From our Friends | Teleworking and Feeling Discombobulated?

Teleworking may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Ellia Harris, the founder of Mindful Organizing, offers guidance on how to improve your working from home experience. 

If you’re suddenly teleworking from home or working in your home office for way more hours than ever before, you may not know what’s hit you…

…All of the systems you normally use to keep you organized are at the office and you’re floundering.

…Or, as you spend more time in your home office you’re now seeing all the papers, books, binders, and tchotchkes that faded nicely into the background when you were out and about. 

There is a silver lining: A change of routine (e.g. teleworking) is a great time to look at things differently – unusual situations are often the springboard for new ideas or solutions. This applies just as much to organizing your physical environment as it does to working more productively. 

Here are two areas in which you can take some simple action to help you work more efficiently and with less stress.

First, take an objective look at your work space:

1. Is your desk in the right spot in the right room? 
2. Do you have a clear work surface? 
3. What systems help you feel organized? 

Second, build some habits into your work day that replicate pre-covid days

1. Take regular breaks. 
2. Continue having meetings and coffee dates (virtually, if necessary).
3. Decide your start and finish times.
4. Work in chunks of time (try the Pomodoro Method).
5. Build in “activity buddy” time if you’re home with others.

If you just want to get set up and organized fast, let’s spend 60 minutes of really useful time to do some virtual organizing together.

I’m Ellia, an organizing and productivity coach. Through Mindful Organizing, I work with professionals who are stressed by their messy home, scattered brain, and project deadlines. I help my clients clear the clutter in their home, their home office, and their head so they have less stress and a better quality of life. 

As well as working onsite with clients, I offer virtual (video call) organizing sessions anywhere in the US. In these sessions, we come up with a plan together, I provide suggestions and instructions, and you do the work while we’re on the call together. Afterwards, you receive a printed summary so you know what to do next. 

Virtual sessions mean that, even in these virus-conscious times, you still get access to my expertise and support. I usually do organizing and productivity coaching as part of a package, but I’m offering this one-off, 1-hour session to make your (temporary or permanent) home office space more organized and supportive, on a PAY-WHAT-YOU-WILL basis until the extensive precautions around covid-19 have ended because I want to help as many people as possible work productively in this current situation.

How it works:

1. Schedule and pay for your session here.
2. At the beginning of the call (via FaceTime or Zoom), we’ll discuss what you want to achieve. 
3. You’ll do the work during the call so you can ask questions and I can offer suggestions. 
4. Afterwards, I’ll send a printed summary of the session along with my advice for going forward.

Here’s what one client said about our virtual organizing sessions: 

“Ellia, thank you for helping me sort out my music corner during our virtual organizing session. With your help, I got rid of things I didn’t need. Now I have places for all that “stuff” that was just sitting around before and I feel like some weight has been lifted. It’s so great to be able to just sit down and play without having to move papers, cables, and piles of stuff out of the way!” ~BL, self-employed professional and musician

If you have questions, contact me at Ellia@MindfulOrganizing.com to arrange a quick call or you can schedule your Free Consult call here.