Less Stuff = Less Stress = More Time = More Energy

What is the one thing that just about everyone can agree on?

They want more time.

And almost universally they want more energy to go with that time. We try all kinds of tactics to make both of those desires part of our reality. We over-plan and over-schedule ourselves. We multitask to the max. Then we dose ourselves with caffeine until we get so jittery we can no longer concentrate on even the simplest task. We read the latest and greatest time management books hoping we will find the perfect solution somewhere in the pages. We trick ourselves into believing that sleep is a luxury we can afford do without.

Guess what? There is an easier way to add minutes to your day and get an energy bump to boot.

Are you ready? It's so simple it's going to blow your mind.

Get rid of stuff.

What's that you say – Get rid of stuff?! But I love my stuff.

I can hear that sentiment being echoed loud and clear. But here is the real deal, you do have stuff you love and that's as it should be. However, you also have stuff you don't love - stuff that doesn't serve you well, adds no value to your life and doesn't contribute to you reaching your goals. That's the stuff you should get rid of. We call that stuff clutter. Clutter can be big or clutter can be small. Clutter is anything that doesn't provide support to us. Clutter should not be in our space. I would be willing to bet there is a significant amount of clutter in your space.

You might wonder why I would bet on something sight unseen. Well my experience in these matters is quite broad. I have yet to work with a client who didn't have loads of stuff that could be let go of without any negative consequences. We acquire things in such a variety of ways that it is virtually impossible to ask ourselves the important questions before we become the steward of each and every item. (If you are unsure what the important questions are drop me a line and I will get them off to you. Or you can check out this post on controlling clutter for good.)

So let's get back to my suggestion. Get rid of stuff. Why am I am saying this? Because, by its very nature, stuff demands our time and energy. Specifically how this works is quite simple. Stuff takes up space. A cluttered space leads to a cluttered mind. A cluttered mind leads to stress. Stress takes energy. The energy it takes is nonproductive. Do you really want to spend any of your time being nonproductive? I doubt it, especially since the goal is to free up more time.

Seeing things you no longer love or things that conjure up guilt is just as bad. Looking at things that create less than desirable feelings is not healthy. It just leads to more stress and wastes more energy.

Stuff also costs energy and time more directly. Time to put away and time to care for. When you have too many things you have to work around them in some capacity and that causes time to be wasted.

I would challenge you to let go of five things over the next five days. See how it feels to free yourself from a little bit of energy sapping, time stealing clutter. Let me know how it works out, I would love to hear your thoughts.