Learn to de-clutter and you can learn to be successful in other areas of your life. Yes, it’s true! The success skills you will learn are the very same skills that will help your career and your business to flourish.
One – Decision Making
When you’re surrounded by clutter you have to make decisions. You want to keep everything, but you don’t use half of it and you’re running out of space. You have to learn to make decisions in order to decide what goes and what stays. This quality is essential in business, as every good business person has to have the ability to make decisions.
Two – Being Ruthless When Required
Sometimes you have to be ruthless. You may like your china dog collection but you live in a one bedroomed flat and you simply don’t have room for it. So it has to go. You’ve sacrificed it for the greater good. This skill will also be required in your career as you will have to make hard decisions sometimes.
Three – Embracing Change
When you de-clutter you’re changing your environment, usually for the better. But some people are very resistant to change. Some prefer to cling to their clutter, even though it’s taking up so much space that it’s making their environment unbearable. Every business has to embrace change if it’s to grow and flourish. Don’t be a luddite and hamstring the progress of your career, but learn that change can be beneficial.
Four – Prioritization
This is an essential skill when de-cluttering. You cannot keep everything, you just don’t have room for it and it’s stressing you out. However you may be tempted to keep a knick-knack or two for sentimental reasons rather than a genuinely useful item. You must learn to prioritize what goes and what stays. Prioritization is an essential business skill and without it your career won’t flourish, as it leads to prevarication and misdirection, two career killers.
Five – Realism
It’s easy to kid yourself when de-cluttering and develop the well-known head in the sand syndrome. You convince yourself that you really do need a huge stack of empty boxes, ten umbrellas and all of your old mobile phones. But you must learn to be realistic about what you use now and in the future. If you force yourself to face reality you will know that you don’t need these things and never will. Burying your head in the sand in your business or career will be fatal, so this skill is vital.
Six – Time Management
Your whole house, office, car, garage and shed may need de-cluttering but you can’t do it all at once. You have to learn to manage your time. Decide which area or room to tackle first and then get on and do it. The danger of not managing your time is that you risk being so overwhelmed that you never get started, or that you make several ineffective strikes at your clutter by dividing yourself too thinly. Time management will also revolutionise your career and business as you realise how much more you can achieve.
Seven – Resource Management
You may decide that you have too many computers or some furniture you don’t need. Rather than just getting rid of them, ask your family and friends to see if anyone needs the very thing you are disposing of. Alternatively you may be able to allocate a different use for the item. For example, an unused cutlery tray could store pens, pencils and rubbers instead.
You may also have human resources within your home or office which you can utilise to help you de-clutter. If you have, then persuade every available person to be responsible for de-cluttering their own room, desk or office. Learning to make effective use of resources like this will make you a powerhouse of industry wherever you go and is sorely needed in many business environments.
Eight – Goal Setting
You must set de-cluttering goals in order to motivate yourself and to understand what you’re trying to achieve. For example, your overall goal may be to de-clutter the entire house in six months. Next set yourself smaller goals such as clearing the living room by the end of the first month and the kitchen by the end of the second month. Write down these goals and refer to them regularly to remind yourself of them. Goal-setting is absolutely essential in your career or business too, to keep you focused, ensure onward progress and to make sure you’re not heading in the wrong direction.
Nine – Measuring Success
Measuring the success of your de-cluttering strategy is vital. You must know what you’re achieving or you will lose motivation. So set up a system for recording your progress. Check your written goals regularly and record any progress so that you know that you’re moving forward in the right direction. Have a chart or spreadsheet and tick off or colour code areas which are achieved or in progress. If you measure the success of your business strategies too, then you’ll be much more likely to achieve supremacy, by not pursuing ineffective policies.
Ten – Planning
Planning is probably the the most essential de-cluttering skill of all. You have to plan an overall strategy for your de-cluttering or you risk your efforts being isolated and ineffective. You need to plan where to start, when to start, what kind of time schedule you’ll adhere to, what resources you’ll use and how you’ll measure results. Planning your project in this way is essential for de-cluttering success. Planning your projects at work is equally vital for success. Fail to plan and you plan to fail, as the well-known saying goes. Practising on your clutter will stand you in very good stead.
Skills for Success
The ten skills listed will ensure the success of any project you undertake and acquiring these abilities on your clutter is a safe way to learn. As you perfect your techniques you can start to apply them to your career or business with startling results. Can de-cluttering make you successful? Yes it can and I believe that no truly successful person has a problem with clutter.
