DIYhipster - finally

I have been a member of DIYPlanner.com for thrity-five weeks and one day. I was a lurker for much longer. I finally came up with my own functional version of the DIYhipster. If you do not know what any of this is referring to, jump over to their site and take a look.

On that day [35wks + 1 day] ago when I became a member I published a photo of the WBF "no-plan-might-be-a-plan" mess. Somehow that photo does not survive, here is the format I finally settled on:

Waiter's Folio; portrait oriented, fits almost anywhere






4x5 4up weeklies; from which I make a little folio with one
week showing & blank dailies inside

Blue six-ring thing; staggering my punching allows the top of the next two week folio to show

A stack of recycled quarters; for notes, et cetera.


All this organizational craziness started for me when I was a child. {doesn't it always?}
My father had a desk filled with cool things that fascinated me. There was nothing like it in my toy collection. The vicious cycle begins; I cannot stop wondering what the desk contains, he forbids me to mess around in it, naturally I cannot resist. My father finds out or catches me fiddling around in the desk, life gets pretty miserable all of a sudden. Around and around it went until someone, probably the [sainted] Mother figures out that three quarters of the fascination is the stuff in the desk.

One magic Christmas, under the Christmas tree with my name on it, was a package that rattled in a most unfamiliar way. As it turns out it was an old fashioned metal album case. But oh what it contained . . .
pencils, colored pencils, a sharpener, an eraser all by itself, pens {which I had never been allowed to use before} all kinds of paper, coloring books, paper clips, glue, rubber bands, new crayons, scissors, a stapler, shiny metalic stars {there was no such thing as a sticker collection}.

The metal case probably had lots of other things I can no longer remember, including some recycled office supplies from both Mom and my father. Ever since that Christmas and the fascinating metal box, stationary stores, office supply stores, gadget stores have all been irresistible to me.

Maybe someday I will wax poetic on the subject of family history and the Scrapbooking store . . .

Slackers Need Not Apply

March 30, 2007 — "Good Morning America" is launching the "Take Control of Your Life" tour with co-anchor Diane Sawyer and workplace contributor Tory Johnson.

The tour will consist of "GMA" and Johnson visiting three cities: Chicago, Atlanta and Denver. At each stop, Johnson will report live on "GMA" with local women. They will cultivate strategies and present steps designed to motivate and inspire women around the country to bring balance back into their lives.

Here is something I would have put my mug on television to support. Good Morning America should make this topic a regular feature. The more the American public is made aware of the benefits of flex-time, the more corporate America will accept the concept as a 'healthy' alternative to the employment/lifestyle balance. The burden of proof so to speak is on the employee. Employees with ethics constructed of warm jello & pipe cleaners will ruin this intelligent lifestyle balancing choice if their work performance drags down corporate outcome goals.

Having pulled up my career choices by the roots and gone back to school, I find there are productivity patterns in which I excel and other patterns in which I slowly implode. 9-5 in a grey cubicle is one of those sure-fire implosion circumstances. I can either do 9-5 with alot of movement or I can do a cubicle but from 7-3. I cannot do both. I find one of my productivity peaks has to do with logistics and the other has to do with movement. Sitting still-concentration no problem, just let me do it earlier in the day. Business keeps banking hours? No problem, put me where I am required to move around alot.

Due to the quirky way life scheduling occurs during college, I have discovered
I like to take one class where I am required to meet a standard every week.
This semester it was an accelerated French class. My gpa actually benefited
from that type of focused learning environment. However, at the end of the
seven week term, I really needed decompression time. Fortunately for me,
my other classes require much less focused attention. I discovered I need
a day off in the middle of the week or a three day weekend when
I have that kind of schedule.

There is a seasonal component to this for me as well. I schedule my heaviest class load for spring/summer in our trimester system. I schedule half time student status for winter term.
I like the productivity outcomes when I schedule this way.

Once corporate America becomes aware of the cost savings in flex scheduling, more companies will buy into flex scheduling. There will be a period of adjustment where Human Resources will have to take a hard look at personal character references to determine if a particular employee should be considered as a flex time candidate.

Slackers need not apply.

Tags: flex-time, gma, healthy, lifestyle, productivity, work