Ep 278 - From Overwhelmed to Organized with guest Lisa Woodruff

Ever felt like your home—and your mind—are trapped in a never-ending cycle of overwhelm? On this episode of The Quiet And Strong Podcast, host David Hall sits down with Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365 and expert in the art and science of home organization. Together, they explore not just how to clear the clutter but also how to create routines, systems, and mindsets that support a healthy, productive, and personalized life—no matter your personality type.

Listeners will learn:

• Why organization is a learnable skill and the surprising results of Lisa Woodruff's research into household management
• The psychological impact of clutter and why simply “decluttering” isn’t enough to create lasting change
• How routines, habits, and tools like the “Sunday Basket” can transform the way you manage your home and free up mental space
• The unique needs of introverts and extroverts in the home, and how understanding these can lead to a more harmonious and supportive environment
• Practical tips for escaping feelings of overwhelm and reclaiming your time and energy

Tune in to discover real-life strategies and encouragement, whether you’re looking to bring peace to your physical space or seeking systems that let your strengths shine. Organize your world, honor your needs—and be strong.

Episode Link: QuietandStrong.com/278

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Lisa Woodruff is the founder & CEO of Organize 365. Lisa and 87% of Americans believe organization is a learnable skill. Yet less than 18% of those same Americans feel they are organized. As the host of the top-rated Organize 365 Podcast, with 24 million downloads & counting, Lisa shares strategies for reducing the overwhelm, clearing the mental clutter, and living a productive and organized life.

Get Lisa's Book: Escaping Quicksand: 10 Steps to Overcome the Overwhelm of Modern Homelife

Connect with Lisa: Website | Podcast | Instagram

Transcript

Lisa Woodruff [00:00:00]:
I was the most overweight I've ever been depressed. We had the least money we've ever had. I had all my cognitive resources and my intellectual ability, but I didn't seem to be making any headway in the world and I felt very overwhelmed. So what I found was when you get to the bottom of the pit of despair, you don't hit rock bottom. You actually sink deeper into quicksand. And at that time, I'm picturing myself in quicksand. The harder I struggle, the deeper I sink. And I'm looking around and all of my friends are in their own quicksand.

Lisa Woodruff [00:00:31]:
It was then that I realized, oh, this isn't a me problem. This is like a 39 year old woman problem and man problem.

David Hall [00:00:48]:
Hello and welcome to episode 278 of the Quiet and Strong podcast, especially for introverts. I'm your host, David hall, The creator of Quietestronk.com this is a weekly podcast dedicated to understanding the strengths and needs of introverts along with strategies for success. Introversion is not something to fix, but to be embraced. Normally, we will air each episode on a Monday. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform, leave a review or a rating that would mean a lot to me and help others find the show. Tell a friend about the podcast and help get the word out there that introversion is a beautiful thing. Lisa Woodruff is the founder and CEO of Organize 365. Lisa and 87% of Americans believe organization is a learnable skill.

David Hall [00:01:35]:
Yet less than 18% of those same Americans feel they are organized. As the host of the top rated organized 365 podcast, with 24 million downloads and counting, Lisa shares strategies for reducing the overwhelm, clearing the mental clutter, and living a productive and organized life. All right, well, Lisa, welcome to the quietestrong podcast. It's so good to have you on.

Lisa Woodruff [00:02:02]:
Thank you so much for having me.

David Hall [00:02:04]:
Gonna get into the great work that you're doing, the book, you're putting out your podcast. So let's, let's start and just first tell us a little bit about yourself and the journey to what you're doing now.

Lisa Woodruff [00:02:18]:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. First of all, I'm. I am an extrovert. Don't turn off the podcast.

David Hall [00:02:23]:
Yeah, yeah, we've let a few extroverts on the show. So you're one of, you're one of the select.

Lisa Woodruff [00:02:30]:
I think this is going to be a great conversation, especially for the introverts in my audience. And I'm sure they will give me a lot of feedback as into what I'm getting right or wrong or how I can learn more. And I would say that's the best introduction to me. I am a lifelong learner. Like as a kid I was very inquisitive. I asked my mom so many questions. She said what are you doing writing a book? And now I've written six. So apparently yeah, I was getting researched all the way back then.

Lisa Woodruff [00:02:54]:
Babysat a lot of kids, came from a large family as the youngest or the oldest grandchild on both sides. So I've been in a lot of households, went to college and got an early childhood degree and did taught preschool in a public school here in Cincinnati, Ohio. And as part of that teaching we would go into people's houses. We one to make sure they lived in the district because they were getting free preschool, but also to make sure that the children were actually being cared for and there wasn't any neglect going on. Then I was a stay at home mom for a decade, which I loved so much. And then I started my company organized 365 and the first way the company grew was I did in home organizing for six years in Cincinnati. Then I was in the bigger houses in Cincinnati and seeing, you know, some of the unique challenges in our area, Cincinnati, Ohio is we have a lot of big companies like Procter and Gamble and GE and Luxottica and Johnson and Johnson. And so people will come in and do a stint in Ohio for, you know, a year to two years in order to move up the corporate ladder.

Lisa Woodruff [00:03:53]:
But we don't have a good rental market here. So they'd have to buy a house, modify the house and then move out. And they're used to being in New York, California. So your money goes a lot farther in Cincinnati than it does in those places. And so I really started to like as organized365 developed as a company and I was in my 40s then. At that point I started to see that the one commonality we all are going to have throughout our lifetime is we're going to live in some kind of a dwelling. And I've been in a lot of them, hundreds of them. I'd seen a lot of different ways in which people use their households by generation, by age group, by family composition.

Lisa Woodruff [00:04:29]:
And so at the age of 50 I went back and I got my PhD in applied psychology. I'm graduating June 2026. And so I plan to do more research because you know, when we talk about being introvert, extrovert, we Talk about a lot in social situations and when we relate to other people. But the truth is we all live in our household and we're managing our household on our own. I mean, obviously if you have a family, they're there, but how you mentally process it and do it is on your own. And you don't have a large repertoire of understanding how other people use households. So that's kind of like the nerdy background about. I'm always questioning, I'm always learning, and I can't wait to learn more from you.

David Hall [00:05:11]:
Yeah. Congratulations on the PhD. That's a big accomplishment.

Lisa Woodruff [00:05:15]:
Thank you.

David Hall [00:05:16]:
And you know, Lisa, having taken a dive into your book, which I've been enjoying, I know studying success, that a lot of times there's a rock bottom moment to get there. And I know that you've had a rock bottom moment. Tell us about that.

Lisa Woodruff [00:05:34]:
Well, I have one in the book, but I have a bazillion in real life. You know what I mean? Okay, so we'll talk about the one in the book. So the book is Escaping Quicksand. And I wrote it at the age of 54, but I really wrote it for my 40 year old self. Like as I was turning 40, I just felt so depleted, alone, depressed, isolated. Like, I just felt like I really didn't know how I was going to live to be a hundred if I had to keep living the life I was living at the age of 39 is kind of how I felt. And my life had been pretty easy up until the age of 33. And then my kids had a couple of medical challenges, my parents got divorced.

Lisa Woodruff [00:06:11]:
My father ultimately became ill and passed away. So my sister and I had to settle that estate. We went through the global recession in 2008, 2009. The direct sales company I loved and still represent went bankrupt twice. It was just like one thing after the other after the other after the other. And we all have those seasons in our life. We're like, can I get a break? And they're like, no, here's one more brick we're gonna put on your head and try to swim with this, you know, And I just felt like that's how I was. At 39, I was the most overweight I've ever been depressed.

Lisa Woodruff [00:06:43]:
We had the least money we've ever had. I had all my cognitive resources and my intellectual ability, but I didn't seem to be making any headway in the world. And I felt very overwhelmed. And so I describe this as sliding down into the pit of despair. And for many of Us. It is years and years and years of caregiving and economics and just you're uniquely gifted and created to do something, but it's just not manifesting right now. And the harder you try, the deeper you sink. So what I found was when you get to the bottom of the pit of despair, you don't hit rock bottom.

Lisa Woodruff [00:07:17]:
You actually sink deeper into quicksand. And so that's where I was when I started to organize 365.

David Hall [00:07:24]:
Yeah. So I know I, I can relate to all of that. As many as probably many can. How'd you choose quicksand as metaphor for your book?

Lisa Woodruff [00:07:34]:
So I tend to have these pictures in my mind and as I was writing the story and I, I love to tell stories and I love to, as a teacher, I love to have you think about your lived experience differently. And so often I'll have to borrow something from business or from school when I'm talking about the house so that you don't. So you can actually see what's going on. And so I was reliving that experience, which is hard to relive, of being 39 and feeling so powerless and how I basically just wanted somebody to rescue me. I wanted somebody to just even tell me what to do. I'll do anything, just tell me what to do. And at that time, I'm picturing myself in quicksand. The harder I struggle, the deeper I sink.

Lisa Woodruff [00:08:19]:
And I'm looking around and all of my friends are in their own quicksand. It was then that I realized, oh, this isn't a me problem. This is like a 39 year old woman problem and man problem. I now know it's just, you know, you've been hashtag adulting long enough and you've said yes to enough things in your 20s and 30s that the ramifications of those hit you in your 40s. So what I mean by that is if you decide to take out a mortgage in your 20s, you're going to pay for that for 30 years. We refinanced ours six times, so we're still paying for ours even though we still live in our house 30 years later. And so those, you know, we decided to adopt children, we decided to live in Ohio. We did like a lot of the decisions we made in our 20s and 30s had ramifications going into your 40s.

Lisa Woodruff [00:09:04]:
So we didn't have a lot of wiggle room. We didn't have a lot of extra white space in order to make new decisions or changes. And the compounding effect was just really getting heavy yeah, for sure.

David Hall [00:09:16]:
So we're going to talk a lot about your latest book, but tell us about the other books you've written. What, what are they about?

Lisa Woodruff [00:09:22]:
So each book kind of. Because I'm a teacher and a podcaster, I've been podcasting for 11 years. I create a lot of content and after there's enough content that would actually make a book, I'll make a book. So the book, the Mindset of Organization talks about how different generations look at the, look at the physical items in their house differently and how a lot of arguments and families are just because you're looking at the value of physical stuff differently. And when you could see it from the other generations perspective, you can have better conversations. How ADHD Affects home Organization took my understanding of our cognitive resources of executive function, how I modified those in the classroom for my students who are diagnosed with adhd, and what modifications I would put in place in a household for people who are diagnosed or think that they might have some executive function issues. The paper solution is how you organize your physical paper in your household. A lot of people think they don't have paper, which is fine.

Lisa Woodruff [00:10:18]:
You might not, but your parents and grandparents do. So you're going to have to organize it somehow. File cabinets really are not good for us. So I've created some binders and some specific ways to organize paper and oh, Organization is a Learnable Skill is the other book I wrote. And that's really my journey the year I turned 40, until I was 41. How did I organize my house over those 12 months? What were the physical things I did and what were the emotions I was experiencing during that year?

David Hall [00:10:45]:
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's funny because like I definitely have less paper now. I don't create paper things anymore. But I sure have a lot of stuff from the past I still need to deal with. It's, it's fascinating. And the generations part is, yeah, there's different ways that we look at things and yeah, you know, like me and my wife, we talk about that. Our grandparents both were around in the depression times and they passed things on to their parents and they passed a little bit on to us too. So there's, there's aspects to all that. So let me read the whole title of your book, Escaping Quicksand.

David Hall [00:11:23]:
10 Steps to Overcome the Overwhelm of Modern Home Home Life. So tell us more about the content of that book.

Lisa Woodruff [00:11:32]:
So you'd have to be under a rock to not have heard the conversation in the media right now about the invisible load that Women are handling as they are managing households, and that is definitely warranted. And it is real. There's a lot to managing a household without children. It takes 28 hours a week on average just to do all the things that we need to sustain life. And you may say that's not right. And I thought that wasn't right either. So I did a time study of my husband and I, and we spent 36 hours a week. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy.

Lisa Woodruff [00:12:01]:
Now we own our home. So we had to do yard work. And it was in the spring when I did this study. But yard work, cooking, cleaning, you know, paying the bills, doing the calendar, getting ready for the holidays. There is a lot of work related to running a household. However, the main thrust of the conversation in media right now is that women are doing too much and men should do more, which, fine, if you're in a relationship. And that's, you know, my husband does more than I do now because I abdicated a lot of the things I was doing. But it's hard to solve a problem by saying somebody else should do the work.

Lisa Woodruff [00:12:37]:
And also the invisible work is invisible to you. So it's hard to delegate something that's invisible to you. So my perspective and my focus is I can only change myself. And I'm in a married relationship, but I can only change myself. And so I decide, do I even want to do the work? If I don't, I just don't do it. If I need my husband to do it instead of me, I will articulate it and we will discuss it. And a lot of it is, I don't mind doing it. Like my husband says, you like being in charge.

Lisa Woodruff [00:13:04]:
I'm like, you're right, I do. So I don't mind leading my household. I really enjoy it. And so I've elevated my role to the CEO, and I'm applying a lot of the leadership and learnings that I have as running a multimillion dollar business to my household. Like, I wouldn't do this at work. Why am I doing this at home? Why am I acting this way at home when I wouldn't act this way at work? And so I've applied a lot of operationalization and plan neglect and doing things to 80% if they don't need to be perfect, things like that, so that I can have more time and capacity for the things I want to do, like getting a PhD or now it's working out. Otherwise I'd spend my whole entire life working at home or working at work. Yeah.

David Hall [00:13:47]:
Yeah. Congratulations on 11 years on the podcast. That's quite an accomplishment. I don't run across too many people that have had a podcast that long.

Lisa Woodruff [00:13:56]:
Thanks. I love to talk because I'm an extrovert and I also love to. As a teacher. It's really, really fun to think about. You know, we live in our households and we know what we know and how do you teach someone at home or share a concept at home that will help you think about your household differently? And that's what I love to do and apply, you know, what's happening in the world to our household. So, you know, AI is not coming for households anytime soon, you guys. It's like the last place they're going to come. Every single thing I have that's smart in my house is totally dumb.

Lisa Woodruff [00:14:32]:
So I'm not. You know, it's fun to have conversations like that, too.

David Hall [00:14:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. And it's called Organize365.

Lisa Woodruff [00:14:40]:
What?

David Hall [00:14:40]:
What? I'm curious, what content seems to be the most popular with your listeners?

Lisa Woodruff [00:14:44]:
Yeah, you told me you were going to ask this question. I was like, oh, no. Yeah. So I'm sure I could go back and see, like, what podcasts download higher than other podcasts do. I have been working for 14 and a half years in organized 365. I've never gone viral for anything, ever. No podcast episode, no book, no social media posts. Like, I'm just plugging along, doing the work over here day after day, week after week.

Lisa Woodruff [00:15:10]:
And I find that. I don't know why, but I don't tend to follow the trends of, like, this is converting well online. So you should do this tik tok thing or you should do this. Like, maybe it's because I'm old. I just don't have the time. I don't have the energy. And so I just really think about what is bothering me now, what is helping me as a household manager. How can I have that conversation? And, like, just how I would have a conversation with another girlfriend over coffee.

Lisa Woodruff [00:15:35]:
That's the whole podcast. And it seems to resonate with people. So it's very timely. A lot of things are very timely. Like right out right now, I'm talking about AI. I wouldn't have talked about that six months ago.

David Hall [00:15:45]:
Right, right. Oh, that sounds great. And so when you're talking about, you know, organizing, getting your house organized, what are the psychological effects of clutter?

Lisa Woodruff [00:15:58]:
It's so interesting. That is usually a question that is asked, and I am not a clutter expert. I've read a Little bit. In academia, I really focus on organizing. So what I like to say is that when you're thinking about your household and how your household runs, we talk 80% of the time on decluttering. Like, it's. You could see the results of decluttering. It's quick and it's easy.

Lisa Woodruff [00:16:19]:
There are a lot of resources out there for decluttering. And having less stuff in your. In your space gives us a sense of calm, for sure. I mean, science will show that. I think, though, it's just the first half of a conversation, and we usually don't get to the second half. So the first half is, yeah, you have to have less stuff in order to organize. But then who teaches you how to organize? And how do you actually organize what's left? And the only reason I say that is because when you just have the first half of the conversation about decluttering, and that takes quite a while. Like over a weekend, you could get rid of a lot of bags.

Lisa Woodruff [00:16:52]:
All of a sudden you feel lighter, you feel better. You don't do the hard work of the organizing, the learning. So then you just go back to running your everyday life. Six weeks, eight weeks, six months later, you're overwhelmed again. Now you're like, oh, I'm overwhelmed. I need to. Instead of organize, you think, declutter. So then you go through and you get rid of things again.

Lisa Woodruff [00:17:11]:
Now, if you have little babies or if you've just moved or you buy a bunch of stuff and you need to declutter, that's fine. But for most people, you don't. And because the only tool in your tool chest is decluttering, you then look around your house, and at first you can fill up a couple of bags, and then you go, well, I really don't have anything else to declutter, but I don't know how else to get that same feeling that I had. So I guess I don't need this. So you start looking at things that you actually wouldn't declutter, and you think, well, in order to get that feeling back, I'm going to get rid of this thing because things are what make me feel better through decluttering. And what you really need to do is you've decluttered enough. Now you have to press into what? Why is this space no longer working for me anymore? How am I going to. You know, I was.

Lisa Woodruff [00:17:56]:
I'm working from home now for six years, and I'm still doing it on the corner of the kitchen table, and I'm trying to move all these Piles around. Maybe it's time to actually buy a desk. Maybe it's time to actually change our house to function the way that we are using our house versus the way we would have it staged if we were selling it, which we're not doing. So we might as well change our house to match how we use it. That is harder. Takes some investment of time, money, and a lot of thinking time. And so if you keep doing the decluttering, you don't get to that. And what you end up doing is decluttering the things you need in order to try to feel better about your space.

Lisa Woodruff [00:18:28]:
Does that make sense?

David Hall [00:18:29]:
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, we're here to have both parts of the conversation, so that's great. And this may apply to extroverts, too, but introverts, you know, often our home or our space at home is a sanctuary that we can recharge in it. And I often talk about the need for being alone for introverts. Part of it is recharge. Part of it is also thinking, getting some work done. We need some alone time. And we don't want to be alone all the time, but we need some alone time for lots of things.

David Hall [00:19:07]:
Recharging is part of it, but not the whole thing. So how important is creating our physical environment, whether it be decluttering or organizing so that we. We have that space?

Lisa Woodruff [00:19:18]:
Yeah. This is such an interesting question. And I've been thinking about it for a couple of days because I only have my own opinion. I don't have, like, this is what science says or anything. So I want to be very clear.

David Hall [00:19:29]:
Yeah.

Lisa Woodruff [00:19:29]:
So I've been thinking about this because I'm obviously an extrovert, but. And I. And I will, like, let's say I came into the office the other day and I was going to work on this project, and I actually said to employee, hey, do you have an hour to get on Zoom with me? And she was like, yeah. So I was able to do a lot of the project a lot faster because I bounced my ideas off her, got real time feedback, and I moved through the project twice as fast as I would have. Of course, I monopolized her time, but that helped me get through my project. But even as an extrovert, I need. I actually need a lot of alone time, which may be surprising. And I usually can't get it because I'm managing everywhere I am.

Lisa Woodruff [00:20:08]:
I'm managing at work, I'm managing at home. If we're in a social situation, I even notice it like. Like when we have family Dinners or things like, if the table gets quiet, I'm the one putting, you know, asking the questions, pulling things out of people, starting the conversations, which is a lot of work, by the way, in order to keep the conversation flowing and things like that. And I think about in different groups. Some people need more processing time. Like you would say, introverts need more processing time. Try to be cognizant of that at work. And if there's something big I want to talk to the team about, I'll let them know the day before what I'm thinking.

Lisa Woodruff [00:20:41]:
So it's not out of the blue. So there's a lot of work as an extrovert to get the introverts to, like, have conversations with me. However, I am a, you know, I'm a researcher now. I write books, I record podcasts. I come up with new products that we patent and manufacture. And all of that has to be done pretty much in isolation. And I don't get a lot of alone time because I'm always managing and leading everything. So the team jokes when I am, like, doing a lot of things, and they need me to be moving ahead of where they are because I'm where the work comes from.

Lisa Woodruff [00:21:12]:
They're like, I think we should just buy Lisa an airplane ticket and fly her to California and back, and then she'll have all this done. Because when I get in the airplane, like, I'm, like, planning and I'm doing and I'm thinking, I also like to have time at home where I can really think about, okay, here's what the next week or the next month looks like. And then I run through a lot of filters, like, how does this impact my work? How does this impact my husband? How does this impact my kids? How does this impact my grandkids? How does this impact our finances? Like, that CEO mindset of going through all those different lenses takes a lot of time, and you have to be able to do it alone. And I, as an extrovert, don't actually get enough alone time. So I think we all need time to think our own thoughts and process. Introverts may need more and for different reasons than extroverts, but I think if you have any extroverts listening or if you're an introvert married to an extrovert, you may think, oh, I didn't think they needed the alone time. I actually find in my marriage where I'm the extrovert and my husband is the introvert. When he's at home, he wants to talk to me more because he's been around other people all day and he started being around other people all day.

Lisa Woodruff [00:22:19]:
But I'm like, not a person. Does that make sense? Like, I'm not a person. I'm the wife. I'm the safe person. I'm the person you could be unfiltered around. So he wants to have a lot of time with me, whereas I've been leading and managing all day. And I would like to have some time to think through the priorities at home and at work, in thinking and not talking, which you think would be the opposite. So my husband actually talks more than I do at home.

Lisa Woodruff [00:22:41]:
So just thoughts I have, but I don't really have any, like, conclusions.

David Hall [00:22:45]:
No, that's great. And it's, it's so important to realize that, you know, there's many aspects to our personalities. We're not just introverts or extroverts, and you have to figure out what works for you. My wife, we're both introverts, but I really enjoy her company and talking with her, and she doesn't train me. I, I, I would like to say the same thing. I don't know if she was on with this right now, if she would say that I don't drain her because, anyway. But it's just that that's so good. It's so valid what you brought up, because we're all different.

David Hall [00:23:24]:
We need to think about what we need. But at the same time, you know, you are recognizing the differences in introverts, such as saying, yeah, if I give them the topic ahead, a day ahead of time, they're going to do better because they're going to have a chance to think through. So that's why these conversations are so important.

Lisa Woodruff [00:23:40]:
And I do think it's important, especially thinking about your family. So as I was thinking about this, in preparation for this podcast, I do a lot of personality assessments with my team members and any of my family members that will take the assessments. And so, like, Gretchen Rubin has a great one. And are you a questioner, a rebel, an upholder, or an obliger? And it's really like what you do with information once you get it. I'm a questioner. I'm going to question everything because I want to know why we're doing what we're doing. A rebel is going to say, I'm not doing it. I don't care how great of an idea it was, it wasn't my idea.

Lisa Woodruff [00:24:14]:
An upholder is going to do things if they think they are worth doing and they match their Values. And an obliger is going to do what you ask, no matter what, because you've asked them to do it. And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking, you know, an introvert who's also an obliger, which I have a lot of them in my audience, so they are thinking through their answer, and they're going to do whatever is asked of them in the community, in their home, and at work. I find that that combination tends to be the most in service to others and least in service to themselves. And so if you're going to do whatever everybody else asks, and you need processing time to think about it, by the time you've thought what you want to do, you've already committed to doing something for someone else, and you're not going to say no. And so your time is never your own. And so as you start to think about those things, or the disc profile or the enneagram, or like a lot of these other combinations of tests that I've done in your household, specifically, the more you understand each individual and their natural tendencies, the easier it is to get them on board when you have a new idea and. Or manage your household.

Lisa Woodruff [00:25:25]:
So I have all the personalities in my household. Some people, I let them know that we're doing things weeks or months in advance, and other people find out the minute we're getting ready to leave the house because the anxiety will be so high if they know something is in advance. And other people, if they don't have enough processing time to get their mind around the fact that we're doing this thing, that they literally will be frozen in place and they won't be able to physically get in the car, like. And those are all real thoughts. And so as you're the household manager, you are the CEO, you are the leader, you have to know all the people in your household, what you need in order to be the best leader you can be, and. And what all your constituents need in order to have the most harmonious household you can have.

David Hall [00:26:09]:
Yeah, And I love this, because having an introvert extrovert conversation like we're having really shows the differences that there are differences. It's not just something sometimes people think, oh, introverts, they just need to get over that or this. And it. No, there's. There's actual differences. But what you're saying right now about your household, I was going to ask you, what do you do when, you know, you may be excited about escaping the quicksand, but others in your household don't share that same Excitement.

Lisa Woodruff [00:26:43]:
Okay, so this is great. I'll tell you a funny story. I was probably 45 at the time. I need to know how old I was because I always say, like, seven years ago, nine years ago. And the time keeps passing. But my kids were in middle school, they were in high school, and I was driving them to two different schools and. And I'd already started organized 365, and I was doing in home organizing. So I was spending 25 hours a week just driving in my car.

Lisa Woodruff [00:27:06]:
And I now eat healthy, but that started in my 50s. So in my 40s, I was eating all fast food and fountain Cokes. Like, that's all I ate all the time, the entire time that I raised my children. It's not great, but it is what it is. So now they're in high school, so obviously my kids like fast food too. So we're all eating fast food. And I'm going to the grocery store and I'm buying groceries and I'm bringing them home. But I'm really terrible at cooking.

Lisa Woodruff [00:27:30]:
I can make Thanksgiving dinner, like, every single thing in the fixings, but for some reason, I can't. I just can't make, you know, six o' clock dinner. So I'd buy the food, and then every trash night, we'd throw it all away, and I'd do it all over again. So it was like a Tuesday night. I was getting ready to go to the grocery store in a couple of days, and my husband and I were talking. I said, you know what? I don't. I don't go to the grocery store anymore. He was like, what? He goes, how is food gonna get in the house? Because he does come home and eat lunch, and, like, he does eat food from the grocery store.

Lisa Woodruff [00:27:58]:
And I was like, well, you have a credit card. You know where the grocery store is, and you have a car. So if you want food in the house, you're gonna have to do it from here on out. And, like, I haven't been in a grocery store since.

David Hall [00:28:07]:
Oh, wow.

Lisa Woodruff [00:28:07]:
I order whatever I need online. My husband took me a couple years ago. Totally backfired. I, like, bought a plant. He found me wandering in some other aisle. He's like, you can't do this. I'm like, I told you, I cannot handle grocery stores. I can't handle meal planning.

Lisa Woodruff [00:28:20]:
I just can't. I can't handle any of it for whatever reason. So I totally abdicated my role. Not only of grocery shopping, like, every single thing related to food, like, nine years ago.

David Hall [00:28:28]:
Oh, wow.

Lisa Woodruff [00:28:30]:
I Know, Crazy, right?

David Hall [00:28:31]:
Been working out?

Lisa Woodruff [00:28:33]:
Well, I mean, we ate a lot of fast food and then my husband started doing a lot of cooking and then he got exhausted from that. So we have one real, you know, we're older. We have one really nice family dinner on Sunday that his mom comes to and everybody comes to. And other than that, my husband and I shop separately for our breakfast and lunches. We're old, so we don't really have dinner. And we, we eat, we eat out once a week. Our kids are grown now.

David Hall [00:28:56]:
Yeah, that sounds great. So, Lisa, what's your definition of productivity? What does that mean to you?

Lisa Woodruff [00:29:02]:
Oh, I love productivity. It is like, I love planning and I love productivity. Those two words, like, I light up when you say them. But I used to be really productive doing a bunch of crap that didn't matter. Like, I could do things really, really fast. And then I get to the end, I'd redo them all and like, they didn't really matter. So for me, productive is to have significance. So I, the strengths finder profile is another one I've done.

Lisa Woodruff [00:29:28]:
I'm a learner, and I'm also big on significance. I don't want to waste my time if it, if you're not going to remember it five days, five years from now. Like, why am I doing it? That's why I got a PhD. Like, I want to do research that will last beyond my lifetime. The company probably won't, but the research would. So what am I doing that is productive? So significant. So productivity is working towards a goal that will make a difference for myself, my family, or the community at large for a long period of time. For me, that's what productivity is.

David Hall [00:30:03]:
Yeah. And something I've learned and I have a similar definition. It's, you know, what's important because I know that I've tried to do everything and you can't, you know, you have to decide what is significant. I like that. You know, I, I, I, I benefited from Clifton strengths as well. You know, what is important and, and, and, and figure out how to do that. You know, in your book you write about manipulating time. What does that mean?

Lisa Woodruff [00:30:34]:
So manipulating time is this con. I talk a lot about time. You know, time management is big topic for people, but I really like to, like I said, have you think about time differently. So manipulating time. We all have the same hours in the day, but productive people use their time differently. They task, stack things, they make decisions or rules for themselves so they don't have to make decisions in the future. So I have found. And one of the ways in which I manipulated time early on that my audience will understand is I get my machines running at home.

Lisa Woodruff [00:31:08]:
So on a Saturday morning, if I'm going to do a lot of work at home, I will get the dishwasher going, the first load of laundry, and the laundry, if we're going to have dinner in a crock pot, I'll get that going. I'll get all of those things going and then I will clean up the room and do all of those things. I do the same thing at work. When I come in, I check in and see what everybody's working on. I double check my email to see if there's anyone that needs a response back from me today. After I get through 30 or 45 minutes of that, then I'll work on the big project I need to work on. Because if you start with what you need first and then at 2 o' clock you're like, okay, what's in your email? Be like, oh, shoot. There's something that if I could have given that person the answer at 8 o', clock, they could have already gotten me the answer by now.

Lisa Woodruff [00:31:48]:
And so I like to have my machines and other people working on whatever my objectives are ahead of time so that I can move forward faster.

David Hall [00:31:56]:
Yeah, you also write a lot about the importance of routines. Why are routines important?

Lisa Woodruff [00:32:02]:
Yeah, so routines and habits are, and schedules are all a little bit different, but they're all similar. Habits are things that you do unconsciously. You're not like thinking about doing them. Like, I brush my teeth at night, I think to brush my teeth, but like, I'm not, not going to brush my teeth because the little sweaters on my teeth are going to bother me. So I'm definitely going to do that. That's a habit. Routines are the closest we can get to habits. And routines can become habits, but usually they don't because something will bounce them out.

Lisa Woodruff [00:32:31]:
So routines are like a morning routine or an evening routine. There are things that you do in the morning or you do in the evening. But now you're going to consciously think through what you're doing, put them in a better order and maybe task stack them. So like, for example, about a year ago, I wanted to start flossing. Well, obviously flossing would happen right after brushing your teeth. Right. So I put the little flossers right next to my toothbrush. So it was easy.

Lisa Woodruff [00:32:54]:
When I grabbed the toothpaste, I would just see them there. I'd be like, oh, yeah, that's right. I want to floss my teeth. So it's right there so I could add it into the habit I already had. Now I had an evening routine. I take my pills, I brush my teeth, I floss my teeth, I take my bath, I go to bed. And so routines are as you start to do them and become more consistent with your routines. You could start to take administrative tasks that you do every week and, and assign them a day or a week or a time and bucket it into your routines and make your routines more and more robust.

Lisa Woodruff [00:33:24]:
So a lot of the things you know that you need to do will have a specific time of day or day of the week that you're going to do them. So you don't have to cognitively be thinking when. Like for example, when do you take the trash out? Everyone knows when you take the trash out. But when do you make your grocery list that doesn't have that set time like when you take the trash out does. So how do we kind of take tuck some of those things in, which will reduce our cognitive load overall?

David Hall [00:33:47]:
Yeah. When do we take the trash out?

Lisa Woodruff [00:33:51]:
The night before the trash comes. It's different for everybody, but you know when it is.

David Hall [00:33:55]:
Yeah, for sure. And you also talk about, I hear you talk a lot about the Sunday basket. What is, what is that?

Lisa Woodruff [00:34:03]:
So the Sunday basket is your school supplies for running your household. So I realized as I was helping people get their homes organized that I had created some structures in my household because I was a school teacher. And I took some of these routines I did and I actually just made school supplies for them. It's not, it's a novel concept, but it's not unique. Everybody has some kind of planning system, way they process the mail, keep track of their to dos and the projects they have going on in their household. But what I found when I was organizing people's households is that everybody's system is different and everybody's system has leaks in it because it's self made. And when you go through a really busy time and you're using a self made system that doesn't have a physical product related to it, sometimes you'll stop doing some things you've always done out of habit. But your new life circumstance, remove that habit and you don't even realize you stopped doing it.

Lisa Woodruff [00:34:56]:
So the Sunday basket is just a way to operationalize the household management portion of your household job. The bill pay, the errands to run, making the list for the groceries, all the projects that you're doing, all the requests that come in through your DMS and texts and email and kids school backpacks and somebody asked you something, you know, while you're standing at the bus stop, all that stuff gets put in the Sunday basket and you process it once a week.

David Hall [00:35:20]:
How do you put it in there?

Lisa Woodruff [00:35:23]:
So I am not a digital person, as I told you. So I write things down on index cards and I just drop them in there. People who are digital might email themselves or they might have some kind of an app that they keep up with. I, I just, I'm terrible with any of those app type things. So I just do it physically.

David Hall [00:35:39]:
Do you keep index cards with you? Is that how you.

Lisa Woodruff [00:35:42]:
Everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. I'm always writing something down and they're about the size of your phone. So I'll write them down here at work and I'll put them with my phone and when I get home, I'll just drop them right in the Sunday basket.

David Hall [00:35:56]:
Yeah, I love that. And again, everybody's going to be different. I'm definitely going to be more of a digital person myself, but I do find, as far as my productivity, that capturing those things is so important because they might be important, but if you know something comes to you that you need to do and you don't capture it, probably not going to get done. So capturing is so critical, whether you're writing it down or putting it online somewhere. That's key.

Lisa Woodruff [00:36:24]:
Yeah. And a couple things I did learn during my PhD is that writing by hand on paper trumps every other way of capturing information because it encodes the message deeper into your brain. And now the research is coming out with AI showing that when you use AI, you're not using all of your cognitive resources. You don't even really remember what you're doing. They've already shown that for a long time with writing. Like, if you write notes by hand or type them on a computer, you're going to remember them more by writing them by hand. Also, I like to provide solutions that are universal and other people can change them. So.

Lisa Woodruff [00:36:58]:
So we're going to get to the third part of my decluttering cycle. So decluttering is stage one. And then you have to organize for the phase of life you're in. The third step is increasing productivity. And so increasing productivity to me is like, okay, I'm going to get the Sunday basket and I'm going to have this analog system in which I do this weekly planning. And you being someone digital, can take that same idea and say, okay, I'm going to do it. Through the Notes app or I'm going to do it through this app or what? However you're going to do it. Increasing productivity digitally is a personal organization.

Lisa Woodruff [00:37:30]:
Strength analog can be used by everyone. Digital is an individual productivity thing. Now, sometimes couples can have a digital system that they share equally. I've only seen this happen like once. Usually even couples that are digital are using digital, different apps and different what, you know, and they don't actually see it when it's in a physical Sunday basket. The nice thing about this is many women find that they are their family's Google or Siri and so they're like, hey mom, where's this? Hey mom, what's the answer to this? And once it's in a Sunday basket, you say, oh, like I just told my husband, we're going to a wedding. The invitation is in a slash pocket named Wedding in the Sunday basket. So he went in, he got it out, he found all the information on his own.

Lisa Woodruff [00:38:13]:
Whereas if that it was digitally, I'll be like, oh, hold on, let me check, let me send you that email. Let me look at the thing. And so while I can increase my productivity with digital apps and some digital things, it isn't a universal system for increasing productivity in a household or group of people.

David Hall [00:38:30]:
Yeah. And I guess, you know, as you were describing how you do it, I, I'm probably more of a hybrid because I also know the benefit of handwriting things and, you know, maybe taking notes during a meeting. I'm going to have a notebook by my side and then when that meeting's done, at some point, I'm going to look at my notes and then put them into my digital system because I'm not going to put everything in there, but I'm going to put, okay, I need to, I need to capture this, I need to capture that. So there is a psychological benefit to actually handwriting things out. So, yeah, I'm probably a hybrid there.

Lisa Woodruff [00:39:06]:
Yeah, A lot of the tasks, you write them down and they're done. They never needed to go in a digital system at all. It was like, pick up the dog from daycare, don't forget your dog, make a haircut appointment. Like, these things don't need to be tracked forever and ever. Amen.

David Hall [00:39:19]:
Yeah, we've talked about a lot of great things and, you know, just thinking about that person that's in that rock bottom place that's overwhelmed right now. What advice do you have for them?

Lisa Woodruff [00:39:32]:
Yeah, I, I don't like to give advice. They just say what I've done. And I think What I've done is just recognize that we are not as different as we think we are. A lot of times, especially when you're in your household, you think you are the only one. You're the only one that doesn't have a solution for this. You're the only one that doesn't have your act together. You' only one that doesn't have a house that's totally clean. No, nobody has that stuff.

Lisa Woodruff [00:39:55]:
The only people that have that stuff are taking a snapshot and putting it on Instagram or Pinterest. And you're thinking that's how they live. No, that's how they were living for that one second of the day. And then by the end of the day, whatever it is that they made beautiful isn't beautiful anymore. Or if they turned the camera 180 degrees, you would see that everything they moved out of the way in order to get that shot. So I think that we are really too hard on ourselves. And, and also we go through some hard seasons in life and those seasons are hard and there is a way out, but it's going to take time. Like the lived experience is much longer and harder than we tend to see when we ask chat GPT or are we are on our social media scrolling?

David Hall [00:40:37]:
Yeah, absolutely. Lisa, this has been a great conversation. Is there anything else you want to add today?

Lisa Woodruff [00:40:45]:
No, I. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.

David Hall [00:40:48]:
Absolutely. And then of course, where can people find out about the great work that you're doing, your upcoming book and podcast and everything else.

Lisa Woodruff [00:40:56]:
Well, thank you. The book is called Escaping Quicksand. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. My company is organized365 so it's organized365.com the podcast is organized365 and I've. I'm most active on Instagram under Organize 365.

David Hall [00:41:13]:
Awesome. Thanks again, Lisa.

Lisa Woodruff [00:41:15]:
Thank you.

David Hall [00:41:16]:
Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you. I hope you take the time to explore other episodes and learn from other amazing guests. Remember, if you're interested in getting to know yourself better, there is now a free typefinder personality assessment on the Quiet and Strong website. This free assessment will give you a brief report including the four letter Myers Briggs code. I'll add a link in the show notes and I'd love to connect with you. Reach out to daviduyanstrong.com or check out the quietandstrong.com website which includes blog posts and links to social media for quiet and strong and much more. Send me topics or guests you would like to see on the show.

David Hall [00:41:56]:
So many great things about being an introvert, and so we need those to be understood. Get to know your introverted strengths and needs and be strong.