Spring presents a great opportunity to "tidy up." I’m sure everyone has heard about the annual ritual of spring cleaning to refresh and tidy up their homes.
In fact, you can apply the principles of spring cleaning not just to your home and the space around you, but also to work processes, business environments, organizational goals, cash flows, social networks... and actually to anything.
Let’s look at some specific points that you can easily tackle today
🧹 Clean up at the workplace. Yes, this perpetual "messy room" that affects your productivity. Spring is the best time to finally discard old notebooks, diaries, stickers, pens, business cards, and clear out work and personal emails, so that your inboxes are finally in order.
🧹 Tidy up tasks. Spring is in many ways a good time to prioritize tasks. It’s time to break down your slightly too long "To-do list" / Backlog / Tech-dept – according to the Eisenhower matrix, Pareto principle (80/20), 2-minute rule, or whatever else you prefer.
🧹 Clean up meetings. In fact, this is a two-way street: 1) You can (and should) revise the calendar for the next week/month and reconsider which of these meetings could be an email. 2) Speaking of email – isn't it worth making a call for 5-10-15 minutes to discuss necessary questions, instead of spending much more time constructing, reading, understanding, and responding to these emails?
Tech-dept, under which I mean unclean code, practice of relying on temporary easy-to-implement solutions to achieve short-term results at the expense of efficiency in the long run.
🧹 Clean up on social media. The very first thing that can be done during spring cleaning is, of course, a digital detox, which we all need from time to time. But if a day without social networks, direct messaging, and work mail sounds too radical for the moment, you can start with a simple task - reassess which applications you need and which notifications from them you really (I emphasize really) want to receive.
The second part doesn't sound very important at first glance. But from experience, I can say that as soon as you stop hearing the cacophony of all sorts of notes from many apps in just one workday, this day will clearly become more productive, and your attention will be more focused on tasks.
So start the journey with spring cleaning in work processes, because a clutter-free workspace leads to a clutter-free mind 🧘
