Take a GTD Challenge Around Your “Stuff”

Things do not get rid of themselves. There seems to be a universal law of physics that goes like this: things that exist want to keep existing, even if there’s no good reason. And I think they have strange, secret, invisible agents that lurk in our psyche, planting little numbing seeds like “it’s there, so there must be a good reason it’s there.”

And stuff changes. What’s useful today may not be so useful tomorrow and by next week may be irrelevant and by next month may be seriously in the way of us getting things done. In addition to inconveniently taking up physical space, it consumes psychic space, of which we can all use as much as we can get.

When was the last time you did an inventory of what you really don’t need anymore?

-in your center drawer

-in your briefcase

-in your closet

-in your garage

-in your bathroom cabinets

-in the trunk (boot) of your car

-on your bookshelves

-on your staff

-on your calendar

-on your computer

-in your product line

-in your relationships

-in your habits

-in your mind

Many of the things you will find have probably at some point become “someday/maybe” kinds of things, and perhaps there’s a decent reason to keep them around, just to keep the option open – “But what if I might need it?” At least consider migrating those to a deeper storage area, and limit that space, so as you add things to it, it forces you to move even older nostalgia out into the dumpster.

–David Allen