My last post was about the challenges of decluttering my office space. I’m happy to report that my office is actually really tidy right now! The image with this blog was taken using my smartphone to immortalize this rare occurrence.

Now I have a confession to make, having a space this tidy is very uncomfortable for me!!! People who know me from my days in the military, from my time in military college up until the day I retired, know that I thrive when surrounded by what looks like chaos to others. One of my past mentees even commented about the state of my office on the Facebook thread that accompanied my last blog.

I really like to be able to see and lay my hands on every project that I’m working on. That being said, it’s also nice to have all my highlighters and pens in one place, so I don’t have to search for them. I’m seeking a balance between creative chaos and organization.

Monday, when I mentioned the discomfort of working in a clean office to one of my WE-CAN Project at Queens coaches, Orlena Cain, she said that discomfort means that we’re growing. She reminded me that people can become accustomed to and comfortable with situations that are not healthy for them. Orlena suggested several ways of decluttering in our group session that morning, and repeated them during our one-on-one coaching session that afternoon.

One of her suggestions was to declutter email files by unsubscribing to newsletters we don’t read, deleting completed email threads, and emptying spam and trash folders. I know I get a vicarious thrill every time I empty my email trash!

She recommended spending 10 minutes every day decluttering, setting an alarm clock if necessary. One of my high school friends suggests starting with 5 minutes, and a Thought Partner I've worked with suggests starting with 3 minutes. The idea is that by starting with a manageable period of time, we get something done, and often we get into the groove and invest more than the time we originally allotted to the task. 

Orlena shared that listening to inspirational music while sorting emails works for her. That resonated with me, as I regularly listen to two of my favourite CBC Podcasts while filing, Unreserved with Falen Johnson and Under the Influence with Terry O’Reilly.

I’ve learned that sometimes people need to be ready for a lesson before they can absorb it.  I’ve noticed that it may take three or more times before a new idea sinks in as applicable to me.  I’ve written about this before, back in April 2020 in my blog post called Digital Bread Crumbs (See blog post https://www.empoweredpath.ca/blog/digital-bread-crumbs) when I wrote about how many times people shared the value of having your business listed in Google my Business before I finally took action. Shout out to Dionne Baker, Shop Boss Secrets, my eCommerce coach, who sets practical tasks for me such as back linking to previous blogs!

I won’t promise to keep my office this tidy all the time, because that’s simply not realistic. For example, I’ve already put the clear storage box with my draft book manuscript, highlighters, and copious notes, onto the flat surface in front of the flag presentation box. I can still see the flag and medals!  I’ve also temporarily thrown the comfy new fleece sweater my spouse gave me for my birthday onto the gliding rocker. I’ll be taking that with me when I leave my office at the end of the day.

While remaining tidy is uncomfortable, I’ve drafted plans, including seeking help from professional organizers, to help me store and access my papers, books and other resources in my office space. Someday, I may even post photos of the wooden bookshelves I plan to eventually install and of an open closet filled with colour coded file boxes.

What growth is making you uncomfortable this week?

I come from a long line of pack rats, we’re not quite hoarders, we just tend to keep everything that may prove to be useful, someday! I generally view challenges as opportunities. I was going to call this blog “Decluttering: Challenge or Opportunity?” except that I couldn’t quite wrap my head about what opportunities this process is bringing my way.

I decided to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Valentines and Family Day weekend, by doing some strategic decluttering. It’s the second phase of a major decluttering project that started in 2019. That year, with the help of the Mommy Mops team, we reorganized our kitchen, going through every cupboard and shelf, finding things to donate, and some foodstuffs to compost. In addition, several van loads of outgrown children’s clothing, toys, books and some kitchen gadgets we’d never used were donated locally.

By the end of 2019, we hit a bit of a brick wall. The rest of the things that needed to be sorted were mostly work papers, photographs and other family memorabilia. These things take time and personal attention. Dozens of bins and file boxes were dragged upstairs to sort through. Many papers were recycled, more were set aside for shredding. Thanks to Assist in Time, the first file box’s worth of shredding was completed in 2020.

With the pandemic, our family has mostly stayed home. We do go out for work, school, supplies, and exercise. We also tend to stick to what my spouse calls our “pods.” We each have a room in the house to call our own, and spend most of our time indoors in our pods. Emerging periodically for meals and conversations with each other.

It’s easy to ignore those last few boxes of photos and papers, still in the living and family rooms, when I’m in my home office, focusing on my laptop. I love learning, and interacting with people online is a great way to learn. I’m not so fond of tidying, filing or sorting.

I have gathered more things to donate locally. What most people would classify as the entry way to our home, is once again a staging area with a variety of bags and boxes of books, toys and clothing, just waiting for charities to reopen to accepting donations.
 
This weekend, I decided to start decluttering my home office. There are several practical reasons to declutter. I’m working on a few projects, and I’d like to be able to easily find the materials related to each, without resorting to going through piles of notebooks and papers. Another reason is that I’m getting my office ready for a video shoot. I need to declutter to allow the Lot 48. Film Co. access to my office space, so they can create a video about my company Empowered Path Inc.

While my family is helpful when it comes to moving furniture and reinstalling closet doors, they can’t really help with my work papers. Given the current pandemic restrictions, I can’t call on outside help. I have to keep sorting through my files and paperwork by myself!

The easy part of the decluttering was tucking things into cupboards, drawers and closets, matching likes to likes, just as the Mommy Mops team taught me in 2019. I’m pleased to report that I’ve made significant progress with papers, and that the full-sized recycling bin in my office is now half full! I still have six short piles of papers to sort through, some dating back to this time last year. That recycling bin may be full soon.

Why am I writing about decluttering?  This is something I loathe doing, and while I’ve been thinking about what my end goal is, I haven’t been able to concentrate on any other topic long enough to write a blog. I know that experts say blog posts should be written in advance, and scheduled. I get it, that makes sense, and works for a lot of people. I’m trying to play to my strengths, which means writing from the heart, about what’s on my mind each week.

I also like answering people’s questions. However, the questions I’ve received in the last week all require me to do a bit of research before providing a credible response. Once my office is tidy, I’ll get right on those questions!

I’d love suggestions about how to keep my work space tidy moving forward. The only thing is, filing cabinets don’t work for me. I do have and use colour coded file boxes. In addition, while many people thrive with a clear desk, I prefer to keep all the projects I’m working on, out in the open, which is why I did not take a picture of my desk. My clients wouldn’t appreciate seeing my notes about their projects in print!
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Any organizing advice you’d like to share would be appreciated!
 
 
 
 
 

The last week in January 2021, about 1700 people attended the Human Resources Professional Association (HRPA) Annual Conference. I’m honoured to share that I was one of the 73 speakers featured during the conference.

When I attend a conference, I go forth with the intent of learning everything I can from the speakers, the tradeshow exhibitors, and from the people I interact with. I’m one of those people who attend 7 am sessions, and stay late to participate in the meet and greet events.

This year, was a little bit different, and not just because I was there as a speaker! For the first time HRPA held a fully virtual annual conference. Overall, it was a great experience, with 4 days packed with learning opportunities.

The one thing I really missed, was moving between the main hall, breakout session rooms and the tradeshow. Sitting at my laptop for several hours a day was not as much fun as the chance encounters that happen when I move among thousands of people with similar interests.

The virtual platform was robust, offering an easy to navigate agenda which we used to reach breakout session Zoom rooms, a virtual tradeshow with 3 floors, and an engagement hub, among other things!  There were even morning yoga and cooking classes and live music during the lunch breaks.

I’m a Digital immigrant, learning how to effectively use the engagement hub took me two days! I quickly figured out how to send connections, that was easy. The chat function took me time to understand. I thought starting a chat meant you had to actually type something into the platform and then wait for a reply. Several people started chats with no text, which confused me quite a bit!

I was thrilled when a person reached out through the chat function to thank me for my session, saying they enjoyed reading the transcript. It took me a couple of more days, and an email to the help desk to figure out where the transcripts were! Because I think in words, and not images, I didn’t notice the icons sitting demurely under the “enter session here” button until the wonderful HRPA help desk team sent me an email with a screen shot and a written explanation pointing out where to find the transcripts. Thanks Tina!!!

While I learned a lot of interesting and exciting HR and Leadership concepts and practices, this post is about what I learned as a speaker. I learned that when I was recording the session, I looked at my notes way more than when I do a session for a live audience; even compared to doing a session online with a live audience. When I know there are people watching and listening, even if I can’t see them, I feel energized and do what I can to make eye contact. During the recording I moved my arms and head, used facial expressions and changes in my voice to emphasize different points and to convey emotion.  However, my eyes spent the majority of the time glancing at my notes! This observation reminded me NOT to look at my notes while recording video! I followed up by practicing recording other content this week so I can do better moving forward.

From some of the other speakers, I learned how to ask engaging questions, to simulate speaking to a live audience. I saw the chat room blowing up with comments when speakers asked for their feedback. It was powerful!

I learned that it’s fun to answer questions live, while my video was running. I also observed how effective it was to have closed captioning for the keynote speakers, and wished that the transcripts provided for the breakout sessions had been added to these videos as closed captioning, something that is relatively easy to do when editing video. I’m glad that as I record sessions moving forward, I’ll be using Adobe Connect, which allows for adding the closed captioning as an option that viewers can turn off or on, to suit their needs.

I know I can learn what to do, or not to do, when I watch others deliver content. The closing keynote, Shawn Kanungo provided an example to aspire to. Shawn rented a theater in his home community and invited a small video and tech support crew, as well as an HRPA member to join him live.  Shawn stalked the stage, used a white board, and tech, had the big screen behind him and two videographers filming him move around the main stage and another set. He was fabulous!

For now, I’ll keep working at learning how to share content from my home office, through my laptop and smartphone. I'm learning video techniques from Aaron and Angela, at Lot 48 Film Co.

I’m curious, what kind of content would you like me to share through video? Do you have questions you’d like me to answer in a blog or a video? If so please let me know!