Three activities you can do in isolation that are good for both your soul and business

With social distancing practices hard in place and isolation still on the cards for the time being, we’ve been afforded more time than usual to really take stock of what’s going on around us.

If you’ve spent the better part of this lockdown pivoting, forecasting cash flows and reinviting your social content, it might be worthwhile taking a break, using this time as an opportunity to do a little (or big) spring clean in your business.

There really is nothing like a good deep cleanse. It’s reinvigorating, freeing and makes you feel a whole lot lighter once you’ve finished. Sometimes it can be the little things that bog us down in our everyday life and business without us even realising. Disorganisation, at its core, is delayed decisions and deferred actions. We could bet our bottom dollar that there were probably a few things you were putting off doing prior to this COVID mayhem.

Here are three activities we recommend engaging in that will ultimately make life easier for yourself in the long term.

Reorganise your physical space in a more mindful way

Did you know that physical clutter creates mental and cognitive clutter too? It’s been scientifically proven. Whether you run your business from an office, warehouse or brick and mortar store, how your space is set up and organised plays a large role in the overall productivity of your business.

So, if your work space is looking like a mini-tornado has swept through, now might be a good time to tackle some of that organising you’ve likely been putting in the ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ basket.

When creating a more positive and productive work area you’ll want to begin by culling down items to only what is needed. Now, if you consider yourself to be a bit of a hoarder, this might be a little tricky. To help with this, try acting as if any and all of the physical things you see in the room aren’t yours. Shifting into the mindset of ‘this doesn’t belong to me’ will help you feel less emotionally attached to the objects, thus making it easier to decide if it truly needs throwing away or not.

Of those items that you see in your work space the first thing to ask yourself is, ‘what can I immediately get rid of?’. These will be the items you can put straight into the bin, think broken and outdated electronics, old marketing materials and post-it notes, and unless you can magically revive them, those dead plants need to go as well. The second thing to ask from here is, ‘what can I donate or get rid of that I don’t need to own but can maybe borrow from someone instead if I need it in the future?’ If you have items in your workspace that you maybe need access to from time to time but don’t necessarily use consistently in your everyday work, these too can be discarded. When the times comes that you need to use these particular things you can instead borrow it from someone else who has it as opposed to leaving it lying around in your office taking up space.

The last thing to consider when sorting out your work clutter is, ‘what can I digitalise?’ If there are things that you can scan and file away on your computer or hard drive do that instead. This will allow you to keep the data but without having the actual physical documents take up any space in your work area.

Don’t be afraid the be ruthless when clearing things out. When deciding whether to keep or chuck an item, think through these qualifying questions; ‘do I truly use and need this? And, ‘would I purchase this all over again if I didn’t already own it?’ If the answer is no, you know where to put it.

Once you’ve cleared your space down to what you need, organise these items so that they are clearly labeled and everything has its place. At the end of the working day when you put these items back in their spot, it will make your following morning a lot more enjoyable as you come into work with a clean, fresh space, ready to start the day without those pesky distractions.

Don’t be afraid the be ruthless when clearing things out. When deciding whether to keep or chuck an item, think through these qualifying questions; ‘do I truly use and need this? And, ‘would I purchase this all over again if I didn’t already own it?’ If the answer is no, you know where to put it.

Spring clean your digital clutter

When we’re knee-deep in the busyness or our business sometimes we can forget that our digital life is vulnerable to clutter, too. Cleansing your digital files and footprint helps to ensure your personal and business information stays organised and safe.

Here are a few things to look at when it comes to cleaning your digital clutter:

What online accounts have you signed up for in your business that you no longer need or have never used? Dormant accounts can be a threat to both your privacy and security. We recommend compiling a list of your old or inactive accounts and if you haven’t used them in the last three months and don’t plan on using them in the next three months then unsubscribe and deactivate them pronto.

If you can’t remember what you might have signed up for, a quick search in your email browser for ‘welcome’, ‘new account’, ‘confirm email’ and ‘thanks for signing up’ will help to surface old communications from websites, apps and other services. You can also try typing your favourite username into Google, don’t forget to try old usernames and old email addresses too as you never know what might show up from years ago.

Next on the list of digital cleaning is your client/customer database and email list. Removing inactive users from your list will increase your email deliverability score, reduce your bounce rate, minimise your spam complaints and can also reduce costs since some email marketing platforms charge according to the number of subscribers you have. Performing email hygiene regularly will ensure you’re only emailing the people who truly want to receive your message — making them much more likely to engage with your business. We believe a client base with quality, engaged users is far more valuable for your business than a large list of people who never have or never will be interested in your product or service.

Hands up if you’ve got messy folders, a messy inbox and random documents all over your desktop? If you’re a visual person like us, seeing an array of files scattered all over the place is an OCD nightmare. It doesn’t take much to clean up your desktop, allocate a weekend or day in your business where your sole focus is to organise your digital assets. If this feels like a big task, you can break it down into smaller more manageable time slots, say two hours every Friday for the next three weeks.

If you don’t already, use a naming convention when organising your digital files and group things in folders with similar themes. This makes finding things a whole lot easier when you need to pull up a particular document. It also allows new employees or contractors to come in and pick up where you’ve left off. They won’t spend their precious time hunting around for the right files and data and instead can get straight to work because everything they need is right in front of them.

Once you’re done clearing up all your accounts and files, don’t forget to take out the trash. The easiest and simplest thing you can do right away is to empty your desktop recycling bin. Until you actually go into your trash and delete what’s in there, all those old documents, embarrassing photos and unused programs are still lingering on your hard drive. Putting you at risk of those old files resurfacing and quite simply taking up unnecessary disk space.

Unload your mental overload

Anyone who has built or owns a business knows that one of the keys to success is making sure you remain focused and refreshed. In the current climate we’re in, focus is a skill you can’t afford not to have. It’s easy for our minds to become filled with the never-ending list of ‘shoulds’, regrets from missed opportunities of the past and unfinished business, like emails to send, phone calls to make and bills to pay. That’s why it’s really important to allow yourself the time and space to brain dump and re-evaluate what’s been going on inside.

What can you do to alleviate some of this stress? Reframe those ‘shoulds’ into ‘coulds’. This subtle change in language can significantly take the pressure of feeling like you ‘have’ to get things done into feeling like you are making a choice to get things done.

Tie up what loose ends you can. If you have what feels like a long list of ‘to do’s’ swirling around in your head, the very act of writing these down will instantly provide some relief to the accompanying anxiety and overwhelm. Putting pen to paper means you won’t have to spend extra mental energy hoping you’ll remember, you can prioritise tasks accordingly and evaluate how you’re going to allocate your time in order to complete each task.

When it comes to those regrets from the past, we’re afraid there’s only so much you can do about that. The past, is the past and there’s no going back. Instead of lying in bed at night running through every conversation you’ve ever had or beating yourself up for every mistake you’ve made, you can ask yourself a few questions like ‘is that situation relevant now?’, ‘was that situation in my control?’ and, ‘was that situation even that serious to begin with?’. Sharing your thoughts and talking things through with a trusted mentor or friend is also great way to gain some perspective on your thoughts and feelings.

This post was originally published on April 28th, 2020 and was written by Erica Torres, founder of And Granger. We help clients think about their future. Then create the brand, web and packaging assets to help them get there.