Jessica's Friday Five: Decluttering hack, put this into ChatGPT, and Fri Five book club
Published about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader,
This week, I spent some time "polishing up" some of my personal and work systems to finish the year strong. If you're feeling like inputs are coming at you from a whole bunch of directions, that's probably because it's true. We live in a busy environment! The top two tips in today's Friday Five are for you if you feel like this, too.
When you're feeling scattered: The best thing you can do when you're feeling like there's too much to do and it's coming from all directions is to get everything into one place. A list of dozens (or even hundreds) of things to do is better than a vague sense of "I am swamped and behind on everything." Next, imagine your favorite colleagues and friends standing next to you and looking at your list. What would they tell you needs to come off that list? Where are you doing too much? In what areas are you holding yourself to an unnecessarily high standard? Take their imaginary advice and push those things.
When you're not sure what to prioritize next: This week for me included some necessary organization on the home front (prioritizing personal finances) and the work front (prioritizing professional projects). My work to-dos and ideas had gotten captured in a few different places (snoozed emails, Asana tasks, a spreadsheet, phone reminders) and needed to be collected in one place. I then decided which to prioritize now and which to look at again in 2025. If you need to do some polishing-up of your systems, my course on the topic is bite-sized and bingeable and will help you make big progress!
Friday Five Book Club with Kendra, the Lazy Genius: Kendra Adachi, the author of The Lazy Genius Way, will be joining our Friday Five community for a chat in November to discuss her new book, The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius. It'll be Thursday, November 14th at 5pm PT/8pm ET on Zoom. RSVP here if you can join us. It's free - we'll discuss the book and Kendra will be there to answer Qs and share her thoughts as well. If you need to get a copy of the book, it's here on Amazon and here on Bookshop. Hope to chat with you in November!
ChatGPT Roast: My friend Sierra texted me this week and suggested that I ask ChatGPT to "Roast me based on my previous prompts". The results she and I both got were hilarious and amazingly spot-on. If you use a generative AI tool like this try it and see what you get. I hope it's fun.
If you need to declutter, try this: If you've been wanting to declutter an area or areas of your home but struggle to actually make time for it, create some sort of "commitment device" for yourself that helps you get motivated to do the decluttering. My favorite strategy in this case is to go ahead and schedule a pickup of donations from your house, even before you're ready. If a big truck is coming to get boxes from your front porch in 10 days, well, better start producing those boxes! https://www.gogreendrop.com/pick-up or https://vva.org/pickup-locations/ are two options to consider!
Bonus Democracy Deeds:If you're wondering what these "democracy deeds" are all about, they're around for the next 2 issues of Friday Five and here's why I am including them.
Share your voting recommendations: If you're the kind of person who carefully votes for each thing on your ballot, you might not know that that's not a particularly common behavior. Many voters leave things blank because they're unsure how to vote for that judicial race, school board race, or ballot question/proposition. People are already voting in most parts of the country, so share your recommendations for all those down-ballot races (and top-of-the-ticket!) on social media and via email with your community. It will help voters and the candidates and issues you care about!
Use the Reach app to help your contacts vote: It's an easy install and it allows you to connect with registered voters you already know and encourage them to vote.
Vote early: Voting has begun in most parts of the US. You can vote early or drop off your mail-in ballot now in many places. There's no reason to risk being sick or injured and missing your chance to vote, so go ahead and take care of that task now. Then, set a reminder to confirm your ballot was counted (here's how to do that).
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