Right now “the one” is a bag that looks cute (ok, that’s a given), is large enough to hold my iPad (or laptop if necessary), has multiple compartments with at least one organizer section so I’m not just dropping my stuff into a bottomless cavern, never to be found again, and it has to be reasonably priced. Impossible?

Enter the Nunzia ‘Annabella’ White Laptop Bag. After countless hours of searching, I found this bag at Overstock.com. With a suggested retail price of $129, this bag is certainly a bargain at Overstock for just $42.99, especially when you consider the super cheap shipping Overstock always offers at $2.95 on your entire order (and yes, that includes furniture too!).

The nitty gritty as described on Overstock.com:

Would you like more time in your calendar and your life? What if changing the way you look at time could make a good life a great life? Think these concepts are impossible? Read on.

At one time or another, most of us have said, “There just isn’t enough time in the day” or “I can never accomplish all I want to both at work and at home”? This kind of thinking makes people see themselves as victims of their overcrowded, overwhelming and demanding schedules. They then sit back, complain and continue their self-defeating behaviors. You can, however, change your attitude about managing time by acknowledging and accepting your responsibility for managing yourself.

It goes without saying that everyone has the same amount of time in his or her day. It’s how you choose to “spend” that time that counts. The word “spend” is key. When you spend money, you choose what amount to pay out in order to get what you want/need. The same holds true for time. Each of us decides how much to spend to get what we want/need. Time is wasted when we don’t spend or invest it wisely. It’s up to each of us to decide what our personal and professional priorities are and then to honor those priorities. This is why effective management of time really is self-management.

Effective time/self-management begins with examining and knowing your own style. People who are structured, organized, good at identifying, setting and respecting priorities, and good at meeting deadlines find managing their time relatively easy. On the other hand, people who lack determination and discipline and who are reluctant to have structure and organization in their lives have a more difficult time managing themselves and their time. But, with resolve and practice, they can learn to get done more of the important things in their lives.

Here are a few tips to help you get started managing yourself and your time more effectively:

1. Keep in mind that you, not circumstances are in the driver’s seat.
2. Keep a daily log for one week of how you spend your time.
3. Assess your own style and attitudes about time. For instance, if you’re a morning person, schedule your most difficult tasks early when you are at your best.
4. Take 10 minutes at the end of each day to write down your top 5-6 priorities for the next day in order of their importance.
5. Make sure that before the end of your workday, you accomplish the top 5-6 priorities that you set for yourself. Let nothing pull you off track or intervene with this accomplishment.
6. Maintain a calendar, either written or electronic, so you don’t over schedule yourself.
7. Have a clear understanding of what is important to your family members and your associates.
8. Delegate what you can.
9. Every week, handle one unfinished task or project that has drained your energy.
10. Respect other people’s time
11. Learn to say no to anything that takes you away from respecting your priorities, and
12. Practice living with the guilt that may come from saying no. You will get better at it.

Remember that it’s up to you to manage yourself–and your time.

Barbara M. LaRock, M.Ed., offers life, leadership and career coaching as well as organizational training.  Her firm is located in Reston, VA.  Her background prior to coaching includes teaching, advising and mentoring students; designing and directing training programs for trade and professional associations; and organizational training involving presentation and facilitation of workshops and seminars. Barbara’s coaching specializes in life-related and career areas with her individual clients and provides them with encouragement, support and challenge as they focus on transition and change in their personal and professional lives. Her clients find more enjoyment in their everyday lives and become even more productive on the job. For more information, visit her web site Barbara LaRock.

Copyright 2010

No parts of this article or the article in its entirety may be reproduced without permission of the author.

Through several years of active work with the help of a mental health professional, I have overcome my eating disorder, and have begun a love affair with my body — something I never thought possible without first losing a lot of weight and reaching some kind of societal ideal. And when I realized I had reached this moment, I celebrated this monumental achievement by claiming self acceptance for myself at last.

And then I sort of clapped my hands together with the sense of satisfaction that comes from fixing something that is broken, metaphorically said to myself “Ok, so what’s next?” and went on to start working on fixing the other areas of myself that I saw as broken. Aside from my relationship with food and my body, the qualities about myself that I saw as needing dire improvements were my organizational skills (or lack of them) and my time management skills (or again, the lack of them). Just as I was once convinced that losing weight would change everything and give me the happiness and success I so desired, I held firm to the belief that transforming my cluttered unorganized personality into a compartmentalized and structured Type A personality would help me achieve my dreams. It was at this point that I hired my Andrea, and told her of the list of things I hoped to accomplish, but felt that meeting those goals could ultimately done by focusing on the areas of organization and time management.

Throughout each conversation, I lamented the mess on my desk, the clutter in my brain (i.e. the inability to focus on any one thing at a time), and the fact that I wasted countless minutes on meaningless things like Facebook when I should be focused any of the kazillion tasks I had on my to-do list. I would harp on my childhood, blaming my upbringing which lacked any kind of structure, organization, or discipline, and dream of waving a magic wand which would transform me into the Type A personality I thought I should be. I mean, after all, what are the merits of being disorganized and not managing my time well?

And then one day, Andrea said “What if that’s just you?” She suggested, if just for a moment, setting aside my desire to be a different kind of person, and reflect on the possibility of staying the way I am. “What would happen?” she asked. “Would your husband leave you? Would your kids suffer? Would your world fall apart?” Andrea reminded me that I’ve gotten along pretty well doing things my way for 37 years, and in fact, I’ve done more than just get along. I would actually define my life as pretty successful. I have a fantastic marriage. I have terrific kids who are smart, creative, and compassionate — to name a few of their qualities, I have a web site that I’ve worked hard on for the last year, and have had several big milestones related to it. I could go on, but the point is, Andrea was right. “My” ways may not be perfect, but then, what is? And they’ve worked pretty well over time. Maybe with my disorganization comes my creativity, not bound by constraints. Perhaps with my less rigid time management tendencies comes the willingness to try new things and be spontaneous. The things that bug me about myself are inseparable from what I love about myself, so why not learn to love the whole package?

Have there been frustrations? Of course. I hate it when I can’t find something because I didn’t put it back in it’s place. Occasionally I miss a deadline of some sort. But for the most part, projects get done, bills get paid, and my house is generally not a terrible mess, though I’m sure there are plenty of Type As that would disagree. (It would help if my dog didn’t shed so much!) But then, ask any one with a Type A personality, and they will find plenty to complain about in their own nature, often wishing for a little more flexibility and spontaneity that comes with a more disorganized (for lack of a better word) mind like my own.

Of course, my realizations and new level of acceptance don’t mean that I am going to stop cleaning my house, never wear a watch, and let chaos take over — no more than learning to accept my body led to eating with abandon. But I will no longer try to be what I am not, and instead reflect on the values that come from who I already am — which I tend to think is a pretty awesome person. What have you thought you needed to change about yourself? Is it possible that the qualities you most want to change are integrally connected to what make you wonderful?

Ok, ok, I made all that up. But sometimes that’s how I feel — cursed! I am much more comfortable in a calm, organized environment, but I am lacking in the skills that produce such a scenario. My mother — whom I wholly blame for my deficiencies — definitely has a clear system of organization in her own world.  But she somehow forgot to pass her secrets along to me.  So while I have her need to have everything in its place, I don’t have the know-how to get it there!

Thankfully, we live in the 21st century, where apparently I am not the only one to have this problem. Indicative of others like me is the growing numbers of professional organizers. Women (mostly) who have turned their type-A personalities into a lucrative business are available to come into your home and bring chaos to order in your household.

According to the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) which has nearly 4,000 members in the U.S. and 8 other countries, a professional organizer “enhances the lives of clients by designing systems and processes using organizing principles and by transferring organizing skills.”

Since not everyone can afford to pay a professional organizer to come reign in the chaos, I talked with Jessica Williams, self avowed Clutter Doctor who owns a business by the same name. I asked her a few questions that I think many of us organizationally challenged folks might want to know about.

VV: What are the most common organizational problems your clients bring to you? (i.e. home office, play area, garage, old files, etc.)

Clutter Doctor: I have worked in literally every room in the house and no two jobs are the same!  However, I’d say that all of my clients struggle with an overload of paper.  We are all victims of the massive influx of mail and paperwork that enters our home each week.  But there IS a way to get a handle on it all.  A professional organizer can help you develop systems for incoming papers and educate you about what to hold onto and for how long.

VV: Do you have some quick universal tips that you can offer for the worst of us disorganized people?

Clutter Doctor: When trying to decide whether or not to hold into an item, ask yourself some of these basic questions:

• Is this information current and/or can I can get somewhere else in the future?
• Do I love this item – does it bring me joy (or do these too-small jeans make me feel bad about myself)?
• Will this item make or save me money?
• Am I only saving this item because I’d feel guilty if I got rid of it (hint: bad feelings are not a good reason to hold onto something!)
• Do I “want” it or “need” it…or neither?
• Am I truly honoring this item (i.e. is it stuffed in a box where no one can see it, or am I properly displaying it so that I can enjoy it?)
• If it needs repair, am I ever actually going to repair it?
• Have I used this item in the past 12 months?
• Is there a legal reason to keep this item (check with your tax advisor or attorney)
• If I took a picture of it to keep, could I more easily part with it?
• What’s the worst that could happen if I got rid of it…and could I live with the consequences?

VV: How often do you go in homes simply to do all the organizing work for your clients, vs. teaching them organizational skills that will continue using?

Clutter Doctor: I never do all of the organizing work for my clients.  It is a collaborative process.  Other than things that are obviously trash (gum wrappers), I would not be able to make decisions for that person about what to keep or toss because the value they have placed on that item is not going to be the same as mine.  They need to be involved in the process of weeding through their belongings.  My role is to help them answer some of the questions I’ve listed above and to help them feel comfortable with their answers.  I try to transfer organizing skills to them while we are sorting through their items.

Williams also added that people’s inability to get organized is not necessarily genetic, nor is it because they’re dumb, lazy or crazy (as many blame themselves for being!).    And many people suffer from issues such as ADD/ADHD, Chronic Disorganization (see National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization’s website), anxiety, depression or other circumstances which make getting organized on their own too difficult.  But being organized is a skill that many people can learn with help from a properly trained professional organizer.

Another great resource Williams suggested is a widely-accepted book in the industry Organizing from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life by Julie Morgenstern.  It’s a step-by-step and room-by-room guide on how to get organized.

In addition to talking to Jessica Williams, I asked around and got a few more tips from some of my more organized friends. My favorite suggestion, since I have a mountain of artwork from my kids, is to keep a large portfolio case for each child’s artwork. All artwork (at least all flat artwork) can go in the portfolio, and then twice a year, once over the summer, and once during winter break, you (with or without the kids) can go through the portfolio and keep the stuff that really stands out.

Another tip was to tear out articles and recipes in magazines that you want to keep, and put them in a binder, and then recycle what’s left. Since I have stacks and stacks of cooking magazines, the tip was particularly helpful for me. For paperwork, I really love the Reminder Binder Clips that Staples carries. They don’t seem to have them online, but I did find binder clips that you can write on. At least if you can’t file your papers right away, you can separate them by action required and keep them organized.

One of my own personal tips is to use hanging shoe organizers liberally! It’s amazing how many functions they can fill in your house, from spice rack to mitten organizer.

Hopefully some of these tips can help get you started in putting some order back in your life. When you have order, you have productivity, and when you are feeling productive, you will feel ten times better about yourself.