If you're like most people I know, you have way too many things you need to track:
- too many contacts
- too many appointments
- too many bills
- too many clothes or shoes
- too many ebooks on the computer
- too many ideas you simply can't get to
- too many responsibilities
- too many temptations
- too many priorities
- too many phone numbers and email addresses
- too many birthdays and special occasions
- TOO MUCH PHYSICAL STUFF that no longer serves a purpose…
So recently I've been attempting to de-clutter all those pockets in my life where the "stuff" has built up.
I have several reasons to simplify – including our desire to become "bi-local" and share our time between California, New Zealand and other ports of travel. But even with such a great reason to get rid of stuff, it's been an interesting challenge, and many times I found myself simply stuck.
As part of the process I decided I was tired of doing a manual back up of my computer data every week or so, and I bought a 2 terabyte hard drive that's supposed to do continual backups.. That was an interesting experience as it took almost 2 weeks to back up the computer, an external drive and our music drive.
And of course everything dropped to a crawl during the backup process. So I learned from that process that the backup drive gets connected at night when I'm not doing anything else & it can hog resources. Not quite what I wanted, but close enough I guess.
Once I had everything backed up, I started reorganizing files and deleting duplicates as well as anything that was way old and no longer needed. An fascinating thing happened – as the space cleared, my energy lifted.
That's when I started hitting gold!! I found several projects that were in various stages of completion, including one that was 3/4 finished when I had to set it aside about 7 years ago to take care of other things.
So I pulled it out and have been working to finish it up. It's amazing how much energy that in itself has created. And now I'm excited about the project again, even if I've changed my focus and it ends up a somewhat different product.
I've also begun to prioritize the other projects I still want to work on, and deciding which ones to let go of. As I complete what's in front of me, it's freeing up more energy to do what I want. Which makes it that much easier to focus on what's important to me now.
The key has always been taking action. Especially when you feel you are stuck. It's isn't always necessary to take massive action, you just have to start somewhere. Your momentum and focus will build as you create the space for them.
Taking those first few steps towards clearing out the clutter in my life has resulted in giving me back the ability to focus.