Avoiding Information Overload

How many emails are in your in-box? How many magazines are in your “to-read” (or sift through again) pile? How many blogs or information websites do you peruse on a daily basis–just for fun? Between magazines, blogs, websites, e-zines, pod-casts, books, newspapers, and T.V. shows, information overload is almost inevitable. It’s simply impossible to get through a single day without being flooded with new (and often exciting) information. The information is exciting because we seek out information on topics that interest us. You subscribe to e-zines on organizing because you’re interested in organizing. Right?

So while all this information is exciting–it comes with a bit of baggage: the information you collect represents to-dos on your mental to-do list. When you collect information, you collect tasks you want to do or feel you should do, even if that to-do is as simple as digesting the information in the newsletter or e-zine. Information overload sets in when you accumulate ideas at a faster rate than you can process them or act on them.

Here’s how it works. For a while, your idea backlog is inspiring. Then you reach a tipping point: your information starts to feel more overwhelming than motivating; inhibiting action instead of inspiring it. To avoid information overload, you need a new plan, a filtering system that allows you to hold onto the information you want and need, and filter out the irrelevant stuff. You will always have more ideas presented to you then you will ever have time to act on. So filter away the overload by keeping ideas that are inspiring to you, relevant to you and will help you in some way.

How does this filtering work? Well, imagine you’ve just finished boiling noodles for macaroni and cheese. You pull out your colander in an effort to collect the tasty macaroni and filter out the not-so-yummy pasta water. In the case of information, the yummy macaroni are those ideas that are relevant and inspiring to you. The icky pasta water, are ideas, that while in and of themselves may be wonderful, simply aren’t a fit for you now, for one reason or another.

Unfortunately, there is no magic colander you can pull out whenever information comes your way. Instead, you have to be your own filter. Here’s a simple formula using the word “filter” to help you separate the pasta from the water.

F: How do I Feel?
Each time a new bit of information is presented to you, tune in to how it makes you feel. Are you energized by the information in your midst or does it leave you feeling overwhelmed? Energizing info is macaroni. Collect information that energizes you.

I: Does it Inspire me? And L: Do I Love it?
Is this idea fun, exciting, and inspiring? Do you love it? Is it something you would enjoy doing (or at least, enjoy the benefits of when it’s done?) Inspiring ideas you love are macaroni … hang on to them.

T: Is this idea Timely?
When new information lands in your lap ask yourself “is now the right time to act on this?” If you won’t be able to act on an idea (or even read it) in the next twelve months, it’s pasta water.

E: Is this idea Economical?
The real question here is this: can I afford to do this now? Think of economy not just in terms of money but also in terms of time. Do you have the time and money to act on this idea now or in the next twelve months? If yes, it’s macaroni.

R: Is this idea Relevant?
Does this information solve a problem for me or teach me about something that is relevant to my life? Does it apply to a project I am working on or planning to start soon? Relevant ideas are the tasty macaroni; irrelevant ideas are pasta water.

So that’s the filtering process. But there’s just one more thing to keep in mind: how big is your colander? Even with the filtering system in place, you may collect more ideas than you can act on. Set up a virtual colander by keeping the information you want to act on in a single location – either a physical file folder (or binder or drawer) or an electronic file folder. By keeping everything together, you’ll always have a feel about how full your colander is. And from time to time, you may need to “spoon out” some excess macaroni … say the ideas that have grown cold.

No matter where your information comes from–articles in magazines to websites–run the ideas through your filter. Remember, you can’t act on every idea you get. So hang onto the information that solves a real problem for you and that you have the time to act on now or in the foreseeable future. Choose the ideas that inspire you … the tasty macaroni. And let the icky pasta water go right down the drain.

Aby Garvey is a professional organizer and the owner of simplify 101, inc. Her mission is to help you create time and space for what matters most in your home and life. Aby is the author of the e-book “the happy scrapper – simple solutions to get organized and get scrapping!” Visit the simplify 101 website for organizing ideas and to subscribe to Aby’s organizing email newsletter.

Fun Friday: For Those Who Don’t Cook

I have heard some say they can not cook, well unless this is you there is hope. Otherwise, live close to where they deliver! 🙂
Have a great weekend!

A Blonde Diary

DEAR DIARY:

It’s fun to cook for Tom. Today I made angel food cake. The recipe said beat 12 eggs separately. The neighbors were nice enough to loan me some extra bowls.

Tom wanted fruit salad for supper. The recipe said serve without dressing. So I didn’t dress. What a surprise when Tom brought a friend home for supper

A good day for rice. The recipe said wash thoroughly before steaming the rice. It seemed kind of silly but I took a bath anyway. I can’t say it improved the rice any.

Today Tom asked for salad again I tried a new recipe. It said prepare ingredients; lay on a bed of lettuce one hour before serving. Tom asked me why I was rolling around in the garden.

I found an easy recipe for cookies. It said put the ingredients in a bowl and beat it. There must have been something wrong with this recipe. When I got back, everything was the same as when I left.

Tom did the shopping today and brought home a chicken. He asked me to dress it for Sunday (oh boy).For some reason Tom keeps counting to ten.

Tom’s folks came to dinner. I wanted to serve roast but all I had was hamburger. Suddenly I had a flash of genius. I put the hamburger in the oven and set the controls for roast. It still came out hamburger, much to my disappointment.

GOOD NIGHT DEAR DIARY. This has been a very exciting week. I am eager for tomorrow to come so I can try out a new recipe on Tom. If I can talk Tom into buying a bigger oven, I would like to surprise him with chocolate moose.

For the Husbands!

The best gift a father can give his children is to love their mother.

I know this blog is geared towards moms. However today I would like to help some dads/husbands out with helping out mom/wife. I believe most husbands want to make their wives happy but they are not sure what to do. While some wives, such as me, does not mind spelling it out for him, others will not. Thus I wanted to give some ideas for guys to show their wives love, to help them out without the wife saying it.

Dr. Kevin Leman says “Sex Begins in the Kitchen”. In other words, it is an all day affair of showing love. It is not deciding to turn on the charm at 10 oclock at night when your wife is exhausted. So here are some ideas that will bless her socks off. (and maybe her clothes! 😉 )

Small chores you can do:
-Take out the trash without being asked (5 minutes)
– Unload the dishwasher without being asked (5 minutes)
– Clean the kitchen after dinner. Do not put this off, do it right after dinner (20 minutes tops)
– If you are the last one out of bed, make it up (5 minutes)
– While waiting on dinner, be in the kitchen with her. Ask her how you can help! (Genius!…10-15 minutes)
– Suggest that she go take a bubble bath, while you put the kids to bed. ( 20 minutes. Do it the way she would! You know what I am talking about. picking up the toys, etc.)

– Take the kids to Mcdonald’s by yourself! Leave her to do whatever she wants for 2 hours ( $15 maybe. Or do breakfast for $5. Two Hours of alone time is worth A LOT of bonus points. Plus spending time with your kids by yourself, and being a great dad, is very sexy…Am I right girls?!)

Someone once gave my husband the best advice: “If you have to write it on a calendar in your to do list so you will remember to show her you love her, then that is what you have to do.” It is not just the big days like Valentine’s and birthdays, but the small things on a consistent basis that let’s her know you love her.

Ideas to be romantic all day:
– Call her in the middle of the day, just to say “I love you”, or send her an email.(5 minutes)
– If she asks you to stop at the grocery store for milk, show up with flowers too (or in my case chocolate!).
We are talking about $5. (No extra time!)
–You plan the date night for the two of you, you arrange the childcare, and tell her to simply be ready. This requires a little planning, and a little effort, but a lot of return! (This does not have to be expensive. My husband and I have gone to get ice cream and walked around the historic downtown square together. It is simply spending time together like you used to)

– If all else fails think back to when you were dating, what were things that you did that she would get googly eyed at you over. You may not always feel like doing those things for her like you did then, but if you will do those things for her then she will reciprocate and the feelings will come!

Delayed But Not Denied!

I had a comment on my post “Never Pray For Patience”, and I wanted to share her comment and my response:

“I watched Evan Almighty, and will not forget the line when Morgan Freeman (playing God) says “if you pray for patience, God will not give you patience, but opportunities to be patient.” This really hit home with me. I admit I have prayed for patience. But I have also prayed for God to do His will in my life. My question now is: when you’re waiting on something you want in life, to move or get a job, or the like, how do you know whether God is giving you the opportunity to be patient, or whether it is not His will? When do you “give up?” because surely it is not wise to continue to expect something that is not God’s plan for your life. Do you have to want nothing to be mature? Do I have to give up on my desires for them to happen? That is depressing to me.”

The Bible says that He will give us the desires of our heart. (Psalm 37:4) So it is not that we should not want or desire things. In fact, we should be blessed to be a blessing. Plus, the scriptures also say he has laid the wealth of the wicked up for the just (Proverbs 13:22). But here is the key: Psalm 37:3-4 says “Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

See, God wants to give us things, but He also wants us to know who gave them and where the source is. I am now walking through things in my life where I have identified what God is trying to do through the circumstances. If everything came easily we may become puffed up and think we did it for ourself. But when there is a financial miracle, or we get that house that we really wanted, or the husband we’ve been praying for, or the child we have longed for and told we would never have, well then, God gets the glory. We know there was no way we could have done that on our own!

Matthew 6:33 says “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” What things? Well he tells us in the verses before that. He tells us that he has fed the birds and animals of the earth without them even trying. He says He clothed the lilies of the field in such a way that even King Solomon had never dressed so fine. He did not say I will give you clothes, but you have to be satisfied with rags. He said if you will seek Him that you will eat without struggle, and you will have clothes better than a King could have (and let’s face it, that was for His daughters, because we are the ones who want the clothes, right?)

The answer is not God saying “no,” but the answer may be God saying “not now”. Delayed but not denied! Even the Israelites had to wander in the wilderness before they could ever see the Promised Land. Likewise, David was anointed to be King at an early age, but he still had to slay Goliath, and even run for his own life before he ever reached the throne. And Joseph endured the pit, slavery, Potiphar’s wife, and prison before his dream was ever realized. Abraham was given the promise of a son, and yet it was nearly 30 years before Isaac was born!

Sometimes the purpose of God’s timing is to develop perseverance and faith so that when the promise finally does come, we will be mature enough to handle it and give God the glory for it.

In waiting for God to bring “the Isaac” (the true promise), we have to be careful not to become double-minded (James 1:6-8) and doubt what God has told us, lest we create an Ishmael.

We must trust and believe that God wants to give us the very best. He knows better than we do exactly what we need and when we need it. He will give us the desires of our heart, but He wants our first desire to be for Him. Only then will “all these things be added to you.”

Calling All Smartmoms!

My friend Andrea sent me her Cafemom blog, and I really love the concept. It is like a myspace specifically for moms. It is so simple to create your own page. So if you want to have a voice on the internet, and a way for family and friends to keep up with you and your family then check out cafemom. I think you will enjoy it. Check out mine by clicking the image below!

 

1smartmom321

1smartmom321

Check out my profile at CafeMom

CafeMom

Fun Friday…God is Exhausted

A little boy comes home from church one day and seems very concerned. “Mom, we need to pray for God”.

“Why do we need to pray for God, son?”

“Because mom, God is tired all the time, and we need to pray for him.”

A little confused the mother asks,

“What makes you think God is tired, sweetie?”

“Well in church today we kept singing ‘He is exhausted, the Lord is exhausted on High’ ”

You have to love children’s perspective!  Have a great weekend!

Household Cleaning Tip: Getting out Ink Stains

I have had several ink stains since my toddler has discovered pens. One was on my fabric covered footstool. She wrote all over it. I looked for how to get the stains out and found this, ehow.com.

While it gives great instructions, the best one I found for me was in the comments section. One person used dishwasher detergent. It doesn’t matter what kind. (Although I did ruin a shirt of my daughters because the particular brand I used had bleach in it, so stay away from that if you have colored fabric.) However, on my green footstool which is color safe I assume, it came out like magic. I wet the stain with water, put a dab of detergent on my finger and rubbed it in. With no effort it came right out. Then I rinsed it again and soaked it up. It was good as new! It saved my footstool, because I was ready to throw it out.

A Personal Testimony:

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2Timothy 1:7)”Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
(Phillippians 1:6)

My husband just got home from traveling to conferences the last two weeks. We have not really been away from each other for more than about a night or two since before we got married almost five years ago. He was gone for a week, home for a few days, and then gone for another week. Though I was blessed to have in-laws (My sister in-law Corrie, and mother and father in law) that traded off with the girls so I only had one at the time, I was glad to see all my family home last night.

With him being gone for so long I was able to see how much God really has changed in me. In the last year I knew God had been dealing with certain things in my life; Loving not judging, forgiving hurts, letting go of control over certain issues, etc. But it wasn’t until my husband left me for two weeks that I realized just how much I had changed.

You see all my life I have never liked being alone, in fact I have feared it. A trait my mother has passed down to me. To this day she will tell you she is terrified to go into her own home after dark if my dad is not with her. She lives in the fear of my dad dying and her having to live alone. After 37 years of marriage I can understand not wanting to be without him, but this is fear that grips her, and it was beginning to grab a hold of me. I have seen how this fear has crippled her in her life, and I would pray for God to help me overcome that. Before we were married, and Emily and I stayed alone for a few months, I hated to see Ben go at night because of my fear. When he has been away from me, I would push through because I did not want to be a “scaredy cat”, but I would lie awake all night and hear every bump in the night. My outside light is motion sensitive and when the wind would blow the flag the light would come on and my dog would go to barking. My heart would be in my throat and it would take 20 minutes or more to bring my heart rate to normal, but usually in the mean time he would bark again.

The last year has truly been a journey of finding myself, again. I have wanted to know who I was apart from Ben, so that I could be all that I needed to be with him. (Marriage is not 50/50 it is 100% you and 100% him. I wanted to be that 100%) While he was gone I discovered something that I was not consciously trying to change. The fear was gone! I slept like a baby. There were not all the thoughts of what could happen, or how I would handle an intruder. I was not playing out scenarios in my head. There was just peace.

People would ask me if I missed him, and yes I did, but not in the way I used too. I wasn’t desperately waiting for him to come home so I could sleep again, and I wasn’t worried about what he was doing. I felt safe and confident that God was protecting me, and with me, the same way he is when Ben is home.

With Ben home I am thankful to be with him. I missed cuddling with him at night, but because I missed him, not because I was afraid of being without him. It is a liberating feeling. It is not an “independent, I do not need him” mentality but instead; “it is o.k. for you to go and do what God has for you to do, because God is taking care of both of us”. And needless to say, it is healthy for your marriage. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”, after all, and after two weeks apart he was ready to be home. He remembered why “It is not good for man to be alone” 😉

It is amazing at what God will do in us and for us, if we only allow him to pull us out of our comfort zone. He is giving me a confidence that I have never experienced before, an inner strength that I have never had. “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.” (2Cor. 3: 4-5)

If you are struggling with this fear, there is hope that you do not have to be captive to it. If He can set me free, He can also set you free!

Roller Coaster Faith

But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. He is a double‑minded man, unstable in all he does. James 1:6;8

Have you ever experienced “roller coaster faith”? James calls it being double minded. One minute we are confident in what God is going to do for us and in us, and the next we are questioning whether it was really God or not. I truly believe that God is going to do what we are believing for, but when the facts say otherwise, well this is the real challenge isn’t it?

There is a difference between facts and truth. Facts are what you see in front of you. The unpaid bills scream at you of insecurity, the failed marriage says you will be alone, or the everyday struggles of being a mom says you are not able to be the woman you want to be. The truth is what God says about the facts. The truth says God knows the bills we have, and He will provide for us. “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”.(Matt. 6:30-33) The truth says your entire household will come to the saving knowledge of Christ, including your spouse (Read 1 Corinthians 7) “They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved–you and your household.” (Acts 16:31) The truth is you are a woman of God and can walk in any circumstance with strength. “Strength and honour [are] her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue [is] the law of kindness. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.” (Proverbs 31:25-26;29)

I loved how my Pastor explained unanswered prayers. He says sometimes we do not get what we pray for because God knows it is not the right time. Do you give your children everything they ask for? It is because He loves his children, as we do our children, that He does not always answer us the way we want or expect. We do face problems and difficulties, and the facts may scream that God is not listening or not there. But there is a truth that is more real than any fact. There are times our children fall down and we do not run to pick them up. There are times they are sitting in time out and have to suffer logical consequences that we can not bail them out of, because we know the lesson for them is greater than the moment of discomfort they are facing. But that pain does not negate that we are there for them, or that they are not supposed to be where they are.

James says to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

Do you feel the facts tossing you back and forth between the truth of what God has spoken to you? Do you feel double minded and question “Did God say”? Then maybe you need to take a “time-out”. Pray, and seek the word for what God says over you, then stand on that truth, not letting the momentary facts discourage you from the eternal truth.