Decluttering homes for greater comfort and peace of mind has become trendy ever since Marie Kondo introduced her KonMari method to an international audience. Don’t worry, I’m not about to judge what your house looks like. Instead, I would like to encourage you to have a closer look at your professional life: your desk, your inbox and your professional social media accounts can all contribute to your productivity or steal your time. Read on to find out how decluttering can help you grow your tech startup or any other company.
What My LinkedIn Feed Taught Me About Clutter
A few years ago, decluttering your professional life started with your desk. Removing papers and files that had been gathering dust for years and were no longer needed went a long way toward clearing your mind and allowing you to focus on the tasks that mattered.
About a decade ago, the focus shifted from physical desks to computers. Email inboxes became the new culprits in our battle for productivity. Just check out these two blog posts on habits you need to stop and productive changes to make.
Today, social media channels are rivalling email when it comes to taking up your work time and making you reactive rather than productive. Before you tell me to get real and point out the importance of social media – don’t worry, I understand. I appreciate that, depending on your industry, you rely on LinkedIn for networking and maintaining professional relationships. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram help you reach potential customers and grow your brand.
Selecting Relevant, Actionable and Productive Content
This is something I thought about when I was looking at my LinkedIn feed. When I joined the platform, I wasn’t sure yet how I would use the platform. As a result, I connected with and followed a wide range of people and companies.
Over the years, I added to those initial contacts. Whenever I received requests to connect, I tended to say yes without really thinking about the goal of the connection. More recently, I noticed that my feed got busier, but I started missing content that was relevant and useful to me. Instead, it took longer and longer to select the relevant parts. My LinkedIn inbox was even worse.
Time for a declutter: I spent a couple of hours deleting messages I would never reply to and unsubscribing from content that was no longer relevant to me. Ever since then, my feed has been far more interesting. Plus, I spend less time on the platform but get more out of it.
How You Can Declutter Your Professional Life
Where do you start when it comes to decluttering your professional life? Marie Kondo’s method suggests dividing the task into categories rather than locations. Let’s see if we can apply this approach to tech startups and other professional circumstances.
My first piece of advice is to identify the biggest drains on your time and prioritising them in your effort to declutter. Perhaps social media platforms are your biggest issue, but a cluttered desktop on your laptop and several screens’ worth of unused apps can be just as bad. Finally, email inboxes with thousands of unread emails continue to steal the attention of even the most committed professional.
Next, imagine your ideal working day and the role of the devices you use, emails, phone calls, and social media within it. Which one is most critical in helping you achieve your goals? Start by decluttering right there to see big changes quickly. Keep reading for practical tips.
Decluttering 101: Three Targets to Tackle Today
Decluttering your professional life means something different for every startup founder and small business owner, so feel free to adjust the following tips to suit your circumstances.
1. Declutter Your Desktop
How much space is on your desktop? This question isn’t about square inches and buying a second or third monitor. It’s about opening your laptop or any other device and having your most important tools right in front of you without needing to search. For most of us, this would mean no more than a handful of links or apps.
A desktop full of files you’re not using is like an actual desk stacked high with papers making it impossible to do any work. Move files into folders or back them up to the cloud to give yourself the workspace you deserve.
While we’re talking about files and folders, how much data are you holding in your computer’s download folder? Leaving unused files there not only makes them harder to find but not deleting the files you no longer need also takes up unnecessary space. Take a look now.
2. Tackle Your Email Inbox
Email may have been replaced by WhatsApp, Slack and other apps in some companies, but most of us still have a sizable inbox. If that sounds like you, decluttering would be a great way to increase your productivity and allow you to focus on your priorities.
Here are three quick ways to cut down on your inbox size:
- Delete unopened emails: any email that is older than a month and remains unopened is likely out of date. Deleting these emails will cut the number of emails you need to deal with to a minimum.
- Unsubscribe: our needs and interests change. Newsletters and other subscriptions that were hugely important a few years ago may not be all that helpful to you now. Spend ten minutes every day for a month unsubscribing from the newsletters you never open. Within four weeks, you’ll notice that it’s taking you far less time to go through your emails in the morning than it used to.
- Deal with quick replies immediately: how often do you open an email only to decide to deal with it later? Make a rule of dealing with small things now. This will help you spend two minutes or less rather than returning to the same task again and again.
3. Reconsider Your Professional Social Media Exposure
Social media has become a powerful tool for most businesses, but that doesn’t mean it needs to limit your productivity or take over your day. Like every other aspect of your business, social media works most effectively when it is backed by a strategic approach.
I’m not about to embark on a long lecture about that, but let me ask you this: is your current social media activity helping you and your business grow? Are you finding customers, are you being inspired, or are you learning new things that can help you achieve your goals? If the answer is no, the content (or even the channel) probably doesn’t deserve your time.
Take Small Steps Today
Are you ready to start decluttering your professional life? There is no right or wrong place to start and even setting aside 15 minutes every day will quickly get you results. Consider this a small investment into a more productive future for you, your team, and your entire company.
And if you have any special tips and tricks to share, we’d be keen to hear them to help us get more productive and use our time even more effectively to your benefit!