Are you feeling exhausted after meeting a deadline or finishing a project? While hyper-drive may be necessary to reach completion, downshifting is essential afterward.

Over the past month, I worked hard on the chapter I wrote for the new ICD (Institute for Challenging Disorganization) book to meet their short, time-sensitive deadline. I am excited to have written the chapter on client support and look forward to sharing more once it is published later this year.

How does this relate to fresh starts? The writing deadline straddled the end of one year and the beginning of another. The time I typically take to wrap things up and reimagine what’s next was allocated to the book project. Instead of slowing down as the year closed, things sped up and kept going until earlier this week when I submitted my draft.

Completing the deadline helped reaffirm the necessity of taking a moment to breathe. This slow exhalation is the break I need to refocus my energy and plan what comes next. I identified several elements that I hope you’ll find helpful the next time you are about to switch gears.

3 Ways to Exhale & Refocus Your Energy

1. Reflect

Doing a post-deadline debrief, thinking about how I approached the book project and what I learned, was valuable and affirming.

These are some reflections:

• Clarified the chapter’s content and description with the committee

• Made time estimates for how long it would take to write the chapter

• Scheduled writing blocks on my calendar

• Said “no” to things that would distract from my objectives

• Remained flexible with scheduling and idea development

• Developed an outline of topics to cover

• Made a plan for how to approach the various sections

• Hired an accountability partner (thank you, Lana) to keep me on track

• Set weekly goals

• Logged hours and other metrics

• Journaled

Another aspect I noticed was how my weekly blog writing routine prepared me for this project. My well-established writing tools and rituals made writing easier during the scheduled “ICD Book Project” writing blocks. When things didn’t go well during a particular block, I wasn’t discouraged, as I knew it was a normal part of the writing. I had built up resiliency through experiencing similar ups and downs with blogging.

Hiring an accountability partner was incredibly beneficial for the book project, especially because of the tight deadline. It was also fascinating to experience and fully appreciate the benefits from the “lived” perspective. While I have received a lot of positive feedback from my clients, I better understand why they say having me as their accountability partner is helpful. I get it.

2. Sense

I just finished reading a wonderful book How to Winter, by Kari Leibowitz, PhD. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re interested in the far-reaching benefits of developing a “positive wintertime mindset.”

One of the things that she wrote about was how to develop an awareness of those things you love about winter, like:

• the “fresh” smell of the air that slow-moving molecules create

• the cozy warmth of being around a firepit

• the delight of sipping hot cocoa with marshmallows or

• the happy sensation of curling up with a warm blanket and book

While I engage regularly with my senses, I noticed how they were heightened during this transition time because I was reading Leibowitz’s book. When I was outside, instead of thinking about how cold I was, I breathed in the crisp air and appreciated the cyclical nature of the dormant, bare trees. Instead of feeling guilty for wanting to go to bed earlier, I recognized the value of rest and delighted in the visceral calming effects of my bedtime rituals.

Appreciating and sensing is a gentle way to experience presence and gratitude for what is here now. Lingering in this presence through my senses removes concern about what will be next and helps replenish my energy.

Of all things, as if on cue, the snow just started falling. At first, the flakes were sparse and descended slowly. Then, the flow and pace increased as the sky and landscape turned white. We’re expecting five to seven inches of snow over the following hours. I’m so excited! Perhaps there will be some hot cocoa in my future. A white covering will soon transform everything. Talk about a clean slate! It’s the perfect visual to encourage a fresh start.

“While hyper-drive may be necessary to reach completion, downshifting is essential afterward.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

3. Nourish

Engaging in nourishing activities that support your well-being is another way to slow down and refocus your energy. When you have exerted a lot of effort, balancing it with restorative practices is vital.

My supportive activities include meditation, yoga, walking, and journaling. There are others, too, like exploring new places, seeing friends and family, watching movies, eating healthfully, or getting enough sleep.

And then there’s soup—yes, soup! Making and eating soup is a thoroughly enriching activity for me. I love washing and chopping ingredients, adding them to the big pot, and creating a delicious meal with a few simple, fresh items.

After hours of simmering, my husband and I will share this hot meal as we look out the dining room window into the chilly night, watching the snow gently fall. Maybe we’ll even eat by candlelight. If that’s not cozy and nourishing, I don’t know what is.

What helps you slow down and restore energy? How can taking a restorative break energize your fresh start? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

How Can I Help?

Do you want support organizing, planning, or restoring energy? I’d love to help! Virtual organizing is an extraordinary path forward – A local feel with a global reach.

Please schedule a Discovery Call, email me at linda@ohsorganized.com, or call 914-271-5673. Change is possible, especially with support.

Combining chocolate, motivation, and organizing into one concept might seem like a giant leap. Hang in there. I will share how this connection came to be and how it can help you get motivated to accomplish your goals. The idea began with several disconnected thoughts:

• Ideas for date night

• Passion for chocolate

• Challenges around motivation

• Goal to get organized

I realize that not everyone loves chocolate, lacks motivation, or wants to get organized. However, the motivation concept I will share applies to many situations.

Where Did My Motivation Concept Come From?

One of the gifts I gave my husband, Steve, for our anniversary was a ‘choose your date night’ certificate. Truthfully, it was meant to be more of a daytime date, but you get the idea. I gave him a list of ten possible options to choose from. He could pick one or combine a few into a single adventure.

One of the choices on the list is visiting The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn, New York. Someone described it as a “playground for grown-up chocoholics.” Did I mention how much Steve and I love chocolate?

While reviewing the date options, Steve looked at all the websites. He found this amazing video on The Chocolate Room site, which you can watch below.

Warning: This might put you over the edge if you love chocolate.

How Did The Chocolate Room Video Make You Feel?

I don’t know about you, but after watching the video, I wanted to eat chocolate immediately. Some drool might have been involved, too. In fact, not only did I want to eat chocolate, but Steve and I were ready to hop in the car right then and drive an hour and a half to The Chocolate Room.

The way they described their chocolate experience was so compelling that my motivation to go there and taste everything on their menu was through the roof.

What effect did the video have on you?

What Is Compelling Motivation?

Let’s connect the dots with chocolate, motivation, and getting organized. The main takeaway from watching the video was this: What makes something so compelling it motivates you to do it now?

These are The Chocolate Room video elements I noticed:

• Luscious photography: Used visuals for the desired goal

• Sense activation: Detailed auditory descriptions of what the ‘goal’ feels/tastes like

• Team effort: Showed passionate professionals in support of the goal

• Essential ingredients: Described a positive environment and supplies needed to realize the goal

• Commitment: Dedicated time to achieve the goal

“What makes something so compelling it motivates you to do it now?”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

5 Essential Motivation Elements

How can you integrate the above elements when you need motivation to reach your goal? Consider these ideas:

• Create a vision board or select images of what the completed goal will look like.

• Write a description or record an audio clip about what the completed goal will feel like.

• Hire your team (professional organizer, coach, or therapist) to provide support.

• Gather tools and supplies needed.

• Plan time and designate time blocks to accomplish your goal.

Collect the combination of ingredients to supercharge your motivation and achieve your goal. Which ingredients make motivation compelling for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

If you need help with motivation and getting organized, email me at linda@ohsorganized.com, call 914-271-5673, or schedule a Discovery Call. Reaching your goals is possible, especially with support.

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.