Articles tagged with accountability
27 July 2015 | Comments [0] »
As I wrote two weeks ago, I’ve fallen behind on a number of things, including my Inbox Zero habit. But last Wednesday I got my inbox down to zero messages once again. It felt so great—like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It’s been a huge boon to my productivity and I’ve emptied each day since. I was going to write a new post about Inbox Zero and then realized that I’d have a hard time improving on the one I wrote this past November. So here it is.
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
email,
habits,
productivity
28 November 2014 | Comments [0] »
Yesterday I had a lovely Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday and I think it’s just wonderful that we take time off as a nation to celebrate gratitude. It got me thinking about how grateful I am for a habit I developed in January of 2011. For almost four years, I’ve been clearing out my email inbox, taking it to zero (or near zero) virtually every weekday.
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
email,
habits,
productivity
25 September 2013 | Comments [0] »
I’ll be celebrating three years of routinely clearing out my email inbox come January. I wrote this nuts-and-bolts post about how I do it in January 2012, after I’d been practicing this habit for a year. Now, more than a year and a half later, nothing’s changed. I use the same procedures and I’m still in love with this habit, which make my life unequivocally better.
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
email,
habits,
productivity,
worth repeating
6 January 2012 | Comments [3] »
It’s been over a year since I started my Inbox Zero habit. On January 2, 2011 I cleared out my email inbox. And, for the most part, it’s been empty at the end of each workday since.
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
email,
habits,
productivity
20 May 2011 | Comments [0] »
On January 2, I cleared my inbox down to zero email messages. And since then i’ve done it every work day except two, when I was out of town without my computer. That’s nearly five months of inbox zero at least five days a week. (I usually do it on the weekends as well.)
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
blogging,
don't break the chain,
email,
habits,
productivity
3 January 2011 | Comments [0] »
Last night, I reached the elusive Inbox Zero. That’s right, I emptied my email inbox. This isn’t to say I don’t have any email messages. It’s just that they’re filed away in folders (or “mailboxes” in Mac Mail parlance).
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
decluttering,
email
29 December 2010 | Comments [6] »
For the last ten days, I’ve been using habitforge to help me create the routine of putting my clothes away properly at the end of the day (something I’ve had trouble with for years). I’ve found it very motivating.
Tagged with: accountability,
don't break the chain,
habitforge,
habits,
routines
22 June 2010 | Comments [2] »
Inspired by my friend, Margaret Lukens, I’ve decided to point out some of my favorite from this blog from Junes gone by. June is usually a pretty busy blogging month for me (though not so much this year). I had so many posts to choose from that I’m going to split the recap into two posts.
Tagged with: 15 minutes,
accountability,
clutter clearing,
decluttering,
email
31 December 2009 | Comments [4] »
2009 was a year of ups and downs for me. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. As I finish inputting data into Quickbooks for the year, I realize that my revenue is down, which isn’t great. I’m chalking it up to the economy. But so many really great things happened in 2009 that I view it as a year of success and progress.
Tagged with: aapo,
accomplishments,
accountability,
declutter happy hour,
napo,
napo st. louis,
nsgcd,
speaking
2 June 2009 | Comments [5] »
Two months and a week ago, I blogged about how I was experimenting with inbox zero, that is keeping my email inbox pared down to just a few messages that required action. This represented a major changing in thinking for me. For more than a decade I typically had thousands of uncategorized emails in my inbox (and many more thousand filed in folders). I never found that to be a problem.
Tagged with: aby garvey,
accountability,
decluttering,
email
12 August 2008 | Comments [0] »
Deadlines used to rule my life. When I was making my living as a writer, deadlines were absolutely everything. I didn’t start a story earlier than necessary to make my deadline. I don’t think in 12 years (and well over a hundred articles, along with eight books) I turned anything in early.
Tagged with: accountability,
commitments,
deadlines,
don't break the chain,
knitting olympics,
writing
27 June 2008 | Comments [2] »
My point: I didn’t clear off my desk yesterday before ending the work day. The reason is that end of the work day didn’t involve my desk. But still, it was a shock to arrive at my desk this morning and see some clutter on it. The worse part is that it was very little clutter—it would have literally taken about 60 seconds or less to put everything away.
Tagged with: accountability,
clean desk,
desk,
don't break the chain,
ikea,
motivation,
sally brown
2 June 2008 | Comments [0] »
On Friday I blogged about how I hoped to focus on decluttering in the coming weekend and that I was experiencing the rare and delightful confluence of having time for this kind of work and feeling motivated to do it.
I have to say, it went well. In Friday’s post, I listed the projects I hoped to accomplish:
Tagged with: accountability,
decluttering,
disorder,
storage
30 May 2008 | Comments [1] »
If you’ve ever worked with a professional organizer, you know that one of the things we bring to the table is focus. When you make the financial and time commitment to have a professional help you get organized, you tend to stay focused on the job during your session. And if your attention strays, the organizer draws it back to the project at hand.
Tagged with: accountability,
decluttering,
disorder,
storage
7 May 2008 | Comments [4] »
I’m going through one of those periods again where I completely empathize with my clients. I had a very busy March and April (I was out of town half the month of April) and now that I have a little time to breathe, I look around my house and think, “I need a professional organizer!” There are no shortage of wonderful organizers here in St. Louis I could hire for help, but I’m going to try to economize and do the work myself.
Tagged with: 15 minutes,
accountability,
backsliding,
decluttering,
productivity,
time management
26 March 2008 | Comments [2] »
As I’ve endlessly documented in this blog, I vowed this year to form the habit of clearing my desk at the end of each work day. The idea was that I would start work each morning with a clear desk, a clear mind, and major productivity. It’s something that I’ve strived for for decades and never been able to achieve.
Tagged with: accountability,
clean desk,
desk,
don't break the chain,
motivation,
productivity
13 January 2008 | Comments [0] »
The habit I’ve been trying to instill with the Don’t Break the Chain method that I wrote about in a recent post is clearing my desktop at the end of the workday.
Tagged with: accountability,
clean desk,
decluttering,
desk,
don't break the chain,
goals,
habits,
motivation,
productivity,
time management,
workspace
22 March 2007 | Comments [0] »
I earned my living as a freelance writer for ten years before starting my organizing business. Writing comes easy for me. So you’d think that having a blog would be a piece of cake. After all, I get to write whatever I want, whenever I want. So why haven’t I posted an entry in over two weeks?
Tagged with: accountability,
coaching,
deadlines,
writing