It’s been cold in southern California. Okay, you can stop laughing now. We think it’s cold, even if the rest of the country thinks we’re crazy. Anyway, when the weather warms up, it will be time to go through the closets again and get rid of old clothes.
If you haven’t worn it in a year, you’re probably not going to wear it again, yes? It’s clutter and it needs to go.
I’ve gotten rid of hundreds of books for the same reason. They were taking up space and collecting dust and needed to go. If I want to read them again, I can buy them on kindle.
I find that the more I get rid of clutter, the more peaceful I am. Lean and clean. The new me.
The same is true in my digital world. That’s why my favorite productivity tool is the delete key.
The more I get rid of, the more productive I am. When I delete emails or notes, it frees up visual and mental space so that I can concentrate on what’s important. I chop through a forest of digital trees with my digital machete, carving a path towards the place I want to go. By getting rid of the clutter in my way, I can move more quickly and with more clarity.
If you’re not sure you’re going to read something or need something, delete it or put it in a searchable archive. That’s how I got to “inbox zero,” finally. I archived 15,000 emails in my inbox all at once. I got rid of the clutter.
I still have a long way to go. I have many hundreds of blog posts saved in “read later” apps and I know I’ll never read most of them. Leo Babauta suggests that we delete everything in these apps once a week. If we haven’t read them this week, we’re probably not going to read them next week.
Maybe after I tackle the closet.
Have you read Evernote for Lawyers? It’s a guide for getting organized & increasing productivity.
