WORK WELL. Play More!
Productive, Clutter-free, Healthy Living – One Step at a Time
HEY READERS!
If you’re looking for all the links, references, and resources I mention in the book, you’re in the right place! Click on the corresponding month below to find the tools, programs, or services for that month. If the item has an (*) asterisk, it means it is an affiliate link, which means I make a little $ with no extra cost to you. Check back regularly because if I find a cool product or make a new corresponding video, I’ll add it to the appropriate month.
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Introduction
Download our Monthly Habit Tracker to print, upload to a digital note-taking app, or simply copy and download into your Google Drive!
Work Well. Play More! Monthly Habit Tracker
Month One
Productivity - Notification Distractions
- Remove the digital clutter from your phone. – A one-minute video of Marcey talking about removing that clutter.
- * Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
- * Amazon Assistant
- Turn off desktop notifications – Instructions and screenshots to turn off Gmail and Outlook notifications.
- Turning off notifications on phone – Instructional video on how to turn off badges and banners on your phone.
Declutter - Digital Files
- Decision Tree – Example decision tree to walk you through friending and unfriending someone in your social connections.
- How to Configure Your Iphone to Work for You, Not Against You – The most comprehensive article I’ve ever seen on a productive phone set-up.
Health - Portion Control
- *Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, New York: BantamDell Books, 2006
- * Demitasse Spoons – I use baby spoons to take smaller bites and feel fancy.
- Ikea Dragon Coffee Spoon – alternative to the spoons above.
- * Titanium Chopsticks – I keep these in my purse and use them for traveling or when I’m at restaurants. I eat with chopsticks as much as possible at home.
- * Meal Prep Containers – glass containers with three compartments.
- * Reusable silicone storage bags – great to put hot food in or to use for the freezer.
- * Hiware 12-piece Demitasse Espresso Spoons – alternative to the spoons above.
- Common Serving Sizes – real examples to help you with portion sizes, like a baseball and deck of cards.
- Hands Portion Sizes – portion example sizes using your hands, fingers, or fists.
- Consumer Lab Protein Powders – list of high-quality protein powders approved by Consumer Labs.
Month Two
Productivity - Folders and Filters
- Sanebox – uses artificial intelligence to filter your email and sort out the trash.
- Evernote – cloud storage with extraordinary Optical Character Recognition (OCR) where the search even works with my sloppy handwriting. The best program for snipping web pages and articles off the internet and downloading entire eBooks.
- Hyperorganizing email – Marcey’s 30-second video on hyperorganizing with folders.
- SMI Financial Coaching – my personal business finance coach. If you reach out, tell her you heard about her from me!
- Outlook Cheatsheet – instructions, screenshots, and videos to help you make the most of Outlook.
Declutter - Car
- www.bugoutbagacademy.com – compact kits with everything you need for emergencies.
Health - Sugar
- How to stop sugar addiction – Marcey’s 6-minute video on how she started the process of breaking her sugar addiction.
Month Three
Productivity - Email Boundaries
- Inbox When Ready – free Gmail Extension that blocks you from seeing your Inbox until you’re ready. Send emails all day, but don’t get distracted by incoming emails unless you choose Show Inbox. You can also set a limit to how many times per day you can Show Inbox and enable a countdown timer of 60 seconds before you see it.
- Inbox Pause – alternative to Inbox When Ready that allows you to pause your inbox from seeing any new messages until certain times of the day. This is part of the paid Boomerang program and what I use to keep me focused.
- Barbara Hemphill – Taming the Paper Tiger* author and guest expert! Barbara founded the Productive Environment Institute where I was certified as a Productive Environment Specialist.
- Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss* – One of the books that started the entire productivity field.
- Boomerang – Gmail and Outlook extension that allows you to schedule and snooze emails easily, pause your inbox, and create templates. I love their service and pay for it annually.
- RightInbox – alternative to Boomerang.
- Streak CRM* – my preferred customer relationship management system for Gmail. Create pipelines, client boxes, canned snippets, snooze emails, and create reports. Free and paid versions available.
- Outlook Video Quick Tips – handy sheet with short videos to make your Outlook more effective.
Declutter - Newsletters and Promotions
- On Task Organizing – Founded by Nancy Hawick. She’s Marcey’s personal professional organizer and works virtually too!
- DMAChoice.org (Direct Marketing Association) – direct mail opt-out.
- CatalogChoice.org – opt-out of catalogs
- OptOutPreScreen.com – opt-out of the unwanted credit card offers and freeze your credit so your account can be stolen.
- Paper Karma – stop junk mail by taking a photo with this app.
- Unroll.Me
- Sanebox – uses artificial intelligence to determine what needs to be filtered in your inbox and what should go to junk mail.
- Outer Order, Inner Calm* by Gretchen Rubin
Health - Movement Opportunities
- Fit Bike – Marcey and many of her clients use the FitBike for work and reading.
- FitBike* – on Amazon if you prefer to buy it there.
- FitDesk* – adjustable standing desk on Amazon.
- Portable FitDesk* on Amazon, standing desk to move around your house and share with your family.
- 6 things to know about Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis – article about how regular daily activity can be the key to longevity.
- A Litterbox Trigger for a Healthy Habit – Marcey’s 90-second video on how she used her cat’s litterbox to do pull-ups.
- Savor Life Summit – Move. Solve. Create. – Marcey’s video on how to reduce pancake butt, increase creativity and collaboration, and stand out in 1:1 meetings, all in less than 12 minutes!
- Tip for Professional Sitters – Marcey’s 30-second video tip for people who sit all day.
- Movement Opportunities for Health and Productivity – Marcey’s 5-minute video on how to defeat glute amnesia and find movement opportunities to boost your health and creativity.
Month Four
Productivity - Email Writing
- * Streak – my preferred customer relationship management system for Gmail. Create pipelines, client boxes, canned snippets, snooze emails, and create reports. Free and paid versions available.
Declutter - Bathroom
- Marie Kondo – life-changing magic of tidying up*
- Nancy Haworth – On Task Organizing – Marcey’s personal professional organizer and this month’s guest expert. She also works virtually!
Health - Veggies
- Miracle Noodles* – shirataki noodles that take the place of pasta and are almost calorie-free! Ninety-seven percent water and three percent plant fiber, super easy to prepare and great for weight loss. Just be sure to rinse them!
- Veggie Serving Sizes – common vegetable serving sizes to help you get enough every day.
- Grain Serving Sizes – common grain sizes (your dish of pasta is probably 3-4!)
Month FIVE
Productivity - Get Shit Done (GSD)
- Zoom* – if you don’t know what Zoom is by now, you may be Amish.
- Calm.com. – my number #1 app for meditation, used almost daily for years. Hundreds of guided meditations, sleep stories, and music.
- Get Shit Done Mug* – I drink out of one of two mugs when I’m in GSD mode. This of course, is my favorite.
Declutter - Closet
- Technicolor Priestess, Eyenie Schultz – bad-ass image consultant who I hired when I made the shift from corporate trainer to a business owner.
- Stitch Fix – curated clothing from a personal shopper that you can choose to keep or ship back.
- Trunk Club – owned by Nordstrom, thousands of options for men and women in a subscription box.
- Michellescaraglino.com – my personal stylist that tells me when things are out of style, new ways to wear clothes, and puts my outfits together quarterly.
- Nancy Haworth – On Task Organizing – Marcey’s personal professional organizer. She also works virtually!
- Studio for Image Professionals – certification program for people interested in becoming a personal stylist.
- Geek-Adonis – personal stylist for men. She transformed my husband and gave him loads of confidence!
- Rent the Runway – designer rental since you’ll probably only wear it once!
- Thredup* – I love this company! It’s super easy to send your clothes to them to sell or get credit. I buy many of my clothes here by filtering for Like New or With Tags.
- fashionista.com – 15 Designers who Always Wear the Same Thing – article to make you rethink your wardrobe.
- fastcompany.com – These designers wear the same thing every day – article from Fast Company.
Health - Sleep
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – article about driving while drowsy.
- f.lux – program to help with blue-rays and the brightness of your computer screen at night.
- Zenni Optical* – inexpensive blue-ray and prescription glasses. Get $5 off your purchase with this link.
- LadyBoss Glasses – blue-ray blocking prescription glasses.
- Natural Vitality Calm* – My nightly magnesium addiction. I travel with the packets and use the bulk container at home to put in my Kombucha every evening.
- Calm.com – I listen to the sleep meditations and sleep stories to help me get to sleep. The French Whisperer does it every time.
- Acoustic Sheep Sleepphones* – -Pajamas for your ears! Headphones and earplugs are uncomfortable and fall out of your ears. These sleepphones are soft and cozy, with flat speakers to listen to your meditation, music or white noise.
- Dream Essentials Contoured Sleep Mask* – the Contoured Eye Mask is my favorite. It doesn’t lie flat against your face so no wrinkles or crinkles (or messing up your makeup for mid-day naps!). Lightweight and adjustable. If you buy nothing else for your sleep, buy this.
- Grow Fragrance – get $10 off your first order!* – Plant-based, toxin-free air freshener for your home. I use lavender at night on my bedsheets and the bamboo in my car. Get $10 off your first purchase by clicking the link.
- Blue Ray Blocking Glasses
- Power of When Quiz – take the quiz and find out if you are a lion, bear, dolphin, or wolf. I bought the book and took so many notes I may as well have written it again!
Month SIX
Productivity - Concentration
- University of Michigan study
- University of Minnesota – a study on costs of multitasking
- UC Irvine – a study on the Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress
- Focus Booster – My favorite Pomodoro Time Tracking app! I set a timer throughout the day to help me track time, keep me from procrastinating, and give me rewards. This can also be used as a timesheet with client reports using tags you come up with.
- Freedom – Protect yourself from yourself by blocking social media and distractions at specific intervals. I use it to block email on weekends. You can block yourself from shopping or news channels during work hours.
- ChromeNanny – limit yourself from going to specific sites at pre-determined times or limit the time you spend on sites.
- Facebook News Feed Eradicator – eradicate distractions by replacing your entire news feed with an inspiring quote.
- The Power of When Quiz – take the quiz and find out if you are a lion, bear, dolphin, or wolf. I bought the book and took so many notes I may as well have written it again!
- Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire by the Center for Environmental Therapeutics – find out if you are a definite morning or evening person and your ideal times for melatonin onset.
- RescueTime – Time tracking productivity tool to show you how much time you spend on all websites and applications. Assign levels for productivity and distraction and improve your effectiveness each week.
Declutter - Media FOMO
- #MeToo Made Me Think I Was Ill – my article on how the stress of the #MeToo movement made me think I was getting another autoimmune disease.
- Downcast – podcast app I use to listen to my podcasts at 1.25 or 1.5 speed.
- Amazon Prime – is there anyone left that isn’t a Prime member? Save money and get access to the Prime channel and Amazon music.
- YouTube – link to my speaking list – productivity and health videos from me!
- What happened when I switched to LinkedIn only. – my article about abandoning Facebook and Twitter.
- The Great Hack – Netflix documentary about how Facebook and Cambridge Analytica interfered with the 2016 election.
- The Social Dilemma – Netflix documentary on how social media manipulates us.
Health - Exercise
- National Academy of Sports Medicine – my certifications for fitness and nutrition are from here.
- Institute of Integrative Nutrition – I’m certified by this organization that teaches about bio-individuality and that no one diet fits everyone.
- Sworkit – fitness app with bodyweight workouts that start with just five minutes.
- Zuzka Light – fitness channel with great videos as short as five minutes.
- *Daily Burn – fitness app I use. Get one free month!
- The American College of Sports Medicine
- Coach.Me – habit tracking app.
- 10 by 10® exercise challenge – my challenge of 10 minutes of exercise by 10:00 am every day.
- 25 in 25® exercise challenge – my annual challenge of exercising every day for 25 minutes from December 1 – 25.
- The history of the 25 in 25® challenge – article about how I started it with my family.
- Boerne 0.5k – want a fun and funny .5k to do with your friends? Yep, you read that right. 0.5k!
Month SEVEN
Productivity - Taskicizing
- Eat That Frog*
- TaskRabbit – Craig’s List but without the scaries. Hire and pay directly through TaskRabbit to get those tasks done like putting up holiday decorations, wrapping gifts, hauling junk, or even professional skills like copywriting!
- Powered Path Playbook® – RaderCo’s digital course and analog tool for reflecting, planning, and prioritizing. We use this ourselves daily!
- Asana – project management system.
- Microsoft Teams – if you work for a company that uses Outlook, you most likely use Teams.
- Trello – project management system.
- Slack – a useful tool to get you out of the inbox, as long as you don’t have all your notifications buzzing you all day.
- ClickUp* – fully integrated project management system with LOADS of features. This is my personal PM system. I hired Geeky Girl for the set-up and it was worth every penny.
Declutter - Office
- Smart Coffee Warmer* – I don’t like drinking out of travel mugs unless I have to, but I like my coffee and tea to stay hot. I can do this with my coffee warmer! I’ve gifted this at least ten times.
Health - Processed Foods
- Institute of Integrative Nutrition – I’m certified by this organization that teaches about bio-individuality and that no one diet fits everyone.
- 10% Human: How your body’s microbes hold the key to health and happiness*
- Whole30*
- Healthy with Ludy – Dr. Ludy de Menten guides people through the Autoimmune Paleo program.
Month EIGHT
Productivity - Meetings
- Acuity Scheduling* – scheduling tool for multiple types of appointments and locations. Easily syncs with multiple calendars and takes payment via Stripe or Paypal. I recommend hiring an Acuity Expert to help you set it up and then never go back and forth over email to schedule an appointment again!
- Schedule Once – another scheduling tool.
- Calendly – free scheduling tool
- How to make your Outlook calendar available to people outside your organization – screenshots
Video
- Tip for Productive Meetings – Marcey’s 20-sec video on how to increase creativity and collaboration.
Declutter - Kitchen
- www.stilltasty.com – not sure if that condiment is still good or that chicken is edible? Check out this site!
- eatbydate.com – alternative to Still Tasty
- National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals. – the national certifying body of professional organizers.
- Tidying Up With Marie Kondo – Netflix series with Marie visiting people’s homes to help them tidy.
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: by Marie Kondo
- Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Doland*
- Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin*
- Nancy Haworth On Task Organizing – my personal professional organizer and former guest expert. She even works virtually!
Health - Convenient and Healthy Foods
- Cooksmarts* – Need help with meal planning? Voted most popular meal planning app by Lifehacker, Cooksmarts will help you save time and money, reduce food waste, and feel more confident in the kitchen. Bonus – it integrates with MyFitnessPal and Instacart!
- Imperfect Foods* – groceries delivered to your door at up to 40% off the retail price.
- Papa Spuds* – local community-supported agriculture program I’ve been using for years.
- Hungry Root* – fresh meals with food that is pre-prepped.
- Thrive Market* – membership service for groceries delivered to your door. I use this quarterly.
- Clean Eatz – healthy, fast-casual food chain that also makes bulk meals for purchase.
- Muscle Maker Grill – healthy, fast-casual food chain that also makes bulk meals for purchase.
- Instacart* – has saved me over 100 hours in shopping since I started using it. I can choose between multiple grocery stores, shop in the app (or simply copy my previous order) and choose to have it delivered in as little as two hours, for just 10% of my bill! We typically arrange to pick it up. You can even create group carts with co-workers or roommates.
- Amazon Subscribe and Save – set it and forget it and have it delivered to your door. It’s like Costco or Sam’s Club for non-perishable items.
- www.care.com – where I found my house assistant.
Month NINE
Productivity - Switchtasking
- Freedom.to* – Protect yourself from yourself by blocking social media and distractions at specific intervals. I use it to block email on the weekends.
- Rescue Time* – Time tracking productivity tool to show you how much time you spend on all websites and applications. Assign levels for productivity and distraction and improve your effectiveness each week.
- Inbox Pause – Alternative to Inbox When Ready that allows you to pause your inbox from emails coming in and only see them when you are in email-processing mode.
- Inbox When Ready – Free Gmail Extension that blocks you from seeing your Inbox until you’re ready. Send emails all day, but don’t get distracted by incoming emails unless you choose ‘Show Inbox’.
- Facebook Feed Eradicator – eradicate distractions by replacing your entire news feed with an inspiring quote.
- Moment.to – digital wellness company with an app to help save yourself from yourself and build a healthier relationship with your phone.
Declutter - Media and Electronics
- Music and Memory – non-profit that provides music and music players to people with Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia. Donate your old iPod.
- Alive Inside – one of the most beautiful documentaries I have ever seen about Alzheimer’s Disease.
- Soldiers Angels – donate your unused electronics to soldiers and veterans.
Health - Mindfulness
- 5-minute journal app – I started and ended my day for years with this app and recommend it frequently.
- 5-minute journal paper version* – I switched to the paper version in my quest to be more analog.
- Calm.com – I had a streak of over 1500 days at one point and then stopped because I wanted to test out some other apps. This is still my favorite. I especially like the breathing exercises.
- Breathe2Relax – portable stress management app with instructions and practice exercises to help users learn how to breathe with their diaphragm.
- www.hypnosisdownloads.com – comprehensive website on self-hypnosis.
Month TEN
Productivity - Boundaries
- Fistula Foundation – the Rader family personal charity of choice. Rated 5 stars by Charity Navigator and featured in several books and documentaries as a worthwhile charity. We have an auto-draft to pay for one surgery a month. If you don’t know what obstetric fistula is, please visit the website and save a life!
- Memento & Muse – corporate gift curation who knows their boundaries and only donates to feed the hungry.
- Kiva.org – RaderCo non-profit of choice. We loan money to women business owners in the Philippines. When they pay us back, we make another loan to someone else.
- Hell Yeah or No – by Derek Sivers
Declutter - Storage Areas
- Disposing of Hazardous Waste – EPA site on how to dispose of household hazardous waste, because it isn’t easy!
Health - Screen-Free Meals
Month ELEVEN
Productivity - Outsourcing
- American Express Profit Calculator – find out how much you really need to make with this calculator.
- Amazon Subscribe & Save – set it and forget it and have it delivered to your door. It’s like Costco or Sam’s Club for non-perishable items.
- Fancy Hands – Fancy Hands is a task-based service where you purchase a bucket of tasks per month. Need internet research, travel plans, or appointments scheduled? Use Fancy Hands! It’s also a great company perk to share the bucket of tasks per month.
- Zoom* – if you don’t know what this is, you slept through COVID.
- Loom – I use this recording software for all videos 5-minutes or less. It’s great for training videos and tutorials.
- Jing – screenshot and recording software.
- Screencast – video and screen recording software.
- Fiverr* – I’ve used Fiverr for professional (creating a book cover, press release, and researching podcasts) and personal outsourcing (making a cartoon drawing of my niece Lily as Rapunzel).
- Travel Guard* – I use Travel Guard for all my international travel or important trips. They make it easy and affordable to save yourself from what you think won’t happen. Plane delayed and miss a day at the beach? They have you covered with a hotel and reimbursement for the day you missed.
- TaskRabbit – Craig’s List but without scaries. Hire and pay directly through TaskRabbit to get those tasks done like putting up holiday decorations, wrapping gifts, hauling junk, or even professional skills like copywriting!
- Virtual Latinos* – Virtual Latinos specialize in fully bilingual virtual assistants in time zones that work for the US. You can choose from direct hire membership plans or through their agency with no long-term contract. They have a thorough interview and onboarding process to help first-timers work with virtual assistants. My former assistant was a college instructor working on her master’s degree in Human Resources.
- Hire My Mom* – recruiting company to connect businesses with talented moms who want to work from home.
- iWorker* – their social mission is to provide high-quality jobs to talented workers in the most economically impoverished countries. They generate opportunities for them to improve their lives, support their families, and grow their local economies. I had bookkeeping help from a CPA/MBA from Kenya and my marketing specialist is from Venezuela.
Declutter - Sentimental Items
Health - Mindset
- Powered Path Playbook® – RaderCo’s digital course and analog tool for reflecting, planning, and prioritizing. We use this ourselves daily!
- The Freedom Journal – an intense journal to help you reach your big hairy audacious goal.
- Bagby* – Who have you phubbed lately? Stop phone snubbing (phubbing) at home or in meetings with their mindful phone holder or grab a few anti-phubbing bands to remind you and your friends or colleagues to look up and pay attention to the people you are with. Check out the founder in our Month One guest expert webinar.
Month TWELVE
Productivity - Protect Yourself and Others
- Dashlane* – if you get nothing else, get a password manager! Generate, store, and confidentially share your passwords. Keep track of your credit cards to easily add payments. Assign users to access your account in the event of injury or death.
- Back Up Your Life* – give this gift to yourself and your loved ones and put a plan in place for your digital legacy. Manage your digital life by having a system for passwords and sharing and a plan in place if something were to happen to you. Self-paced training as well as coaching with Annette, a RaderCo Team Specialist. Use code PLAYMORE for $10 off!
- Beyond the Estate Plan: Important Details Your Family Needs When You Aren’t Here to Tell Them.*
- Your Digital Afterlife: by Evan Carroll*
- Importance of your Digital Footprint – Marcey’s 90-second video on what you may be forgetting about your digital footprint.
- 5-Min Journal* – Gratitude and reflection are backed by research to show improvement in happiness, well-being, and self-awareness. Click here to watch Marcey’s review.
Declutter - Brain
Health - Future planning
- Shauna Van Bogart – my former business coach who helped me find what makes me feel abundant.
SPECIAL REQUEST
I sincerely thank you for reading my book. Whether you bought it, received it as a gift, or borrowed it, you made it this far so it must have meant something. If you feel like this book was valuable, whether you loved it or just kind of liked it, please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads.
Without sounding like someone desperately needing a friend, in today’s world where anyone can write and self-publish, reviews are one of the primary ways other readers find books like this one, especially in the giant categories of organization, health, and productivity.
Please be my One Percent of reviewers on Amazon and Goodreads. You don’t need to write a whole story, just jot down a couple of things you valued from the book. I promise to send good vibes your way!