I know I furrowed my brow and said, “No. You need to take the time to drink water and eat.” I even tweeted it, and since my tweets go to Facebook, one of my high school friends wrote on my page that she had the same problem. She was so busy at work that she couldn’t eat or drink during the day. Bullcorn. I don’t care how busy you are, you should have time to keep yourself watered and fed.

Excuse me as I drink a sip of water……See, that didn’t take long. Humans require water, nourishment and shelter to stay alive. Water and food are a need, not a luxury.

Even surgeons take time to take sips of water or juice to keep themselves going and take breaks during long surgeries. Keeping yourself hydrated and fed is not brain surgery.

People who skip lunch are not fun to work with. Skipping meals and not being hydrated can lead to overeating since you may gorge at dinner. Lunch skippers may wind up eating whatever they can find in a vending machine and snacking away all day on unhealthy fare.

We need water to live. Water is one of those miracle drugs in a way since it affects every cell in our body. Water aids digestion, carries nutrients to cells, flushes out toxins, lowers your blood pressure, and cushions your joints. Without enough water, you may be as constipated as your e-mail’s inbox with dry skin, urinary tract infections, and reoccuring headaches. Yeah, that’s the “fun” person I want to work with — the non-hydrated one.

By feeding and watering yourself, you will work at your best. “Being busy” doesn’t mean that you’re working at your most productive. Take ten to 15 minutes, close the e-mail and eat your lunch. Your brain needs the rest. Keep your water glass or re-usable bottle handy and drink up during the day, and feel that water flowing through your body to keep all your parts moving.

So please, take down the “Do Not Feed” sign. Don’t be a martyr. Feed and water yourself during the work day and make yourself a better worker.

My client told me that he learned about how vision works by watching a bicycle race. While watching bicyclists race through a curvy road, he noticed two cyclists far in the lead and asked another bystander if he thought the others would catch up. The bystanders nodded and said, “Yes, the others can still see them. If they can see them, they will catch them.” If the race leaders were not in sight of their fellow competitors, they wouldn’t have been able to catch up.

Sure enough, the other cyclists caught up with the leaders of the race. With a clear vision, the cyclists could see their goal.

We all need a clear vision to meet our goals. Decluttering your house or losing weight is a nice goal, but you need the vision. What does a decluttered house look like to you? What does losing weight look like to you? A vision doesn’t need to be complicated. Post a photo or list of what decluttering looks like to you. If you want to lose weight (like I’m doing myself), hang up a photo of yourself at a healthier weight or hang that killer outfit — the one you loved — on the closet door as a reminder.

I encourage my clients to set smaller goals that lead up to the bigger goal. For decluttering, the first goal may be to recycle all newspapers and magazines at least once a week. To move forward in weight loss, focus on losing weight in five or ten pound increments. It’s always best to set smaller, bite-sized “mini-goals” to reach the Super Duper Mega-Goal. Because if you can see it, then you can catch it.

When I bought my house last fall, I knew it needed some updating. Nothing had been updated since it was built in 1964. The good thing is that anything I do is an improvement! As I wrote my house project list, I could feel myself getting overwhelmed. It would have been easy to write up the list and not look at it again.

My friend Donna Smallin wrote in her book The One Minute Organizer that trying to organize the entire house at one time is like trying to eat a chocolate cake in one bite. So true! When you have a cake, you have to slice it and then eat it bite by bite. I tell my frustrated and overwhelmed organizing clients the same thing. Bite by bite. Little by little. One thing at a time.  

When you face a big task, break it into bite-sized pieces. Cross each “bite” off the list as you accomplish it. Then reward yourself when you accomplish your task. Perhaps a bit of chocolate?

The best way to prep for the morning is to do it the night before. What can you do to prepare for the next day? Here are a few things you can do:

• Lay out bowls, cups, glasses, and spoons for breakfast.
• Lay out the clothes you’re going to wear tomorrow.
• If you iron, iron. If you don’t iron, run wrinkled clothes through a few minutes in the dryer.
• Make lunches. Put a sticky note on your keys to remind you that lunch is in the frig.
• Make the coffee so you only have to push the button in the morning. Yeah, some of us really need to get a programmable coffee pot.
• Shower the night before.
• Sign the school papers and make sure everything is in the folders to return to school.
• Gather up all the books and homework and make sure they’re in the backpacks.

A little time in the evening can save you so much time in the morning. Sleep tight!

As I deleted thousands of e-mails from a client’s inbox, she stood behind me, directing which ones were good to go. She said, “Why can’t I do this without you? You make me less afraid of deleting e-mails.”

I’ve come across this with many of my organizing clients. When organizing by themselves, they’re more afraid of throwing things away, more afraid of making the wrong decision. When we work together, the decision-making process is crystal clear. My goal is to help them make those fearless decisions eventually by themselves. As we say in the organizing world, a lack of decision-making results in clutter — whether its paper or electronic. It all adds up.

But you don’t have to be alone and afraid to make your own decisions. You can learn to make fearless decisions on tossing paper and other clutter and delete e-mails and other electronic clutter. Here are a few ways to make those decisions without fear or regret:

• Have I ever used this? If you can write your name in dust on it, you haven’t used it. If you have e-mails from 1998, do you really need those in your inbox?
• Will I really ever need this? You have to brutally honest with yourself. Are you ever going to use that ice cream maker or fondue pot? Are you going to read all of the articles you have in your RSS feeder? It’s time to get real and pare down.
• Can the information be found elsewhere? No need to keep the phone book if you look up numbers on the Internet. No need to keep e-mails from a long dead project when you have the project completed. Companies usually keep updated policies and other information on their websites so you don’t have to keep it yourself.
• Are these attachments important? I frequently find attachments in a client’s inbox. Instead of using your inbox as storage, detach those attachments and store them on your desktop or server. If you want to keep the photos of rainbows and kittens for stress relief, detach them and delete the e-mail. Attachments take up too much room on your e-mail.
• What’s the absolute worst that can happen if I get rid of this? It’s amazing. Many times my clients and I have deleted or thrown something away, and the world keeps spinning and no lightening struck.  

When you have no one looking over your shoulder, you can make those decisions about what to toss or delete without fear. Be fearless. Be clutter free.

Ironically, most job postings ask for someone who can multi-task, and all of us have sat in job interviews and declare, “Oh, yes, I can multi-task. I can multi-task like no one’s business.” In reality, too much multi-tasking makes us less efficient. Think of those drivers who can’t drive and talk on their cell phones at the same time.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a deep breath and spend 20 to 30 minutes focusing on one task. You can set a kitchen timer or make a playlist on your MP3 player. Spending time focusing on one task makes a huge difference in your productivity and stress level.

Another tactic is to check e-mail only at certain times of the day. You don’t have to check it constantly throughout the day, and it’s always best to turn off the e-mail alert announcing new e-mail. The alert only serves as a distracting interruption, and interruptions cost us too much time. In fact, research shows that we get interrupted every 11 minutes — many times we’re interrupting ourselves by bouncing from one idea to another, and it takes 25 minutes to get back on track. The study also says 40 percent of the time we don’t even get back to what we’ve been doing. Researchers speculate that all of these interruptions that we and others cause us may lead to short term memory loss. See — it may not be as related to age as we think!

I know work is even more stressful these days with our challenging economic times, but it’s better to work smarter, than harder. There is no rule that says you must check your e-mail inbox every minute of the day, answer the phone everytime it rings, or answer each knock on the door. Guess what? Your computer won’t implode, the world won’t stop spinning, and no one is going to hate you for having boundaries. Then you can master walking and chewing gum!

Check out the post here: http://tinyurl.com/mrwrbt.

In the article, Hardwick takes three books – Getting Things Done by David Allen; Never Check E-Mail in the Morning by Julie Morgenstern; and The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss – and time with each of the tomes to see if he can bypass procrastination and master time management and productivity skills.

Hilarity ensues. Who knew productivity could ever be discussed in the same breath as pine squirrels and Rob Zombie? But it does in Hardwick’s world.

In the end, Hardwick decides to steal the best ideas out of the three books and use them. This is something that I like to do since there is no cookie cutter approach to organizing and time management. Even if you discover one good idea in an organizing book, blog or newsletter, it was worth it.

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

I hope each of you are spending your “coin” in the way you want. If you’re not, why not?