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Do you feel like you’re juggling too many balls? Me too. And same for LOTS of others. Today’s newsletter is here to help you decide which balls to set aside and which to keep (and perhaps which new ones to pick up).
STORY: Decluttering my house. Decluttering my mind.
READ MORE: Links and resources to help declutter your life.
BOOK STUFF: And the new book for September and October is...
PODCAST: Episode 12 and 13 are out and 14 drops on Monday!
GOING FURTHER: Join a brand new Women’s Leadership Collective (FREE) or the Collective Wisdom Leadership Circle (LAST CHANCE)!
STORY: Decluttering my house. Decluttering my mind
Decluttering my house
When I asked my husband what he wanted for his birthday, he replied, "I just wish all the piles of stuff and unfinished projects would go away." I looked around the house at unfolded laundry, desks and counters piled with detritus, and a garage where we literally have to edge sideways past the random junk to get to the car. I got it. No wonder we were both so defeated, overwhelmed, and stressed.
Every household suffers from entropy -- the inevitable creep towards disorder – piles and projects piling up, cobwebs expanding, and all the useful stuff you actually need like rubber bands, screwdrivers, and keys lost somewhere in the mess. My house was so bad that the toolbox was literally empty because every hammer, tape measure, and wrench had been used for projects. Tools lay scattered all over the property in random buckets, under tables, and garage shelves.
So, for my husband’s birthday present, a bunch of friends and family descended last weekend and we finished a whole bunch of house projects together. We cleaned the garage, unearthed the laundry room, dusted the cobwebs, and sent a ton of things to charity or the dump.
My mother in law tackled our shoe shelf and asked if she could throw away worn out shoes. “Yes?” I said.
A friend collected all the screw drivers, hammers, and crescent wrenches that had been scattered to the four winds onto two big folding tables, sorted all the tools, and organized them neatly into drawers.
I tackled the laundry room, pulling everything off the counters and out of drawers and only put back those things we actually use and need.
Everything else had to go. I didn’t quite realize what that meant until I went back to the shoe shelf and saw half my shoes in the trash…even my favorite pair of 20 year old Uggs with light blue paint stains and worn out heels that fit my feet so utterly perfectly were sitting in the garbage bin. I had to restrain myself from pulling them back out again.
After breathing my way through the discomfort of letting go, at the end of the weekend, there was a huge sense of spaciousness and relief. I could open a drawer, labeled with “rubber bands and scissors” and actually find rubber bands and scissors inside! I saw my laundry room counter again for the first time in years! My husband is still exclaiming regularly how nice it is to look at ceiling fans that aren’t trailing cobwebs.
Ahhh… Thank you family and friends for that birthday gift to Jason.
Decluttering my mind
Meanwhile, in my own life, some unnamed feeling was gradually growing noisier. It came up recently when a friend asked us to donate a dinner at our place to raise money for a local fundraiser. My jaw clenched and my heart raced as we discussed whether or not to say yes. The feeling came up again two days ago when I looked forlornly at my calendar and to do list, both full to bursting with no extra time at all to absorb extra, unexpected, but really important things: a huge proposal to write and dear friends navigating hard times. That night, my daughter asked me something super simple and benign, “What’s for dinner?” and I stumbled over my words, “Um…Ah…” unable to get through the mind clutter to formulate an answer.
In my mind, in the quiet space inside my skull, I looked around to find piles of cruft, unfinished projects, dust bunnies the size of real bunnies, and a complete inability to find anything I need (like words) when I need it.
Then a few days ago, my BFF Tutti asked me, “Where are you at right now?”
I paused. I closed my eyes.
The inside of my head was suffering from entropy just like my house. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, just the inevitable creep towards disorder that’s baked into the second law of thermodynamics.
I desperately needed to declutter my mind.
I began by rewatching two of my favorite TED talks – one by a ER doctor Darria Long on triaging your crazy busy life, and the other by time management expert Laura Vanderkam on prioritizing what’s most important. Then I pulled out a stack of post it notes and did a brain dump – one post it note for every single project I’m working on, responsibility I carry, person I support, or promise I made.
38 post it notes. 38 balls in the air. No wonder my brain felt like a junkyard.
Next I sorted my post its into categories:
BIG ROCKS - These are the most urgent, most important things. I call them “big rocks” because of business consultant Gino Wickman who says in his book Traction:
“Picture a glass cylinder set on a table. Next to the cylinder are rocks, gravel, sand and a glass of water. Imagine the glass cylinder as all of the time you have in a day. The rocks are your main priorities, the gravel represents your day-to-day responsibilities, the sand represents interruptions, and the water is everything else that you get hit with during your workday. If you, as most people do, pour the water in first, the sand in second, the gravel in third, and the rocks last, what happens? Those big rocks won’t fit inside the glass cylinder. That’s your typical day.
“What happens if you do the reverse? Work on the big stuff first: Put the rocks in. Next come the day-to-day responsibilities: Add the gravel. Now dump in the sand, all those interruptions. Finally, pour the water in. Everything fits in the glass cylinder perfectly; everything fits in your day perfectly.”
BIG ROCKS are the essential things that nobody else can do, and that can’t wait. Most of all, they’re the things that align most closely with who I am when I’m at my very best, when I’m fully restored, centered, and purposeful. I ended up with 7 total: 3 work things, my family, my BFFs, self care, and daily meditation.
WAITING ROOM - These are the “gravel” that fills in around the ROCKS. They’re urgent or important but not both. They hang out in what I call my WAITING ROOM because I like to think of them as people in a waiting room, waiting for me to check in on the BIG ROCKS first before I take care of them.
Once I settled on these two categories, I met with Tessa, my chief of operations and the guardian angel of my time and energy. I told her about what I was doing and together, we emptied my calendar of everything except BIG ROCKS. Then, in the white calendar space around those BIG ROCKS, we designated time for WAITING ROOM items. It was just like tackling my laundry room by taking everything out of the cabinets and off the counters, then only putting back the things I truly wanted and needed, and organizing them into labeled drawers.
As Laura Vanderkam says in her TED talk: “We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.”
SOMEDAY MAYBE - These are the things that are neither urgent nor important. Looking at them now, it’s funny how so many of the post it notes I wrote were actually things I thought I “should” do or “wish” to do, yet when put side by side with my top priorities, I could clearly see them for what they are – distractions that occupy the brainspace that I’d rather save for what’s most important. They’re things like essays I want to pitch to newspapers and magazines, online courses I want to take, reading through the backlog of articles I’ve been saving, updating the family scrapbook, and rearranging the furniture in my office. By clearly putting them on a SOMEDAY MAYBE list, I could get them out of my head and onto a list for doing someday… maybe…
LET IT GO - Finally, there were 8 items that needed to be thrown out like old shoes. They were worn out, no longer fit, or had long gone out of style. Plus there were several that shouldn't have been mine to begin with. It took several phone calls but in the end, I was able to delegate or renegotiate all 8 of them away.
I was having big feelings about one LET IT GO item in particular, much like that ratty old pair of Uggs. Yet, I knew that I couldn't focus on what's truly most important without letting that one, and all the rest, go. So I had a conversation with a coach friend of mine who helped me see that I was making what was essentially a creative fun project into an ego driven achievement thing. If I treated it more lightly, with lower expectations and a lot more playfulness, then that project could hover somewhere near the edge of SOMEDAY MAYBE ready to move into the WAITING ROOM when some space opened up.
Bye bye old shoes. Bye bye old projects and outgrown responsibilities.
Obviously entropy will catch up with me in time. And my old habits of saying yes to too many new things. By spring I’ll need another round of spring cleaning. However, for now at least, I'm really enjoying my decluttered mind.
You can too!
Tonight I’ll be leading a group of local women leaders in exactly this exercise (read more about that new project in the going further section below). If you want to try it yourself, here’s what to do:
Grab a bunch of post it notes and write every single project you’re working on, responsibility you carry, person you support, or promise you made – one post it for each item.
Pick the most important things as your BIG ROCKS. Try to limit yourself to 5-7 as that’s your working memory capacity.
Next identify your gravel or WAITING ROOM items, things that may be important or urgent, but that take a back seat to your BIG ROCKS.
Then, sort the remaining items into SOMEDAY MAYBE versus LET IT GO.
Take action to truly clear the LET IT GO items. Maybe there’s someone you need to call or email to tell them that you need to drop something. Maybe there’s something you need to delegate to someone else.
Finally, rearrange your calendar to align with the new priorities. Remove everything you can and put things back in priority order.
READ MORE: Links and resources to help declutter your life
My two favorite videos on decluttering are from an ER doctor and a time management coach. Totally worth a watch.
Check out Podcast episodes 5 and 6 for more on decluttering your mind. Learn all about cognitive load and working memory.
I send this blog post to overwhelmed leaders constantly. Declutter your to do list and calendar today.
BOOK STUFF: The new book for September and October is
PODCAST: Episode 12 and 13 are out…and 14 is coming Monday!
Don’t miss the latest episodes.
And dropping Monday Sept 2…
14: Soaking in Mindfulness: Lessons in centering from a Japanese onsen
Find the Leaders' Playground on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, my website, or wherever you get your podcasts.
GOING FURTHER: Last chance to join the Collective Wisdom Leadership Circle!
Stress is normal and natural but what we do about it is what counts. If I were to recommend two things, and just two things to alleviate stress I’d say #1 breathe and #2 breathe with friends.
Relationships help us navigate stress. But we come back to baseline with the help of our friends and loved ones. We vent. We get a hug. And then we feel better.
If you don’t have healthy supportive relationships, then there’s nobody to help bring your stress system back down to baseline. Your body stays in low level fight or flight, and that wears down your physiology.
This is why I offer a leadership circle every year. It’s a judgment-free zone of encouragement and support so people don’t feel alone, so leaders can ask "dumb" questions or admit their mistakes, so real help is there when you need it, and so that there’s someone to hold you accountable as you do great things.
If you’re a female leader in Shasta County and are interested in a FREE bimonthly leadership circle, you’re in luck! Hope Seth from Vistage and I are volunteering our time to create a Women’s Leaders Collective so leadership can feel less lonely.
And if a casual after work gathering every other month isn’t nearly enough, enrollment for the next cohort of my collective wisdom leadership circle closes October 11th. We start the following week. It’s likely that I will NOT be offering a leadership circle in 2025. So if you want to achieve your biggest goals with a coach, teammates, and circle of cheerleaders, now’s your chance.
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