Decluttering Your Life Beyond Your Possessions
We have just passed the halfway point between Winter and Spring and most of us are thinking about Spring cleaning. While we all probably think of Spring cleaning in terms of our home, have you ever thought of Spring cleaning your life?
Creating a meaningful life takes intention. Removing the layers of clutter allows you to feel accomplished and fulfilled at the end of each day.
Read on to see the how-tos and the benefits of decluttering your personal life and how it can get you more time for people and activities you truly love.
Learning To Say No And Stop Overcommitting – If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.
One of the biggest issues we have today is that we are way overscheduled. We are all on the “yes train”.
What can we do about that?
Here’s a little trick you can use to see if you really want to commit your time and energy to something.
Each time you are considering committing to an activity or an event ask yourself how excited are you about said commitment. A great adage is “If it’s not a hell yes! It’s a hell no.”
In other words, if you are not really excited about taking something on, you will probably regret that you have committed your valuable time to it when the time comes.
Reserving your commitments for only those things that you are truly passionate about will make you feel more energized and more fulfilled.
How Multi-Tasking Robs Us Of Time And Energy
Many of us don’t really know how we spend our time. Have you ever landed at the end of your day and thought, “what did I even do today?” I know I have and it took me intention and time to learn to stay focused on what matters.
Even though you may have been busy all day, you may not feel as if you accomplished anything of real substance. One cause of this is multi-tasking.
Often times we fool ourselves into believing that we can make a massive to-do list and then we dive in, starting multiple tasks at once just to get to the end of the day without accomplishing much.
And even though we feel like we were very busy all day (because we were!) we did not get the satisfaction of completing anything. Stopping the cycle of multi-tasking is like decluttering your time.
Look At How You Spend Your Time
One way to look at how you spend your time is to use a method called time journaling. Time journaling consists of writing down a detailed list of what you did during each day for one week.
These entries do not have to be detailed, they just need to record the activities you did during your day and the times that you did them.
These quick notes will show you exactly where and how you are spending your time and energy.
After you see where you spend your time, you can then ask yourself these two questions:
- What can I let go of?
- What activities did I engage with that do not align with my goals and how I want my life to be?
- What do I want to make more time for?
Making More Space For People And Activities You Love
Now that you can see where your time is being spent, go ahead and take a pen or marker and cross out things that you feel you can let go of. Circle things that must stay.
Look at the things that have to stay and ask yourself:
- How can I do these things more efficiently?
- Can I delegate any of these tasks to save time?
Once you have answered these questions and you have decluttered your schedule, you can move on to the next step.
Create A Realistic Schedule Based On Your Time Journal
Now that you have seen how you were spending your time, have reassessed what things were necessary and what things were not, you can create a calendar that should help you get through your days more efficiently, and leave room for spending more time doing things you love.
Create your calendar with these few steps:
Fill in what needs to be done each day, making sure to consider the things you found out about your time and energy expenditures while you were time journaling.
- List those things you want to do more of
- Fill in a few spaces with these activities
- Be sure to leave some blank spaces for spontaneous commitments and downtime.
Once you have decluttered your days and created this new calendar, you will see that you are moving through your days with more energy. You will get to the end of your days feeling more accomplished and satisfied with how you have spent your time.
