Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Unclutter Your Life in One Week Part II

As my memory is fading as to what I read, I better knock out office clutter and lifestyle clutter in one fell swoop. Office clutter is a lot of basic time management. I know what activities I need to do in a given day. The hard stuff I usually try to do between 9:00 AM and noon when I am at my most productive. I am a slave to e-mail and read everything within minutes rather than only checking e-mail hourly or twice/day. My phone does not ring too often so I don’t need to worry about that distraction. As far as paper and electronic clutter, I occasionally revert to being a pack rat, but my electronic data is quite organized and accessible. I am also cognizant of others times and maintain clear agendas for meetings.

Lifestyle clutter is a hard one for me. The only take away I have tried to incorporate is picking up the house 30 minutes during weekdays when I get home. This has eliminated a significant amount of “reminding (nagging)” in my household as bottles and sippy cups get washed, the dishwasher can be loaded or emptied and I can slip in a load of laundry in this amount of time daily. I am hit and miss on packing my lunch and the girls bags in the evenings. As far as our other household tasks, I have not incorporated the dinner and cleaning the kitchen suggestions. My commute is still hectic and there are several errands that get relegated to precious weekend time. My wife and I have started using Google calendar to communicate, but we do not have set days for laundry, grocery shopping, and misc. errands. Communicating grocery lists is another challenge that I have not addressed.

I really enjoyed Doland’s book and it was a pleasant read. It offered positive reinforcement for my few good habits, a gentle reminder on my many poor habits and some real easy to incorporate ideas. If I can take even one gem away from a non-fiction read I feel I am ahead of the game. This is true regardless of whether the genre is poker, bicycling, running, marriage, child-rearing or personal development.

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