Do you know what a professional editor does? I’ve noticed four editing trends that could change your understanding of what a professional editor does.
Singles Planning
Men call about organizing their home and their partners. Best of all, women are the ones who reach out for planning help, often saying they can’t/don’t want/shouldn’t tell their husbands. We have now seen a dramatic increase in the number of men making the first call.
There is good news and, well, some things to think about in this trend. The men who call are usually fathers of children under ten years of age, and do not host the daily care of the home and children. A mother is a stay-at-home mother or an underemployed working mother. But she’s more concerned with the way the house looks, the pile of laundry, and all the emotional things that everyone (except her) keeps. He wants a simple fix, one or two appointments that will make his wife a little person like him.
God shows humor by combining opposites. Savers who spend money. Introverts have extroverts. Goalkeepers have toss. The magic is in being able to see that both parties have complementary skills that work in different situations. If neither party is able to resolve the issue, calling in mediators can restore balance to the couple’s relationship.
When personal planning turns into couples planning, home planning can illuminate what mom needs and what dad needs, and find solutions that work for each of them. Both usually learn something new. (Labels take up a lot of time! Unthreading makes things look good! It’s okay if everyone gets dressed in the laundry room!)
ADHD Is Everywhere
Hello, do you know someone with ADHD? Or are you someone with ADHD? (Squirrel! Squirrel!)
Professional planners do not diagnose ADHD, but as more adults are diagnosed, they manage their health, habits, and environment to make things easier.
Most ADHD clients cannot create simple structures for themselves, but if someone else creates a structure that works for them, they can stick to it, making their whole life easier.
As industry leaders say, ADHD is not a problem of knowing what to do, it’s a problem of doing what you know. Professional planners offer home guidance to deal with the boring things that keep the home manageable, and we usually do it by making it more fun (or at least more rewarding) than expected.
People with ADHD often wake up to mess up and come home to mess up, and it feels like a huge problem to fix. The parts of their lives where their creativity lies, often in their jobs or how they relate to children, are overshadowed by the chaos and busy nature of their days. We love helping those with ADHD reset their space to be calm, safe, and realistic. Climbing the mountain becomes a walk in the park.
Getting dressed in the morning is easy.
Staying focused in school or work becomes easier.
Dealing with annoying technology and paperwork becomes easier.
Following a healthy diet, exercise and sleep becomes easier.
A well-organized life is easy for everyone, but for our high-functioning ADHD clients, it’s non-negotiable.
Aging of the Young at Heart
If we’re lucky, we’re all growing up and we’re all going to need some kind of help. Boomers do a lot of things differently as they get older, often because they don’t live around close family members.
We support many families now where an elderly relative is in our area, but older children, younger siblings, or other relatives live outside the country. We provide the practical personal planning assistance they need, whether it’s computer support, help staying organized at home, finding other service providers such as handymen and financial advisors, or regular visits to their assisted living facilities to assess basic needs.
For younger relatives, “downsizing” sounds like something you do once, quickly. But for many customers, downsizing is a new category, with new interests and needs. Because HeartWork Organizing has been in business for over twenty years, we tend to walk the line between the old house and the new house, the normal and the new normal.
It can be tricky for older children to raise getting help at home, but our older clients are happy to receive our help on a weekly or monthly basis. Personal planning is more affordable for the extended family than a plane ticket, and it’s much friendlier and more useful than an app or AI. We often fill the gap for the client who doesn’t need home health care, but needs help navigating this complex world and making decisions.
Young Adults Need Help Too
You might think that young people don’t need personal planning, but people in their twenties are reaching out to us too.
I can tell you the stories of a twenty-four-year-old who needs help learning how to make digital photo books. New parents, fresh out of high school, living in the family basement work with our professional home planner to help them create a safe environment for the new baby. This sounds like a lifesaver for parents. As is often the case, since we are removed from the ways of the family, our message tends to get through, even though it is similar to parental advice.
The iPhone is now 19 years old, but kids who grew up in an always-on-the-line world aren’t terribly naive in the 1990’s. They are still figuring out how to send email and use a calendar to do the growth that happens online, like paying bills, stocking the fridge, setting deadlines, and job hunting.
Companies contact us to help young employees learn how to meet company expectations on things like email behavior and prioritization. Through our corporate classes, we can help connect the culture. Through one-on-one coaching, we can help transform struggling employees into thriving employees.
There is no reason to expect a young person or young adult to have the world and everything in it figured out (even when they think they do). Their brains are still developing, and they are still thinking and planning, just like many of us do.
Self-Organization Is More Than a Fundraiser
Twenty years ago, everyone thought we were working with hoarders, which was not part of our ministry.
Boring people don’t call professional editors.
Everyone we work with is busy, and many are experts in their chosen field. But being a doctor/lawyer/nurse/business owner/artist/etc. it doesn’t always lend itself to being good at home, digital literacy, photo editing, or administrative skills. These are the things my team and I excel at, and we love helping our clients de-stress and de-clutter so they can enjoy their lives more.
If you see one or more trends in personal planning, please know that a professional planner can help.