Giving Yourself A Fair Shot

How much harder would basketball be if the basket were in different places when each player went to make a shot? You'd have to be a Ninja-warrior basketball player, adept at moving at lightning speed and agility to even come close to making a basket. Despite this ninja-warrior moving basketball hoop game being fun to watch, I'm not sure how fun it would be to play.

Now let's think about the last time you were looking for something, how fun was that escapade? Why were you looking so frantically?

Could it be that the items you were looking for are an ever-moving target? Perhaps the item(s) don't have a permanent home or if they do, the items never seems to end up back there?

Give yourself a fair shot!

1. Keep your items in the same places

2. If it's a bin or a bag, it's probably a good idea to label it

3. Take the few seconds and mindfully return it to it's place.

You don't have to be a basketball hoop finding-ninja-warrior just to get out the door in the mornings.

Attention Overworked Entrepreneurs!

Do you ever dream of taking a 3 or 4-week vacation from your business? For most of us, that's all it is, is a dream. Well, WAKE UP! What if you were told you can unplug from your business for a month—without destroying it?

It's all talked about in this latest article in Forbes Magazine. Click below to read.

Here's even better news! Dexterous Organizing is currently being "Clockworked". Soon we'll be serving our clients even better than before, getting out the kinks in our workflows, and beating burnout at the roots!

Who's excited to try this in their own business or know someone who can benefit?

Adrienne Dorison, cofounder of Run Like Clockwork, alongside her business partner, Mike Michalowicz, helps entrepreneurs step away from their laptops and out of the way of their own success.

Share this blog post and the article below.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE.

New Uses for Old Things: Thoughts in Support of Mixing Antiques in Modern Interiors

by Sarah Reeder of Artifactual History® LLC Appraisals

This is

an opinion piece, and a manifesto of sorts, born out of my personal thoughts working in the appraisal field about the widespread confusion and discomfort about how to mix antiques and art in contemporary homes.

For many years now, there has been an underlying pressure in mainstream culture that all furnishings in your home have to match cohesively, be from one distinct stylistic era, and also ideally be brand new, which has helped contribute to the commercial success of large furniture chains. These stores offer new mass-produced inventory that satisfies these cultural expectations and also removes the perceived risk of having bad taste by making all the design decisions ahead of time for the customers. Looking at it from a historical perspective, many notable 20th century modernists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Sheeler frequently mixed multiple design eras in interiors, so the expectation that everything must match is a much more recent development.

Skewering unique or atypical interior design choices has become a couch pastime in the nation (and yes, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of those television shows too, so I write this well aware of my hypocrisy!) Considering the phenomenon over time though from the perspective of my professional role as an appraiser, I think these trends of popularizing design judgment as a form of entertainment have contributed to making many feel uncomfortable expressing their individual originality and stylistic preferences in their own interiors.

Due to these conditioned fears of ridicule for “getting it wrong,” many people now feel more comfortable buying all of the items pictured on a catalog page of one of the popular mass-produced chain furniture stores, because they have the safety of knowing it was an already “approved” group of furnishings so they can’t make a mistake if they replicate the catalog page within their homes. Many stores even offer coordinating mass-produced printed canvases to hang on the wall above the furniture instead of original one-of-a-kind artwork.

This has been a real loss for our collective creativity and has robbed many of the opportunity to build a deep and intimate relationship with their home environments by selecting pieces that speak to them personally, regardless of whether they have been culturally approved as matching or being “in good taste.” From my professional perspective as an art and antique appraiser, I can also see how this societal practice has contributed to the softening of the art and antique market, particularly in the category of antique furniture.

I’ve had many conversations through the years with individuals who’ve inherited beautiful antique furniture from a family member. In talking with them, I can tell how much they are drawn to it, both for the powerful memories and the solidity of the natural wood materials (which, by the way, don’t give off toxic chemicals like many new mass-produced furniture items and don’t consume precious resources from our already-beleaguered environment), but inevitably there is a point where I hear “but they don’t match my furnishings.” In those instances, I try to...

Read the rest of the article here