Productivity with Purpose
Posts tagged clutter
What are You Tolerating?
May 3rd
Everything you tolerate saps your energy. Most people tolerate more than 50 small, petty things in their life on a regular basis. Set aside a day this week to “attack” these annoyances that are hanging over your head and get rid of as many of them as possible —make that phone call you’ve been putting off, clean out your desk, drop off your dry cleaning, call the plumber to fix that slow drain, purge some of your old clothes, buy a frame for that picture you have been meaning to hang for 6 months, fix the wobbling chair leg, fire that ineffective employee or let that time-eating client go; the list is seemingly endless –then go out and celebrate by having lunch with a friend!
What Can You Eliminate?
Dec 22nd
One of the self improvement training principles of Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week is to eliminate.
Eliminate what? Well, eliminate unnecessary processes, tasks, and all around clutter.
Are you doing enough to eliminate? Here are some tips for “cleaning up” and adding to your own self improvement.
- Clean your desk/work area. Do this today. Now. You need a clean and more importantly, welcoming area to work. I hate doing any amount of work at my desk when it’s messy. Why not clean it up and at least make your work area welcoming if you have to be there, all day.
- Eliminate “to-dos.” Like JB talks about, go for a Sacred 6 or as Tim says in the book, 2 mission critical to-dos for a single day. Ultimately, the message is to not get bogged down in minutiae and creating 42 to-do items for one day, thereby ignoring those “mission critical” items. If you can only get one thing done today, what one thing will make you satisfied with your day? DO THAT, FIRST!
- What are you doing that someone else can get done if you just let go of the reigns a bit? What are some things that someone else could get done in half the time, ten times the results, and better than you for just a small amount of compensation?
- What payments can you automate? I cannot tell you the last time I wrote a check for anything nor had the power turned off. Everything that can possibly be paid is done so, online, on a schedule, without me even thinking about it, including investing and savings.
- How many blogs are you writing for? How many Twitter accounts? How many Facebook fan pages are you running? How many are really important? Are you doing one thing well or 10 things mediocre?
With all these tips, the key is to really examine what is necessary. What’s mission critical?
This can carry over to your personal life, too. Is it really necessary to finish the food on that plate? Just because you always get popcorn at the movies, are you really even hungry or just doing it out of habit? Do you really need all those clothes or do they just result in more laundry (more importantly, more time to do laundry)?
Stop and think. What can you eliminate? Not just “stuff,” but processes, tasks, and so on.
Excerpted from MorningCoach.com
