Lesson 6-Ordering Clutter


 

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Ordering Clutter: The Ten Minute Tidy

Welcome to Lesson 6 on ordering clutter. I once read a book that talked about being able to learn anything in 15 minutes. The main thrust of the author was that if you simply took 15 minutes a day to read about a topic, eventually you would understand it. The key was perseverance.
 
Today’s tip hinges on that principle of repeated small action. It goes against the grain of how people commonly tackle chaos in their home or office. I know this all to well from past experience. My office used to get horribly out of control. Eventually, I would get frustrated and spend a day trying to get it all in order. I would go through bottomless stacks that often times just kept getting reshuffled. It wasn’t unusually for me to sort my piles into what needed to stay and what needed to go, but so much of my ‘stay’ stack just sat there until another purge day. I don’t do that anymore.
 
I do highly recommend that from time to time or if you have absolute chaos right now that you do a deep cleaning, but BEWARE!!! If you do a deep clean and do not establish a routine for maintaining order, then you will find yourself on a never ending roller coaster ride that vascillates between order and chaos. I got tired of that ride and got off.
 
I now instead have routines for staying on top of order. They are nothing glorious or earth shattering, but they work so much better than my old surge and purge method. Watch, read or listen to the lesson and discover what my simple home and office routines are. Then just faithfully apply them and trust the process to get you there. It doesn’t have the immediate gratification you find with a massive purge, but over time it will completely eliminate the need for those deep cleaning days.

 
You may choose to watch these videos by streaming live from the web, downloading the MP3s to your computer or MP3 player, or by reading the text transcript.
 
To get the most out of these lessons focus on taking action every day, no matter how small that action may be. Small actions add up more rapidly than you may realize. Much of the battle of time management, conquering clutter and getting organized is purely a matter of consistency.
 
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Task

  • At home, regularly set a timer for ten minutes and during that ten minutes tidy. Once the ten minutes is over stop. The key is consistency.
  • At the office, similarly set a timer for ten minutes. During that ten minutes TRAF…Toss, Refer, Act or File on any paper work. If you have a tremendous amount of clutter do multiple TRAFs during the day, but always set a timer and stick to the timer. Otherwise, it is easy to get absorbed in the activity to the neglect of your truly productive tasks. If you simply stick at it day after day you will soon notice a recognizaeable difference in you clutter.

     

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