Testimonials: Columns
“Angela Hoxsey is an organizational Maven. She is fast, efficient and a pleasure to work with. Angela makes getting and staying organized easy with her helpful tips, tricks and knowledge of organizational products. I hired Angela to help me prior to and after a large home remodel. She helped me to declutter, purge and organize multiple rooms in my home. I loved working with Angela, she helped me streamline my home and I enjoy the organizational benefits everyday! ”
Susanne Hudson, Napa, CA
“I’m thrilled with what you helped create. It totally blows my mind how quickly you work and I love your thought process. Fantastic!!”
Dona Bonick, Kopol Bonick Photography, Napa CA
“Angela is always thinking about my organizing issues and often sends suggestions and helpful advice and ideas, even when she is not physically on the job with me. She comes up with unique solutions completely customized to my business, home and personal style—things that I never would have thought of on my own...”
“I can totally trust Angela’s taste and rely on her honesty about what’s working and what’s not with regards to my wardrobe. That said, she is always respectful—if I say I want to keep something, she respects my wishes...”
“I have a lot of “stuff”, and Angela has always been non-judgmental about my collections, while helping me to make smart decisions about how to lose things that I do not need. I value her wisdom, her experience and her perspective. She is a joy to work with, I look forward to our time together and dread to think what my home, closet, garage, life would look like without her expert guidance!”
T. Beller, Verve Napa Valley
“Angela is my dream girl! I was referred to her to help me prepare to move after living in one house for 27 years. She was fantastic in helping me get organized and declutter years of gathering too much of everything...!”
“Angela took me from panic, and an overwhelming moving experience, to an organized new home. She is a pleasure to work with, has lots of energy, while always maintaining a positive attitude. I think she is "THE BEST"!!!”
Sheila Sosnow, Piedmont, CA
“Have you ever accidentally run across someone who just COMPLETELY changed your every day life for the better? And you couldn't imagine your life without them? That's how I feel about Angela. Angela came into my fairly organized but slightly hectic life completely by chance. I wasn't looking for anyone to help me organize or streamline my life because I didn't really think I NEEDED it. And just in the same way that she seemed to just quietly float into my life, she helped me with such kindess, grace and ease.”
Lindsey Wiseman, St. Helena, CA
“Angela has a real gift for seeing what needs to be done and pulling it all together. I have worked with many organizers in the past, but none as efficient and focused as she. From my office to the garage, Angela has helped create a system that works
for the long term!”Karen Schuppert, Napa, CA
“Angela Hoxsey was the best referral that I have ever gotten. Needing to get my house ready to sell and declutter the 20 years worth of accumulation was no easy task. She was fast, efficient and a joy to work with. The best part of working with her was her cheerful yet no nonsense way of getting you to decide 'keep, trash or donate'. . . Love it!”
Cherie Melka, St. Helena, CA
“We spent four hours organizing an enormous amount of paperwork and I feel like I just got a massage!”Joanne Maher, St. Helena, CA
“Whether you are prone to chaos, pretty organized yourself, or a combination of both, Angela Hoxsey can help you bring order to your home. Yes, you could do it yourself, but most of us have so many competing demands on our time that organizing tasks easily fall by the wayside. Angela has brought her professional touch to my home, demonstrating every time
the lasting value of an expert.”Karen Saeger, Ph.D., Berkeley
“You can smell the sanity. Angela is worth her weight in diamonds.”
Masako Takahashi, artist;
San Miguel de Allende/San Francisco
Columns
Two Minute Distraction
I am a longtime advocate of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology and have mentioned aspects of it frequently and lovingly in past columns. Like most methodologies, as we become more adept at them we find ways to customize them. For me, the GTD “Two Minute Rule” is one of the tenets of the program that doesn’t always serve me well.
The Two Minute Rule states that when going over a To-Do (or Action) List or when cleaning out the In Box, it is easier to just handle anything that will take two minutes or less rather than write it down, file it or track it. It is a fantastic tip for achieving a sense of accomplishment when you are neatening up your desk or doing a Weekly Review. Not only do you gain peace of mind from tidying and going over your week, you also get to knock out a few easy wins, for example, pay an online bill, make a few appointments, write a quick e-mail, etc.
I have found, however, that the Two Minute Rule can become an excuse for interrupting work on something boring or a distraction from creative or other productive time that for some reason scares us.
The Two Minute Rule works best when it is part of a planned session of getting through a stack of unidentified paper, a few dozen e-mails, or a review of our calendars, action lists and project folders. Otherwise it just offers another shiny object—and almost acts like an addiction—to take our power and focus. The first Two Minute Distraction can take us on a ride down a rabbit hole that we “wake up” from with regret.
One of the easiest examples of the Two Minute Distraction is encountered during computer work. When trying to write a report, invoice or letter or working on a project, distracting thoughts might float through our minds like wispy little squirrels in a dog’s dream. If we are connected to the internet, it is all too easy to follow a thought like, “I wonder if Naomi Watts has had a nose job?” or “Is it true that high waist gaucho pants are back in style?”
Even though it will take less than two minutes to see before and after photos of Naomi’s nose, there is a 99.9% chance that you will be tempted to click on other photos and headlines and not get back to the task at hand for an hour or more.
Most writers and famous creatives say that their success is mostly a matter of showing up; as the old saying goes, “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Notice that “information” is not part of the adage. Another Two Minute Distraction that we need to watch out for is looking stuff up, whether in books and paper files or on the internet.
Writer Camille Dungy, recently in town for the Napa Valley Writer’s Conference, shared in her lecture that looking up facts and figures when writing on will slow or possibly permanently stall your progress. She suggests leaving blanks or question marks in the places where you need to look up a fact and just keep going so that you don’t lose your flow. Once you’ve finished you can look up the details you need to fill in.
The computer is not the only place we tend to interrupt ourselves. Organizing projects in general are easy to be distracted from. We might want a drink of water, a snack, an antihistamine. We might think we need to call our sister to see if she wants the sofa in the barn, or, after a sneezing fit in a dusty attic, decide that we’d better go downstairs and make an appointment with an allergist. But I suggest planning in advance for these bodily needs and epiphanies: have water, snacks and supplies at hand ahead of time along with a pen an pad of paper handy for writing down things like “call sister re sofa” and allergist appointment” that occur to you.
It may seem like tiny two minute phone calls or internet searches won’t derail you, but they definitely can. The Two Minute Rule only works if it is used in the proper context, not as a distraction from productive flow.