(This article was originally published in 2010 and updated in 2017. It has been updated in 2020.)

Flylady is one of the biggest systems for managing your home cleaning out there. It works for many people. But if you’re one of the unlucky few that it doesn’t work for, Flybabies (adherents to Flylady’s system) will tell you that you didn’t try hard enough.

One of the biggest search terms that brings people to my blogs is “when Flylady doesn’t work.” So I know that it isn’t just me that it doesn’t work for. I did try. I worked that system for well over five years before I finally threw in the towel.

Sometimes the best results are about simplifying, rather than following exactly.

March to the Drum

Flylady’s system is very regimented. This is not a bad thing…for those who need structure, those emails are something to grab onto and do. No questions, no thinking.

Dozens of reminder emails are sent out with a militant bent. You MUST shine your sink every night. You MUST do 15 minutes of cleaning every day. You MUST clean by zones. Everything has its time, rotating around, and if you fall behind you are admonished to pick up the rhythm again, marching back in line.

There is Some Good

Flylady does have some great qualities. It was instrumental in getting me past my perfectionism which led me to do nothing. Her 15 minutes is a great example of what Mark Forster calls the “little-and-often” principle. And she lays out, in a very structured way, how to clean your house.

And honestly, I don’t want to have to think about how and when to clean the house. It’s not something I want to spend my brain cycles on. So in that regard, Flylady is great.

For so many people, myself included, Flylady isn’t a sustainable system. It can be rigid, too complicated, and overwhelming. So here are some ways to simplify Flylady’s system:

Simplifying Flylady

Set Your Own Daily List

Flylady has a list of tasks that need to be done every day. These include getting dressed to the shoes, swish and swipe (bathroom maintenance), laundry, hot spot patrol and shining your sink. These tasks are to give you a place to start and keep you on track.

I have a confession: I clean my sink once a week, not every night. I wipe down my kitchen counters every night to keep ants away. I also swiffer my floors downstairs every day – partly to keep up with the fur from 4 animals, but also because I go barefoot in the house (GASP! No SHOES!!!!!)

One of the secrets of making this daily routine work is to make it your own. You know what is important.

Pick Your Own Zones and Chores

At the time I originally wrote this article, I had stretched my household deep cleaning (also known as zones) into 13 areas and did everything quarterly. That just gave me a reason to procrastinate, so I went back to monthly rotations.

One of the principles of Flylady are the Zones. Breaking your house up into five areas, you clean each area for 15 minutes a day, focusing on one of the Zones per week in the calendar. The problem is that rarely do we have five full weeks in a month, so Zone 1 and Zone 5 are shorted.

Zone one includes your Entrance, Front Porch and Dining Room. Zone two is the kitchen. Zone three is the bathroom and one other room. Zone four is the bedroom. Zone five is the living room.

Anyone else see a problem here? This zone system works great if you have a one bath, one bedroom house. Me? I have four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a formal living and dining room, a great room, a game room, a writing studio, two pantries and a partially finished attic. Cramming all those into the proscribed zones leaves me crazy, since we use all the rooms regularly.

And those aren’t going into the regular five zones.

Flylady’s chores don’t fit my house either, and I needed to customize them.

Customizable Chore Grids

I’ve developed a spreadsheet to help me customize the chores to my house. I’m making it available to all those people out there who have a bigger place than a one-bedroom/one-bath house. It’s a complete and customizable (to YOUR house) way to generate a zone cleaning list. It comes in two flavors: Excel and Google Sheets.

For more information on the sheet, please click here: Get The Chore Grid

Reducing Frequency

One of the underlying principles of Flylady is that if you clean something before it looks dirty, it won’t be as much work to clean it.

I can see that. However, in the Fly system, that means you clean all the time.

A closed cabinet with knickknacks? Clean it once a month. Windows? Clean them once a month. Sink? Clean it daily.

Nope. Not for me.

I have figured out where that magic line is between extra effort for cleaning and needless cleaning for most things. True, I err on the side of extra effort, and make sure I note if there is a lot of extra work involved.

That’s figured into the spreadsheet above.

My Family Is Involved

One of the things I heard over and over again in the Flylady emails were that families weren’t helping out. The response? “Tough! Do it yourself.” (I’m paraphrasing. Flylady would never be that tactless.)

Hold the horses right there.

I live in a house with two other humans. None of us are home full time. Therefore, all of us do housework.

I had to work at this. At first I consistently asked my husband to do certain chores. They are now “his”. This includes laundry, changing linens and towels, and mowing the grass. My daughter has chores assigned to her every week, and she can earn money by doing extra chores, like mowing the grass, weeding, emptying trash. These have changed as she grows older; but she has been making her bed and picking up since she was three. She started doing laundry as soon as she could reach the bottom of the washer with a stepstool. And now she maintains her own bathroom, empties the dishwasher, and keeps the great room shipshape. Since she is now a college student living at home, she has taken on additional chores and cooks a few meals a week.

True, the majority of the housework is on me. I’m the most efficient at it out of practice. If I feel like I have too much on my plate, I can ask for help. And if someone complains that I haven’t been doing something around the house, they immediately find it is now theirs.

They’re Suggestions, Not Commands

In spite of Flylady’s best efforts to exhort her followers to not play catch-up (“Jump in where you are”), many people feel guilty if they don’t get to what they are supposed to.

Remembering that the 15 minutes of cleaning, shining your sink and zones are all suggestions, not commands.

If you are one of the people for whom Flylady doesn’t work, take heart. You don’t have to feel guilty.

You don’t have to discard all of it; just make it flexible to fit your life.

The Someday-Maybe list is a mythical being of great power. You give it the things you would like to do, and it keeps them for you. But like most mythical beings, it has a dark side. Most of the Someday-Maybes consume the projects and expand to dangerous levels, until they topple over and explode on your current work, peppering you with shards of guilt and disappointment.

When I first read about the Someday-Maybe list (Getting Things Done*), I was thrilled. Finally I had a place to stash all of those things I wanted to do eventually, but just didn’t have time for now. I started cheerfully putting stuff on the list. After all, I would get to it someday, right?

Someday is a really poor place to plan on doing things. Because someday is never now.

And by definition, we will never get to those things. They are out of sight, out of mind, waiting for someday to come.

I had an awakening a couple of weeks ago when I looked at my someday-maybe list. It has grown to gigantic proportions. I would estimate that it will take longer to clear my someday-maybe list than several lifetimes. I don’t have several lifetimes, and so now I must take this beast in hand before I end up with a pile of regrets.

The Cause of The Backlog

The someday-maybe list is just a big ol’ fancy name for a backlog. And it has to be handled like a backlog if you are going to stay on top of it.

Inputs Exceed Outputs

So what causes a backlog? Simply put, it’s when the output doesn’t equal or exceed the input. In other words, you’re not doing stuff as fast or faster as it is being added to the list.

When you are dealing with a backlog on an assembly line, you can see it happening, because the material keeps coming. A great example of this is Lucy’s Chocolate Job:

Putting Reviewing The Backlog on the Backlog

If you can’t see the backlog coming, then you need to review the inputs to see if there is a backlog building. Surprisingly, most people put reviewing the backlog in the backlog. So you may get to the point where you are seeing it, but it will be too late to do anything.

Lack Of Purging

If the backlog gets too great, you either have to put more people on it to get it done, or eliminate the tasks. Most people dump things into their someday-maybe lists and never look at them again. This can cause unnecessary bulk. For instance, you might have wanted to climb Mt. Everest at one point, but if the opportunity offered itself now you would choose not to do it. Yet “Climb Mt. Everest” stays in the list.

Purging any list is important. Lack of purging, after all, is how I ended up with a mini-trampoline. But that is a story for another time.

It can be hard to purge things from your lists. After all, these were things that at one time were important to you. But it still must be done, or the list will soon be unusable.

A Word About Definitions

Before we start talking about sorting your tasks, let’s set forth some definitions.

A Someday is something that you have committed to do. By the nature of the word commitment, it also means that you have set a time frame for when you will do this.

A Maybe means that are things that interest you, but not enough to commit to doing it.

With these two definitions, it should be straightforward to sort your tasks.

Pruning the List

Getting rid of a backlog is not a difficult task, but it can be taxing because you are making lots of decisions. That is the only challenging part of the process. Here are the steps:

1. Get everything into one place. Your lists will function best if you only have one place to check. This may live in a part of your regular task list, or in a separate tool altogether. I use Evernote to manage my someday/maybes, because I can easily send things to my task manager of choice, Remember The Milk.
2. Decide on a way to distinguish the two. Regardless of where you keep these things, you will need some way to determine which are somedays and which are maybes. You will also need to segregate them if you are using your regular task list, so that they do not cloud your vision of what needs to be done right now. In my case, I have a separate notebook in Evernote for these tasks, and label them as “.someday” or “.maybe”
3. First Pass: sort somedays vs. maybes. On your first pass through the list, sort the tasks into somedays and maybes. Use your method decided on in the second step above to label the difference between the two. Remember, if you are not willing to commit to doing this in the next year, it goes on the Maybe list.
4. Second Pass: Sort the Maybes. Now you need to take a more detailed look at the Maybe list. Evaluate each one. Sit with it. Ask if you really want to do it. If you do, add the date to it so you know when you last looked at it. If you don’t, delete it. I personally keep an “Abandoned” notebook in Evernote to hold these things so that I can look back and have a good laugh later. (“I really wanted to do that?“)
5. Third Pass: Evaluate the Quantity of the Somedays. Now you need to purge your Somedays. If you are like me, you will have lots of things on the Someday list. Far more than you can ever do in the next year, even if you were to quit your job, ignore your family and friends, and focus solely on these tasks. It is time to be realistic about the Somedays. Don’t be afraid to move these into the Maybe list. You will revisit them soon.
6. Last Pass: Set Your Timeframes. Now, with your reasonable Someday list, you will go in and set the time frame for when you will do these things. Since I plan my time in 12 week blocks, I mark them as “Now”, “1Q”, “2Q”, “3Q”, “4Q” indicating how many quarters away they are.

That’s it. Your backlog should be manageable.

Getting It Done

So you’ve spent a lot of time working though that list. There are two things you need to remember:

1. You must DO the things on the list. Don’t ignore your work. Get those tasks you’ve committed to doing into a place where you will see and work on them.
2. You must REVIEW the system at least quarterly. You can either repeat the whole process above quarterly, or mark your new someday/maybes in a fashion that will allow you to process those as above. But you must move the tasks through the system, not allowing anything to stagnate.

Over To You

I would love to know how you manage your someday/maybes without it turning into a slush pile of despair. Comment below, or send me an email!

In any system, things get taken in (inputs), something happens, and things come out (outputs). If there are no inputs, the system dries up; if there are no outputs the system will explode. That’s a year of system theory boiled down, folks.

Productivity systems are no different. We have our inputs, which we talked about two weeks ago (Inputs: Getting Started with Productivity). So the next step is to consider what we need as outputs, so that we can figure out what has to happen in the system.

I’ve followed a lot of advice and systems for peak productivity out there. And I’ve had some successes, and some spectacular failures. All of the failures were because either I didn’t define my outputs correctly, or because I got outputs that weren’t workable. Today we will take a look at what meaningful outputs are, and how we design the system to get them.

Functions and Systems

I like to think of systems as a black box. You might have seen these in Algebra…I know my students did, just as I did. The inputs go in, something happens, and the output comes out.

The system operates the same way each time, meaning if you put the same thing in twice, you will get the exact same output. If you don’t get the same results, well, that’s just chaos.

But here is the thing. It isn’t enough to design what is in the black box: if the results aren’t helpful or meaningful, it is a waste of time.

Meaningful Outputs

So let’s talk about meaningful outputs.

Let’s say you have a system where you input flour, water and egg. There are a lot of possible different outputs here. You could end up with pasta. You could end up with popovers. You could end up with cream puff shells.

What you end up with depends on what happens in the black box. The black box can be set to produce pasta. However, if you are looking for cream puff shells, you have missed the mark.

We need to know what we are trying to get out so that we can make sure our productivity black box produces the output that we need.

Defining Your Outputs

So what are our outputs of a productivity system?

The main goal of any productivity system should be to allow you to get things done efficiently, in the most effective way possible.

This means that the things that go into your productivity system – emails, tasks, notes and appointments – need to come out of it in a form that allows you to act on them efficiently and effectively.

Efficiency

Efficiency means that you don’t waste time and effort. For the output, then it has to be presented in the way you need to see it, so that you don’t have to dig or manipulate it.

For example, you need to be notified of where an appointment is. A simple notification “You need to be somewhere at sometime today” is hopelessly vague. In order to be efficient, you need to be notified of the appointment before it happens, and it should provide you enough detail to get you to the right place at the right time. An efficient calendar reminder would tell you “You have a meeting with your dentist in 30 minutes” when you are 30 minutes away.

Effectiveness

Effective means that you get the information when you can act on it. Information that has no relevance does no good.

Being reminded that you need to bake cupcakes in the middle of the night does no good. Being reminded that you need to bake cupcakes the evening before you need to send them into the school gives you the information when you need it.

Picking Tools For Your Outputs

There are broad categories within outputs that apply to everyone. For example, we need to know about appointments before they happen. We need to know what needs to be done. We need to get to information that is relevant to whatever we are working on without having to search.

But the difference is that all of us will have a different criteria of effective and efficient within each type of output. Here are the basic outputs, and the variations that can be found.

Calendar

A calendar is for recording date and time-based commitments.

For some people, a paper calendar hanging on the wall is enough. For others, they need appointment books scheduled to the quarter hour. For others, it has to be with them all the time, and link into electronic systems. Still others will have a separate system for work and personal.

You can determine the most effective way to be notified of appointments by looking at what works…and what failed. If you missed an appointment because you forgot to look at the wall, you need something that will remind you. If you missed an appointment because it was rescheduled and you were out of the office and didn’t get the reschedule notification, you need something that is with you constantly. Each person will have different set of needs and efficiencies for the calendar.

Task Management

Task managers keep a list of things that need to be done.

Some people can use a pad of paper and fill it out every day. Others need lists of things to be done someday as well as extensive lists of ongoing projects. Still others will need a system that allows them to plan their workload for the day. Others need to be reminded to do things when they are in specific locations.

Unlike a calendar, you can’t look at missed task deadlines to determine what will work (because there are so many other things that affect how many tasks like unexpected scheduling, overflowing washers and watching football games. Not that I would know anything about that last one. Really.)

Instead, look at what makes it easiest for you to get your tasks done. Do you need a big list? A small one? Electronic, or paper? Do you need to be location-based? Do you need to manage load, both present and future?

Notes

Ah, notes. We take notes so that we can remember. But do we take them on paper? Electronically? On little pieces of paper you stuff into your wallet?

It doesn’t really matter as long as you can put your hands on them when you need them.

You can look at missed information to evaluate what your output needs to look like. When did you not have the information you needed? And more importantly, where was it so that you couldn’t get to it? Was it a matter of being in the wrong place? Or was it that you couldn’t find it?

So what are your output? Your assignment is to think about what is working, and what could be better.

Photo by bowdenartist. Licensed under Creative Commons. Text added.

Last week I talked about how I had started my bullet journal, and I provided the basic information on how to start one. This week I will talk about the particulars of how I am using it.

The First Few Pages

The first few pages of my journal are dedicated to the standard…

Index

I left a total of 5 pages for the index. In hindsight, this will probably be too many.

I decided that in addition to doing the page numbers, certain types of pages would have their edges marked so I could quickly find them. I am using a highlighter to do this. I have green for blog items and pink for list. Lesson learned: when using certain types of ink, it is better to highlight first and then write the words, otherwise the words will smear.

Future Pages

I did four pages of future. This allows three months per page, and goes out long enough for me to note things that are coming up.

Calendar Index

In a three column list, I wrote all the day numbers, noting when the months changed by a boxed letter. The purpose of this is for me to keep track of when I have done something. I’m still feeling my way on this.

Journal Pages

These are the pages that I am using to track things. This includes my month page, plus my daily entries.

My Month Page

This is just a calendar list, but allows me to see what days I have things going on. Since my notebook does not contain enough lines to have a month on one side, it spills onto the second page, and I write my tasks below that. I am still using Remember The Milk as my task manager, so the tasks that are on this page are ones that are coming up but may not be on my radar yet. These are generally triggered by calendar events.

My Daily pages

For each day I put the day of the week, plus the date. I also track the weather. I might have tasks in here, but they would only be here if it popped up. Mostly these entries are just about what happened during the day.

My Legend

There are a lot of fancy systems of bullets to put out there. I’m sticking with simple, and keeping it on a sticky note to boot.

My “Notes” Pages

Interspersed are my notes pages. I write as much as I want, and then put it in the index.

Particulars About My System

I don’t plan with my Bullet Journal

At this point it has just supplanted my regular notebooks, and helps me look forward to things that are coming up. The advantage over my old notebook is that I can find things…and having future items allows me to see what is coming at me, something that was lacking in my other systems.

I am less creative than I thought I would be

I will admit I had visions of the beautiful journals I saw on Pinterest. But that’s not for me. I have adapted a couple of things…I use a flag to show the date, and I will also use other color inks to call attention to certain headings.

I am trying not to mod the system

Until I get the hang of the system, I am not going to tweak it. I have given myself until the end of the journal. That doesn’t mean I am not considering what I would like to do, and I am thinking about how to incorporate some of the features into my current daily planner. Particularly I like the long view of scheduled items, and I also like the flexible writing spaces.

I am really enjoying this format. It is the longest I have ever journaled, and I haven’t lost anything in the notebook, either. Expect that this will grow over the coming months.

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I started something new at the beginning of May, and I have to say that it has been a great success in both productivity and journaling. It’s called the bullet journal. Today I will give you an overview of what it is.

What is a Bullet Journal?

A bullet journal is a notebook that allows you to do “rapid logging.” (Don’t worry, it sounds more complicated than it is.) The journal is set up so that day by day you can write what you need to without being limited by predetermined borders or artificial page breaks.

Rapid logging just means that you have a simple system to write everything down, and it all goes into one place. Later you go back through and take care of the leftovers.

Why I Started Bullet Journaling

I have been looking for a way to keep myself journaling. I don’t want to write pages of prose every day. My whole point of journaling is so that I have a record of what is going on in my day-to-day life. The format of the bullet journal, with its succinct entries, seemed to fit the bill. (Samuel Johnson I am not)

When I got into it, I also realized that I could use the bullet journal as a way to record ideas, make lists, and keep future events on the radar.

What Do You Need For a Bullet Journal?

Here is one of the things that drew me to the system: you get to use any notebook you want.

Time for a confession here: I am a notebook junkie. I have a whole box of unused journals that I have acquired over the past few years, and it was twice that before I purged half at the beginning of the year. So the thought of having to buy a special notebook was not a good one for me, when I had already selected dozens of notebooks as potential journals.

The other things you need for the journal? A writing implement. Pen or pencil, it is up to you.

I have also found a ruler helpful in the setup.

How Do You Set Up A Bullet Journal?

If you want the official setup, you can look at the official site and watch the video.

As a summary, you are going to want to leave some pages at the front of your notebook for an index, and then put in the future log (the video does 6 months, I did a year). Then you put in a monthly log, and start the daily pages.

How I Started

I started by picking a notebook out of my stash. I used a Barnes and Noble special with some inspiring quotes on the covers.

The next thing I did was go to the back page of the journal and tested all the pens I thought I might use on the journal. Anything that bled through was noted. My journal will take all of my pens except the Bic permanent markers, and the Sharpie fine points are iffy.

Next I put in my index, and then the future log.

Next I put in a calendar index, which is something I read about somewhere (and I can’t find again). Each page is divided into three columns, and I wrote the day number consecutively for the whole year, noting when it changed months.. This allows me to keep track of things that were date specific. For instance, I made a note of when I turned in the Girl Scout papers and the page number of the daily entry.

Following that was my index for May, and then my daily pages.

I have also made note of pages where I have done general “thinking aloud”, guest post plans and other various note pages. I wouldn’t really call them collections, but more “musings.”

How I Am Using My Bullet Journal

Next week you will get a look at how I am using my bullet journal…with pictures!

Conclusion

I have managed to keep a daily journal now for over a month…that is a record for me. Plus I am also more on top of what is coming at me in the future so that I can prep. I am still excited about the bullet journal.

Over to you… have you experienced the bullet journal? What did you think?

Image by The D34n. Licensed under Creative Commons. No changes made.

What’s in your productivity toolbox?

Just like there are basic tools we use around the home, there are basic tools that belong in your productivity toolbox.

Minimal Productivity Tools

There are three tools that need to be in your productivity toolbox: a calendar, a task list, and a notebook.

They can be electronic, paper or a mix. But they are the building blocks of a good productivity system, either at home or work.

Why these three?

• Calendar. This keeps track of your time-bound commitments. This is the framework within everything else will work. Without having a sense of what moves you through time and space, you will be unable to be effective.
• Task list. This is where all the things you need to do go. They can be organized as projects, bucket lists, or just things you need to remember at the store. The task list is what will help you fill in the spots between your calendar framework.
• Notebook. This is where all the details of things go. Ideas, minutes of meetings, reflections…anything that is not scheduled in or needing to be acted on.

With these three things, you can arrange everything to hit peak productivity.

Don’t Misuse Tools

A word of caution: don’t misuse your tools. Yes, you can keep appointments in your task list. Yes, you can keep tasks on your calendar. Yes, you can keep notes in your tasks and appointments. But mixing these tools is like trying to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. It will work, but it isn’t the most efficient, and misses can be painful.

Cutting Away The Fluff

Productivity doesn’t have to be complicated. If you are using an overly complicated system, a good chunk of your time is going to be spent doing upkeep on the system. That time could be better used doing things that are on your task list, or recording ideas in your notebook.

Your productivity toolbox doesn’t have to have lots of tools, just three. And with the three: the calendar, the task list, and the notebook, you can build all the rest of the things you need.

Tell me what your favorite brand of tools are in the comments.

Image by florianric. Licensed under Creative Commons. No changes made.

Pop quiz:
Are routines:
1) the resort of boring, unimaginative people? or
2) the staple of productive people?

If you picked 1, you need to rethink your take on routines. Because the answer is 2.

Routines Are Not Stifling

Before we start talking about routines in detail, I want to make sure that you know that routines are not stifling. And in order to understand why, you need to understand the basics of decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue means that we can only make so many decisions before the effort starts to wear on us. After making many decisions, we start to just pick the defaults.

So why waste your precious decision-making capability and discernment on things that don’t need it?

Why Routines? Why Not Simpler Choices?

Decision fatigue isn’t impacted by the toughness of the decision. You could be deciding which shoe to put on first, or deciding who wins the full-ride scholarship. To your ego, it’s all the same level of decision.

Routines take some of those decisions away. You make the decision once on what you are going to do, and you follow it on subsequent days, without repeating those decisions.

Morning And Evening

The two types of routines I am talking about this month are morning and evening routines.

There have been lots of articles and books out there about the value of a morning routine, and how every last person who has every made a bajillion dollars has a strict morning routine.

I’m not here to contradict it. Although I will throw in that just having a morning routine isn’t going to be all you need to be the next Warren Buffett. Just saying.

In addition, though, we need to consider the evening routine as well. Why? Because even though we are at the end of our decision making capabilities by the time we are ready for bed, we can still use a routine to make decisions to make the morning flow much faster.

An Example

One of the things we do in the morning is get dressed. (I hope) That should be part of the morning routine. Getting dressed sets the stage for a lot of things, even if you are working from home.

(A great article for some empirical evidence of this can be found at How Getting Dressed Can TOTALLY Change Your LIFE!)

However…the decision of what to wear can be time-consuming and difficult, particularly if you are not fully awake, you overslept, or you have children screaming at you from every corner of the house. Or all of the above.

So rather than force yourself to make that decision under those circumstances, or to put clothes on only to find that you have to change because of missing buttons/broken zippers/wrinkles/runs/spots/stains/whatever, do that as part of your evening routine. Make the decision at night, and do the inspection of the clothes then. In the morning you just need to put them on.

How Do Routines Boost Productivity?

At their very basic implementation, routines will boost your productivity just by keeping some decisions off your radar.

But they also can have a bigger impact…
…if you are not taking the time to make routine decisions, you have more time to work on stuff that matters.
…if you are not thinking through the process each time, you are doing necessary activities more efficiently than reasoning through each time.
…if you are building things into your routines that allow you to expand your horizons, you will learn more and be exposed to more ideas that can boost your productivity as well.

Image by Impact Hub. Licensed under Creative Commons. Text added.