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Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life
Harvard Health Publications
If you’ve ever lost your keys, missed an appointment or wasted hours because you were distracted by a frivolous text or email message, then this book is for you.The key to a less hectic, less stressful life is not in simply organizing your desk, but organizing your mind. Dr. Paul Hammerness, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, is at the forefront of new neuroscience research that has discovered the brain’s extraordinary built-in system of organization.Margaret Moore, a certified wellness coach and cofounder of Harvard’s Institute of Coaching, has helped to turn that science into solutions—showing you how to use the innate organizational power of your brain to make your life less stressful, more productive and, ultimately, more rewarding.Together, Dr. Paul and Coach Meg have created a one-two prescriptive punch that will teach you how to: - regain control of your emotions - embrace effective uni-tasking (because multitasking doesn’t work!) - fluidly shift from one task to another - curb time-consuming impulsivityThis groundbreaking guide is complete with stories of people who have learned to stop feeling powerless against multiplying distractions and start organizing their lives by organizing their minds.



PRAISE FOR ORGANIZE YOUR MIND, ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE
“A treasure trove of tips, tools and techniques, making it possible to stay mindful of your self-care priorities while navigating the challenging stresses of everyday life.”
—Pam Peeke, MD, MPH, FACP
Host, Discovery Health TV’s Could You Survive?
Author of New York Times bestseller Fit to Live
WebMD’s Lifestyle Expert
“Marvelous! This empowering collection of transformative, science-supported tools can help anyone change his or her life in healthier, happier directions. If you want a smart, straightforward guide to taming the crazy-making factors in your life and fulfilling more of your personal potential, this is it!”
—Pilar Gerasimo
Editor-in-Chief, Experience Life magazine
Senior Vice President, Education—Life Time Fitness
“Hammerness and Moore have translated the latest science in brain function into a few, highly effective skills that help us bring order and control in our lives. In a world where distractions are ever growing and taking new forms, this book offers key insights that will help us lead less stressful and more productive lives at work as well as at home.”
—Jon Ayers
Chairman, President & CEO, IDEXX Laboratories
“Together, Dr. Paul and Coach Meg offer hope. They show us what works and help us create a believable, workable plan to be our best in even the most challenging situations. This unique wellness coaching offers reasons, real-life strategies and results.”
—Ruth Ann Harnisch, President
The Harnisch Foundation
“Practical and very accessible, this book significantly empowers anyone’s ability to nimbly manage the massive amounts of information we all must deal with in an increasingly complex high-tech world.”
—Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD
Research Psychiatrist, UCLA
Coauthor of You Are Not Your Brain and The Mind & the Brain

Organize Your Mind
Organize Your Life
Train Your Brain
to Get More Done in Less Time

Paul Hammerness, MD & Margaret Moore
with John Hanc



CONTENTS
Introduction
CHAPTER 1: The Rules of Order/Dr. Hammerness
CHAPTER 2: A Change Will Do You Good/Coach Meg
CHAPTER 3: Rules of Order/Tame the Frenzy
CHAPTER 4: Rules of Order/Sustain Attention
CHAPTER 5: Rules of Order/Apply the Brakes
CHAPTER 6: Rules of Order/Mold Information
CHAPTER 7: Rules of Order/Shift Sets
CHAPTER 8: Rules of Order/Connect the Dots
CHAPTER 9: Staying on Top of a Fast-Changing World
APPENDIX 1: The Rules of Order At-A-Glance
APPENDIX 2: The Top 10 (Dis)organizational Complaints—and Our Solutions
Notes
References
Acknowledgments
About the Authors

INTRODUCTION
HOW ORGANIZED ARE YOU?
(Please answer A, B or C.)

A. VERY ORGANIZED. My desk is neat, I never miss an appointment or a deadline, my friends are amazed, my co-workers are jealous and my boss loves me.
B. MODERATELY ORGANIZED. I manage to stay on top of things pretty well, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed, not sure what to do first, and I must admit that I’m a little jealous of my colleagues and my boss who seem more organized.
C. COMPLETELY DISORGANIZED. In fact, I’ll be lucky if I can remember where I parked my car. That’s assuming I don’t get a text or a phone call in the next two minutes, which will completely throw me off and…what was the question again?
If you answered A, B or C, this book is for you! In Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life, we share with you the six key ways in which you can use “top-down organization” to get more done in a lot less time—and feel good about it.
By “top-down organization,” we mean brain science. As you will see, there are amazing new insights gleaned about the way our brain works to organize our thoughts, actions and emotions. Through hightech brain scans, or neuroimaging, we can now “see” the response of the brain to various situations. Here’s an exciting example of what scientists have found.
THE ORGANIZED BRAIN IN ACTION
In a 2008 study, subjects were shown a series of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures while they were attempting the difficult task of keeping in check their emotional reactions. Through the use of hightech brain imaging or neuroimaging, researchers were able to observe the “thinking” regions of the subjects’ brains (including areas called the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex) managing the “emotion”-generating parts of the brain. It’s an intriguing new study that sheds light into the brain’s own built-in system of organization and regulation—one that strives for order, one that can “tamp down” (suppress) our emotions when necessary.
As we will show you, once you can better manage your emotions, you can then begin to harmonize and focus the various “thinking” parts of your brain, opening up a whole new world before you. You’re on your way to achieving a more organized, less stressful, more productive and, in many ways, more rewarding life. And—here’s the most exciting part—the features in the brain’s magnificent self-regulation system come “preloaded” in every functioning human mind; these features can be accessed, initialized and utilized to allow you to become better organized and to feel more on top of things.
You just have to know how to do it. That’s what this book will show you.
WHAT MAKES THIS ORGANIZATION BOOK DIFFERENT?
This is not a book meant to give you tips on how to rearrange your desk, to make lists or to set up a better system for keeping track of your appointments.
This is a prescriptive book that will help you better organize your life by better organizing your mind, by making some basic changes in the way you think about and deal with your work, your colleagues, your family and yourself on a day-to-day basis. As a result, you will become better focused, more attentive, less distracted and better able to adapt to new situations and changes that, in the past, might have overwhelmed you.
Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life is organized differently than most self-help books. At its core is a unique partnership between a leading Harvard clinician-researcher and a leader in coaching for health and well-being—a collaboration that serves as a model for the future and can help make a big impact on readers like yourself. In a physician-coach partnership, a new concept in personal health, a Doctor of Medicine diagnoses the problem, explains what you need to do and plants the seeds for you to make the change. Then, a certified wellness coach guides you through implementation of the change.
Here is our team:
PAUL HAMMERNESS, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Psychiatrist, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital; and Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Newton Wellesley Hospital. Dr. Hammerness has been involved in research on the brain and behavior for the past 10 years, with a focus on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He has lectured on the topic locally, nationally and internationally to other physicians, mental health professionals, educators and families. In his clinical practice, Dr. Hammerness sees on a daily basis what a clinically “disorganized” mind looks like across the age spectrum, whether it’s an eight-year-old who is struggling in school due to inattention or a forty-eight-year-old professional woman whose life-long organizational problems are now affecting her work and family life. From research, and from witnessing the struggles of people with clinically “disorganized” or distracted brains, Dr. Hammerness shares his insights into what a well-ordered brain can do.
MARGARET MOORE, aka Coach Meg, is codirector of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, and a founding advisor of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Spaulding Hospital, both affiliates of Harvard Medical School, founder of a leading coach training school, Wellcoaches, and co-author of a coach training textbook. Margaret and the thousands of coaches she has trained have helped guide tens of thousands of clients through important and positive changes in their health, work and personal lives.
We mentioned the preponderance of books on getting organized that are available. Maybe there are a couple right next to this one. While many of them are good, they often use a bit of an outdated model that begins with organizing your surroundings—your office, your desk, your household—rather than organizing your mind. Dr. Hammerness and Coach Meg have a new approach based on the latest scientific literature that employs a top-down (that is, starting with your brain) organizational process—achieved by first understanding six key brain concepts and then employing specific coaching strategies to integrate each of these into your daily life, with astounding results.
These concepts refer to brain or “cognitive” traits and abilities that we all have but that most don’t recognize nor know how to utilize. Think of them as embedded features in your brain, waiting to be switched on. Dr. Hammerness will show you where the switch is located and how it works, and Coach Meg will show you how to engage it. So as with the four-wheel drive in your car, you can cruise smoothly over the roughest roads into a more organized and productive future.
These cognitive features can be learned and practiced through the innovative method of self-coaching. They will help you become better organized, less distracted, more focused—with a mind poised and ready to surf the heavy waves of distraction that come rolling in on us in today’s world.
To help you become better organized, we have organized this book into a prescriptive “one-two punch” that will enable you to understand clearly the brain science behind these cognitive skills, and then help you adapt it as part of your own make-up.
It’s science, followed by solution.
COACHING: THE ORGANIZATIONAL SECRET
That solution—how we will help you to get on top of things, to tap into your “embedded” organizational abilities, improve focus and attention and better structure your life—is one of the unique features of this book. To help you learn how to better function in this distracted world, we will use the new but highly effective psychological technique known as coaching, which coauthor Margaret Moore, aka Coach Meg, will explain further in the second chapter. Defined by some as the art and science of facilitating positive change, coaching is essentially a process for developing a road map for well-being—and becoming motivated and confident in our ability to implement it.
In this book, Coach Meg approaches the reader as she would one of her clients in practice. Think of her as your coach, a collaborator, helping guide you through the journey of positive change that is the hallmark of what successful coaching is all about. We will take the journey together, and the process begins with what it is that you’re feeling—about your emotions, about your sense of organization or lack thereof, about your life.
That’s the “one-two” prescriptive punch of this book.
Dr. Hammerness identifies and explains the organizing principles (or, as we call them, our Rules of Order) that are the hallmarks of an attentive, focused brain—one that is able to shift, adapt and function at maximum effectiveness even amidst the constant bombardment of stimulus that is today’s world.
Coach Meg shows you how to make these principles your own. She helps you help yourself and guides you step by step toward a more organized mind and, more importantly, toward becoming a better functioning person, enjoying a more productive life.
While their knowledge is rooted in neuroscience, psychology and the science of change that underlines coaching theory, their prescription for you is clear, practical, motivational and—most of all—doable.
You can improve your level of organization; you can learn to tune out the distractions in your life; you can learn to ride the waves of change in a fast-changing world.
Let’s go back to that little quiz. If you answered B or C (or even A—because maybe you’re rethinking that response as you realize you forgot to reply to the guy from sales who e-mailed you the other day), you are not alone.
By all measures, we are living in a distracted, unfocused world. Call it the flip side of the digital revolution that now gives us such fast access to unlimited amounts of information and that has opened up so many new channels of instant communication. It’s great to be able to use Facebook to find your old high school friends, right? It’s so convenient to use Google or Bing to find the study you were looking for as opposed to going to a library, isn’t it? Can you imagine not being able to send an e-mail to a colleague or a client?
Of course, when all those colleagues and clients e-mail you back and, at the same time, your boss is calling you, and your kids are texting you, and your friends are instant messaging you, well, then you might be forgiven for a bit of nostalgic longing. There was a time when you weren’t always so reachable, no matter where you were, no matter the time; and when you weren’t always being bombarded by so much stimuli, whether in the form of e-mail, texts, tweets or whatever new technology may emerge…well, any minute now. “‘Information overload’ has become almost a cliché,” writes the Institute for the Future, a think-tank in Palo Alto, California, in a 2010 report on cognitive overload. “We use the phrase half-jokingly to describe the stress associated with the onslaught of media that digital technology has unleashed on us. The sobering reality is that we ain’t seen nothing yet. The suffocation of endless incoming e-mail demanding immediate response, the twinge of guilt from falling behind on your RSS feeds, dread about a TiVo hard drive full of unwatched shows—these are all just a teaser for what’s to come. No matter how many computers surround us, collecting, aggregating and delivering information, we each have only one pair of eyes and ears, and more importantly, one mind, to deal with the data.”
One mind, indeed—but that’s where the solution lies.
THE DISTRACTION EPIDEMIC
Nowhere is information overload more evident than in the United States, where some people consider this the psychological equivalent to the obesity epidemic. We even have an unofficial president of Distracted America. No, not the one in the White House but rather in Albany, New York. There, the risks of distraction and disorganization were crystallized in a single, career-flame-out moment in the summer of 2009—a now-infamous moment that made Malcolm Smith a punch line and a punching bag, as well as a cautionary tale.
Smith, a Democrat, was the New York State Senate Majority Leader who famously fiddled with his BlackBerry, checking e-mails, while billionaire Thomas Golisano, a major independent political player in New York, was trying to talk to him. Golisano, who had made a special trip to Albany to meet with Smith, was furious. “When I travel 250 miles to make a case on how to save the state a lot of money and the guy comes into his office and starts playing with his BlackBerry, I was miffed,” he told reporters.
Golisano was so miffed that he went to the Republicans and told them he’d be happy to help unseat Smith, perhaps in the hopes of having him replaced with someone who could pay attention for a few minutes. Faster than you can say “you’ve got mail,” the state Republicans engineered a coup, Smith’s party was divided, the opposition was poised to take back control of the Senate, and the majority leader was being pilloried in the news media.
“Smith Fiddles with BlackBerry While Senate Burns!” read one headline.
“Blame it on the BlackBerry!” crowed another.
Wrong—blame it on distraction. What cost Smith dearly, and plunged one of the largest states in America into one of the worst constitutional crises in its nearly 235-year history, was (besides maybe some bad manners) a lack of focus, divided attention.
The problem isn’t limited to the United States, either. One of the biggest scandals in the British tabloids in 2010—right up there with Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson’s admission that she accepted bribes to give business officials access to her influential ex-husband—involved a union official who, during emergency meeting negotiations with British Airway officials hoping to avoid a strike, sent Twitter messages—some at the rate of three or four an hour. When airline officials found out he was tweeting while they were supposed to be talking, they were furious; the negotiations broke down and the strike was on, disrupting travel plans for thousands of people on one of the world’s biggest airlines. “Twitter Blamed for Wrecking British Airway Peace Talks,” screamed London’s Daily Telegraph on its front page. Again, the wrong culprit: Twitter is not to blame. Rather, it’s a brain unable to stay focused even in a critical meeting that demonstrates an inability to put down a handheld device and look another human in the eye.
Still, at least, Malcolm Smith and the British union official weren’t behind the wheel of a car. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 25 percent of all auto crashes involve some sort of driver distraction—and there are those who believe this number is steadily climbing as those distractions multiply with the addition of each new mobile communications device, every cell phone feature, every new satellite radio station, every new sign on the road.
But are the signs, the phones and the stations themselves really the problem? Once again, no.
The problem is that we can’t deal with them. The problem is that we can’t focus. The problem is that we’re overwhelmed and disorganized, and the net effect of the Distraction Crisis can be felt in the workplace, at home and in our individual health.
Some other distressing distraction-related statistics:

Forty-three percent of Americans categorize themselves as disorganized, and 21 percent have missed vital work deadlines. Nearly half say disorganization causes them to work late at least two times each week.
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A lack of time management and discipline while working toward [financial] planners’ professional goals contributes to 63 percent of those surveyed facing obstacles regarding their health. There is a direct correlation between too much stress, deteriorating health and poor practice management.
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Forty-eight percent of Americans feel that their lives have become more stressful in the past five years. About one-half of Americans say that stress has a negative impact on both their personal and professional lives. About one-third (31 percent) of employed adults have difficulty managing work and family responsibilities. And over one third (35 percent) cite jobs interfering with their family or personal time as a significant source of stress.
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In a Gallup poll, 80 percent of workers said they feel stress on the job, nearly half said they need help in learning how to manage stress and 42 percent said their coworkers need help coping with stress. Job stress can lead to several problems, including illness and injury for employees, as well as higher insurance costs and lost productivity for employers.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 80 percent of our medical expenditures are now stress-related.
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Seventy percent of employees work beyond scheduled time and on weekends; more than half cited “self-imposed pressure” as the reason.
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One specific category of disorganization or, to be precise, distraction has come to symbolize an era of divided attention: distracted driving. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has a special website dedicated to this problem (distraction.gov), in which readers are reminded about the perils of distracted driving, which is often thought of as just texting but also includes driving while talking on a cell phone, watching a video, reading a map or other behaviors that involve taking your eyes off the road or away from the safe operation of your vehicle.
The scope, effects and consequences of distracted driving are sobering, according to statistics compiled by DOT:

Using a cell phone while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent.
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Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent.
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Nearly six thousand people died in 2008 in crashes involving a distracted driver and more than half a million were injured.
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The younger, inexperienced drivers under twenty years old have the highest proportion of distraction-related fatal crashes.
Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves.
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Lest we assume, as many seem to do, that distracted driving is purely a problem of the young; teenagers and young adults who are checking their friends’ Facebook status while doing ninety miles per hour on the interstate, think again: almost half of adults who send text messages have sent them while driving, according to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center (the same study found that about one-third of sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds admitted that they had done the same). According to distraction.gov, half of all people in the United States admit to cell phone use while driving; one in every seven admit to sending cell phone text messages while driving. These are also folks who should know better: 65 percent of drivers with a higher education text or talk while driving.
All in all, the distracted driving crisis—part of that larger Distraction Epidemic—seems to some a part of an even greater problem, suggesting that the human race has reached a point of information overload—or at least a point where we feel so overwhelmed by the demands of our lives that we would risk our lives for one more text or phone call. In 2010, The New York Times published a series of articles about the supposedly dire effects of technology on our brain. In a USA TODAY story on the issue, one researcher concluded gloomily that “people are multi-tasking probably beyond our cognitive limits.”
A DISTRACTED FACT OF LIFE?
Some say there’s little that can be done about all of this. The pace of life is increasing and the distractions multiplying. Get used to it. You’re powerless. To which we say, baloney! While we may not be able to slow down technological change or the speed with which life unfolds around us—and in some cases, why would we want to?—we very definitely can find a way to better manage ourselves, in order to not only deal with change and complexity but also thrive amidst it. This book is designed to show you how.
Remember: for every driver driven to distraction and for every stressed-out person who has lost an assignment, a job or a vital piece of information because he or she was disorganized and distracted, there are people on the opposite end of the spectrum. These are individuals who know how to use their brain’s abilities to organize their lives, to stay focused on the tasks at hand and to enjoy greater productivity—and pleasure!—at work and at home.
Some of them you probably know: athletes such as Derek Jeter or Tom Brady, famous for their ability to block out distraction and focus on the little white ball or the white line on the field ahead, public servants such as General David Petraeus, making life-and-death decisions in the midst of a foreign country exploding in religious civil war; Steve Jobs, a visionary who manages one of the world’s largest and most influential corporations; Hillary Clinton, patiently mastering the minutiae and intricacies of a seemingly intractable conflict as she engages Palestinians and Israelis at the bargaining table. And the ranks of the super-organized are not limited to government, big business or the pressure cooker of professional sports: how about J.K. Rowling, whose disciplined imagination enabled her to create the Harry Potter world? (Imagine how organized she had to be to keep track of, much less create, the Hogwarts faculty and their complex histories.)
There are numerous examples of famous people whose achievements lie, at least to some degree, in their ability to stay calm, focused and organized, especially in the midst of crisis. There are many other very successful people whose names might not make headlines but who have, through both innate and learned skills, managed to harness their cognitive powers in a way that makes them extraordinarily productive, both on the job and at home.
Let’s meet two of them.
ORGANIZED MINDS AT WORK AND PLAY
By 8:30 am most mornings, Rob Shmerling has already exercised for an hour, has caught up on world and national news, and is well into responding to his e-mails.
For two hours, he exchanges messages with colleagues and scours various websites for the latest medical news. Dr. Shmerling is a physician and the clinical chief of the division of rheumatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
It’s a big administrative job at one of the country’s leading hospitals—but it’s not all that he does. Shmerling, fifty-four, also writes and does research—he has authored a total of forty-one journal articles, book chapters or reviews, as well as numerous web stories for nonexpert audiences. He also teaches and mentors medical students and residents. He is a husband and a father of two daughters. He volunteers at a women’s shelter once a week. He and his wife belong to a book club (Janice Y.K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help are two recent novels they’ve enjoyed). He also “hacks away” at the piano, is an amateur photographer and, on weekends, enjoys long bike rides in the Massachusetts countryside.
Oh, and he washes and folds socks, too.
“I’m the laundry guy,” he says proudly. “Everybody in our house has their job, and that one’s mine.”
Actually it’s one of many jobs, as you can see.
How does Shmerling cram it all into one day, one week, one life, and make it look easy?
He admits that he is a creature of habit and was always fairly structured. “I can recall organizing the crayons by color in those sixty-four-Crayola packs as a little kid,” he says with a laugh. But, he’s quick to add, a lot of the skills that help keep him organized he learned because he had to. And he’s still learning. “I’ve gotten better at ignoring things,” he said. For example, “We have this e-mail system where a quick preview of the e-mail comes up on your screen, and at first it was distracting. Now I’ve gotten better at sticking with the matter at hand. If it’s a really important message, I can attend to it, but I don’t let them distract me as they pop up.”
In the hospital, things come at Dr. Shmerling fast and furious. A patient’s condition might change. An administrative problem may arise. A resident or a nurse or a colleague may need an immediate answer. And sometimes the decisions really are a matter of life and death. “I used to get more easily flustered when several things were coming at me,” he says. “Now I’ve learned how to deal with it. Now I can shift pretty quickly from one thing to another and prioritize.”
The problems that do come up are often complex ones—what course of action to prescribe to someone with arthritis, lupus or osteoporosis; dealing with patient complaints or concerns; helping to mediate or referee internal problems that arise, whether with staff or fellow physicians. He knows how to act, but he also knows how to think before he acts. “I try to imagine the range of options for a given situation and figure out fairly quickly if this is something I’ve seen before,” he explains. “If not, if it’s something better done by someone else, or if I’m going to need someone else’s help solving this, I mentally file it away, putting it aside for later.”
Putting his attention on and pulling it off, deftly and smoothly, as the need arises—that’s a sign, as we’ll see, of an organized mind. Dr. Shmerling does it with a range of tools, some high-tech, some not. “If I have to jump off something, I’ll bookmark what I was working on,” he says. “Either with a mental or actual Post-it note so I can return to the right place quickly later on.” He also has a nice trick for keeping track of his reading (and in his job, he does a lot of it—reports, memos, articles). If he’s reading a Word document on the computer, “I’ll yellow-highlight the line I’m on so I can get right back to the page and the line I was on, without wasting time scanning through the document, going ‘where was I?’”
Shmerling uses a PalmPilot to keep track of appointments and to have other important information at a glance when he needs it, even though, he admits, “I’m regularly laughed at for using a device so ancient.” And while you might think someone being held up as an exemplar of efficient organization would have an empty, ordered desk at the end of each day, it’s not the case. Dr. Shmerling’s offices at home and at the hospital are filled with stacks of books and papers—but, he says, “While it might not look organized to you, I know exactly where everything is.”
The efficiency allows him some simple pleasures during the work day. People who feel overworked often claim they have no time to read anything but e-mails or work-related documents. Shmerling not only finds time to read The Boston Globe every morning online, he spends an extra few minutes doing the popular Sudoku numbers puzzle; and is a diligent fan of Doonesbury and Dilbert (“Another efficient office guy!” he jokes). Indeed, while he is a hard-working professional and leads a busy life, Dr. Shmerling is not some obsessed workaholic, constantly looking to squeeze another hour out of his life to devote to work. He likes to have fun, he likes to laugh, he has a rich and satisfying personal life and, oh yes, some of that time he manages to save by being efficient and organized, he likes to waste.
Here’s an example: “I like to stop sometimes on my way to work and have Starbucks. If I was really trying to be a time management-efficiency nut, I could save a few minutes by making the coffee at home or grabbing it at the hospital cafeteria. But I like stopping at the coffee shop. It makes the ride more pleasant. Nothing wrong with a little down time.”
A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Shmerling is obviously a smart guy. But he is quick to point out that his academic pedigree has nothing whatsoever to do with his ability to be efficient. “There’s nothing I learned at Harvard or anywhere else specifically that taught me any of this,” he says. “None of it requires any particular advanced degree. The measures I take to keep organized could certainly be adopted by others.”
Some of those are common sense and can be found in any of the dozens of books about organization. “Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow, at the end of each day.” Fine. Good tip. But there’s more at play here. The skills that Shmerling demonstrates—his ability to shift from one problem or stimulus to another, to sustain his focus, to attend to several things at once while prioritizing quickly the one that is most demanding of his attention and to do it with ease and grace while maintaining composure and good humor—speak to qualities that are linked not to the layout of his office but the make-up of his mind.
It’s an organized mind and, while he may have certainly nurtured it, nature created it that way. We all have the systems, the functions in our mind that enable us to become better organized, whether our job involves, as Dr. Shmerling’s does, people’s lives—or our life savings, as is the case with our next organized role model.
Let’s take a peek at a typical day for another organized person.
Catherine Smith starts her morning on the roads and trails outside her Connecticut home. Her daily, three-mile run is not only good for her heart but also her head. “It’s a re-energizing time,” she says, “but I also use it to clear my head, to think and to reflect.” Thinking! What a concept. Who has the time? But using that time to plan and reflect may be one of the keys to Smith’s success—and quite a success she has been. Until recently, she was one of the highest ranking female business executives in the global operations of ING Insurance. Headquartered in Amsterdam, ING is one of the world’s largest insurance and financial services corporations. Smith was CEO of the division that oversees workplace retirement plans in the United States. She managed a business that employs about 2,500 people and serves nearly 5.5 million consumers at more than 50,000 private, public and nonprofit employers throughout the country. (You may very well have your retirement money in the division of ING that Smith oversaw.) Their combined assets today: a staggering $300 billion, literally more than the gross national product of many countries. And it was her responsibility.
Smith was accustomed to traveling one out of every two working days. On a daily basis she made decisions that involved millions of dollars—many of them representing people’s life savings and retirement money. “ING is doing important things,” she acknowledged. But she had fun doing it. “I have a lot of passion and energy,” she says when asked how she managed to stay on top of everything she needed to do. (She has since taken this passion and energy to a brand new role—and one no less demanding—serving the state of Connecticut as Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, a position to which she was appointed by the state’s governor, Dannel P. Malloy.)
A former colleague who traveled with her on a daylong business trip in New England while at ING commented admiringly in an e-mail how effortlessly Smith seemed able to meet all of the demands and responsibilities hurled at her:
Early morning: in Quincy, MA, visited one of the company’s major sites
Late morning: in car on the way back to Hartford area—did a phone interview with major trade publication
Noon: arrived at golf course in Bloomfield to play in an LPGA tournament that ING sponsored. Won longest drive contest!!
Evening: after her gold round, came in and spoke to the crowd about ING’s commitment to community and its role as a good corporate citizen
Late evening: caught up on e-mails
In addition to her innate talents, she has a mind that is fully engaged, a mind that is organized.
In her new job, she adds, she’s putting it to good use.
“Organization is even more important in this role!” says Smith, whose job includes helping to create jobs and attract new business to the state. “It’s requiring me more than ever to utilize good time management skills.”
Interesting point: Smith doesn’t make to-do lists, a supposedly common trait among organized people. She does make the most of her greatest resource, which is between the ears. “I use my reflective time to consider what things I got done, what things I need to do,” she says. Smith has also learned how to put aside things and return to them at a more opportune time. These could be complex problems or problem people. Like we all do sometimes, she can get frustrated or angry. The difference is that she knows how to manage those emotions. “It’s better to wait until you can speak thoughtfully and calmly,” she says. “I’ll leave that part of my work alone for a day or two, to get perspective and calm down.”
This reveals another part of her cognitive make-up: a mental nimbleness that allows her to jump off of one task and onto another without losing balance. “It’s rare that I go through a full day without some interruptions and changed priorities,” she says. “You cannot ignore many of these issues and need to be flexible in addressing them.” Another thing about Smith: while many might hail her as a paradigm of “multitasking” or as a “juggler,” she rejects that very terminology. “I try very hard not to multitask,” she says. “Instead, if I can stay focused on the task at hand I find I’m much more effective in completing it. If I try to spread my energies among several things simultaneously, more often than not, I end up with several half-done things.” Again, as in the case with Dr. Shmerling, it is not necessarily a driven mind or a person so single-minded that he or she is an automaton, bereft of joy and focused only on work or success. Catherine Smith, too, enjoys what by any definition would be considered a well-rounded, balanced and satisfying life. She has been married to the same man for twenty-seven years, and they’ve raised two happy and healthy children. She is a passionate outdoorswoman, who enjoys biking and hiking, and also is active in various volunteer and environmental causes. She is on the board of directors of Outward Bound USA (which serves 70,000 students and teachers annually) as well as a former director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
Balance. Flexibility. Poise. An ability to tamp down the emotions and to shift and set your attention on something else with grace and ease. As we shall see, these are all qualities of the well-ordered mind. That is, a mind that is organized and can focus and pay attention. A mind that can stay afloat and buoyant in a turbulent sea of change.
It’s a mind, or a mind-set, that can be yours as well. While you may not have the academic pedigree of Dr. Shmerling or the business resume of Catherine Smith, you do have the capacity to engage and enhance the same cognitive skills that can improve your life. Whether your goals are simply to better focus on your required reading for school or work, better manage your day in order to have more time for your spouse and children or make a quantum leap forward in your career, the ability is there in your mind and in the resources that exist in you, like unused features in your computer that you have but may simply not know how to use.
In the next chapter, Dr. Hammerness will explain the principles—or Rules of Order—and the science behind them by using some cases from his own practice.
In Chapter 2, Coach Meg will show you how to get ready to take the journey of change.
In subsequent chapters, they will examine each of the Rules of Order in depth, giving you both the science behind it—so you have a better appreciation of just how organized your brain is (although you might not feel that way at the moment)—and specific suggestions on how to integrate each of these organizing principles into your life.
Citizens of Distracted America! Men and women all over the disorganized world! Join us in becoming more focused and productive. You have nothing to lose but your car keys, which, by the way, you probably left on the kitchen table.

CHAPTER 1
The Rules of Order/Dr. Hammerness
IT WAS A THURSDAY, AROUND 6:00 PM, and I was sitting in my office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, located along a tree-lined stretch of Alewife Brook Parkway, a few miles outside of Harvard Square.
The four-story brick building, an annex of Massachusetts General Hospital’s psychiatry department, is where I see patients as part of my research and teaching responsibilities at Harvard Medical School. They span the age and occupation spectrum—elementary-school children, grandparents, lawyers, salesmen, housewives and house-husbands—but they have one thing in common: they are coming to see me and my colleagues with familiar complaints and concerns. “I know I could be doing better” is a common one; as is, “I can’t go on like this.”
While the complaints may vary slightly, the symptoms they describe are the same—and consistent with the condition we treat. You’ve probably heard of it: attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
One of those patients, we’ll call her Jill, is late for her appointment.
As I sit catching up on e-mails, the door bursts open and in she flies, out of breath from climbing the two flights of stairs to my second-floor office. She is flustered and clearly upset.
“Sorry I’m late!” Jill says, as she plops down on the chair facing my desk. “You wouldn’t believe my day.”
“Try me,” I say. “Take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on.”
Jill is in her late thirties and a highly educated research scientist, one of the many “knowledge workers” who labor in Cambridge, home of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She takes a moment and launches into her story, which begins a few weeks earlier when she temporarily moved into a friend’s apartment while her own house was being renovated.
“Last night, when I came in,” she says, “I put my keys down somewhere, and this morning, I had not a clue where they could be.”
I nod. I have a feeling I know where this is going.
“I looked everywhere—the usual places, which of course are not the usual places, as it’s not my place. My friend, she really is a good friend, but I am wondering if she has more trouble than I do. You think I am disorganized, you should see her place….”
I know this is the right time to jump in and direct our conversation back to the issue at hand or—like this morning—Jill could continue running in verbal circles and not getting anywhere. “Okay, so, you were looking for your keys…?” Jill smiles. “Oh, right, yes, I was flipping out. I spent thirty minutes trying to find my car keys.”
Jill then stops, shaking her head.
“Well, did you find them?” I ask.
She nods ruefully. “Eventually.”
“Where were they?”
“Right on my friend’s kitchen table! And, of course, I’d walked back and forth through the kitchen ten times while I was looking for them. All that time they were right there…right there in front of me. Unbelievable!”
“Sounds very frustrating…but pretty believable, as those keys have eluded you before.” Jill smiles ruefully, and I press on. “Then what happened?”
“My day was in shambles from that point on.” Jill went on to relate how the half hour she’d spent looking for the keys set off a domino effect of tardiness and inefficiency—problems galore. She arrived at work late for a meeting and opened the door to the conference room just in time to interrupt an important point that one of her company’s head honchos was making. Embarrassed and angry at herself, she returned from the meeting and finally got in front of her computer to find a barrage of e-mail reminders that further annoyed and overwhelmed her. She sent out a flurry of responses, including a snippy reply to the wrong person, who was not happy to get it (neither was the correct recipient, when she eventually cleared up the mistake). Dealing with her e-mail gaffe kept her from attending to a project due by noon. Her deadline blown, she skipped lunch, scrambling to get her work done, and what she did hand in—two hours late—was subpar and received with something less than an enthusiastic response by her supervisor.
In other words, it was a crummy day for Jill. It wasn’t the first time such a day had begun with something misplaced or by an episode of forgetfulness, but the snowball effect of losing her keys still surprised and upset her.
“This happens all the time,” Jill says, teary-eyed, angry and ashamed. “At this rate, I could lose my job…just because I can’t keep track of stupid things like keys.”
I’m sorry to hear that Jill is upset, but her story is not unusual. Jill has ADHD—and she is certainly not alone. It’s estimated that about 4 percent of adults and 5–7 percent of children in this country meet the medical criteria for ADHD. It’s equally safe to estimate that at some point in their lives almost everyone has felt as if they have ADHD, too. The symptoms of ADHD include forgetfulness, impulsiveness, losing items, making careless errors, being easily distracted and lacking focus. Who hasn’t exhibited one of these symptoms in the last few days…or even hours? Who hasn’t lost their car keys? Who hasn’t been distracted in the car (once the keys are located), on the job or at home—by a text, a tweet, an e-mail, a cell phone ring? Who hasn’t been late for a meeting or missed a deadline or made a mistake because they were disorganized that day, lost focus that morning or were distracted that minute? That doesn’t necessarily mean you have ADHD, but it does suggest you might be part of the distracted masses that now make up such a large part of our society. If so, you’ve come to the right place because we’re going to show you how to get back on track.
ADHD or OBLT?
(Overwhelmed By Life Today)
If you answer Often or Very Often (on a ranking scale of Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often or Very Often) to four or more of the following questions, it may be beneficial to consult with a health professional to see if you have ADHD.
In the last six months….

1 How often do you have trouble wrapping up the final details of a project once the challenging parts have been done? (never/rarely/sometimes/often/very often)
2 How often do you have difficulty getting things in order when you have to do a task that requires organization?
3 How often do you have problems remembering appointments or obligations?
4 When you have a task that requires a lot of thought, how often do you avoid or delay getting started?
5 How often do you fidget or squirm with your hands or feet when you have to sit for a long time?
6 How often do you feel overly active and compelled to do things, like you were driven by a motor?
Source: World Health Organization
Whether or not you have ADHD—and chances are, you probably don’t—the purpose of this book is to inform, inspire and organize your brain. Whether forgetfulness is a “symptom” of a disorder for a person like Jill or an “issue” for someone else who doesn’t have the same degree of severity, this book will approach it in a straightforward way—and with equally straightforward and effective solutions.
What was first labeled the “Distraction Epidemic” by Slate magazine in 2005 has now reached epic proportions, right up there with the obesity epidemic and is of no less import than that or other public health crises that have befallen modern society. In a 2009 New York magazine story on the attention crisis, David Meyer of the University of Michigan described it as nothing less than “a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought” and has drawn comparisons to the insidious damage of nicotine addiction.
“People aren’t aware of what’s happening to their mental processes,” says Meyer, “in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.” The difference here is that unlike the “mad men” of the 1950s and 1960s who went around merrily sucking up packs of unfiltered Camels, seemingly oblivious to the harmful effects, most of us today know that we are having problems staying focused, paying attention and maintaining some sense of order in our lives.
Unlike smoking (which you either do or don’t do), it’s not just the people afflicted by the most serious and definable form of distraction and disorganization—ADHD—who are affected by this epidemic. Ask friends, family members and colleagues how they’re doing, and chances are, the responses will usually include words like “frazzled,” “stressed,” “overwhelmed” and “trying to keep my head above water.” In casual conversation, you often hear people talking about “brain freezes,” “blanking out” on something or suffering “senior moments” (often, when they really aren’t very senior). All of them…all of us…are affected to some degree by the epidemic.
To get back to my patient Jill in the four-story brick building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I knew that the woman with the lost keys and the lousy day was not one of the millions complaining to each other about how crazed their lives have become. She has a clinical disorder; most do not. But, as I listened to Jill’s story, I also knew the potential power of a rather simple solution that could help her and many others.
A couple of weeks earlier, during one of our regular sessions, Jill and I had somehow gotten on to the topic of the Apollo lunar landing. We talked about the coverage of the fortieth anniversary of that historic moment, the spectacle of the great Saturn rocket that hurled the astronauts into space, how exciting it still was to see the old black-and-white images of Aldrin and Armstrong on the moon and hear their voices crackling over the television from Tranquility Base and about whether we’d ever go back.
The memory of that conversation about the space program and her interest in it gave me the language needed to help frame the solution for Jill.
“So, I have a thought about how to start your day tomorrow,” I say. “As we’ve been talking about, we are working on bringing order into your life, changing old patterns that don’t work with new ones that do.”
“Right, that sounds good,” she says attentively. “What’s your idea?”
“You need a launch pad for your keys.”
Her eyebrows raise quizzically.
“A launch pad,” I repeat. “A place where you always put your keys and maybe your ID and glasses, too. That way, you’ll know that’s the place they’re always going to be…and every morning, that’s where you’ll launch your day.”
Slowly, as if an unseen hand was drawing it methodically, a smile etches itself across her face.
“A launch pad,” Jill says, starry-eyed “Yes, a launch pad. What do I have to use? A box…a hook…a basket…a tray?”
I smile back. “It’s your launch pad. You can use whatever you like. You just need to make sure you know where it is and keep it in the same place…so that the moment you enter your friend’s house, you’ll leave your keys there and then every morning that’s where they’ll be. On the launch pad, ready to lift off.”
This seemed to really resonate with Jill. First of all, it was an action-oriented solution, something she could do right away and without great difficulty. But more importantly, and Jill appreciated this, the launch pad served as an image, a reminder of how one’s day can begin, not in confusion and distraction but with precision and predictability.
The next week, Jill arrived for her appointment on time. And she entered the room not in a huff but with a smile.
“Go ahead,” she says, “ask me about my forgetfulness this week. I’m ready to answer.”
“Okay,” I respond. “So tell me, did you forget any items, appointments, things like that this past week?”
“Nope,” she said triumphantly, “and here’s why.” She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a small, uncovered trinket box, one, she explained, that she hadn’t used in years. “My launch pad,” she says, proudly. “I have a spot for it right by the kitchen door.” Moreover, Jill went on to tell me, she had not neglected the area around the launch pad. In fact, you could say that a major redevelopment project had been undertaken in the area: the table cleared and the space near the door rearranged so that her launch pad had its own…well, space. That wasn’t all, she reported. She built a launch pad at her office, too—but this one was project oriented for critical tasks to distribute to others. This, too, was accompanied by a cleaning and rearranging of her workspace.
That week, you might say, all systems were go for Jill. Is this an ADHD “cure”? No, but it’s a small success to build upon. And she has. You could see the impact on her organization and on her self-esteem; she began to regain confidence, as she could now trust herself that her mornings would be a little less frantic and a little more consistent. I’m happy to add that since she “launched” her launch pad, she has not missed a morning meeting again because of time spent looking for her keys.
My experience with Jill illustrates a few important points about organization. First, individual moments of forgetfulness and disorganization can have major consequences.
Second, just as one episode of forgetfulness triggered a series of negative events, so can one small step lead to giant leaps of improvement in the organization of one’s life. The launch pad is a simple solution, but it has effects that go far beyond knowing where your keys are. You begin to think about other things you can organize. You have more time. You are less stressed before you leave the house in the morning. You enter a new environment more relaxed and thinking more clearly. And so on and so on.
Third, and this might not be something readily apparent from hearing the conversation with Jill, the simple remedy that I suggested is rooted in an understanding of the workings of the most complex organ known: the human brain.
THE ORGANIZED BRAIN: TAKE A LOOK
You may have heard about how neuroimaging—our ability to look at the structures and functions of the working brain through advanced imaging technologies—is giving us incredible insights into our understanding of how the mind works. That’s true, and nowhere more so than in our ability to see how the brain is structured to help it function optimally—in other words, its organization.
So just how is the brain organized? Well, at first glance, its complexity seems almost beyond comprehension. The human brain is composed of neural cells—an estimated 100 billion neurons!—that are connected into groups or circuits, communicating with chemicals called neurotransmitters. These groups form larger macrocircuits. The scale of it all is mind-boggling. But here’s a good way to visualize it: Think about looking at your house on Google Earth. You can zoom in and see where you live and your neighbors’ houses—each of them like a single neuron. Toggle back on your computer, and you can see a whole block. Go back further, and the blocks form a neighborhood, a community. Even further, and you’re at jet-plane level, looking at clusters of communities forming a metropolitan area. The brain is structured in a similar way. Put all those individual “houses” (neurons) together, and you go from something relatively simple into something enormously large and complex.
Now imagine it’s a hot summer day in your neighborhood, and you and everybody on the block cranks up the air conditioning. Folks on the adjoining blocks are doing the same. If the whole community and the adjacent communities are doing it, too—responding to the hot weather—what do we have? An overload, maybe at the local level, but more likely—if enough blocks or neighborhoods are involved—a grid failure, a blackout, an entire community powerless.
What happened is that the system got overloaded. But it probably could have been avoided. Chances are, there were warnings signs: The lights dimmed at one point. Or the local power authority issued alerts throughout that day, warning customers to cut back on their power usage during peak hours.
A brain bombarded with too much stimulus, as many of us are these days, is similar to the community on the brink of a power outage on a hot summer’s day. Too much drain, too much strain. Losing those keys, forgetting a scheduled meeting, “blanking out” something you needed to do: each of these episodes are like a momentary dimming of your cognitive lights, a warning message from the brain. Indeed, you may have already experienced some of these signs, which is why you picked up this book.
That’s a great first step. But here’s where the electrical blackout analogy falters. There is only so much power available from the grid and when it goes down, it goes down. Fortunately, the brain is more adaptable, so we reach for a different metaphor:
You may get irked and frustrated by what goes on in Washington, D.C., but one thing that continually works and works well is the balance of power in our American system of government. The Executive Branch, Congress, the Supreme Court—sure, they may bicker and they may even work against each other at times, but the truth is that in the complex array of checks and balances that is the genius of the Constitution, none can ever get the “upper hand” over the long haul. The human brain, too, is in and of itself a remarkable system of checks and balances of “on” and “off” switches. What’s really remarkable is how, despite this delicately engineered balance, the entire structure stands strong and stable, even when being battered by the storms of stimuli that assail us in modern life.
A NEW APPROACH TO NEUROSCIENCE AND MENTAL HEALTH?
A provocative new way of thinking about neuroscience and mental health comes from the folks at the National Institute of Mental Health, who suggest that many cognitive, emotional and behavioral problems—e.g., ADHD, depression, anxiety disorders—can be thought of as problems in the brain’s circuitry, problems that may have existed and been ignored for years. If we can identify them early, we may be able to intervene in very specific ways to prevent and even reverse the problem; much the way a physician will prescribe a low-fat diet and exercise to a patient with slightly elevated cholesterol which, if left on its own, can lead to very serious heart and blood vessel problems or failure.
As neuroscience shows us the intricate details of these circuits, we see the brain’s checks and balances in action. One example of particular importance at the “macro” circuit level can be seen in the brain’s balance of emotions and cognitions. Remember the brain-imaging study that we mentioned in the introduction, the one where subjects viewed pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures while attempting to keep in check their emotional reactions? Through the use of imaging techniques, researchers at the University of Colorado were able to observe the “thinking”-brain regions of these subjects (including areas called the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex) actually regulating the emotion-generating regions. If you can manage your emotions, harmonize and focus the various “thinking” parts of your brain, then a whole new world opens up before you. You’ve got a more organized, less stressful, more productive and, in many ways, more rewarding life—not to mention one where you can always find your car keys.
Yes, this is the good news about your brain. While you may be disorganized, your brain isn’t. Inherently, it’s a jewel of organization and structure, of different components working harmoniously together. And here’s the exciting part—the features in this magnificent self-regulation system that come “pre-loaded” in every functioning human mind can be accessed, initialized and used to become better organized and to feel more on top of things.
You just have to know how to do it.
That is the purpose of this book: to help you do for yourself what I did for Jill; to help you understand just what your brain can do to help maintain order and to keep you focused and then to show you how you can do that for yourself. We’ll talk big picture and sharp-focus details. We’ll talk about day-to-day details, but we’ll also talk about life in general. We’ll talk descriptive and prescriptive. We’ll talk “neuroscience”—the science of cognition, the science of ADHD and the science of a properly functioning brain. And we’ll talk “solution”—how you can learn to harness those amazing organizational abilities embedded in our minds. My colleague and coauthor Margaret Moore will also employ an exciting new discipline, the science of change, to help you make these modifications in your life (more about that in the next chapter).
What we will not do, sorry to say, is eliminate distractions. The bad news on that front is that they’re here to stay. And some of the things that distract us are very odd indeed.
The Brain Bone’s Connected to the Ham Bone…
The issue of distracted driving has been in the news over the past few years. First cell phones and now texting have been shown to be contributing factors in many incidents of distracted or inattentive driving. But you can’t just blame technology here. The Record, a newspaper covering the Waterloo region of Ontario, Canada, analyzed more than four hundred local highway reports of distracted-driving collisions to see what was causing drivers to take their eyes off the road. Here’s what the reporters on The Record found:
About 20 percent of drivers were distracted by something inside their vehicle—fiddling with the radio or talking to other passengers.
One driver told police he was driving with his knees while trying to roll up his window. He slid onto the shoulder and smashed into the concrete median.
A passenger told police she was having a heated argument with her boyfriend, the driver. Neither noticed their car had slid onto the shoulder until she grabbed the wheel, causing them to lose control.
Six drivers were distracted by food. One driver admitted she was cleaning melted candy off her steering wheel when she lost control of her car. Another started choking on coffee, and another let go of the steering wheel after spilling hot chocolate.
But in almost half the cases, drivers were distracted by something outside the vehicle, most often other drivers, accidents, construction crews or road signs.
One driver became so transfixed by pigs being transported in the next lane that she crashed her car into the truck.
“As I was in the turn, I looked off to my right at a transport truck in the right-hand lane,” she told police in her driver statement. “It looked like he was transporting pigs, so I focused on the animals. As I did, I started to head toward the truck… I remember slamming on the brakes. Everything went white and then I heard the crash.”
Disclaimer to readers of this book: If you are someone who becomes transfixed by the sight of farm animals in trucks while driving, nothing we can say will help you.
THE RULES OF ORDER
Through years of working with patients, through the growing body of clinical literature and through insights gleaned from advances in neurosciences, we have learned much about what ADHD patients and the general public struggle with. From that, we can better understand what we should do in order to stop being forgetful, start getting focused and stop allowing distractions and a lack of focus to mess up our lives. In Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life we boil down many essential “brain functions” to six principles—what we call the Rules of Order. Consider these “brain skills” or abilities that you can develop and master. In the chapters ahead, Coach Meg and I explain these Rules of Order and then show you how to learn these skills to give yourself more focus and your life greater order. We will start with three “simple” principles and build upon these more complex organizational abilities and strategies.
1. Tame the Frenzy: Before we can engage the mind, we must control, or at least have a handle on, the emotions. It’s hard to be thoughtful or efficient when you’re irritated, frustrated and distraught. First, it’s necessary to calm down and stabilize the frustrations, anger or disappointments that we may be feeling at that particular moment.
A wonderful example of this quality comes from, of all places, a well-known cable television program. There is no one better at taming frenzy than Cesar Millan from Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. And just as Cesar teaches dogs and owners how to more happily coexist, so, too, can he teach us something about the necessary approach to thinking and organization. When he deals with dogs (and their often-distraught owners), Cesar’s tenet is to be “calm, yet assertive.” In order to have a healthy, responsive canine, you have to find your “calm-assertive” energy. As described on his website (www.cesarsway.com), this is “the energy you project to show your dog you are the calm and assertive pack leader.” Assertive, he adds, “does not mean angry or aggressive. Calm-assertive means always compassionate, but quietly in control.”
Quietly in control. That’s a nice phrase. How does this apply to your life and to your abilities to better organize yourself? Here’s how: before you attack that mound of work piled up on your desk or computer inbox, you can’t be angry over the fact that it’s there, annoyed with your boss, fearful of what’s ahead or full of self-criticism for letting it get this way again. First, you need to get yourself together, get ready to mobilize your cognitive resources—then you can tame the wild pile, like Cesar tames the unruly canine. Organized, efficient people are able to acknowledge their emotions. But unlike many who let their emotions get the better of them, these folks have the ability to put the frustrations and anger aside, almost literally, and get focused on work. The sooner the emotional frenzy welling within you is tamed, the sooner the work is done and the better you feel.
Like Cesar says: quiet confidence.
2. Sustain Attention: Sustained focus or attention is a fundamental building block of organized behavior. You need to be able to maintain your focus and successfully ignore the many distractions around you in order to plan and coordinate behaviors, to be organized and to accomplish something.
In the process of sustaining attention, your brain scans the environment, directing your attention on a certain stimulus, while it continues to process other auditory and visual information. So while your attention rests on one thing (the speaker at the head of the conference table, for example, talking about an important new development at your company), your brain continues to evaluate new information (the rustle of papers to your left, the whispered comment to your right). This extraneous information (or “noise”) is competing for your attention, but the organized brain is able to instantly evaluate and screen out what is not worthy of your attention—to identify the signal through the noise. The sound of the papers and the side conversations are deemed unworthy of greater cognitive effort, but the person who rushes into the meeting saying, “Our CEO has just been led out of the building in handcuffs!” would go right to the top of the “Pay Attention!” list.
The ability to properly handle all the noise from the environment—and to evaluate and prioritize it while not being pulled off the main task at hand—is another basic and important sign of the organized brain.
3. Apply the Brakes: The organized brain must be able to inhibit or stop an action or a thought, just as surely as a good pair of brakes brings your car to a halt at a stop light or when someone cuts suddenly into your lane. People who don’t do this well struggle with suppressing what has turned out to be the wrong response or action. Often, it is very difficult at times to stop yourself in the middle of something. Here’s an example:
You’re working diligently on one task—say, your taxes. You’re sustaining your focus as you itemize your deductions and carefully read the forms. Meanwhile you’ve been subjected to an ongoing stream of distractions. Your spouse wants to know where you left the television remote. Your child has a homework problem. A coworker texts you with a question. Then, the phone rings. It’s your accountant, calling to ask for a meeting to go over your taxes. Your instinct is to forge ahead, because you really want to finish this tonight so you can watch your favorite television show, which is on tomorrow.
The organized brain says, “Stop now and schedule the meeting!” Yes, it would be easier and more convenient for you to just get it done now. But the organized brain has weighed the options. The organized brain remembers that last year you made a mistake on your tax forms and ended up paying $1,000 (not to mention $500 to your accountant, who had to redo everything). So the organized brain decides to put on the brakes. The function is called “inhibitory control,” and you could also think of it as a compassionate hand on the shoulder, or a sort of impulse control that keeps the efficient organized brain from getting off task and helps put you into a position for the next Rule of Order.
However you look at it—traffic cop holding up a raised hand or guidance counselor gently steering you away from an ill-advised task—you need to heed the message of the organized brain and stop in order to get to the next step.
4. Mold Information: Your brain has the remarkable ability to hold information it has focused upon, analyze this information, process it and use it to guide future behavior—even after the information is completely out of sight. This form of brain work involves something called representational thinking.
Efficient and organized people have the ability to retain and manipulate information or ideas. Like a computer-generated image suspended in space or a hologram in a sci-fi movie, information is “held up” to scrutiny, slowly turned around and considered from different perspectives, almost as if it were a three-dimensional object. You can consider representational thinking to be reflective—not gut-reacting, seat-of-the-pants thinking, as valuable as that can be in certain cases. This is the mind that takes information, steps back, considers and reflects—often looking at things in new and different ways.
Some people are more comfortable molding visual, verbal or spatial information. Martha Stewart is probably far better at solving a problem of how to decorate a certain-sized room for a holiday party than, say, Albert Einstein might have been. And vice versa if the information that needed to be molded involved theoretical physics. But both illustrate the same principle. No matter how it’s done, or in what context, the ability to “turn over” the information after the stimulus is gone and do something with it—this is a skill to know, embrace, develop.
5. Shift Sets: People with superior muscle flexibility can touch their toes, demonstrating what exercise physiologists call “range of motion.” In football, quarterbacks come up to the line of scrimmage and observe how the opposing team is arrayed to stop them. In the seconds before the play begins, a quick-thinking quarterback will call what’s known as an “audible”—a last-minute change in what he is about to do, based on the quarterback’s instant reading of the way in which the defensive team is positioned against him. This athlete’s brain flexibility has equal importance to his physical flexibility.
The organized brain is ever ready for the change in the defense; the new game in town; the news flash; the timely opportunity or last-minute change in plans. You need to be focused but also able to process and weigh the relative importance of competing stimuli and to be flexible, nimble and ready to move from one task to another or from one thought to another.
In other words, you need mental range of motion and the ability to call an “audible” at your own “line of scrimmage.” Because this is the way life presents itself, isn’t it? To illustrate this cognitive flexibility and adaptability—the ability to shift sets—again consider the particular deficits of persons with ADHD. While those with ADHD are often considered to have a deficit in attention (as if he or she can’t pay attention at all), the better description is that they cannot regulate attention. The mental switch is set to “on” or “off,” and it’s hard for them to change it back; sometimes they can’t pay attention, but sometimes they can’t stop paying attention, even when more important or salient stimuli are at hand.
6. Connect the Dots: The organized and efficient individual pulls together the things we’ve already talked about—the ability to quiet the inner frenzy, to develop consistent and sustained focus, to develop cognitive control, to mold mental/virtual information and to flexibly adapt to new stimuli. The organized and efficient individual synthesizes these qualities, much as the various parts of the brain are often brought together to perform tasks or help solve problems, and brings these abilities to bear on the problem or situation at hand.
The disorganized, unfocused individual may do none of this. We all know people whose lives seem to be out of control—and at the moment, you may feel like you’re one of them. At times like these, it seems as if nothing ever gets done. You feel as if you’re in a losing race with the clock and the calendar. You seem to have no ability to influence or manage events and “things just keep happening” to you. It seems as if there is no time to accomplish the important things.
You see where we’re going here, right? Connect the dots: Thinking…feeling…acting…living. Following a logical path, from emotional control through the different cognitive building blocks, you are ready to put it all together. Here, the organized brain orchestrates all the other functions. The end result: a cognitive harmony that allows you to function more effectively, productively and enjoyably in every aspect of life.
One last time, let’s go back to our example of Jill and her keys. In suggesting the idea of the launch pad to this patient, I was actually addressing two of the Rules of Order.
First, because she was emotionally distraught over what her episode with the keys had wrought in her workday, I knew that I had to calm Jill down; to help her Tame the Frenzy (Rule #1). You can’t get organized and can’t make rational decisions about how to get organized when you’re distraught. In her case, the suggestion of the launch pad began a new process of thinking, not only reacting to the problem at hand.
Next, finding the little box that she eventually used for her launch pad and clearing out the space for it at home and in the office helped her to Sustain Attention (Rule #2) on the tasks at hand:
1) putting her keys down and later
2) finding her keys—by removing physical/cognitive distractions
This small success helped Jill become more confident. You can imagine her now starting her morning on a more positive note, heading out the door on time and ready to face the day, as opposed to already demoralized, frustrated and down on herself because of a moment’s inattentiveness.
In the pages ahead we will examine more closely each of the Rules of Order, one at a time, and give you the tools and solutions that can help you to better sustain attention, stay on task and, above all, create a greater sense of order and efficiency in a world that often seems anything but.
Coach Meg and I will provide you with your own launch pad—and then some.

CHAPTER 2
A Change Will Do You Good/Coach Meg
MY COAUTHOR, DR. PAUL HAMMERNESS, does in this book what doctors do wonderfully well at their best—share their expert knowledge and wisdom in a compelling fashion so that you can make the best possible decisions and choices about your health and life. But of course knowledge and insight are only a start. Knowing what to do is one thing; knowing how you’re going to do it is quite another. Doing something means that you need to make some changes, develop some new habits and unlearn some old ones. That’s where I come in.
As a professional coach, change is my business. My kind of coaching has a few things in common with those who coach football or basketball teams. Like the men and women who exemplify the best of that profession, we know how to help people accomplish their best. But our goals are not to win games and the people we coach are not always young or athletic. Today the most established domains for coaching are in the executive suites of some of America’s largest corporations. In the United States, more than five thousand executive coaches help CEOs and other leaders to improve their performance, impact and capacities and to handle the pressure cooker of the executive suite without sacrificing their families and health.
Of course, executive coaches are not limited to helping executives. Indeed, many of the people I’ve worked with were individuals trying to either get to the top of their field or on top of some other aspect of their lives. Coaches help clients navigate life transitions or realize lifelong goals and dreams. Wellness coaches work with people to improve their health and well-being in a way that lasts.
No matter whether we’re helping Fortune 500 executives balance their lives or middle-aged sedentary individuals manage their health, the process and the tools we coaches use are often similar. In a nutshell, we help people organize their brains for change. I help you achieve clarity, choose a focus, build a plan, and embark upon and complete the journey of change. Doing this requires an understanding of how the brain works, and because of that, the best coaches have strong foundations in psychology and neuroscience. In particular, we are interested in the psychology of change. Research suggests that this work—the work of change—involves the activation and organization of the prefrontal cortex of the brain or, as Harvard psychiatrist and author John Ratey calls it, the “thinking CEO” region. Coaching also works on the limbic system, the home of our emotions. Coaches help clients increase positive emotions and better manage or decrease negte emotions, which increases the likelihood of success. Positive psychology research has proven that positivity, or increased positive emotions, opens and broadens our thinking and increases our resilience and capacity to change.
As a coach, my specialty is inspiring and facilitating the process of change—and that’s what I intend to do with you in the pages of this book.
I am here to help you make the changes that will enable you to get a better handle on your life—to get your life better organized and to help you become more attentive, focused, and less distracted. My job is to prepare and guide you through this journey. I will help you motivate yourself (the only kind of motivation that works). I will help you identify and mobilize the resources you need. I will try to build your confidence so that you can complete this journey. I will keep watch for the obstacles and hazards along your journey—the kinds of things that can derail the change journey—and help you steer clear of them or get back on your feet when you fall back.
Of course, while I can show you the way, I can’t take the journey for you. Making change is work; it takes time and commitment. The fact that you are reading this book suggests that you have already taken an important first step on that journey.
In the previous chapter, Dr. Hammerness identified and explained the Rules of Order, the traits demonstrated by individuals who are functioning at a high level of organization and productivity. So there you have the “what to do”—what you need to do in order to become the person who is on top of things in your life. Now comes the “how to do it” part.
As I’ve said, getting better organized and more focused is a process of change. And like any change in your behavior, whether it’s losing weight or quitting smoking, it’s going to require a certain mind-set. In order to achieve that mind-set, and to begin to get a better handle on your life and the changes needed to feel less frenzied and more in control, I’d like to share some tips with you, based on my knowledge and experience as a coach.
YOU’RE THE BOSS
Enough for a moment about Dr. Hammerness and Coach Meg and about Rules of Order and action plans. Let’s put the spotlight on you.
As discussed earlier, humans are wired to want to be in control and resist being changed by others. It manifests itself early—witness an infant’s need to assert even a modicum of control by refusing to eat his mushy carrots. It reaches another peak when a parent reaches her elder years and heartily resists the advice of her children.
It’s up to you to decide that you want to have a better organized life—and that, in doing so, you need to some degree to change the way you use your brain. Maybe your spouse bought you this book in the hopes that you won’t lose another pair of expensive sunglasses or forget that you left the pot of water boiling on the stove. That’s fine; it is still up to you to decide to change—and on your terms. Forget what others are telling you that you need to work on. You’re in charge. You choose.
We have spotlighted some of the key principles of organization and focus (our Rules of Order) to help give you the language, a reference point, a starting point. Ultimately, though, the ability to incorporate, to some degree or another, all six principles will go a long way toward improving the organization of your life, but that doesn’t mean you have to master all six. Again, you’re the one best suited to know.
GET CLEAR ON YOUR PRIORITIES
You can’t change many things at the same time; you’re not likely to change any if you’re using up all of your bandwidth at this moment. Unlike the cable modem that can seemingly accommodate unlimited data, pictures and text, your personal capacity to handle data and stimuli has its boundaries. You may know that you need to get better organized at some point, but your first priority may be to help a colleague through a crisis or care for a sick family member. Know that you can put the book down and come back to it later—you may have more important priorities right now.
But let’s say that getting better organized feels like the top priority right now. You’re sick and tired of feeling distracted and disorganized during the day and worrying that not much got done by the end of the day. You feel it’s time to get beyond the struggle that has plagued you for years.
Now you have some choices. Dr. Hammerness has presented his Rules of Order—those six areas where you can work on improving the organization of your brain. Reflect on and assess your mastery or lack of talent or skill for each of the six dimensions of an organized brain. Celebrate and be grateful for the dimensions where you are in good shape, either because you inherited good genes or you had an amazing parent or teacher who patiently and relentlessly helped you build that dimension. Appreciate that you can enlist the dimensions where you are strong to help you improve on the weaker ones.
Choose what, when and how to change carefully and thoughtfully. Success begets success. Failure will damage your confidence and bring negativity.
Although several areas may be calling for attention, it’s important to pick the area that will set the dominos in motion, the area where you can make good progress quickly and build confidence in working on other tougher areas.
Which area might set in motion a domino effect (like unblocking a blockage)? Which would make your life better and open up new possibilities? Which one of these principles sounds like something doable to you? (When facing a number of changes, it’s often a good idea to build your confidence by tackling the one that seems the one you can do with the highest probability of success.) Which area are you drawn to? Which feels like a good pain that is beckoning to be eased?
Rate each area’s importance to you (out of 10) and your confidence in being successful (out of 10)—start with the area that has the highest score and, even better, a score of at least 6 on both ratings.
Let’s say you’ve had a problem staying with one thing—a project at work or even a book you’re trying to read. Then learning how to “sustain focus” might rate a high score. Or perhaps you purchased this book because your spouse has pointed out your inability to stop what you’re doing and attend to something else without getting flustered. Maybe you’ve noticed that you get angry and frustrated and curse or bang on the computer keyboard whenever unwanted e-mails pop up, distracting you from what you’re doing, and you’re not sure whether to jump off what you’re doing and address the e-mails or finish the task at hand. A smashed keyboard would certainly suggest a 10!
IGNITE YOUR MOTIVATION—THE JET FUEL FOR THE CHANGE JOURNEY
Your motivation is the jet fuel for the journey of change—the hotter it burns, the more likely it will get you through unavoidable and unpredictable setbacks, moments of doubt and any other stuff that pops up to throw you off course. So let’s find something really flammable! Is there something in your life that’s important to you that’s being affected by your relative inability to focus the way you want to, your distraction or your sense of being overwhelmed by all the stimuli and messages competing for your attention?
Spend a little time digging down to the biggest benefit of getting more organized. Not one imposed by anyone else (like hanging onto your expensive glasses) but something that you get fired up about. Remember some of the statistics we presented earlier about the problems associated with distraction and disorganization: this could very well be causing sufficient stress that it might be affecting your health. Your job performance could be suffering. Or you could feel that you’re spinning your wheels, not getting ahead in school, career or life. It could also be affecting your family life.
The best motivator is to connect the change to a higher purpose (something that hits you in the gut or brings tears to your eyes); how it will help you do the things that make you thrive, realize your life’s purpose or legacy, or make a difference in your world.
Expand your motivator into a vision statement, such as:
I will improve my relationship with my children if I am better able to tame the frenzy and focus mindfully on our conversations.
I will appreciate the good things in my life more fully if I’m not distracted by the stressful “noise” in my environment.
I will be more creative and have better judgment if I detach myself from the hubbub of daily life.
I will get more done and feel better about how much I accomplish if I am not diverted and distracted.
Your motivation is truly the jet fuel for the change journey, both in the early phase as you build new fledgling connections and paths in your brain and later to keep you on track with new habits. If your motivational tank is low on fuel, you’re not likely to be successful.
MAKE SURE THAT THE PROS OUTWEIGH THE CONS
You may have one really compelling reason to change the behaviors that are contributing to your continual sense of disorganization, distraction and loss of course—or you may have several. But the reasons not to change, at least right now, may win out. Or while you may decide to push forward, you could quickly find yourself back on the fence with second thoughts, weighing whether “to do or not to do.” Psychologists call this a decisional balance. If you find yourself in such a mind-set, list the reasons to change in one column and reasons not to change in another. Even better, find someone to orally do this exercise with you. If the reasons to change clearly win, then you are ready to move forward.
No judgment allowed—if you feel badly about the reasons for not making the change and staying the same, let it go. You can’t easily move forward with a rain cloud from the past following you around, even on sunny days. From time to time we all face deeper issues that hold us back, undigested life issues or unhealed pain. You need to heal old wounds or get a new perspective on life issues with a therapist or other program designed for that purpose.
BUILD CONFIDENCE TO MEET CHALLENGES
There will always be reasons to do nothing and to talk yourself out of making changes and meeting challenges. Getting your life better organized sounds like a lot of work. It’s not the right time, you’re too busy, it’s football season, it’s your son’s graduation or your wedding or whatever. While there are periods in your life that may not be best suited for making major changes, doubting yourself as to the timing, whether justified or just a convenient excuse, will eat away at your confidence in your ability to change. Ask yourself on a scale of 1–10: “How confident am I that I will be successful in overcoming my challenge and making this change?” If your score is below a 7 then you should first spend a little time thinking through ways to handle your challenges. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
Make sure that you think you can.
Sometimes it’s as simple as scaling back the goal a little so that it moves from “I’m really anxious about whether I can really do this” to “Absolutely!” Sometimes you need to shorten your horizon: take it one day, even one hour at a time.
Or you may discover that you need to learn a new skill and gain knowledge first because you’re about to do something you’ve never done.
Set small first steps, and don’t worry about how long it takes to make them. The race to long-lasting change is usually won by those who take time to build the foundation needed for new habits to last.
ADOPT THE MIND-SET OF A SCIENTIST
As much as we would all love a quick fix or shortcut and avoid a lot of experimentation, there is no one else quite like you. Someone else’s prescription probably won’t get you to the finish line. That’s why our approach in this book is highly individualized. Here, you get options, you get choices and you get to pick what works best for you. Sure, we have some evidence-based principles to offer you; yes, I’m going to give you the information, techniques and approaches that I know can work, but just how they will work best for you, to what degree and how you’ll integrate them into your day-to-day life…well, that’s going to be up to you.
We’ll talk quite a bit about the science of the brain and how it can help you. So get into the mind-set of a scientist. Be ready to do a few experiments, observe the outcomes carefully, think back to past experiences that might be revealing and decide which habits fit you best now, based on the results. Don’t worry, I’ll help. I’m here giving you some suggestions and guidelines and a framework to help you make these changes, but ultimately it’s your experiment, and you’re the one best suited to judge the results.
CALL IN YOUR STRENGTHS
Another way to cultivate confidence is to bring your strengths and talents to the table. It’s very easy to forget what you’re good at when you’re swimming upstream. While your desk may be a mess, your kitchen pantry may be well organized. While you may feel unfocused and unable to stay on top of things, you may be quite capable of helping your colleagues organize their projects. Or you may be known as tenacious, as someone who doesn’t give up, who’s determined to close the deal, find the item you’re looking for and reach the finish line of the race. Or you’re creative and you have a knack for finding new ways to do things.
By the time we are adults, only one-third of us have a pretty clear idea of where our strengths and talents lie. We are typically much better at naming our deficiencies. If you want to learn more about your strong points, complete the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment (www.strengthsfinder.com) or do the VIA (Values in Action) Survey of Character at www.viacharacter.org. You can also ask your family members or colleagues what they think are your strengths.
The important thing to understand is that whatever realm they lie in, with a little digging you will find that you do have strengths, talents and abilities. And those strengths can be used to improve or overcome those areas in life where you are not as strong.
FOSTER POSITIVITY
Barbara Fredrickson, an author and inspirational leader in the emerging field of positive psychology, has taught us that you need to be at or above the tipping-point ratio of at least 3:1 of positive emotions to negative emotions for your brain to function at its best. In other words, you need a 75/25 percent positive energy ratio to succeed.
This isn’t just facile “put on a happy face” stuff. It’s hard to be positive all the time. Some days, it may be hard to feel positive at all. But while negative emotions are good teachers, you can’t change if your thinking and energy are impaired by too many negative emotions. Fredrickson has also taught us that positive emotions are the active ingredient enabling “resilience.” This is that wonderful quality we so admire in children. It’s caused by responding positively to adversity and is necessary for change. It’s inevitable that you will fall back from time to time. In fact, if you don’t bump into setbacks you’re probably not going to make lasting change. But try to see these challenges as teachers and friends: welcome them and appreciate them and they will serve you well.
Here are some ways to “reframe” your emotions and accentuate the positive. One way is to make peace with the past. Negativity in one area (for example, not forgiving yourself or someone else for something that happened) can follow you around like a dark cloud that overshadows the otherwise positive aspects of your life and disposition. It’s particularly important to let go of the past as it relates to the area you’re working on. If you feel ashamed or embarrassed about your past behavior and performance, the negative feelings will act like brakes on your forward motion. If it was an embarrassing or damaging incident that prompted you to pick up this book—whether losing your keys again or losing a job because distractions got in the way of performance—well, you need to put it behind you, starting right now. The past is the past. What’s done is done. Time now to take the lessons of what happened; apply them to tppen and develop a fresh, open and positive outlook toward the future. Here’s a little pep talk I give to my clients who are stuck on mistakes they’ve made in the past. If need be, you can use this “mistake mantra” to absolve yourself:
I forgive myself for the mistakes I made. I’m not perfect—no one is—and I’m committed to learning and getting better. In fact, the past experience is my wise teacher, and I will apply the lessons well.
Enough with the mistakes. Fredrickson has identified the most common positive emotions. Here are some you can work on:

Cultivate curiosity about and interest in the challenge of change.
Seek inspiration from others who have been successful.
Be grateful for something, anything.
Savor small moments on the journey.
Enjoy the pride of doing something well—appreciate even small steps forward.
Celebrate early wins. It’s very easy to ruminate on the negative. It’s less familiar to focus on the positive.
Have fun. Making positive changes in your life can be extremely enjoyable. We don’t mean to make this sound like a lark; it’s not and your reasons for wanting to get yourself “together” may be serious. That doesn’t mean you can’t discover joy in the process of changing. In fact, you probably will!
BUILD A SUPPORT TEAM
It’s hard to change when your environment is working against you. A chaotic or noisy desk or office can be highly distracting. Or your spouse may be raining negativity on your time together. What can you do?

Engineer support: Clean your desk or office. Ask your spouse to suspend the critique and say affirmative things for the next ninety days (after that it may become a habit!).
Tell a friend or two that you’re working on making some changes and ask them for support, via regular phone check-ins or e-mail reminders. Find a buddy with similar issues and work on your vision and goals together and meet regularly for mutual support.
Celebrate progress together for more reinforcement. That could be with a spouse or a close friend. Ask your children to help and encourage you, perhaps by cleaning common areas of the house so you’re not distracted. It’s so much easier to change when you’ve got a team cheering you on!
CREATE A VISION FOR CHANGE
Creating a clear vision of your ideal destination is an important early and ongoing step for your journey. Neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shown that when people reflect frequently on what their positive future selves will look like, they are more likely to make choices in their long-term interest rather than shortsighted ones.
Who do you want to be? What do you want your life to be like? What’s the best thing that will happen when you’re more organized? Let’s answer those questions.
The first step is to accurately understand where you are now. Self-awareness is a necessary precondition for change, and so your first step is to explore what’s working and what’s not working when it comes to the state of your organization at home and work. Reflect on where you are right now, and look at it honestly. Get real but don’t beat yourself up. Appreciate that the past is your friend and focus on how it helps you go from here.
To help you figure out where you are, here are a few questions that allow you to put a number to something that isn’t easy to quantify—where you are now and where you want to end.


Now you have a better sense of where you are, where you want to get to (your target) and how far that is from the current picture. From Dr. Hammerness’s chapter, you’ve also begun to understand some of the factors behind organization (and lack thereof), as well as the things you need to aspire to in order to change that. Now it’s time to create a vision, one that inspires you and one that makes you feel hopeful and optimistic. As your coach, I want to help walk you through this “vision creation” process, which is specific and clear and can be enormously effective. We do it through a series of questions that we call a Vision Grid.

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