Procrastinating Over Decluttering? Sort Out Your Business And Your Life Now

Procrastinating Over Decluttering? Sort Out Your Business And Your Life Now

by Sue Ellson BBus AIMM MAHRI CDAA (Assoc) ASA

I started this year with a huge list of things I wanted to complete and achieve. It was largely focused around shifting my business from a service based enterprise to a product based enterprise. And yet here I am at the start of November with a lot of things still on that list!

That said, I can be proud of many of the things I have completed on that list. And some of them were both difficult to start and difficult to complete.

All of my friends will tell you that I have been wanting to sort out my garage for YEARS. It is one of those tasks that has both a range of business and personal content. I commenced Round Two last Friday.

What? I hear you ask. Round Two in November? And what do you mean, Round Two? How many rounds does it take? (I will tell you at this point, I am predicting about 10 rounds!).

I can't remember when I did Round One earlier this year but it was many months ago. It involved sorting out my hardware and electricals section. Yes, I made it tidier, but did I de-clutter and pass on much stuff, not really.

So I knew that for Round Two, I would have to enlist some more moral support. I invited a trusted friend around (whom I also paid), to start me off. Naturally, I nearly procrastinated out of it again because when he arrived, I was out in that other well known place of procrastination, the garden!

But he reminded me that he was here to help me with the garage, not the garden! So I stopped the gardening and started the garage. I began by taking out all of the empty boxes and plastic bags that I keep to 'better sort things out in the future.' It seemed like nearly half the garage was emptied with that one small step.

But then it was time to do the real thing. This time I started in the 'garden' section and went through my huge pile of pots that I keep 'just in case' I decide I need one in the future. I knew that my helper friend likes talking to people and that some neighbours down the street use pots for the annual St Paul's Anglican Church Fete, so I sent him down to their house to deliver a range of pots. They were very happy to receive them.

That was the easy part. Then it was time to go through some of the contents of the garage. That included the 'camping cupboard.' In amongst the sleeping bags, deck chairs and stretchers were some old quilts and a blanket - the blanket was one that I remember my Mum sewing when I was a child and some sheets that used to be on my children's beds. I don't use that blanket or those sheets any more so I put them on the 'recycle to an Opportunity Shop' pile.

But as you can probably predict, I couldn't leave them all in that 'Opportunity Shop' pile.  I left the sheets there (as I have other sheets inside the house!) but I retrieved the blanket. You just never know, I might need it. It is a good quality wool blanket after all! Maybe I will have the courage to release that blanket in Round Two.

I started doing this work around 10am and by 3pm, I had reached my emotional and physical limit. I had managed to declutter a large bookshelf, several boxes and papers, two bags of clothing, fabric and sheets, two containers of two stroke engine oil, lots of pots, a whiteboard, a painting and a few other bits and pieces. Baby steps really.

However, I also realised that the next step was to process the contents in my indoor office to prepare for the next phase of business decluttering from the garage. Now to put this into some sort of context, I have been contracting, freelancing and in my own business since 1994 and I still have all of my university study materials too.

At the same time, I have four websites, I teach, have two part time casual roles, multiple regular clients and even more two session clients. So as you can imagine, deciding how to determine what I will be doing next year is not a simple mathematical equation.

Each decision, for someone as analytical as me, takes hours and hours of evaluation! The good thing is that as soon as I do finally make that decision, I am happy with it, but I sometimes wish it could be a whole lot quicker!

I have decided that after almost a year of 'thinking' about what I will do next year, (what I will continue and what I won't in the business sphere), in two days time, I will go to my sabbatical day trip location (Bendigo Cathedral) and try and make my final decisions.

However, there was a little hiccup after Round Two of the garage last week. I ended up back in a really weird emotional place. The place of 'not being able to function' that I talked about in another article I wrote this year on 'How to change your life in 10 years or less.' I panicked. I have been away from that place for about a year now and to find myself slipping back made me anxious.

So this morning at my weekly Accountability Partner meeting, we talked about what could have been the trigger for my funky mood. We both agreed, it was the Decluttering the Garage that did it.

That led me to think about why we procrastinate when it is time to de-clutter.

Why don't we want to sort through the things we have kept?

Why does it take so much energy to make so many decisions at once?

My Dad has suggested on multiple occasions to just 'burn the lot.' I haven't because in my mind, I need to action the items that are in the garage (and keep some items just in case). In Round One of my indoor decluttering process, I was with a de-cluttering expert, Jacquie Wise and she created a tray called the 'Too Hard Basket.' That was a great way to put off some of those more complicated de-cluttering decisions. Every time I open my cupboard and clients see that tray, they have a little chuckle.

At the  Australian Human Resources Institute HR in Focus Conference 
I attended last week, I heard that most business ideas now last
only five to seven years.

That was a BIG wake up call. Also, most of the top Fortune 500 companies are not in the list 50 years later. That gave me some more clues for the business de-cluttering process and another way to evaluate my choices.

Then I also started to think about why I was keeping each item. In the hardware box were two different sorts of curtain rings, stored just in case the next house I move to needs a few curtain rings. Really? Wouldn't I be better off just buying a few if I need them rather than storing these for the next 50 years? I have heard declutter expert Peter Walsh say in the past that you should not keep things 'just in case.'

So as I prepare for my business decision making day in two days time and my next round of de-cluttering the garage some time later this month, I will take heed of the wise counsel offered to me today by my accountability partner.

I am different to the person I was when I collected all that stuff.

There is no reason why I can't stand beside that person now and offer my 'better' assistance rather than 'revert' to that former person to deal with it.

If I look at my diary for the last year (yes, I still have a paper diary) and my record of 'tasks completed,' a huge amount has been achieved.

As I think about some of the things that have been making me procrastinate about de-cluttering the garage, they are a mix of both practical and emotional issues:

• making the time to do it
• having the courage to ask for help to get started
• not being clear on what I want to keep or not keep before starting
• not having a reliable benchmark for the decision making process (if I associate it with 'bad memories,' perhaps now is the time to let it go regardless of its personal significance)
• the dust and the spider webs
• the enormity of the task

What was helpful included:

• having a trusted friend present
• deciding what I would do with some things before I got to the stage of sorting them

• cleaning the shelving before re-stocking it to signify a fresh start
• stopping when it became too much
• planning what I would do in the next round rather than try and do it all at once

As I transfer my learnings from this exercise to the business world, I can see that I will need to develop some criteria for my future business decisions:

• what is the real time frame of effectiveness? (for example, can I produce a greater impact from publishing rather than running local events?)
• what is aligned to my overall purpose in life? (check out How to choose your next job or career)
• what is the best use of my time and talents? (check out Guru rather than a Dinosaur)
• how can I make my life more balanced (check out The Real Deal or No Deal)

It is interesting to observe that I have written most of the articles mentioned in this article this year. After writing the first two chapters of my book last month, I have booked another five days away at the end of this month to finish the first full draft.

Perhaps, without realising it, I am closer to making my decisions for next year and completing my to-do list than I thought! Let's hope so!!!

Have you been procrastinating this year?

Are you planning to de-clutter some time soon? (I find the time between Christmas and New Year is usually a good time to de-clutter).

What tips would you like to share with the people who read this article? (please comment below).

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Sue Ellson BBus AIMM MAHRI
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