I have been doing some purging as of late. I pride myself in being a minimalist, but the “stuff” is stacking up in the garage, the attic, the closets, under the beds and seemingly every drawer.
Jolene and I have lived together in eight homes now, not including our childhood, college or apartments. As such, we purged many items during each of those moves. We also transported many of the same unopened boxes several times. Sound familiar?
This process of purging reminds me of three pieces of advice I received through the years. The first was to handle a piece of paper once. The same goes for voicemails, emails and text messages. Don’t save them to review later. Don’t let them pile up. And certainly don’t just ignore them. If you do — and maybe you can relate (or know someone who can) — you suddenly have thousands of these items, and the stress of that piles on, too.
The second piece of advice was on to handle tasks immediately and not procrastinate. “Do it, ditch it or delegate it,” I was told by my first boss out of college. The best scenario is to do it right now, he suggested, and get it over with. Or if it simply isn’t important, ditch it. And if you can ask someone else you trust to get it handled for you, delegate it.
Recently, I read another related tip that said, “If you can do the task in less than five minutes, then do it right now.”
I try to use these three tips on every task I have and every piece of paper, every voicemail, every email and every text message I receive. They help, but they are not failproof, which is obvious by the “stuff” I am sorting through right now.
And the purge continues.
Have a fabulous Friday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@dmcityview.com
641-755-2115