Three weeks ago I sent you an email about having “too much stuff“.
My solution to this was (what now seems quite paradoxical)… to do much, much more stuff in three weeks to get massively organised and (eventually) create some much-needed space in my life.
Did I achieve my goal? Let’s take a look at the list and see:
1) Finishing organisation that I started over the Christmas holidays (files, photos, bookmarks, backups etc).
This turned out to be so big that it probably should have been broken down into smaller goals. I’m happy to report that I did finish my organisation I started over Christmas, my files are now very nicely organised, they are all backed up and my system is up-to-date.
My favourite part from this section is the organisation of my bookmarks, I’m an avid researcher and had around 2,000 saved bookmarks across 3 browsers with varying degrees of bad/no folder structures over about 10 years.
These are now condensed down to 725 (with some new ones added too) and make it extremely easy and actually enjoyable for me to find what I want online.
2) Setting up a CRM system for my business.
I finished setting this up last night at about 9.30pm, so I can’t yet report how much it’s helped my business – but the CRM I’m using looks great so far and I’m thankful for the leap year to ensure I could get this one completed before my end of Feb deadline.
3) Setting up an online workspace to keep all of my notes, plans and writing in one place.
I signed up for online workspace Notion a few months back but hadn’t set it up or used it. Setting myself this challenge finally gave me the push to complete a training course I’d been meaning to take and to finally get things set up.
I’m so glad I did because I love this workspace and it’s going to make my systems, processes and life in general much easier. It’s also a much better place to keep some contents of emails rather than in my email account. Which brings me to…
4) Condensing my email folders and purging old emails I don’t need (over 3,000 unread).
Purged a ton of stuff here, down to under 500 unread emails and have a more organised folder structure and unsubscribed from emails I wasn’t reading.
5) Listing our 2nd car (that we don’t need) for sale.
Listed and had a few enquiries, but not yet sold.
6) Implementing a system for ongoing housework.
Here’s what we did, my partner and I wrote a list of all the chores we have to do and rated how much we like (or don’t mind) doing them out of 10. Whoever has the highest rating does the chore, we negotiated a few tiebreakers and then put everything in a schedule on the fridge.
So yes I think I did achieve what I set out to… but only just!
There are definitely deeper levels I want to go to with everything, it would simply be impossible to set everything up perfectly in three weeks whilst running a business.
To get my list finished I spent a lot of extra time on evenings and weekends at my computer, which I normally wouldn’t have if I hadn’t put social and financial pressure on myself by declaring my challenge publically.
Was it worth it? If you’d have asked me a week ago I’d have probably said no, because it’s hard and I’m tired and it’s been stressful.
But now I would actually say yes, not only because I completed the list, but because I also picked up a second wind in the last week and just got used to working the extra hours and getting more stuff done… I adapted.
Working such long hours and within such a short timeframe is probably not sustainable in the long-term and I am ready for some good sleep, but I do feel quite proud of what I’ve managed to achieve in the past three weeks – on top of having my best month in business so far.
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