I’ve been thinking about the difference between “planning” and “preparing” a lot lately. 

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You may think of your calendar as only a time management tool, but it is also an important organizing tool. Barbara Hemphill, author of “Taming The Paper Tiger at Work”, teaches an organizing method called the Magic 6™, which we use at Living Orderly. The calendar is number three of her Magic 6™. You can eliminate a lot of incoming paper and computer files by using your calendar. 

When you are going through your inbox or email, the key is to take the information you need from a document or email, enter it in your calendar, and ditch or delete the original. If there are details, that are too much to enter into your calendar, keep it but file in a Pending File, Action File or a Tickler File. (I will write more about using a Tickler File later. I use a Tickler File called the Swiftfile, and it is absolutely one of my most essential tools.) Depending on your filing system, you may want to note on your calendar where you filed the document with the details.

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When I took my first vacation having my son, planning for the trip was a bigger undertaking than any other trip before.

Why? First, I needed to bring the truckload of things that I needed for my son and had to make sure I could remember it all. Then as a small business owner, I was a little nervous about being away and being "out of touch" with my clients and prospects. Finally, the clincher was that we decided to travel without laptops. GULP! (If you know my husband and I this was MAJOR. We never go anywhere without our electronics.)

So we packed ourselves up and we were all ready. Then on Mother's Day my husband and son presented me with an Amazon Kindle. Wow, just what I wanted. As I began playing with it the night before our trip, I realized, with my iPEP and my Kindle, I could free myself from worry.

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As I sit here through yet another rainy day in NY, it reminds me that rain as necessary as it is, can in very large quantities, wreak havoc.

National Disaster Preparedness month is September, but you need to plan year round to be prepared properly.

The prospect of preparing for a business-halting event is daunting, but necessary. Not being prepared to react quickly in an emergency can lead to loss of business. iPEP can make it easy.

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Do you ever wonder why you feel crazy when you look at your inbox or check your phone messages or mail?

Well, it's easy to understand when you consider that the average person today receives more information on a daily basis, than anyone received in a lifetime in 1900. Staggering but true.

It actually gets worse...the average person sends and receives over 190 messages each day and on average we spend a total of 8 hours per week in paper document management.

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Having a home based business is a challenge. How do you successfully give your business the attention and nurturing that it deserves, while managing the day-to-day issues of your home?

This is a challenge faced by anyone who works from home. It's easy to get distracted by chores at home, especially when it's time to do a business task that's less than exciting (like bookkeeping for example). Or your friends and family automatically assume your have time to talk, run errands or baby sit.

How do you make sure that you properly divide your time so that you can successfully work on your business, while working in your business and keeping up with home duties?

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