My definition for Clutter.
“Too much for the space available.”
Could be too much stuff for the physical space available, like in the kitchen above.
Could be too many meetings for the space available on your calendar.
Could be too many projects for the space available on your team’s work schedule.
Could be too many ideas for the “space” — time, energy, budget, cognitive capacity — available. (Let me raise my hand on that one.)
Here’s the problem: your inbox, your computer, your filing cabinets — they all have virtually unlimited space for stuffing in more. But your brain doesn’t.
Your calendar doesn’t.
Your budget doesn’t.
A Pareto-parsed view of your work doesn’t.
Antidotes:
- Don’t think more, think better.
- Don’t do more, do important.
- Don’t commit to more, commit to what moves the needle.
How do you administer these antidotes?
~
Image by Hassan Abdel-Rahman, used under a Creative Commons license.
Category: Management, ProductivityIf you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed so you can receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
5 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
Earlier this year, I began working on keeping my inbox clutter-free. If I have to scroll down to read anything, then there are too many emails so I deal with them. I set up a lot of sub-folders to help, and if I’m not sure about one, I simply use the recycle bin, but now I’ve become kind of obsessive about it. I sort of watch it to make sure it doesn’t get very full. But, it still feels better than clutter.
Thanks for the comment, Kelley Marie. Your experience sounds like my own. Ten years ago, I consistently kept hundreds of e-mails in my inbox. After reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, I carved it way down — though not to zero as Allen suggests.
Over the course of months, I found new “set points” where I was comfortable with my inbox — first around 80 messages, then 25 (no scroll bar!), then 10. At each level, I felt better about it.
At this moment, there are 14 things in my inbox, and it feels like too much. Time to practice some inbox-fu . . .
Yes, I still will have about 10 to 15 in my Inbox and am comfortable with that. I’ve also started closing Outlook during part of the day to focus. I think I’ve become too obsessive trying to keep it ‘clean’, and every time I get a notification of a new email I stop what I’m doing to see what I should do with it. Too disruptive! I will consider “Let the Good Times Roll” though!
Thanks for the other links.
By all means, Kelley, turn off all the pinging mechanisms from Outlook, and only check it at set intervals during the day. I view those as key steps on the road to sanity.
[...] 6 April 2009: My definition for Clutter. [...]