Organized Audrey says it well. “Clutter is the result of delayed decision-making.”
Become a decision-maker. Practice by looking around your desk – your home – your closets. Chances are you’ll see evidence of delayed decisions all around you.
Then, consider your inbox. How many delayed decisions are in there? In lean terms, consider your cluttered emails as excess inventory – one of the seven wastes of lean. Then, consider the sum-total of conversations you’ve delayed. How much energy are they zapping?
Here’s what you don’t want to do. Don’t delete all your emails just to get rid of the clutter. Note, you don’t need to get your inbox down to zero by the end of the day. You don’t need to go out and have every delayed conversation by 5 PM on Friday. Just stop delaying decisions you can make now, stop postponing conversations you can have now, and live your life with more dynamic immediacy. Then, take heart that while you may still have clutter, you’re moving in the right direction.
Clutter is the result of delayed decision-making. Organization is the result of systems and processes that make decision-making easy. But that’s the subject of another post.