Special thanks to our friend Dan Faulkner, Jr. from John L Scott  for these great ideas.

Many people avoid setting goals for themselves simply because they are faced with a few common challenges.  We have three tips to overcoming these barriers to success so you can being achieving your goals today.

1.  Set Practical Goals.  Often times, people set unrealistic or impractical goals for themselves that they are unable to achieve in the immediate future.  Instead, break large goals up into smaller short-term goals and reward yourself along the way.  For more tips on how to reward yourself check out our recent Goal Setting Success post.

2. Don’t Fear Failure.  While some of us set the bar too high, it is also possible to set the bar too low.  Trying to avoid disappointment by making your goals easy to obtain can stop you from moving forward.  Studies have shown that the additional effort and motivation that is required for challenging goals makes them more fulfilling to accomplish.  Need more motivation?  Try looking at our tips for visualizing success.

3. Have a Plan.  A big part of making goals is coming up with a plan of action to achievement.  You can improve your chances of making your goals reality by creating a deadline and sticking to it.  Deadlines both hold you accountable to yourself and keep you on track to your target.

How do you overcome the obstacles in the way of your goals?  We want to hear about it!

This year, we’re sharing our tips on goal setting success for New Year’s Resolutions. This is the sixth and final post in our series. So far we’ve posted tips for rewarding yourself, visualizing success ,  focusing on goals that are important to you, sharing your goal to gain accountability and staying positive.  Today’s topic is keeping your goals SMART.

Tip #6 Make it SMART – each goal you set needs to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Sensitive.

• Specific: Your goals should be as specific and detailed as possible. For example, saying that you want to work on your marriage is too general. However, stating that you will hire a babysitter for each Saturday night to go on a weekly date with your spouse is more concrete and specific.
• Measurable: Write your goal so that it can be measured and tracked. If you’d like to save money for a specific purchase, state that you’d like to set aside a certain dollar amount per month, for the next X months in order to afford the new purchase. Or, instead of saying, “I’d like to lose weight”, a measurable goal could be stated as, “I’d like to lose 1 pound per week for the next 15 weeks”.
• Attainable: If you set a challenging goal, break it down into smaller pieces to realize and celebrate success more often. Don’t vow to get your home completely organized in one weekend. Focus on one area each week. Declutter for 15 minutes each day. (Visit our Facebook Page or search this blog for a number of decluttering projects that take 10-15 minutes a day – we’ve been posting a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge for a couple of months now). Decide to enlist help where needed.
• Realistic: Make sure the goal is realistic for you, and you alone. This is not an area where you want to try to “keep up with the Jones’s (or even your friend, spouse, etc.). If you can barely jog around the block, it would be unreasonable to set out to run a marathon next month. Go ahead and challenge yourself to reach your potential, but set yourself up for success at the same time.
• Time Sensitive: Give yourself a deadline … don’t fall prey to “I’d like to do this someday”. Use start and end dates. You can even establish a “to do” timeline in between. Schedule time to work on your goal. Plan it on your calendar and treat that time as “appointment” time.

Are your New Year’s Resolutions or goals SMART?  How has our series affected your goal-setting strategy?  We want to hear from you!

This year, we’re sharing our tips on goal setting success for New Year’s Resolutions. This is the fifth post in our series. So far we’ve posted tips for rewarding yourself, visualizing success ,  focusing on goals that are important to you and  sharing your goals. Today’s topic is staying positive about your goals by removing the negative aspects and focusing on the solutions.

Tip #5 Stay Positive – Focus on the solution rather than on what you don’t want. The mind doesn’t translate words of negation, such as not, don’t, or stop, because it thinks in pictures. If you set a goal that “I will quit smoking,” it’s hard for your mind to see a picture of NOT smoking.  If you set a goal that “I allow myself to be a non-smoker,” you can picture being a non-smoker, as that’s something you can see — other people (or you) living a healthy life.   Create goals or make choices that the mind can visualize.

How do you picture your goals?  We want to hear about them!

This year, we’re sharing our tips on goal setting success for New Year’s Resolutions. This is the fourth post in our series. So far we’ve posted tips for rewarding yourself, visualizing success and focusing on goals that are important to you. Today’s topic is sharing your goals with others and building your own support network.

Tip #4 Share – Studies prove that when you speak your goal out loud and share it with others, you increase your chance for success. This is a great way to also build a support system and to enlist others in helping you reach your goal. This also creates a sense accountability to yourself and to your friends. Those who support you will want to know how you’re doing along the way.

Decide on who to share your goals with, share with them the specifics of what you hope to accomplish, the end result you’re shooting for, what steps you’ll take to get there, and ask them to help hold you accountable. You might even determine a frequency and format for how that person can “check-in” with you to ask you about your progress.

Do you share your resolutions and goals with your friends and family? How have you created a support system? We want to know!

This is the third post in our series about goal setting success for your New Year’s resolutions. Its also tied in to our Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge. Double dip!

Our second tip was about visualizing success. The road to achieving your goals can be a long journey, especially if you have big goals. In Goal Setting Success for the New Year: Visualize we suggested visualizing your success. Today, we’re sharing tips on how to narrow down your list of goals and focus on specific ones that will make the biggest difference to your work or life right now.

Tip #3 Focus – Its great to keep a Master Goal List so that you don’t forget all of your ideas and things you’d like to accomplish someday, but pick one or two to work on at a time.  Think about shorter-term goals.  For many people, making a resolution for the whole year is too difficult.  Focus on re-wording your goal so that you can accomplish (and celebrate) it in parts, if needed.

Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend ten minutes tossing lofty,  or outdated goals off your resolution list.  Also take this opportunity to cull your list of “other people’s goals” or “shoulds”. Bring that list down to  goals that are important to you right now, that you really WANT to accomplish (for you, not for anyone else), and that you look forward to spending your energy on this year. Ten minutes is enough time to remove goals from last year that you already accomplished, or that you’ve decided not to pursue,  or take off any goals you don’t think about often or that aren’t relevant.  Focus on just a few goals or make short term goals to be more successful this year.

Take our challenge now and tell us how it went! If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

This is our second post in our new series about goal setting success for your New Year’s resolutions. Our first tip was about rewarding yourself along the way. Achieving your goals is a long journey, in Goal Setting Success for the New Year: Reward Yourself we suggested celebrating your small achievements along the way. Today, we’re sharing tips on how to visualize success in part two of our series.

Tip #2 Visualize -Visualize success. Write a statement about how you’ll feel and how things will look once you’ve achieved your goal. Post pictures or visual reminders in strategic places to keep you on track. Keep a journal or log of your progress – write in daily results and make plans for what you’ll do the following day to help achieve the goal. Review your visual aids daily.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions this year? How to you visualize success? We want to know!

The time for setting New Year’s Resolutions has come again.  Do you have lofty expectaions of what you’ll accomplish each year, but find it can be challenging to follow through and stick to it? It can be hard without a plan. Let Simply Placed help.

This is the first in a series of posts about how to achieve goal setting success in the new year (or any time!).  Join us in making your resolutions/goals successful this year!

Tip #1 Reward Yourself – What will accomplishing your goal mean to you? What will motivate you to stick to it and reach the desired result? How will you reward yourself for accomplishing your goal? Choose something that you’ll look forward to. Post a picture of it in a visible place. It could be a tangible item that you’ll treat yourself to, or an experience, or even the gift of “downtime”. Depending on the degree of difficulty of the goal, choose a reward that is appropriate.

But, don’t just wait until the goal is achieved to reward yourself. Celebrate “wins” along the way to ultimate success.  Decide ahead of time on some “mini-rewards” so that you’ll have something to look forward to in the short term and the long term. How can you reward yourself for accomplishing the milestones along the way to the end result?

Reaching a goal takes dedication and hard work.  You deserve more than a pat on the back.

How do you choose your goals?  What have you used to reward yourself?  We want to hear your ideas!

Stay tuned next week for more tips on Goal Setting Success.

Happy New Year! May 2012 be fabulous for you both personally and professionally. We plan to make it a year to remember!

TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a set of global conferences dedicated to “ideas worth spreading.”  This talk, given by Graham Hill, discusses how we can edit our lives. Its less than 6 minutes and well worth the time to view. It will get you thinking about your “stuff”.

Have you edited your life?  How would you like to edit your life in the future?  Simply Placed can help you achieve whatever edit you want  today.  Contact us  to make an appointment!

For many businesses the summer season brings a different pace to the office. Anxious to get out and enjoy the nice weather, spend time with kids out of school on summer break, and take a vacation, we seek ways to get our work done faster. For some companies, the summer months also bring a slow down of business. This can be an optimal time to employ some strategies that will both help you get out of the office earlier to enjoy those nice summer days, as well as put you in a position to be even more effective and efficient for when business picks up again. Here are a few tips that can help you leave the office earlier today, while still getting the important things done.

1. Clear the clutter – you know it should be done periodically, but do you know the benefits? You’ll eliminate distraction (those papers in front of you that you don’t really need) and make it easier to find what you need, when you need it (saving time every single day). Go ahead and take one of those slower summer days in your office to get rid of anything that’s getting in the way of your optimal productivity. Clean out old files, toss papers you no longer need, unearth your desk so you have space to work, take out trinkets you’ve collected over time that are crowding your work space. Breathe deeply and enjoy the space!

2. Christmas in July – it may sound like a crazy idea, but what if you took care of the task of ordering and preparing your business holiday cards this month? You certainly can wait to send them until early December, but why not take the time now to do the legwork while you have it, and save the time for a busier season when there’s other demands on your time. Not thrilled about the idea of doing this task so early? If you really want to stand out from your competition (who also send out holiday cards in December), send “Happy Summer” cards or “Thank You for Your Business” cards to show appreciation and recognition right now. Consider printing address labels and postage with one of Dymo’s printers to save even more time on the job.

3. Review and revise your plan – If you have an annual business plan, marketing plan, or set New Year’s resolutions, the summer months are a great time to take a look, assess where you are, adjust your sails (if needed) and create a fresh action plan that will help you accomplish your goals for the second half of the year.

4. Eat a Frog for Breakfast – you’ve heard me preach this one before … if you really want to get out of the office earlier while still getting the important things done, then do the important things first.

5. Design a new system – have a process that you do repeatedly? Now might be a good time to see if you can train someone else to do it (helpful for vacation coverage or for ongoing delegation to free up your time for things that only you can do), find a way to automate it or simplify it, or create a system to support it. This might be a new filing system, documenting a process for a policy and procedure manual, or brainstorming with a team that all performs similar tasks on best practices or time-saving ideas to streamline the process. Slower times are perfect for tackling these types of projects that will save you time immediately, and most importantly, when business picks up again.

What do you do when business slows a bit to develop new business and/or to prepare you for the busier times that are right around the corner? What strategies do you count on that help you get out of the office a little earlier or take a break to play, vacation or get some R&R? We’d love to hear from you. Comment away!

Enjoy the lazy hazy days of summer!

Disclosure: This is sponsored content and we have been given nominal gift in recognition of our time to do this post. That being said, we do not blog about anything we do not believe in and Dymo did not edit our post or direct our content in any way.

Some of you may have heard us discuss our involvement with NAPO.  Sound ominous? It simply stands for our professional organization: the National Association of Professional Organizers.  We have a conference once a year, and a couple of us just spent a few days in San Diego, soaking up information on organizing methods, new organization products, and tips and tricks to help us better serve our clients.

While there was more than enough information at the conference to make any Professional Organizer drool, we were most excited to learn about an organization which won NAPO’s Organizing Excellence in Community Service Award: Soles4Souls.

Soles4Souls has one simple mission: to collect shoes and get them to those who have none, both in the US, and around the world.  They began in 2004, just after the Southeast Asia tsunami.  Watching the devastation on television, the founder, Wayne Elsey, called friends and sponsors, seeking to collect shoes to send to the victims.  He began again, when Katrina hit the gulf coast.  

They have since expanded efforts to include providing shoes to the poor in less dire circumstances, though they continue to focus on disaster relief: Japan’s tsunami victims and domestically the Southern states’ tornado victims are current recipients.

Simply Placed felt an instant connection with this organization, which has an overall goal to collect 11 million pairs of shoes in 2011.  We’d love to help them reach that number and you can help make this goal a reality.  

Simply Placed is looking to collect new, gently used and even single shoes and shoes needing repair, to send to Souls4Souls.  If you, or anyone you know, would like to donate shoes -regardless of their condition- we encourage you to do so by contacting us at sharon@itssimplyplaced.com.  We’ll be accepting shoes during client appointments, by special arrangements and at particular events over the next few months.

In the immediate future, we are staging a large collection on Saturday, May 14th from 9:00AM-3:00PM at the All West Seattle Garage Sale. If you will be in the area and have shoes to contribute, please email sharon@itssimplyplaced.com for the specific drop off location for this event. If you’re not available that day, but wish to gather up shoes from friends, family, your work place or school, please let us know, and we will happily collect them from you to send them to the organization. 

One note:  for those who can afford to do so, we are asking for a donation of $1 per shoe, to cover the cost of shipping to the Soles4Souls warehouse. 

You can change the world -  one pair of shoes at a time, or, as Debbie says, “turn your clutter into contribution.” We look forward to hearing from you!

Here’s to helping others in need.