Series: Productivity For Nonprofits
I open my email and read, “I’m finding it really difficult to work with your organization. I’m frustrated by the lack of clear communication around my session at the board retreat. I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing. At this point I don’t know if I still want to participate.” This woman advises top universities on their individual donor fundraising campaigns, and she is volunteering her time to support my nonprofit organization.
Her confronting email is a mirror showing me the effects of my fierce lack of being organized. My throat swells. A problem I ignore like an unidentified body pain has now bubbled to the surface, on display for everyone to see my failure.
This wasn’t the first or last time I made someone upset, confused or blew an opportunity. In a different job, I heard frustrated community members complain about how slow it was to get critical services from my organization. Instead of looking inward for how I could improve, I made excuses blaming the lack of resources and being understaffed.
I went from being that person to leading productivity trainings for top performers including the former Treasurer of the United States.
My mission now is supporting nonprofits and young people in improving their effectiveness with their limited time and resources. I spent years learning how to be more productive. I want to give you the shortcut, so you spend more time achieving your goals and serving others. This post is the first in a series on productivity for nonprofits.
The transition wasn't easy for me. My hippie, inner-bruja, spirit was resistant to becoming more organized. My woke-self was resisting the capitalist extractive system where our personal value is equated with what we produce.
Finally the pain was too real. Instead of juggling many balls in the air, I felt like I was dunked into a giant Chuck E. Cheese ball pit being suffocated, unable to keep track of or find anything. Simultaneously, the communities I cared about were in a fierce battle to survive. Each day that the programs or policies I was working on were not moving forward, people were suffering.
That was when a guy I just started dating recommended I read the book, Getting Things Done by David Allen. I took it as a sign from the universe when, that same day, I found the book in the crusty office back cabinet. Here was some frigid looking self-help book, with a middle-aged white guy in a suit, written when Palm Pilots were a thing. In an effort to impress the guy I was dating, I read it. To my surprise, I was hooked by the underlying principles and philosophy. David Allen talks about this concept of "mind like water," a mental state where your mind is clear so you are able to focus. My mind was like a cluttered antique store, making it hard to find the treasures under all the junk. I wanted that mental clarity.
I went on to be a student of productivity devouring books, articles and taking online courses. Then I got serious investing in premium software, intensive 6-week online programs, and immersive weekend communications seminars. Most of the people in these programs were in tech and startups. I infiltrated their communities and appropriated their techniques to benefit the under-resourced nonprofit world.
That guy ended up becoming my husband and together we’ve created and led productivity trainings for nonprofits, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies.
What I’ve learned in my journey is that being organized allows me freedom to play, create, and envision the future. I trust that everything critical will be handled. Knowing fully what is on my plate at any given moment gives me power to say yes or no to requests without guilt, because I have an overview of everything in my life that is important. Rather than being a victim of my work and other people’s priorities, I am in control of my work, life, and destiny.
To borrow from adrienne maree brown, who is at the forefront of transforming competitive, burnout, nonprofit culture, “I believe that all organizing is science fiction — that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.” She is talking about community organizing, but I believe this also applies to getting more personally organized.
I believe making a concrete plan is a radical act of shaping the future through the actions we take daily. It may seem like just check boxes and folders, but you have the power to define what the steps are. You have the power to adapt in real time to what is not working, and to continue towards your vision of what Brown calls a “just and liberated future.”
Time management tips and hacks aren’t enough. You need a system--a way to process the waterfalls of information falling onto you into tangible actions. Nobody can give you a system. You have to design it for yourself. Using the principles and tools I’ll talk about in this series, I’ve developed a system that is pleasurable and sustainable for me. It includes the latest technology and tools that I borrow from the tech and corporate world to benefit the people and programs in the nonprofit world. But it also incorporates feeding my inner-bruja spirit with a new moon goal/intention setting ritual and a full moon reflection and feedback ritual.
My goal with this series is to help individuals design their own pleasure-serving, life-balancing, productivity ecosystem. So ask yourself, what would make organizing yourself not feel like a chore but pleasurable? What would bring aliveness to your organizational system? What would feel so easy, that it’s sustainable?
In this series I will cover the following topics:
Using a digital task manager as your operating control center.
How to create a project list and prioritize it regularly
How to organize your tasks and files by actionability using the PARA method
How to develop a digital knowledge management system so you have a personal archive of everything you have ever learned or worked on.
How to get comfortable with and leverage the power of digital tools.
How to take mental and emotional breaks and take care of yourself
How to set boundaries and clearly communicate what you need
While this series is targeted at nonprofit professionals, I believe it can benefit anyone -- tech savvy or not -- who wants to control their present and shape their future. Please comment on other topics you would like to see covered. If you are ready to follow along on this journey, please subscribe!
Shout out to Michael Brown, DJ Bowers, and Amy Huynh for their feedback.