Edit Your Life, Part 4: Your Work Space

One of the things I have learned is to edit brutally (no sarcastic comments about why I don’t do that with my blog posts). Cut out everything that’s not necessary, and you’ve got a more meaningful story.

I highly recommend editing your life.

Today’s edit: Edit your work space.

If you’re at work, look around you — how many things are on your desk? How many things are up on the walls around you? How cluttered is your computer desktop? Are there piles of things around your desk?

All of these things are visual distractions, and as we are visual creatures, our minds do not let us ignore them. They pull for our attention, and stress us out.

The solution: simplify, edit, minimize.

In my workspace, I have a pretty minimal and clean setup. When I moved in, I stripped everything from the walls but a single, pretty calendar. I have one inbox, that’s usually empty (see: Steps to a Permanently Clear Desk), two photos of my family, a phone, a printer and a computer. Otherwise, my desktop is clear of everything but the document I’m working on at this moment. My computer has no desktop icons, and I try to have only one program open at a time (unless more than one is absolutely necessary).

It’s a clutter-free, distraction-free, stress-free and productive work space, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Your space could have a few personal items, to make it yours, but for the most part, you want to be able to focus on the task at hand, otherwise your work day will be more stressful than necessary.

A quick note about productivity: I should write another post about this, but when I write about productivity, it isn’t because I think we need to be working machines. In fact, if you’ve read any of my posts about slowing down and simplicity, you know I believe the opposite. Instead, productivity is important, to me, because if we can get our work done in a shorter amount of time, we have more time for ourselves, our families, and our goals.

Let’s edit our work spaces and create a simplified environment:

• Edit your walls. Look at all the stuff on the walls around you. What really needs to be there? Chances are, none of it. We put stuff up on the walls to remind ourselves of things, to inspire ourselves, to make ourselves laugh. But it just distracts us. Take it all down, except perhaps for a nice picture (art is good if you have any), and maybe a nice calendar. If you have a sign to remind you to do a goal or habit, leave that up. I have a little sign taped to my computer that says, “DO IT NOW” in big blue letters. It’s a distraction, sure, but one that distracts me from my other distractions.


• Gather up all your papers. Do you have papers all over your desk? How about stacked on your floor? Gather these all up into one pile, and process them one at a time. This may take awhile if you have a lot of papers, but trust me, it’s time well spent. Most of these papers can be trashed, but the important ones need to be filed, with important dates entered in your calendar and actions in your to-do list. File the papers right away. Feel free to toss without mercy, or forward to the appropriate party. Work your way down the stack, starting from the first document. Take one document at a time, make a decision about how to dispose of it, and do it quickly. Don’t put it back to decide on later. Don’t make several stacks. Do them one at a time, right away.


• Edit your knicknacks. Do you have a bunch of little things on your desk? Photos, cute little animals, candy trays, stuff for pens and paper clips, little signs with funny sayings on them. Get rid of all of them but maybe one or two photos. Pens and paper clips and the like can be put in a desk drawer, neatly in a drawer tray. Most of the other stuff can be tossed, or filed appropriately. This stuff is pure distraction.


• Find other spaces for things. If there are things within sight that you need, find a place out of sight for them. Really, there’s nothing that needs to be on your desktop (besides an inbox and your electronic equipment like phone and monitor). Everything else can be put in a drawer. The key: find a place for things, and always put them there. That way, they will be easy to find when you need them. Put the things you use most in the drawers closest to you.


• Edit your computer. Most people have a desktop cluttered with icons. This is distracting, and it’s hard to find stuff. In my My Documents folder, I created five folders: 1. Inbox 2. Actions 3. Incubate 4. Current Projects and 5. Archive. I download everything to 1. Inbox, and try to clear it out at least daily. I work mostly in the 2. Actions folder. Stuff I need to think about or read later goes in 3. Incubate. The other two are self-explanatory. So take everything on your desktop and file it. If there are actions that you need to do, put them in Actions. If there are programs or files you need to access regularly, you can put them in your Start menu (or equivalent), or even better, develop a shortcut key for it. Then turn off your desktop icons, and get a nice serene desktop pic (I have a Zen garden pic). Another tip: don’t have a bunch of programs open at once. Work on one task at a time, and only have the window(s) open that you need to work on that task.


• Edit your drawers. Go through drawers one at a time, tossing junk and only keeping what’s needed. Organize it, have a place for everything, and make sure you always put stuff back in its place.


• Edit your filing system. Do you file your documents regularly? Can you find it immediately at any time? If so, you’re ahead of the game. If not, create a handy reference filing system. Do it simple, from A-Z with simple manila folders. Make sure to have a box of folders and labels on hand so you can make a new file immediately, whenever you need it. Don’t have a “To File” pile — just file stuff right away! Your filing drawer(s) should be close at hand so there’s no reason not to file something immediately or pull the file if you need it.


• Don’t go and buy a bunch of stuff. When people start GTD, they go out and buy a Brother labelmaker. If you want to do that, and get some labels and manila folders, that’s fine. But otherwise, don’t go on an office-supply rampage just to simplify your work space. Remember, we’re editing here, not doing a home makeover!

If you do all of the above, you should have a pretty nice and simplified work space now. If you can’t do it all at once, that’s fine — schedule one-hour chunks over the next 2-3 days and you should be done. When you’re done, sit back, look around, and enjoy! It should be immensely pleasing. Now keep it that way!

Edit Your Life, Part 3: Closets and Drawers

 One of the things I have learned is to edit brutally (no sarcastic comments about why I don’t do that with my blog posts). Cut out everything that’s not necessary, and you’ve got a more meaningful story.

I highly recommend editing your life.

Today’s edit: Edit your closets and drawers.

Last week, I talked about a method for editing your rooms, removing the clutter, and only leaving what’s necessary. I suggested that you skip the closets and drawers, saving them for later, and only focus on what’s visible when you walk in the room. The reasoning is that if you include everything at once, including closets and drawers, it can be overwhelming, while if you only focus on what’s immediately visible, you can make a big difference on how you feel about that room with a shorter amount of time dedicated to your editing.

But this week, let’s focus on what’s not immediately visible. Every room has closets and drawers, and they can easily accumulate junk from years of putting stuff in there and forgetting about them. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Yes, but every time we open the closet or drawer, we are reminded of that junk and clutter. Let’s create simple, stress-free spaces!

Drawers

Start with drawers, because they’re simpler. Take one drawer at a time, and follow these simple steps for each drawer:

1. Empty everything out of the drawer. Everything.


2. Clean out the drawer. Clear all junk and debris, then clean with a wet rag or use a cleaning product. Make it nice and clean.


3. Remove all junk from the pile of stuff (that you took out of the drawer), and toss it.


4. Now go through the remaining stuff, and sort: stuff you’d like to give away (put this in a box to give away, and put the box in your car to drop off when you’re done), stuff you want to put in other places in the house (do this immediately after you’re done), and stuff you want to keep in the drawer. Try to keep related stuff in the drawer — don’t have junk drawer. Only keep school supplies, or underwear, or whatever, in that drawer, so you know what belongs there.


5. Put the stuff back in an orderly manner. You should have a greatly reduced amount of stuff to put back in the drawer. Don’t have too much stuff, or the drawer will still be cluttered. Put it back neatly, in some kind of order — it helps to get a drawer organizer that fits the stuff you’re putting in there. This is great for office or school supply stuff, like pens and tape and scissors and paper clips.


6. Now that it’s nice and neat and de-cluttered and simplified, celebrate. And keep it that way! Never just toss stuff in the drawer. Make sure that it belongs there, and put it back in an orderly manner. This habit might take some time, but it will pay off in less cluttered drawers.

You can either stop after doing one drawer, and tackle the next drawer tomorrow, or keep going if you have the time and energy.

Closets

Now on to closets, which are a little more complicated. However, to simplify things, start with one section of the closet: one shelf, or the floor of the closet. For each shelf, follow the same steps as above with the drawers. Do the same with the floor of the closet — in fact, remove everything from the floor and keep the floor clear if at all possible. A clear floor greatly simplifies a closet.

Next would be clothes or other things hanging in the closet. It’s best to take all these out, and follow the same basic procedures, simplifying, tossing, and only putting back what is essential. This is a great exercise that will greatly reduce your wardrobe (get rid of clothes you no longer wear or fit!) and simplify the closet.

Closets can be intimidating, so you might tackle one area at a time, and do it every day for a week. Each day should only take 15 minutes or so, if you work quickly and make quick decisions about each item.

How NOT to Multitask – Work Simpler and Saner

You’re working on two projects at once, while your boss has placed two new demands on your desk. You’re on the phone while three new emails come in. You are trying to get out the door on time so you can pick up a few groceries on the way home for dinner. Your Blackberry is going off and so is your cell phone. Your co-worker stops by with a request for info and your Google Reader is filled with 100+ messages to read.

You are juggling tasks with a speed worthy of Ringling Bros. Congratulations, multitasker.

In this age of instant technology, we are bombarded with an overload of information and demands of our time. This is part of the reason GTD is so popular in the information world — it’s a system designed for quick decisions and for keeping all the demands of your life in order. But even if we are using GTD, sometimes we are so overwhelmed with things to do that our system begins to fall apart.

Life Hack recently posted How to Multi-task, and it’s a good article on the nature of multi-tasking and how to do it while still focusing on one task at a time.

This post is How NOT to Multi-task — a guide to working as simply as possible for your mental health.

First, a few quick reasons not to multi-task:

1. Multi-tasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task, and the switch back again.


2. Multi-tasking is more complicated, and thus more prone to stress and errors.


3. Multi-tasking can be crazy, and in this already chaotic world, we need to reign in the terror and find a little oasis of sanity and calm.

Here are some tips on how NOT to multi-task:

1. First set up to-do lists for different contexts (i.e. calls, computer, errands, home, waiting-for, etc.) depending on your situation.


2. Have a capture tool (such as a notebook) for instant notes on what needs to be done.


3. Have a physical and email inbox (as few inboxes as possible) so that all incoming stuff is gathered together in one place (one for paper stuff, one for digital).


4. Plan your day in blocks, with open blocks in between for urgent stuff that comes up. You might try one-hour blocks, or half-hour blocks, depending on what works for you. Or try this: 40 minute blocks, with 20 minutes in between them for miscellaneous tasks.


5. First thing in the morning, work on your Most Important Task. Don’t do anything else until this is done. Give yourself a short break, and then start on your next Most Important Task. If you can get 2-3 of these done in the morning, the rest of the day is gravy.


6. When you are working on a task in a time block, turn off all other distractions. Shut off email, and the Internet if possible. Shut off your cell phone. Try not to answer your phone if possible. Focus on that one task, and try to get it done without worrying about other stuff.


7. If you feel the urge to check your email or switch to another task, stop yourself. Breathe deeply. Re-focus yourself. Get back to the task at hand.


8. If other things come in while you’re working, put them in the inbox, or take a note of them in your capture system. Get back to the task at hand.


9. Every now and then, when you’ve completed the task at hand, process your notes and inbox, adding the tasks to your to-do lists and re-figuring your schedule if necessary. Process your email and other inboxes at regular and pre-determined intervals.


10. There are times when an interruption is so urgent that you cannot put it off until you’re done with the task at hand. In that case, try to make a note of where you are (writing down notes if you have time) with the task at hand, and put all the documents or notes for that task together and aside (perhaps in an “action” folder or project folder). Then, when you come back to that task, you can pull out your folder and look at your notes to see where you left off.


11. Take deep breaths, stretch, and take breaks now and then. Enjoy life. Go outside, and appreciate nature. Keep yourself sane.

Edit Your Life, Part 2: Your Rooms

 One of the things I have learned is to edit brutally (no sarcastic comments about why I don’t do that with my blog posts). Cut out everything that’s not necessary, and you’ve got a more meaningful story.

I highly recommend editing your life.

Today’s edit: The rooms in your house, one at a time.

Are you surrounded by clutter in every room in your home? Clutter is visually distracting and stressful — every item that you see demands your mind’s attention, and no matter how short that attention is, and despite that it is subconscious, these little distractions add up. It’s difficult to have peace and to focus amid this clutter. Add to this the wasted time and energy needed to look for things, to maintain things, and to clean things, and the more clutter you have, the more energy it will take to have it.

So, I recommend that you edit each of the rooms in your house, one per week, until you have de-cluttered your home and made it a peaceful and calming place to be.

Here’s how:

• First, choose a room to do this week. Don’t try to do your whole house at once, as this can be very time consuming (unless you just have a lot of time on your hands — in which case, go for it!). Focus on one room, and try to do 15 minutes a day (unless you get carried away and feel like doing more). Work on one room each week.


• In the beginning, skip the closets and drawers that are out of sight for now. We’ll tackle those in next week’s Edit Your Life. Focus for now on the things you can see.


• Start with the big things. Is there too much furniture in the room? If so, edit them. What is necessary, which furniture do you love, which stuff is just too distracting. Also consider removing other big items, like boxes full of stuff.


• Clear all flat surfaces. Desktops, tabletops, countertops, etc. Remove all papers, piles of stuff, little junk, knick-knacks, anything. Put it on the floor. Now get a trash bag and two boxes. Sort through everything in your pile(s), one item at a time. Each item should be either thrown away in the trash bag, put in one box to give away (to friends, family or charity), or in the other box to put in another room in the house. Put back only a couple select items on the flat surfaces, such as a family photo or something that functionally belongs there. But as much as possible, leave the flat surfaces as bare as humanly possible. “Stuff” doesn’t belong here — you need to find a drawer, shelf, or container for whatever stuff you’ve removed. When you’re done sorting through the pile, put the recycle box in the trunk of your car and drop it off the next time you go out to do errands. Throw away the trash bag. Take the other box and put the stuff where it belongs elsewhere in the house (don’t put it on flat surfaces unless absolutely necessary!).


• Repeat this process for any other “stuff” in the room, including stuff on the floor.


• Now go around the room, clockwise, and edit what’s left. This might be stuff on the walls, posted to surfaces like the refrigerator, stuff under tables or desks, etc. Only leave the stuff that’s absolutely necessary. I mostly have blank walls except for a few choice paintings or drawings (by my dad, an artist). All my flat surfaces are bare. It’s nice.


• Be merciless. Edit brutally. The more you can get rid of, the better!

OK, your room should look pretty good now. If so, you should feel pretty great! Sit down, relax, look around, and enjoy the peaceful goodness. Savor your triumph.

Now, this editing process is not a destination, but an ongoing process. It won’t last long if you don’t have a system and develop habits to keep it de-cluttered.

Here’s the system:

• A place for everything, and everything in its place. An oldie, but valuable nonetheless. Are you about to put something down on a flat surface? Stop yourself. Think about where that item belongs. If it doesn’t have a home, find one and stick with it. Always put it in that spot. For example: I have a tray for my keys, wallet, etc., and when I first get in the house, I put these things in this tray. Every time. So I always know where it is. And when I leave, it’s as simple as grabbing my stuff from the tray.


• Have an inbox for your home for ALL incoming papers. And a filing system for documents you need to keep, from bills to important documents to taxes to kids’ report cards. Put all incoming mail, school papers, receipts, etc. into the inbox, and process it once a day (or every other day, but not much longer than that — otherwise you’re just creating a pile). When you process, don’t leave stuff in a pile to be filed later — file it immediately. Trash other stuff. Pay bills immediately or put them in a bills to be paid folder. Don’t leave papers laying around elsewhere.


• Clean up at night and before you leave the house. If you’ve developed good habits, you may not need this, but no one’s perfect, and if you have kids, you’ll definitely need this, because kids certainly are not perfect at this habit. Just take 5-10 minutes to pick up stuff and make sure your flat surfaces are clear.


• Every six months (or a year), de-clutter. Despite your best efforts, new stuff just accumulates. You need to have a regular binging process every now and then.

Zen Mind: How to Declutter

One of the things that gives me most peace is have a clean, simple home. When I wake up in the morning and walk out into a living room that has been decluttered, that has a minimalist look, and there isn’t junk lying around, there is a calm and joy that enters my heart.

When, on the other hand, I walk out into a living room cluttered with toys and books and extra things all over the place, it is chaos and my mind is frenetic.

I’ve been a simplifier and a declutterer for years now (probably 8-9 years) and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but I’ve found that you have to keep coming back to revisit your clutter every once in awhile.

Here are my top decluttering tips:

• Do it in small chunks. Set aside just 15 minutes to declutter just one shelf, and when that shelf or that 15 minutes is up, celebrate your victory. Then tackle another shelf for 15 minutes the next day. Conquering an entire closet or room can be overwhelming, and you might put it off forever. If that’s the case, just do it in baby steps.


• Set aside a couple hours to do it. This may seem contradictory to the above tip … and it is. It’s simply a different strategy, and I say do whatever works for you. Sometimes, for me, it’s good to set aside part of a morning, or an entire Saturday morning, to declutter a closet or room. I do it all at once, and when I’m done, it feels awesome.


• Take everything out of a shelf or drawer at once. Whichever of the two above strategies you choose, you should focus on one drawer or shelf at a time, and empty it completely. Then clean that shelf or drawer. Then, take the pile and sort it (see next tip), and put back just what you want to keep. Then tackle the next shelf or drawer.


• Sort through your pile, one item at a time, and make quick decisions. Have a trash bag and a give-away box handy. When you pull everything out of a shelf or drawer, sort through the pile one at a time. Pick up an item, and make a decision: trash, give away, or keep. Don’t put it back in the pile. Do this with the entire pile, and soon, you’ll be done. If you keep sorting through the pile, and re-sorting, it’ll take forever. Put back only what you want to keep, and arrange it nicely.


• Be merciless. You may be a pack rat, but the truth is, you won’t ever use most of the junk you’ve accumulated. If you haven’t used it in the last year, get rid of it. It’s as simple as that. If you’ve only used it once or twice in the last year, but know you won’t use it in the next year, get rid of it. Toss it if it’s unsalvageable, and give it away if someone else might be able to use it.


• Papers? Be merciless, unless it’s important. Magazines, catalogues, junk mail, bills more than a year old, notes to yourself, notes from others, old work stuff … toss it! The only exception is with tax-related stuff, which should be kept for seven years, and other important documents like warranties, birth and death and marriage certificates, insurance, wills, and other important documents like that. But you’ll know those when you see ‘em. Otherwise, toss!!!!


• If you are on the fence with a lot of things, create a “maybe” box. If you can’t bear to toss something because you might need it later, put it in the box, then close the box, label it, and put it in storage (garage, attic, closet), out of sight. Most likely, you’ll never open that box again. If that’s the case, pull it out after six months or a year, and toss it or give it away.


• Create a system to stop clutter from accumulating. There’s a reason you have tall stacks of papers all over the place, and big piles of toys and books and clothes. It’s because you don’t have a regular system to keep things in their place, and get rid of stuff you don’t need. This is a topic for another day, but it’s something to think about as you declutter. You’ll never get to perfect, but if you think more intelligently about how your house got cluttered, perhaps you can find ways to stop it from happening again.


• Celebrate when you’re done! This is actually a general rule in life: always celebrate your accomplishments, no matter how small. Even if you just decluttered one drawer, that’s great. Treat yourself to something delicious. Open that drawer (or closet, or whatever), and admire its simplicity. Breathe deeply and know that you have done a good thing. Bask in your peacefulness.

The First Rule of Simplifying: Identify the Essential (or, How to avoid the Void)

 “Our lives are frittered away by detail … simplify, simplify” – Henry David Thoreau

We talk a lot about simplifying your life on Zen Habits, from simplifying your possessions and clutter to simplifying the stuff you need to do. But recently I had a comment from a reader who said that the problem is that he doesn’t know what to do with himself after cutting out television and other time-wasters from his life.

The simple answer: Do what you love.

His comment, while understandable, illustrates a common misunderstanding of simplification, and it’s a good point that I thought is worth discussing. The misunderstanding: that simplifying is basically just cutting stuff out, leaving an emptiness or void. People think that it leaves you with a boring life, and nothing fun. They couldn’t be more wrong.

The real goal of simplifying, and the First Rule, is to first identify what is essential, what you love, what is important to you — and then cut out all the rest that distracts you and keeps you from doing what’s important.

We have so much stuff in our lives, from possessions to things we need to do to information coming in to visual and emotional clutter, that we are overloaded. The result? We end up doing a lot of things that aren’t really important to us, because we have so much other stuff to do that has crept into our lives and that we leave in our lives, unexamined.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, Socrates must have been an excellent simplifier — as evidenced by the fact that he just wore a robe and sandals. In any case, in order to simplify our lives, we must first examine our lives. What is important, and do all the things in our lives give us value? These are the questions to ask, and if you find the answers, simplifying is extremely easy.

Let’s look at how finding what is essential, what we love, and what is important to us, can help us simplify, and what it leaves in our lives:

1. The first question: What is most important to me? What do I love to do? The answer is different to every person. For me, it’s simple: I love my wife and kids, I love writing, I love reading, and I love helping others. For others, it may be hiking or mountain biking or creating music or anything, really. Answer this question first.


2. The second question: what are the things going on in my life, the things I do every day and every week and month, and how are they related to what is important to me? If you are going out drinking with the guys, and it’s not really important to you, and it’s stopping you from doing what is important, that’s a candidate for simplifying. Examine all your commitments, and ask yourself if they are really important to you, if they give you great value for your time, and if they are related to what is truly important.


3. Possessions: The same questions can be asked of all the stuff you own — do you really love them? Are they truly essential? Another question you can ask, to clarify your thinking: If my house burned down, which few things would I want to replace? Get rid of all the rest. They leave clutter and stress and keep you from enjoying the stuff you really love.


4. Everything else: This same concept can be applied to anything else in your life — your work, the information you read every day, the television programs you watch, the people in your life. Know what’s essential, what you love, what’s important … and get rid of the rest.


5. What you’re left with: If you get rid of the extraneous stuff, the stuff that’s not related to what’s important to you, what do you have left? Just the important stuff. Just the stuff you really love to do. When you get rid of the other stuff, when you cut, let’s say, television and hours of Internet surfing and beer drinking from your life, don’t just cut it out — remember what’s important and what you love to do, and do that instead. For me, that means spending time with my family instead of working, that means writing or reading instead of watching TV, that means helping others instead of going to the mall (something I want to do more of).

Simplifying isn’t meant to leave your life empty — it’s meant to leave space in your life for what you really want to do. Know what those things are before you start simplifying.

Edit Your Life, Part 1: Commitments

One of the things I have learned is to edit brutally (no sarcastic comments about why I don’t do that with my blog posts). Cut out everything that’s not necessary, and you’ve got a more meaningful story.

I highly recommend editing your life.

Today’s edit: All the commitments in your life.

Take an inventory of the commitments in your life. Here are some common ones:

• Work - we have multiple commitments at our jobs. List them all.


• Side work – some of us free-lance, or do odd jobs to take in money. More commitments.


• Family - we may play a role as husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter. These roles come with many commitments.


• Kids - my kids have soccer, choir, Academic Challenge Bowl, National Junior Honor Society, basketball, spelling bee, and more. Each of their commitments is mine too.


• Civic - we may volunteer for different organizations, or be a board member or officer on a non-profit organization.


• Religious - many of us are very involved with our churches, or are part of a church organization. Or perhaps we are committed to going to service once a week.


• Hobbies - perhaps you are a runner or a cyclist, or you build models, or are part of a secret underground comic book organization. These come with – surprise! – commitments.


• Home - aside from regular family stuff, there’s the stuff you have to do at home.


• Online - we may be a regular on a forum or mailing list or Google group. These are online communities that come with commitments too.

You might have other categories. List everything.

Now take a close look at each thing on the list, and consider: How does this give my life value? How important is it to me? Is it in line with my life priorities and values? How would it affect my life if I dropped out? Does this further my life goals?

These are tough questions, but I suggest seeing if you can eliminate just one thing — the thing that gives you the least return for your invested time and effort. The thing that’s least in line with your life values and priorities and goals. Cut it out, at least for a couple weeks, and see if you can get along without it. Revisit this list at that time and see if you can cut something else out. Edit mercilessly, keeping only those that really mean something to you.

Each time you cut a commitment, it may give you a feeling of guilt, because others want you to keep that commitment. But it’s also a huge relief, not having to do that commitment each day or week or month. It frees up a lot of your time, and while others may be disappointed, you have to keep what’s important to you in mind, not everyone else. If we committed to what everyone else wanted all the time, we would never have any time left for ourselves.

Take the time to edit your commitments, and your life will be greatly simplified. You will thank yourself for it.