transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Today's mailbag comes to us from Maria. I feel like I had a lot of wins this week, and I haven't reset my Sunday basket yet. I realized last Sunday or Monday that we'd have a crazy week. So I kept trying to figure out how to prep and clean up without a big crash and burn on Friday and Saturday. I realized I could safely make buttercream frosting a few days early. So frosting and hard-boiled eggs on Tuesday night while I made spaghetti for dinner. On Friday, I made the lamb cake and I decided to make a half a batch of frosting and got the pork tenderloin in the marinade. Saturday, I frosted the lamb cake, made pea salad and peeled and sliced the carrots. Sunday after church, I was exhausted. I am nursery staff. So coming home to all that was so great. Grilled the pork, heated the marinade for gravy, made the carrots, microwaved the Bob Evans mashed potatoes and dinner was ready and super fabulous. There is still a pile of dishes, though not as high as it usually is. Thinking ahead enough to plan easy meals and figure out how to prep so the lamb cake didn't happen on top of everything else really helped a lot. Do you have an Organize 365 success story? If so, we would love to hear about it. Please send us an email at customer service at Organize 365 and tell us how you have taken back your home, your paper and your life with Organize 365.

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Welcome to the Organize 365 Podcast. I'm your host, professional organizer, productivity expert, and motivational speaker, Lisa Woodruff. This podcast will help you embrace progress over perfection and create lasting functional organizing in your home. I have so much to share with you, so let's get started. Oh my goodness, planning day is next week. I am so excited. I'm like a kid in a candy store, a school girl getting ready for the next semester in school. I love planning day. I cannot explain to you the difference in even just planning your weeks and planning your months as to looking at the next four-month chunk in your household. For those of you that are joining me in planning day next week, this podcast is for you. This is information that I want you to be thinking about for a couple of weeks before we meet next week to kind of get you ready for what is coming in planning day. If you've never been in planning day before or you're like, this sounds interesting, but isn't this just like just sitting down and regularly planning? It's not. The best way I could explain it is how I do planning in my business. The longer I've been in business, the better I get at quarterly planning. So let me explain to you how business owners and entrepreneurs who do quarterly planning plan in their business. At first, when you're doing quarterly planning in business, like it's March and you're thinking what's going to happen in April, May, and June, really all you do is you set a revenue target. Like, I want to make this much money or we need to make this much money in order to stay in business, and what can we sell in order to make that much money? For the first five to seven years in business, that's all I ever did. So, five to seven years, that's like a lot of planning days. After that, I was like, okay, what is the team we need in order to make the deliverables, in order to create the revenue that we would need in the company? You get the idea. You move from just figuring out how are we going to stay in business, like make enough money to stay in business, to how are we really going to become a unique business in the marketplace? How are we going to inject the uniqueness of me, the founder, and also the team members that are part of the team into the company? Then, literally, it was probably COVID, so 10 years into business, when I started thinking about market forces and beyond just my thinking or what I want to do in my company, how does me being part of the world affect Organize 365? I think we all woke up during COVID about market forces. Again, here we are, not in the same climate, but a similar uncertain climate right now, with all the wars going on and things like that. We have to be aware that we are a global society, and how does that impact what we are going to be able to do in our houses in the next four months? As a business owner, I think about that all the time. That's why I listen to so many different news outlets, and I'm always looking at what's going on globally, and how that affects industry, and then how that affects Organize 365, and ultimately how that affects you and your house. So if you're in planning day, I just dropped a video about what I feel is happening. I don't understand what's happening in the world. Let me be clear. I'm just like a regular woman. But how I feel the uncertainty in the market is going to impact us at home this summer. There have been a couple of times when I've done this state of the union type, what's happening in households and how we can kind of prepare. Honestly, I don't have a lot of how we can prepare this time. When COVID lockdown was coming, I was really good at saying, hey, here are a couple of key things. If you have the resources, go ahead and buy these now. It'll make your summer in 2020 better for you. A lot of you did it. I don't have anything you're going to buy, but I do have a reframing. How do we not be so worried and anxious and how do we be more purposeful and active at all times in our household? There are different seasons for doing different things at home, so I've just dropped a video in the planning day group for you guys to go listen to about this. So when I think about planning at home, my planning days at home have gotten so much better because I plan well in my business. If you don't plan well in your business, you can easily be out of business, which means you no longer have a job. At home, I mean, you don't have to plan. You're still going to live there. Let's not talk about bankruptcy, but I'm just saying we don't have to plan at home. It's not normal to plan at home. Maybe that's a better way of saying it because it's not like everybody's doing it. You don't have to have a budget. A lot of people have a budget when you mention having a financial budget at home. People are like, oh, I understand what that is. You either do or don't do that. You're like, okay, that makes sense. People have budgets. You have income. You have outgoing money. You could budget it, not budget it. But you know that budgeting is a thing. Planning it, days or not. Planning, and also three times a year. Where did that come from, Lisa? Why not quarterly or once a year? Annual planning? Yeah, people have maybe heard about that, New Year's Resolutions in January. Or if you're going to bring this in from business, Lisa, how about if you do quarterly planning, which I used to do. But it makes no sense. So here's why we do it three times a year. And again, as an American, I have an American perspective. It's so hard for me when I start to think about the Australian year that it's literally, they're going into winter, not summer. Like that just boggles my mind. It's really hard for me to grasp that and that their school years are different and everything. So as an American, my American perspective is, for those of us, even if you don't have children, even if you never had children, like this is true for my sister, never married, never had children, we tend to think in three chunks of time as Americans. Right now, we're starting to think about summer. We're thinking about our summer travel. We're thinking about our summer projects. We're thinking about the longer days of summer. Like, we're just naturally thinking about summer. And even if you have a corporate nine to five, you know, 52 week a year job, the summer is just a little different. It's just a little different than every other season. So I scoop May into the summer for a couple of reasons. First of all, some schools get out in May, and some schools go back early in August, and some schools don't get out till the end of June, and they go back in September. So your summer is very dependent on where you live regionally, the schools and things like that. So May, June, July, August. That's the block that we're going to call summer. So we plan in early May for all of summer. Then sometime in July or early August, we all get this little itch to plan and organize and get ready for the fall. Even though really, like in Ohio, the fall doesn't really come until October, like weather-wise. But mentally, like the schools close Labor Day weekend, and really the last couple weeks of August, most of the schools are back in session in Ohio, so the pool hours are very different. We kind of think about our summer bookending, at least in Ohio, based on when the pools are open, and they open on Memorial Day and they close on Labor Day. If you had to arbitrarily say, what is summer for Americans, it would be starting on Memorial Day, or yeah, Memorial Day, end of May, and ending on Labor Day beginning of September. That 13, 14 week period of time is what most of us feel is summer. But sometime in July or August, we really are like, yeah, we've got to start thinking about the fall. For fall, most of us lump September into the fall, because that's when we went back to school. So to us, fall, go back to school, even if the weather is not fall like weather. Behaviorally, as household managers, and as business people, we spend a lot of money, September, October, November, December, like we're getting ready to go back to school, and then we're getting ready for the holidays, and then we're getting ready for the New Year. We are the most spendy, September, October, November, December, and most businesses make the most money, September, October, November, December. So we tend to work the most hours those months as well. Then after the holidays are over and we're getting ready to flip into the New Year, end of December, into January, we have this more purposeful, organizational, productive energy. Like, okay, what are we going to do in the New Year? What is going to be our resolution? What are the projects we really want to dive into? And we hit January hard. You know we do. By the third week of January, most of us are like, forget it, let's just find a new show on Netflix. But some of us keep that energy. And if you can keep that energy going, like January, February, March is awesome project organizing energy, okay? So that is the annual cycle that Americans are on. And we right now are going into May, and we are going into our summer planning. And one of the things I want to say about planning is that, I talk a lot about executive function and working memory. Like how much can we keep in our head and manipulate and think? And how do we get more brain capacity by writing things down on paper so that we're not using our brain as a mental to-do list? And that's great, so we can have capacity to think and do. But there's another thing that our brain does that I mention often, which is planning. Planning cannot be done while you're doing something else. Planning needs some time set aside, some thinking time, some non-working time, non-task doing time, non-multitasking. You can't plan and multitask at the same time. Like you need dedicated time to plan, to plan your day, to plan your month, to plan your next trimester. And that is what Planning Day does, basically. It puts it on your calendar. It's live. So yeah, a lot of you join me live, but a lot of you don't. A lot of you wait and you like do it over the weekend and you watch the replay. Usually, the replay is up by the end of the day. We try to get it up quickly. It just depends on how fast things are buffering, you know, technology. But usually, the replays are up by the end of the day. So if you're just like one day off, you'll definitely have the replay. And the replay lasts for six weeks. So you have six weeks to watch the replay and plan your next season. And you need dedicated time. You need dedicated time to plan. The way in which I plan, I loved the feedback you guys gave me about when I gave you the ten ways, lenses in which I think through my weekly planning. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so over the top. People are going to be like, oh, I can't even listen to Lisa anymore. And so many of you are like, no, this makes total sense. I was like, oh, okay, maybe I'm not as off the reservation as I think I am. If you liked that podcast or if you're tracking with that, you're going to love planning day. You're going to love planning day because planning day is where I take that kind of thinking and I figure out what are the lenses with which I want to plan my weeks. It's really hard to just go from reactive day-to-day living to doing a Sunday basket and being able to plan your week the way I explained to you that I plan my week without doing planning days because how do you know what the big things are that you want to do? And also when you listen to the podcast after that about how every action causes an equal and opposite reaction, like I literally just spent three months figuring out how to be a gym person and an active grandparent watching my grandchild like 20 hours a week in addition to everything else that I'm doing. Now I've got an awesome schedule. Actually, yesterday I just went through and I registered for all my Pilates classes for the next two months because now I know what my schedule is, now I know how it's going to work. It takes some time to do that. So even in planning day, when you're thinking like, okay, this is what I think I want my fall to look like, you're going to practice it all summer, like whatever your biggest rock is. And we can't really even figure out what that biggest rock is going to be without some good quality reflecting time. So a week from now, we're having planning day. From now until the following Sunday, so for the next ten days, for me, this is like my planning season. I'm thinking now, what do I want my goals to be next summer? That's why I'm dropping this podcast and the video inside of the planning day group for you guys to be thinking about, like, okay, let's think about market conditions, let's think about our family, let's think about all these things, like what are all the variables, what's the data that I need in order to make the best strategic decision for the next one hundred and twenty days, like what is this summer really going to look like for us? And then next Thursday, we'll be going through our Sunday basket, pulling out anything that we need to put into our binders, going through and making our workbook for the next planning day, filling out anything that we can. And then on Friday, we will go through and walk through the workbook and look at our time. How are we spending our time daily? How are we spending it weekly? What are the pockets of time that we have? And can we actually achieve these goals? What do we want the goals to be? How does that change our morning, afternoon and evening routines? How does that change our housework? Has like all the things like I am going to guide you step by step by step through all of the things. So if you've never been in planning day before, it is a webinar where we're all on their live and we record it. And it is four hours and I talk for like five, seven, maybe 10 minutes. And then I give you five, seven, maybe 10 minutes to work. Then I talk for five, seven, 10 minutes. And so I'm guiding you like here's the thought, you do the action. Here's like you get it done during planning day. Now your first planning day, you might not get your whole workbook done. And often I say if it's your very first planning day, just watch the whole thing like you're in a movie and be making notes and then go back and do it while you're doing the replay. But every time you do it, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And I will say that the key to planning days is doing them over and over and over. Because you get more data about how you live your life and more information about what works for you and your family. And each goal that you make in planning day is built on all of the goals that you've done the planning day before and before and before. You can't make more time and you can't always get things done faster. But the thing that planning days have taught me, let's say in business for example, is that the less goals I have, the more likely I am to achieve those goals. And the less goals I have, the bigger those goals can be. And so I no longer try to get like 14 goals done in a quarter in business. We have usually one actually, sometimes two or three, but almost, almost like right now it's launching the book. That is my one goal. And that was our goal for the whole first six months of the year. Like that is our number one goal. Everything that we do, like, is this going to help us launch the book? Yes? No? No? Okay, we're not going to do it. Like everything is about launching the book in business. When you're so clear on what the one goal is that you want to do, then you actually get it done. You actually get it done, which is really encouraging. So one of the things I want specifically us to think about as we go into this planning day is, how do you move from feeling like you're in quicksand, to fully supported in everything that you need to do, in order to set and achieve your goal in this next 120 days? First, I'm going to give you an overview of how the summer energy flows. Just give you a little bit of that. Then what I think the top two goals I would pick, if I was new to picking goals in the summer, would be. Those are the ones I'm going to really deep dive into for planning day. Okay. One of the things I do at the beginning of planning day, and I'll do this in more detail in planning day, is I really talk to you about, as an expert in how the home functions, home organization and households in general, what are some things that I know are going to happen in most households in the next couple of months, that you may have either forgotten or I just want to bring to your awareness, so that as you're setting your goals to achieve, you're like, oh yeah, I need to factor that variable in. So summer is a really interesting season. As I already mentioned, summer, the start and end of summer, is really relative. And I'm so sorry if I keep thinking of those of you in Australia. I'm so sorry. I know it's winter. There's no way I could translate this. So I'm just going to keep going with the American, but just let you know, I'm thinking of you. And I know this doesn't resonate, and I'm really sorry. But those of us that are in America, let's be thinking about how this works. You may feel like, like I feel that summer kind of starts in May because my yard work starts in April and May. You know, having to get the yard done, mulching done, all of that. So the work of summer happens in May. The fun doesn't really start, but the work of summer kind of happens in May. So May is kind of a transition month. You can, you can tuck it into your January goals if you're not quite done with those, and you can move on to June. Also, May just kind of you blink and May is gone. There's just so many things that happen in May. I generally don't attach goals to May. I feel that it's a very transient month, and I just kind of, just kind of experience May. That's just how I've always felt. It's a very busy spring energy. You're getting used to walking outside again, at least in Ohio, enjoying the longer days of summer. It just seems to blink and it is gone. June and July, so like I said, depending on when your kids get out of school or when school changes in your area, and you may say, Lisa, you keep saying kids. I don't have kids. I am telling you, there, you'll notice it. There's a difference in traffic flow when kids aren't in school. There's a difference in who's available in the office when kids aren't in school. There's the school zone, 20 mile an hour things change when it's summer. There's just differences in summer, the energy of summer, even if you're not on a kid's schedule. That happens in June and July. In June and July is a great project energy. Get projects started. A lot of times Memorial Day weekend, the last weekend in June, people will start projects and those will bleed over into June. Or if you have a big project to do in the summer, like you want to get the kids stuff done or you want to do a household project, people will usually start those in June, maybe July. But you have to be aware of July. July is a sneaky month. July, I always call the Bermuda Triangle of months. I don't know what happens in May. I also don't know what happens in July, but I know in May I was very busy and in July, I don't always know that I was very busy. I have been saying this for years and years and years and years and years. It is nearly impossible to be productive in July. I'm a very productive person. I will set goals in July and I do not want to do them. I'm just like, nope, don't want to. My brain leaves my body. I don't know. I just don't get a lot of projects done. Now, last year, I had a lot of projects to work on in July, and our team takes the same vacation weeks. So we're all kind of off and then other weeks we're in the office. Last July, I forgot my own rule. My rule is that it's the Bermuda Triangle of Months, so we don't try to get a lot done in July. Well, apparently, last July, I wanted to get a lot done in the company. I kid you not, from the end of June until the beginning of August, my team and I were hardly ever able to have any meetings outside of our company. Now, it's hard to have meetings inside of your company in July because people take so many vacations. But we could not have meetings with contractors and outside entities because every time we tried, somebody was on vacation. I was so frustrated. I cannot even explain to you how frustrated I was. So I'm just letting you know right now, if you count on meetings with outside vendors, contractors, you want to get something done in your house, July is not the month to do it. Do it in June, do it in August, but do not plan to do it in July. So if you can move your project up or back, that would be great because it's the Bermuda Triangle of months. There is no productivity happening anywhere at all in July. It's, I don't know, it's frustrating to me, but it is what it is, so that's July. And then in August, as I mentioned, we will get this busy preparation back to school energy. Ironically, August is the hottest month in Ohio, like it is the hottest month. So you would think I'd be at the pool more, I'd be like enjoying summer. No, by the time I'm in August, in my brain, I'm thinking about fall, I'm thinking about productivity. I'm wanting to buy a new planner, even though that's not when planners come out. Like, I am ready for the productivity of fall, even though we have the longest hottest days in August. I can't explain it. But this is how we think, this is what you were up for when you are planning your summer. Think about what you already have scheduled in May. May is kind of a, you know, just get a whole bunch of projects done. Think about what you want to do in June and July, what big project you want to get done in the summer, frontload it as much as you can in June, especially if you need any contractors or outside help. And then get ready for the productivity that is coming in August, because if you ride that productivity energy, when you start to get it in August, you will set yourself up for a really, really productive and profitable fall. Okay, so based on that information, what would I suggest your projects are going to be? What are the projects that I'm going to talk about in planning day? And there are two. The first one is paper. I always focus on paper in the summer for a couple of reasons. One is really easy to organize paper in the summer. It's portable. I'm going to give you some ideas for that. And second, this is when the Productive Home Solution and The Paper Solution kind of dovetail together. So if you're in the Productive Home Solution, we have specific weeks set out for paper focuses and getting everything related to medical, financial, household, and reference paper organized. But if you have The Paper Solution, you're also working on your binders during that time. So these two programs come together in the summer. This summer, just like in the spring when I had for the Sunday Basket Birthday, I did some Sunday Basket seminars. And we did the Tax Basket and the Calendar Basket. This summer, I'm going to be doing four seminars in The Paper Solution. So those of you who have The Paper Solution, I will be doing these seminars in The Paper Solution, one per month, one for each binder. I'm going to go through my binder, answer any questions you have for the binder, give you some additional ideas about how to get the binder done. Paper is an amazing project for summer. And every time I've organized my paper, I always do it in the summer, I think because it's kind of portable. And the way in which it is portable, there are three ways in which it's portable. First of all, and this is the weird way, I'll start with the weird way. The weird way is, my kids, who knew how to swim, would want to go to the pool. And I just, I was never one of those people that dropped my kids off at the pool. Probably because they didn't ask me to. So, and I, they have the great ice at the pool, so I would get like a Coke with that great ice, and I like ice cream, and so. I would just go to the pool with my kids, and I would work on projects, and they have tables, and I had a friend, she and I would do this in the summer. Our kids would be there playing, we would just talk, and we would do projects, sitting at one of the tables. We would bring our laptops, whatever, we were both in direct sales together. Well, the summer, I decided to get my paper organized, which was the second summer of Organize 365. I would just load up a big huge bag with a whole bunch of files, and I would take it to the pool, and I'd open up the file, and I'd just like go through, and figure out what I wanted to save. If it didn't have to be shredded, I literally just threw it away at the pool. So I would go home with less papers. The other way in which I organize paper in the summer, and I would do this for my paper, and then as I started doing client's paper, is I would just bring up three, five files from the basement or a banker's box of files on the kitchen counter. Kitchen counter is a great place to sort paper because it's a higher height and it doesn't hurt your back. Whereas if you set up a table, like that's lower, it might hurt your back. If you're setting up a foldable table to work on paper, and you're going to stand, I recommend buying bed risers and then just elevating that table so it's a higher height, so you don't hurt your back because I mean, it's going to take us a while to get through our paper, you guys. So anyway, I would just sort some paper. I'd take it on the back deck and sort through files, and I'm going to do a whole separate podcast about doing the big sort. I did that a couple of months ago for how you sort and get ready for your Sunday basket. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to do that for how we're going to sort to get ready for our paper. If you're like, oh, okay, great, there's some extra seminars right now. Lisa is going to do a podcast about this. Maybe you want to join me for the Paper Organizer Retreat here in Cincinnati. Come to the Paper Organizer Retreat, get your book signed. That's going to be July 9th and 10th. We'd love to have you here for that. Paper is going to be the focus of organizing this summer. Paper is a great thing to get organized in the summer. Thinking about how you're going to organize your paper, and then you can even go beyond that. You're like, oh, I've gotten pretty good with my paper. What are all the other things related to your financial and your medical and your household operations and your household reference? All the things that will come into play with that. So that's going to be my number one suggestion for you to organize this summer is going to be your paper. Second suggestion that I have every summer is to also focus on yourself. And if you're in planning day, I'm talking a lot about how in a world that is uncertain, where we are right now, the best thing that we can do to reduce our stress and anxiety and worry is to focus on ourself and our home. That you will never regret the time and money that you put into your professional development and your households running well. And in times of uncertainty, I always double down on myself and my household. And I don't speculate and I don't worry about the rest of the world because I have no idea what the heck they're doing and I'll just wait for them to figure it out and tell me later. I am not in control of any of that, but I am in control of my own personal professional development and I am in control mostly of my household and how my household runs. So we're going to work on paper, our information management, and secondly, ourself. And there are two options that I have for you for focusing on yourself inside of Organize 365. The first is Embrace. And most of you already have Embrace. Again, it's a lifetime. These things you purchase from Organize 365 are a lifetime. So when you're like, I really would like to redo this or clean this out or revisit that, you've got access to these courses. So many of you have started doing Embrace every single year, which is what I do. Whenever I'm on a big road trip, I just turn on the Embrace playlist and I just sing through those songs. And once you've watched the Embrace conference a couple of times, you know the talks that go with each song. You know the workbook activities that go with each song. And the interesting thing is every single year, you're in a different place. So where you were when you first did the Embrace experience, or the second, or year after year after year, like you are in a different place. And so those songs hit differently, the questions hit differently, your uniqueness has gotten deeper because you're looking for it and you're working on it, and you're becoming more of who you're uniquely gifted and created to be. So if you're like, I don't even remember how to dream like you, Lisa. I had this goal that I would do this and I've accomplished this, and now I don't know what I'm doing next. So for me, that was I wanted to get married, have babies and be a stay-at-home mom. The year I turned 40, I was like, okay, I did all of that and now what? Like now what? I didn't know. I had to re-experience it. And that is what Embrace really brings out. Like, let's really explore. What did you think running your household would be like? What are the influences you have on how you run your house? What are the wolves that are coming after you about making you question your uniqueness? What are you uniquely gifted and created to do? That is the Embrace experience. So if you don't have that, that's available in the shop. It's also part of the complete home organizing bundle if you decide to go that route. The second way in which you can really invest in yourself is the self-care retreat. The self-care retreat that we're doing this summer is related to the book Escaping Quicksand, and this will be the only time that we do it live. So the book Escaping Quicksand comes out on Tuesday, June 23rd, and the self-care retreat will be Friday, June 26th. There are a couple of different ways in which you can experience the retreat. You could do it virtually, so you just join us like you would for planning day. You could do it in-person. I'll be in Nashville, so you can come visit us in-person in Nashville. There are a few seats for the VIP experience. In the VIP experience, we're going to go out to dinner the night before, just you, me, and four other people, so it'll be a nice intimate dinner that we're going to have. The self-care retreat is, how do we put into place this new definition of self-care that I've created? I define adult self-care is the support of an adult's educational, spiritual, emotional, and relational needs, in addition to the provision of life-sustaining care, including feeding, bathing, clothing, and medical care. So the self-care retreat, just like Embrace, is going to be a lifetime purchase. When you purchase it, you will get the replay, you will be in the group for the lifetime of the program. So if you choose to come in person, you will also get the recordings, you will also be in the virtual self-care groups. You'll be in both the virtual and the in-person. If you choose to come to Nashville, and there's really not that many seats in Nashville, but if you come to Nashville, that would be so much fun. We're going to be doing this in person, and a lot of you have been asking me where are we going to stay? It is the Sheraton Hotel. I was going to recommend the Gaylord. The Gaylord is like sold out. If you can get there, I mean, I think they have a handful of rooms, but they just don't have very many. But the Sheraton Hotel by the airport, Music City, I think is what it's called, great hotel. I stayed there when I went down to Rory and AJ's Mastermind down in Nashville. Pretty much there is not a hotel that's near the venue that we're going to be at, because it's just a little building. It's not a big venue that we're going to for our event. It's a freestanding little, it's almost like a little house. So you're going to need a car or to Uber wherever we're going. You could stay downtown. I'm not a big downtown girl. They're great downtown hotels if you want to stay there. I always drive into Nashville, and I drive around big cities a lot, and I just, I don't know. I'm not big on the downtown and trying to figure out parking. The parking is so easy at the Sheridan. That's partly why I like it. There's a lot. It's up on a hill, so you can walk around outside. I just think it's going to be great to stay at that hotel. That's where our team is staying. That's where we're going to recommend that you stay. We don't have a hotel block there. They have plenty of rooms right now, so we're good to go, and it's reasonably priced. So that's where we're going to stay. Then the event is going to be on Friday the 26th. I think doors open at 8.30 and the event starts at 9, and we have to leave right at 4. So at 4, it's going to be over, and we're going to leave. So let me give you a rundown of what I will be teaching at this retreat. Okay, so let's get started with what is going to be at this self-care retreat. First of all, it's going to be a blast, because we're going to be active in the app. We're going to be in person. I'm just so excited to be doing a conference in person. And we're really going to dive into, okay, well, adult self-care is the support of an adult's educational, spiritual, emotional, and relational needs, in addition to the provision of life-sustaining care, including feeding, bathing, clothing, and medical care. And everyone else is defining self-care as a bubble bath, a spa day, and getting your nails done. That's a big leap. That's like kindergarten to PhD. Like, there is no bridge between those two definitions of self-care. So I've really spent some time thinking, and this is going to be very much like embrace, if you've been to embrace or as you think about the podcast, it's going to be like 12 podcast episodes, where we're really going to wrestle with how do we create proactive, positive, reasonable self-care for ourselves? How do we truly care for ourselves like we care for everyone around us? And how do we wrestle with what is pie in the sky and what is essential and necessary for today? And we're going to do both. So we'll do this in four sessions. We're going to do a session and then we'll have a half an hour break. Another session, we'll break for an hour for lunch. Another session, half an hour break, another session, and then we'll be done for the day. So online, you'll join us at nine. During the break sessions, there's just, it's going to be a break. So just know that you're going to have four sessions. In person, we'll have a couple of things going on during those breaks. Okay, so session one, I'm really going to talk about that educational and professional development part of self-care. And really, that is your uniqueness. So if you already have Embrace or you're going to get Embrace, like watch it or listen to it before you get to the adult self-care retreat. And this is really going to resonate with you. And you're going to be like running when you hear this part, because when I really thought about the order in which to teach this adult self-care retreat, for me, and I think for you too, because you're listening to this podcast, the genesis of everything related to the care of myself, personally, is my educational and professional development. I want to feel like I am moving forward. I don't like the status quo. I don't like going with the flow. I want to be where the flow comes from, thank you. I like to be growing and developing. I don't like to just be stagnant or declining. I am most anxious when I feel like I don't have a big, meaty goal to tackle or some big thing that I am working on adding to my uniqueness. I feel like that's probably you too. There's no way you're listening to these podcasts and you're like, yeah, no, status quo sounds good to me. There's no way. We're the same person. So I was like, let's start with that. Let's start with some big, meaty things like big, long list of all the things that we might want to do educationally and in our professional development. We're not going to do them all this summer, but big, long lists like what do we want to do? What is exciting for us? What adult professional development would we want to have? So that's how we'll start and then we'll have a break. Then the next session will be, okay, well, then what do we need to do so that we are healthy and well enough in order to go after those goals? So we're going to talk about medical care, wellness, nutrition needs, and we're really going to dive into physical wellness, nutrition wellness, all the different kinds of things we might need medically, nutritionally. I've got a lot of fun things that we're going to talk about. So just like you would with a kid, like, okay, well, what's a good meal plan for them? What's a good exercise program for them? How often do they need to go to the doctor? Which doctors would you need to see? Like, I've got a lot of great ideas that we're going to talk about in that next section. And really thinking about, how do we set ourselves up for success, like you would your child or your parent or grandparent, if you were in charge of their physical well-being? How do we be in charge of our own physical well-being and feel like we are really supported in this phase of life? We're going to think about ourselves for a while and what we need, not what we think everybody else is doing or what looks great on Instagram, or if we had a personal chef or what we do. If you have one of those, that's amazing, but most of us don't. What are we working towards? Then what are the first couple of steps we can take towards this? This will be a lot of the whole self-care retreat, just like it is an embrace. You think, okay, well, here's where I could be five, ten, fifteen years from now. Now, let's back it up. What am I going to do in the next 120 days? What is my thing? This self-care retreat, you are going to be pulling from it in all the planning days going forward. So when we get to the planning day in August, you'll be like, okay, so back to what I did in the self-care retreat, back to looking at all my medical and nutritional needs. What's one thing I can add to my morning, afternoon, evening routine? What's one thing I can add or take away from my housework list? See how these are going to kind of dovetail together? It's going to be so great. Okay, then we'll have lunch. After lunch, we're going to have some conversations about relationships. So adult self-care is a support of an adult's spiritual, emotional, and relational needs. How do we really talk about that? Well, we're going to wrestle with that a little bit. We're going to think about what do we need for our emotional development? Do we need therapy? Do we need coaches? How can we really grow our emotional development as adults? We'll touch on spiritual development lightly, and then we'll talk about relational needs. Like, what relational needs do we need in our close family and friends? Are there some friends that it's time to say, you know, this was a great season, but this is not a relationship that's going forward? Are there some friendships that are kind of like on the back burner that you really need to pull up forward and go, these are great friendships. I really want to put some time into these friendships and make sure I'm maintaining these friendships. And are there some areas in which you need to seek out new friendships? And I know a lot of you find new friends with Organize 365, which I love. You guys are so like minded, both online and in person, you will make a lot of great friendships and be able to hold each other accountable and meet some of your needs. A great example of this is what Laurie has done in the group for caregivers. Laurie's dad is in his nineties. You've heard him on the podcast. She talks about it all the time. And she's created a group for you guys where you get together and talk about things related to caregiving. It's so amazing. Another great example is in the teacher workbox that we used to have. That's now sunset over in that teacher workbox group. That's now in the legacy settings. You guys have come together and created times for you to come together and talk about the unique needs of teachers. Whenever you get humans together, they are able to meet and grow together. And so I'm super excited about what comes out of this that will have absolutely nothing to do with me and will have everything to do with you guys. And that is, it's amazing, just amazing to me. All right. And then our last session is going to be about getting you organized. We're going to talk about bathroom organization, having a schedule for our personal care services. Can I get an amen? How often are we going to get our hair cut and our nails done? Do you need pedicures and massages and facials and all that? And like I said, you may not be able to implement any of this right now, but we're going to make a list. We're going to make a list so that when we do planning day, when people ask you, what do you want for the holidays? What do you want for your birthday? You can go to this and go, you know what? I've never had a facial, but I think I'd like a facial. It's been four years since I got a massage. I'd like a massage. So often people ask us what we want. We're like, I don't know. For me, a puzzle. I'd like a puzzle. But now I'm asking for Lululemon gift cards so that I could go get more workout clothes. I mean, that's not something I ever would have asked for before. So what are the things that maybe you're not doing today, but in the future you might want to do? We're going to talk about our closets, and we're going to talk about clothing. We've created a whole bunch of future versions of ourselves up until this point in this self-care retreat. We're going to think through all those different versions of ourselves and what is their uniform going to look like, and how can we start to build our wardrobe around who we are becoming versus what's just in our closets, and then we will end with our bedrooms. So that is going to be the self-care retreat. If you want to know more of the nitty-gritty details, go ahead and go over to the Organize 365 website. There will also be a link in the show notes. Go to the shop, find the self-care retreat, and you'll see the different versions. But basically the self-care retreat, virtual or in person, will have the same content. It's going to have a downloadable workbook. It's a very generic workbook. It'll just have the section of what we're talking about and some lines for you to write on in that. We'll have the talks. You'll be in the community. The replays will be in the community. It's going to be a lifetime purchase that is new. I was saying that it was going to expire on Labor Day, and I've changed my mind. I think that this should be like an embrace. Once you've made the investment, you are going to stay in this group. You'll be able to redo it every summer, just like you can redo and embrace every summer. There are some other things that are included. If you're listening to this after the book launch and it's available for purchase, it will be different before the book launch. It's going to include five copies of the book and some other things. So just head on over to the Organize 365 website to watch the video and see what's included in the live version of the self-care retreat. Okay, so here's where we are. Next week is planning day. We are going to be planning this summer. If you are already registered for planning day, I want you to go on over to the planning day group in the app. I've dropped another video for you talking about the uncertain economic times that we're in right now, how I am viewing those, what I am doing. And I think that doubling down on investing in yourself, embrace in the self-care retreat and getting clear on what project you want to do. I'm going to be talking a lot about organizing paper this summer, and the extra paper organizing seminars that we're going to have, is what I'm going to be guiding you through. There are some other options in which you can do in Planning Day. And when we're in Planning Day, I'll talk about how you do a bigger household project, how you do a kid project like I usually do. Those will all be over in Planning Day. If you want to join us in Planning Day, I don't think it's too late. We do run out of workbooks. So however many workbooks we have, that's when it will sell out. Now is the time to join so that we could get your workbooks sent out on Monday. If you sign up next week and your workbook isn't going to get you in time, don't worry about it. This is not an emergency. Don't stress out. Just watch Planning Day, especially if this is your first time, as if it's a live event because it is. Then when your workbook arrives, just do the activities when you watch the replay. If this is your first, second, or third Planning Day, you should know you will not finish all of the workbook activities. You will not get everything done. It will feel like you're drinking water through a fire hose because you are, because I've been planning for my entire life, and I think very deeply and I plan a lot. So if you can implement three, four, five ideas out of Planning Day, that is a huge win. I think I mentioned in the tax seminar that I did for the Sunday Basket Club, that I go to a two-day, 16-hour tax seminar every year from a tax attorney. And he says, if you find one to three ideas to implement in your taxes this year, that's it. Stop. Do not try to implement everything that he shares because he shares so much. And you physically can't even implement all of those things. So same with Planning Day. You are looking for adding three to five new ideas of how to plan every year, not implementing every single thing. All right. That is all I have. I am so excited about Planning Day and seeing you guys next week. We will be back on Thursday and Friday. Remember, the replay will be available for six weeks. Self-care retreat is open. Oh, one last thing. The self-care retreat, that does not get you into the book club. So if you have not bought your pre-order copy of Escaping QuickSand yet, in order to get into the book club, these are two separate purchases. So your pre-order copy of the Escaping QuickSand book, bought wherever you bought it by books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Booksamillion, wherever, you go back over and you put in that receipt, and that gives you the free book club that we're doing right now, where I'm dropping an audio chapter every week. If you haven't done that yet, you could still do that. That is separate from the book care retreat. The book care retreat is going to be an additional five copies of the book. I'm doing this as part of how to get on a USA Today bestseller list. We did this back when The Paper Solution was launched as well. So those are two separate purchases. Just wanted to let you guys know that. All right. Hope to see you in Planning Day. And I really hope to see you in the self care retreat. Spring has sprung. And you know what that means. That means we're getting ready for summer. I would love to curate and walk you through how I purposefully think through and plan for the next season in my life. I do this through planning days. The Organize 365 Planning Day Experience is a two day experience with a six week replay. Starting on Thursday, April 30th, we will deep dive into our Sunday baskets, clean them out, move anything into binders that has been finished, create slash pockets for what we know is coming next in the summer and reset all of our tear pads and our weekly to do's. Then on Friday, May 1st, for four hours, we will deep dive into a workbook that I have created just for you and me to think about the next 120 days. We'll be thinking through May, June, July, and August. We'll be thinking through all of our household management responsibilities, housework, goals for our family, fun that we want to incorporate, and how we're going to get our organizing done in this next season. Registration is open. It will be a live event on Thursday, April 30th, and Friday, May 1st, with replays available for six weeks. I can't wait to see you in Planning Day and see how much purposely, strategically planning the next season in your life makes an impact on how much you're able to accomplish in this next season and also how much you're able to enjoy and experience the season once it's been planned. Join us for Planning Day, April 30th and May 1st.