Get Organized!

[00:00:09] Welcome to Riches Revealed, revealing how to improve your finances and lead a richer life.

[00:00:16] Coming to you from the scruffy low city of Knoxville, Tennessee, is financial planner Jack Martin.

[00:00:32] So today I wanted to talk to you about the importance of being organized.

[00:00:38] And this is not just about the kind of things that happen at work, but also in your personal life as well.

[00:00:46] Because I don't think that you can generally be successful and accomplish the things that you want in life if you're not organized.

[00:00:58] Now I realize that probably in your mind you're immediately jumping to examples of people who are completely disorganized and yet they've accomplished great things.

[00:01:09] And I'm not speaking to the exceptions here.

[00:01:13] Because there's always an exception that people can find.

[00:01:17] Talking generally speaking, for most people you need to be pretty organized in order to accomplish your goals in life.

[00:01:24] Some people that you might be thinking of, for instance, are actually able to appear to be disorganized from what you see.

[00:01:33] But in their mind they're able to keep track of things very well.

[00:01:37] I think that's kind of an unusual type of individual that's able to do that.

[00:01:43] And even for that type of person, I believe that really it's not really an ideal scenario.

[00:01:51] Because a large portion of their mental faculties are being used just trying to keep track of things, times, places,

[00:02:03] that otherwise could be offloaded to an organizational system so that they wouldn't have to be keeping track of those kind of things.

[00:02:12] To give you an example of how important I think this is, I'm going to tell you my story of what happened to me and just how important organization is in life.

[00:02:24] Hold on for just a moment. Let me get a glass of water.

[00:02:28] All right, I'm back.

[00:02:29] If I was more organized, maybe I'd remember to have some water with me.

[00:02:34] To give you an example, when I first went to college at Arizona State,

[00:02:40] I thought that, I guess I was thinking that I could get by like I had in high school.

[00:02:46] Sliding by, doing enough, and just relying on some talents and brains and things like that.

[00:02:53] But I thought that I would be okay with it.

[00:02:56] I don't think it helped when I went there.

[00:02:58] I didn't quite know what I wanted to do.

[00:03:02] Some of you may be able to relate to that.

[00:03:04] And I think that's probably one of the reasons that so many people don't succeed initially when they go to college.

[00:03:11] And that was, as I'll tell you, that was my experience.

[00:03:16] I was disorganized to the point that I didn't know where my classes were.

[00:03:21] I went from a very small school, preparatory high school up in Maine.

[00:03:28] I think we had 250 students, something like that.

[00:03:33] So we're talking a small place, easy to find your way around.

[00:03:37] Everybody knew everybody.

[00:03:39] You couldn't really fall through the cracks.

[00:03:42] There were no cracks to fall through.

[00:03:45] Then I went to Arizona State, which had 40-something thousand students and was like a small city.

[00:03:52] And that difference was part of the issue too.

[00:03:56] To succeed in an environment like that, you really had to be self-sufficient and organized.

[00:04:02] And I wasn't.

[00:04:04] Like I said, I didn't know where my classes were.

[00:04:07] All the buildings looked the same to me.

[00:04:09] I didn't have basics like a backpack.

[00:04:13] If I had a notebook, it's probably something I just grabbed at the last kind of moment.

[00:04:19] Supplies, computer equipment.

[00:04:21] I just really was not prepared for what I ran into there.

[00:04:29] So after the first semester, I was on probation.

[00:04:35] I had a one-point-something GPA.

[00:04:39] So I decided to try and put more effort into it.

[00:04:44] Stop doing all the stuff I was doing.

[00:04:47] The messing around and chasing girls and drinking all the time.

[00:04:53] Decided to try and get myself better situated.

[00:04:57] And I put in effort the second semester.

[00:05:01] And I still did terribly.

[00:05:03] In fact, I was so bad that after my second semester, I had a .9 GPA.

[00:05:12] And the school told me not to come back.

[00:05:15] I tell you this to tell you that was primarily an issue of me not being responsible and not putting in the effort to be organized.

[00:05:32] And perhaps not having the skills, the knowledge, how to go about it.

[00:05:37] That story is really to tell you that without being organized, you're probably not going to be able to achieve a lot of the things you want.

[00:05:45] And to give you the flip side of that story, I went back to college years later and it was a completely different story.

[00:05:53] I made sure that there was no chance that I was going to fail the second time around.

[00:05:59] I had to go and go through the community college system initially because no four-year university would ever accept me after having failed out with a .9 GPA.

[00:06:10] But the second time around, I was in community college.

[00:06:15] I was Phi Theta Kappa.

[00:06:16] I had a .396 GPA.

[00:06:19] Everything I did was completely different the second time around.

[00:06:23] I thought back to all the things that I had failed at previously and made sure those were things that I knew how to do.

[00:06:31] After going through community college, I transferred to the University of Colorado and finished up my four-year degree there and was successful there as well.

[00:06:41] I think my GPA at that point maybe was only a 3.4 something, 3.5.

[00:06:47] But still good.

[00:06:48] But I also was able to do a lot of the things to make sure that I got all the experiences outside the classroom as well.

[00:06:58] Like when I went to the University of Colorado, I walked the campus prior to classes even starting when I first enrolled there to make sure that I had a real thorough understanding of the layout of the campus and marked down where all my classes were.

[00:07:15] I had all my supplies ready, backpacks, the computer equipment that I needed.

[00:07:21] I wanted to make sure that there was no chance that there was going to be a repeat a second time around.

[00:07:26] So today I'm going to tell you about some more things that I've also learned along the way in the workplace to help you in your life and also in your home life as well.

[00:07:36] Because a lot of the things that you want to accomplish in the world are not just at the workplace.

[00:07:42] So after failing out of college, I worked at UPS for years.

[00:07:48] And they taught me a really valuable lesson.

[00:07:51] And the lesson that they taught me was touch things only once.

[00:07:58] So I used to load trucks in the morning.

[00:08:02] And the packages would come down a belt.

[00:08:05] And there would generally be three or four trucks that I would be responsible for loading so that the drivers could take them out and deliver them.

[00:08:15] If you got into a situation where the packages were coming down fast and you decided to, rather than walk them in the truck, you set them behind the truck.

[00:08:27] That might seem good initially because you've saved time.

[00:08:33] But you've cost yourself time later.

[00:08:36] And not only have you cost yourself the amount of time that it would have taken to walk it in, but as the packages start to pile up, you become less efficient getting in and out of that truck walking the packages in and out.

[00:08:48] And if it gets bad enough, pretty soon you're actually tripping over packages.

[00:08:51] And it becomes dangerous and very time-consuming.

[00:08:55] So it becomes very inefficient.

[00:08:58] And this really pertains to your work life and your home life as well.

[00:09:03] The ideal situation is that when you have something that needs a task done to it, it might just be as simple as sorting your mail and deciding what stuff needs to go in the trash.

[00:09:16] If you pick up the mail and you look at it and you can't quite make up your mind what to do with it and you set it down, what's happened there?

[00:09:25] At the very best, you're going to wind up having to look at it again and try and make the decision all over again.

[00:09:31] So you automatically double the amount of time at the very least.

[00:09:36] But then as things start to pile up more and more, your office becomes cluttered.

[00:09:41] Your workplace becomes cluttered.

[00:09:43] And then it becomes harder to find things.

[00:09:45] So it affects other aspects of your life as well once you've innocently set down that envelope that you didn't want to make a decision on right then.

[00:09:55] So the ideal situation is touch things only once, look at it, and make a decision right there.

[00:10:03] If it needs an action, try and take that action immediately so that you don't go through the process of having to reacclimate yourself with it later and then decide on an action that needs to be taken as well.

[00:10:16] This also goes back to another issue, which is the importance of time.

[00:10:24] Sometimes people will push back on the idea of the very thought of being highly organized because they say that it takes time.

[00:10:34] And it does.

[00:10:35] It definitely takes time to be organized.

[00:10:38] It also takes a lot of time to be disorganized.

[00:10:43] And the importance of the time, you may think, for instance, that a minute is a minute, right?

[00:10:49] They're all the same.

[00:10:50] They're not all the same.

[00:10:53] The minute that you can use, for instance, at the end of your workday or a slow time period,

[00:11:00] that minute that you might spend organizing is not nearly as important as the minute that you need as you're rushing out the door for an appointment.

[00:11:13] So to clarify, let's say you take a minute and you put that document, that important document, that one for the meeting, in its folder.

[00:11:27] That took you some time.

[00:11:29] Let's just say that it took you a minute.

[00:11:33] That's a minute that cost you a minute.

[00:11:36] But let's look at the other scenario.

[00:11:39] Let's say that you don't spend that minute to do that.

[00:11:42] You've saved yourself roughly a minute, probably less, but you've set down the important document somewhere else because you didn't want to take the time to put it in its proper spot.

[00:11:54] Then you go to leave for the meeting and you've got one minute to get out the door.

[00:12:01] But you can't put your hand on that important document because you don't know where exactly it is.

[00:12:08] Minutes are not minutes.

[00:12:10] They're not all equal.

[00:12:13] You could have spent that one minute making sure you were organized using a less valuable minute.

[00:12:18] And instead, now you're trying to use a minute to find that important document for a critical minute.

[00:12:24] And maybe that minute is the one that's going to cost you time that will cause you to be late for your appointment.

[00:12:31] An absolutely critical minute that you couldn't afford.

[00:12:36] So you can't afford to use minutes that are less valuable, and I would encourage you to do that.

[00:12:41] So the whole thing that we're going to be talking about today with these little tips about being organized, really use the less valuable minutes for these organizational processes because they will allow you to have back the critical minutes when you need them.

[00:12:58] So to get on to some specifics, I like to have a large desk, for instance, a good-sized desk.

[00:13:04] At the very least.

[00:13:05] There are actually people in the world who actually get by without even having a desk, and I don't know how they manage that, to be honest.

[00:13:12] I don't know how anybody can get by in life without a desk.

[00:13:16] Something to write on, to spread papers on, to keep your computer equipment on, and preferably a desk that's also got some file drawers and drawers to keep miscellaneous equipment in as well.

[00:13:33] And, of course, it should all be fairly organized, at least, so you can put your hands on things.

[00:13:38] I don't understand the whole concept of, like, desks that are nothing but tables, basically, that have no drawers.

[00:13:45] Hey, the modern aesthetic kind of thing.

[00:13:47] I don't get it at all.

[00:13:49] Get yourself a desk that's got good drawers and preferably a file drawer as well.

[00:13:56] If not, if it doesn't have that, get yourself a little external file cabinet.

[00:14:00] And I'm going to explain to you why I think that's important.

[00:14:03] Now, some of you might be saying, I do everything, like, on the computer kind of thing anyway.

[00:14:10] I don't think we're ever quite to the point in society where, you know, we're completely paperless.

[00:14:15] And I'm about as computer savvy as most people you're going to meet.

[00:14:21] So what I would recommend is, for instance, with your documents either in the workplace or at home.

[00:14:28] This kind of works for both locales.

[00:14:34] Is make sure that you've got yourself a filing system and a file cabinet.

[00:14:39] And you put documents in there that maybe you don't have time to immediately scan into the computer.

[00:14:45] Because I will say that scanning is more time consuming than filing.

[00:14:52] But the filing does at least allow you to easily put your hands on things.

[00:14:57] Now, long term, you want to have the things scanned into your computer system.

[00:15:02] And I would say that it should be saved on a cloud-based system so that you can access it from all your devices.

[00:15:10] What I do is, I have a...

[00:15:13] I'll give you actually the names of all my different files that I keep here in my house.

[00:15:17] And you can make what you want of those.

[00:15:20] But it'll give you an idea of what the filing system that I use.

[00:15:23] And some of these are not going to pertain to you.

[00:15:26] And there'll be a bunch on here or that are not on here that you'll want to add for yourself.

[00:15:31] So my file names are current bills.

[00:15:34] I actually keep that one at the front just to make sure that I check it every once in a while.

[00:15:39] To make sure there's nothing in there that I've forgotten about.

[00:15:41] Then they go alphabetically after that.

[00:15:43] So I've got automobile, banking, cards.

[00:15:47] Which means gift cards in this case.

[00:15:50] Certified financial planner stuff.

[00:15:53] Contacts, coupons, computing, credit cards, financial planning association, housing, investments,

[00:16:01] marketing, manuals, and warranties.

[00:16:03] Medical, which is oftentimes the biggest one because the medical establishment loves to send paper to you.

[00:16:12] Miscellaneous, which honestly, if you've got a good filing system,

[00:16:15] you shouldn't need to put a whole lot of stuff in the miscellaneous folder.

[00:16:18] So if you find yourself really filling that up, it probably means you need to make some new folders for yourself.

[00:16:27] Patents, phone bills, podcasts, receipts, schools, utilities, and work.

[00:16:34] So that's my list.

[00:16:36] And what I do with that is, like I said, I will put things in there on a temporary basis.

[00:16:42] And then preferably about at least once a month or so, I will go and scan those into the computer.

[00:16:51] On the computer, it's important to have a good filing system there as well.

[00:16:55] It may resemble in a lot of ways the filing system that I just wrote off to you, the paper filing system.

[00:17:02] What I would do is get yourself a good scanner.

[00:17:05] I recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap.

[00:17:12] I guess they got bought out by Ricoh.

[00:17:15] But the Fujitsu ScanSnap is a really great scanner that can handle all sorts of multiple sizes of paper.

[00:17:22] It has great visual quality.

[00:17:25] Super easy to use.

[00:17:27] When Ricoh bought them, their software is not as good as it used to be.

[00:17:30] So if you can get an older version of the software, it's actually better than the new one.

[00:17:34] But if you guys have questions about that, just write to me on the website, richesrevealed.com.

[00:17:40] You can send me a message there.

[00:17:42] A critical part of what you're going to be doing with the scanning is to scan them as a searchable PDF.

[00:17:47] PDF.

[00:17:49] Then, if you're using a good searching system like it can be found built into a Mac, you can actually just do a search and it will find that document anywhere on the computer that it might be in.

[00:18:01] So you don't have to be perfect with your filing on the computer because you'll still be able to find it if you can think of a good search term, good keyword to be able to find it.

[00:18:10] And then within the document itself, once you're there, if you want something in a long document that you need to be able to find that easily, you'll do a keyword search, just a search in the PDF.

[00:18:20] Whatever PDF you're using could be something like Adobe Reader, which is free.

[00:18:27] And you can still do a search with Adobe Reader and it'll find that keyword within that document.

[00:18:33] So again, make it as a searchable PDF.

[00:18:36] It's very important that it be searchable.

[00:18:38] Following up on some of the stuff about computers, I use generally a two monitor system.

[00:18:44] That way I can have something up on one screen and something on the other.

[00:18:48] I know some people have actually gone to an ultra wide screen and they're also able to do that and keep multiple documents up on something at the same time.

[00:18:58] So it might be a document or a website in one area and you're looking at information back and forth and transferring information or being able to research two different things at once and see how they compare.

[00:19:09] So something like that works really well.

[00:19:12] I think it works a lot better than just having kind of one small screen where just one thing at a time tends to take up the entire screen.

[00:19:20] So that's why it's important, I think, to either have that dual monitor or a widescreen monitor.

[00:19:26] Now I will tell you that for computer equipment, I am a believer in Apple products compared to PCs and Android.

[00:19:42] I am a believer in Apple products compared to PCs and Android.

[00:20:09] As though it wasn't going to be much of an issue.

[00:20:12] It was a terrible experience for me.

[00:20:15] It wound up almost destroying my computer entirely.

[00:20:20] And everything that they said that could be done to reverse the process either didn't even exist or was buried so deep that you couldn't find it.

[00:20:33] So that was the last straw for me.

[00:20:34] And at the time I was using a Windows computer and an Android phone.

[00:20:41] And then I went and I got myself a Mac computer and Apple phones.

[00:20:47] And I like the fact that they are able to easily communicate back and forth with one another.

[00:20:53] The cloud system is stable, robust, and inexpensive.

[00:20:59] So things that you save in the cloud on iCloud Drive are accessible easily, natively across all your devices.

[00:21:07] And one of the things that's so key about Apple devices is they're based on a Unix type system.

[00:21:17] And it doesn't use the shared registry that occurs with Windows products.

[00:21:25] So with a Windows product, they all share this registry system.

[00:21:29] And they all kind of dip their toes into the registry system.

[00:21:35] And if one of them was to corrupt the registry system, then it's corrupted for everybody.

[00:21:40] And this is why you find so many times that you develop issues the older your Windows computer gets that are almost unexplainable.

[00:21:54] And it's because of this shared registry system where it just essentially becomes more and more corrupted over time.

[00:22:02] With the Mac computers, it's a discrete registry system.

[00:22:07] Each one has its own registry.

[00:22:09] And therefore, it can't cause problems for all the other computer programs you may have.

[00:22:14] And that's also one of the reasons that it's a more secure system as well.

[00:22:17] So for me, I'm Mac all the way now.

[00:22:21] And I'm much happier.

[00:22:24] I've literally lost years of my life to Windows computers trying to fix issues.

[00:22:30] And when I, like for instance, do an update on my Mac computer, it's a non-event.

[00:22:38] Everything works fine afterwards.

[00:22:41] I don't have any issues with it.

[00:22:42] I don't have to start reinstalling drivers.

[00:22:45] Things don't start working strangely that worked before.

[00:22:48] So it's a much better, more stable system.

[00:22:51] I will say for all of you who are thinking that you love your Windows computer, I get it.

[00:22:59] But the Windows operating system in many ways, I think, is when it works, is a better operating system in a lot of ways than the Mac.

[00:23:11] When it works.

[00:23:13] That's the key.

[00:23:14] I will never, I don't expect to go back anytime soon to working on a Windows computer if I can at all avoid it.

[00:23:22] So let's talk a little bit about home organization as well.

[00:23:26] Because that can also have a big effect on you.

[00:23:29] It has a big effect on your mindset and your family life as well.

[00:23:36] So I know that there is also the system called feng shui, I believe.

[00:23:45] I'm probably just murdering the pronunciation there entirely.

[00:23:49] But a lot of the things that I suppose I'm talking about may be part of that system as well.

[00:23:55] So I don't know a lot about that system, but it's probably something worth looking into a little bit about.

[00:24:00] I believe that, and this is probably one of the principles also of feng shui as well,

[00:24:05] is that an organized environment leads to an organized mind.

[00:24:09] And I believe it's very much a circular thing.

[00:24:12] So I tell people, if you come over to my house and it's messy, it's probably because I'm not doing very well mentally for some reason.

[00:24:24] I'm down about something.

[00:24:27] And I recognize that oftentimes as well.

[00:24:31] And I will look at my environment and realize that it's become messy.

[00:24:35] And one of the ways to bring myself, my mental mood up is to organize my environment.

[00:24:44] And then it makes me feel better just looking at a more organized place.

[00:24:48] And again, that kind of feeds into a more organized, decisive feeling mind.

[00:24:55] So it's critical also in your home life as well.

[00:24:58] So I will say that one thing that I have recently changed is that I may be going back to using paper for my kind of daily to-do list.

[00:25:12] And I was thinking about it, and I was thinking about when I was getting the most done.

[00:25:17] And I think it was when I had a to-do list, an organizer that I could write things down on.

[00:25:22] And there's a company called Planner Pads, a very generic name.

[00:25:26] But Planner Pads, where at the top they have things that you want to do.

[00:25:32] Below that is a list of, you can bring things down.

[00:25:36] And it has a list of things that you want to do that day.

[00:25:41] And then below that would be specific times, either for appointments or those specific things that you want to get done that day.

[00:25:49] What time do you want to get them done?

[00:25:50] So I think that works pretty well.

[00:25:52] It works better for me than just making up a list on my iPhone of things without any specific times to them.

[00:25:59] And it also creates a more efficient system.

[00:26:03] Because part of the thing about being organized is you have to be able to see what you're trying to organize.

[00:26:11] And that's probably something I could have mentioned to you earlier.

[00:26:14] It's a hallmark of being organized to be able to see what you need to be able to see.

[00:26:19] If you can't see it easily, you can't organize it.

[00:26:24] And that's probably sounding very obvious at the moment.

[00:26:28] But you can't organize what you can't see.

[00:26:31] So I may be going back to paper now.

[00:26:33] Things like my contacts, I keep on the phone.

[00:26:36] A work schedule that I need to share with others.

[00:26:39] That's going to be on the computer.

[00:26:42] So computer and phone, for me using Mac, that's the same thing.

[00:26:46] If you're in a workplace where you've got an iPhone and you've got a Windows PC or something,

[00:26:52] you have to make accommodations there.

[00:26:54] You're going to have to probably keep your schedule on the PC.

[00:26:58] Hopefully in a cloud that can also be pulled down onto your phone.

[00:27:02] That's not that difficult, honestly.

[00:27:04] Your to-do list, you may keep something on paper, but people are going to need to be able

[00:27:10] to see oftentimes what you're working on.

[00:27:12] So you'll need to keep something on the computer there as well.

[00:27:14] So there are going to be things that you're going to have to do to make sure that other

[00:27:18] people are able to see what you're working on as well.

[00:27:21] So that's one of the drawbacks, of course, to paper is others can't easily access what

[00:27:26] you're doing.

[00:27:30] So gymnastics were today in the Olympics.

[00:27:32] And I've got to tell you, I watched Simone Biles today.

[00:27:37] And you probably know she's considered one of the greatest gymnasts ever.

[00:27:44] And today I really saw why.

[00:27:46] In the floor routine, she was the last person to go on the last event, the floor routine.

[00:27:55] And at that point, she just about had it locked up.

[00:27:58] But it was leading up to that.

[00:28:01] It was fairly close.

[00:28:03] And people were saying that this was her best event.

[00:28:07] And I saw why.

[00:28:08] The difference between her and the other gymnasts in that event was pretty remarkable.

[00:28:17] She had more power, higher, greater spins.

[00:28:23] It was impressive.

[00:28:27] It was just impressive.

[00:28:30] And we're talking something that's already impressive that all the other women are doing

[00:28:35] as well.

[00:28:35] But Simone Biles was clearly on a different level in that event.

[00:28:42] So you saw what makes her so great in a lot of ways was right there in that event.

[00:28:49] So that's about it for today.

[00:28:51] Hope you guys are doing well.

[00:28:52] And until next time, be one of the good ones.

[00:29:10] The end.