When it comes to your business, decluttering vs organising are two very different things. Yet, the difference, and why it’s important to you, isn’t talked about much.
Decluttering vs organising
Decluttering is the process of getting rid of what no longer serves you. That could be emails you’re never going to read again, ideas that are past their expiry date, or leads who aren’t the right fit for your business.
Organising is what you do with everything that is left.
There is no one ‘right’ way to organise, or a ‘perfect’ system that everyone should use. To organise your business in a way that supports you, runs smoothly, and allows you to get on do the work you love, requires considering the way you work best, if you have a team, and what your aim for your business is. Trying to shoehorn your business into someone else’s system can make you feel like you aren’t the organised type.
Why systems are important to organising
Let’s talk systems for a minute, as different people use that term in different ways. To me it’s the series of steps you take to get from A to B (and may or may not involve software).
Some examples of what that looks like:
- ‘A’ is a notebook full of ideas for blog posts, ‘B’ is a completed and scheduled blog post.
- ‘A’ is an idea for a new course, ‘B’ is the course ready to sell, with all of the marketing copy written and ready to share.
You’ll already be using some systems in your business; you simply might not call them that. You might call them processes or workflows. Or you might not call them anything at all, they’re simply the way you naturally work.
Systems are a necessary part of organising your business, as they:
- allow you to provide a consistently great client experience, no matter how busy you are, or who in your team is doing the work
- save you time, as you’re not having to remember how to do a task
- stop decision fatigue, as you make the necessary decisions when you set up the system, and not every time you use the system
- save you money, as you’re not buying unnecessary software, or hiring when you don’t need to, and when you do hire – your staff are able to do the work in less time, with better results.
Now, let’s get back to decluttering vs organising.
What happens when you do one, but not the other
Imagine you have a wardrobe full of clothes, yet you feel like you have nothing to wear. We’ve all been there!
If you declutter your wardrobe, but don’t organise it, you’ll have a wardrobe full of clothes that look great on you, fit you perfectly, and are in colours that suit you. But you can’t find what you need because most of the clothes are on the floor, or need a wash, or an iron.
If you organise your wardrobe, but don’t declutter it, your wardrobe is a thing of beauty. Coloured coded clothes hanging from wooden hangers all facing in the same direction, your jerseys in pull out boxes, and your belts on a special hanger. But most of it doesn’t suit you, so you still feel like you have nothing to wear.
How does this look in your business?
When you declutter your inbox, but don’t organise it, you’ll have to continually do a big declutter as it keeps getting out of hand and filling up. You constantly feel like you’re behind and that is no fun at all.
When you organise your inbox, but don’t declutter it, you’re wasting precious time moving emails and creating folders for emails you’re never going to read again. And client emails still get lost because you have. So. Many. Emails.
When you want to have a business that runs smoothly, giving you amply time and energy to focus on the core actions you want to take, then you need to declutter AND organise elements of your business. Usually you’ll start with decluttering, but you may need to loop back around a few times as you realise that you need less and less, and as you refine your systems.
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