positive shift in thinking.

For many people, getting and staying organized is a challenge. It can be helpful to link a seemingly unrelated concept to that struggle. That connection can facilitate an “ah-ha” moment or possibility, which helps you get unstuck. I hope one of these ideas will be beneficial to you.

3 Little Lessons from the Forest That Inspire Organizing Possibilities

1. Mast Year

There have been many autumns where it seems as if our oak trees drop more acorns than usual. You can’t walk without stepping on them or hearing them ‘plunk’ as they hit the ground. At those times, I asked my husband if he noticed any difference. He assumed that we probably just didn’t remember how many acorns there were the previous fall and that it was “nuts as usual.”

As it turns out, once every two to five years, nut trees do produce massive amounts of nuts. These are called “mast years.” Fascinating that all the oaks, beeches, or hickories in a region have identical boom years. It’s a scientific mystery why mast years happen or why the trees in an area have the same cycle. There are plenty of nuts to feed the animals during a mast year, with enough remaining to grow new trees.

How does a mast year relate to organizing? Consider if this will be a mast year for you. Will you let go of the extraneous, as in the extra nuts? The abundance of nuts is like the stuff in your life. The trees share the nuts with animals and release the extras so they can thrive. Will you release the things you no longer need and donate or gift them to people who can use them? Is this your season to let go? Is this your time to create space for what matters so you can grow and thrive?

2. Phytoncides

Have you experienced the therapeutic effects of being in the woods? Studies have been done about shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing,” the Japanese tradition of spending time in the forest and experiencing it through your senses. This improves your immune system and a general sense of well-being.

The phenomenon is more than just psychological. There is a physical process where trees release phytoncides into the air, which are antimicrobial chemicals. They protect the trees against harmful insects and germs. The phytoncides are similar to essential oils or aromatherapy. Conjure up the wonderful scent of cedar, which is the result of a phytoncide. 

Breathing in phytoncides boosts your immune system by stimulating the white blood cells responsible for fighting off tumors and viruses.

How do phytoncides connect to organizing? Think about the restorative and immune-boosting properties of being in the woods. Now imagine your home. Is it a place that promotes calm? Do you feel supported and relaxed there? Or, are you stressed and overwhelmed by clutter or ineffective systems? What would it look and feel like if your home supported your well-being, like a forest does, phytoncides and all? You deserve to live in a healing, supportive, and clutter-free environment.

Do you need assistance? Learn more here about how I support my virtual organizing clients find the calm they deserve. I’m here to help.

“Create space for what matters and you will thrive.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVPO™

3. Frondescence

Say that one three times fast. This word was new to me. Hannah defines frondescence as “the time at which a plant or tree unfurls its leaves.” I love that there is a word for this unfolding and blossoming. This natural process is more often observed in spring and summer, although I’ve noticed unfurling in fall too. Have you ever watched a tight bud open slowly to reveal its magnificently colored blooms? Or, have you observed a tree that transforms its bare branches to leafy new growth? 

How does frondescence pertain to organizing? Think of frondescence as that awake, aware, and fully alive state of being. You feel fresh with wonder and possibilities. When we focus on what’s important, have systems that support us (including people and processes), and have cleared the unnecessary from our lives, we are free to unfurl. We become open, aware, and engaged.

Clutter can hold us back. It can deplete our mental and physical energy and erode our self-esteem. What do you need to unfurl, open up, and get organized? Possibilities are available to you.

When we shift our perspective, possibilities come into view. Which forest lessons resonate with you? Do any apply to an organizing challenge you or someone you know is experiencing? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.