Most business related decluttering advice begins and ends with "declutter your office".

*Insert side eye*

Don't get me wrong, I get it. The office is the room in your home that is tied directly to time and money management. So, decluttering your office is great if you need to create space for tools that help you structure your time and money.

But what if something else is impacting your ability to manage your time?

In this blog, you'll learn the 4 spaces every entrepreneur should declutter to improve their time management skills.

Continue reading or check out the video replay from Instagram above where we discussed this topic live. If you're not already, be sure to follow Nacho Average Fro in Instagram to join live every Thursday at 7pm CST.

Why the office is the most commonly suggested space.

Every single room in our home is tied to a different aspect of our lives.

Your office is the room in your home, that is directly correlated with time and money management.

This make a lot of sense when we think about where we plan things, whether it's like vacations or just our week. It's where we hold our to do list. It's where we typically manage our budget. For those that don't have an office, maybe you're in an apartment, and so you don't have like a designated office space, your living room can also be a space that is directly tied to time and money management.

So the idea behind this advice is that if you learn how to declutter the space, then you will have more comfortability more confidence or more results in managing your time managing your money. If I walk into an office, that feels clear, that feels decluttered that feels spacious, then I can ideally, do a better job of managing my time. I can be focused when I'm in that space and planning out my week. There will be less procrastination because there's not like a bunch of things in my environment that are derailing my progress.

Why the office shouldn't be our only focus.

So the advice is good advice, on the surface, where I tend to have a little bit of a differing opinion is one in relation to how I think about clutter. I really see clutter, as anything that keeps us from our most fulfilling and most authentic life.

There's really like three categories that I tend to think about when it comes to what clutter looks like. So I break clutter down into:

• what we think
• what we do
• what we have

So what we have is what we commonly hear about are the physical items that we have. What I've learned through my own experience, is that there are actually other kinds of clutter that are even more important, even more impactful to our lives than what we have in our homes.

So as I started thinking about time management, about entrepreneurship and managing our time, it comes back to this idea of like, okay, while the office, within the constraints of my home, is the place that is directly correlated to my time and money management, there are actually other aspects of my life that are directly impacting my time, right?

There's so many different reasons that we may be struggling with time management, and the office can speak to one reason - maybe we just haven't dedicated the space, the time and the energy to sit down and plan our time.

But what I find for a lot of people is that that is often not the case.

Oftentimes, we're already making an effort to plan we've already gotten the to do list and the planners and the whatever's, we've already tried these different tools, but there's some other block that may be getting in the way of our time management.

That's where I think expanding the way we think about decluttering and where we think about decluttering is so important and so helpful.

The 4 spaces every entrepreneur should declutter.

So going back to that definition of how I think about clutter - what we think, do, and have - that really helps us to redefine where we focus on decluttering.

So these are the four spaces that I actually think are really, really important for every entrepreneur, the first is going to be your mind.

One: Your Mind

Your mind is an environment of its own.

If you have ever spiraled into like thoughts, that made you upset, made you sad, even maybe made you happy, you know, that your mind is like a space of its own. If we have not yet learned how to choose our thoughts, that can have a direct impact on our time management.

I have to learn how to choose the thoughts that will support me in creating the life that I desire to lead. So if you're someone who's like, "yeah, you know, I have tried different tools. I have a planner, I put things in my phone on my calendar, I get the notification, I have a to do list", but you're still not leveraging your time the way you desire, then we might need to think about what thoughts are coming up for you, that are actually keeping you from doing what you want, or what you say that you want to do.

Our mind is such a powerful place.

If I start thinking to myself, as I'm working on something for the business, "nobody cares about this. nobody's interested in this. I don't even know if this is good enough, maybe I shouldn't put this product out. maybe this isn't a good idea, maybe I should wait till later", my mind becomes cluttered with all these negative beliefs.

Despite the fact that in my calendar I might have written out, 'write out launch emails', I'm not doing it not because I didn't plan for it, but because my mind is so cluttered with these discouraging thoughts or these discouraging beliefs that I say, "you know, what, I'm gonna do something else". That's that moment where we find ourselves getting up to do something else - I pull up my phone, I start scrolling on social media, I start looking for things to do around my house, I find other tasks. This big task that needs to be done starts to feel a little bit overwhelming and so suddenly, I'm off doing stuff that like, might need to be done, but it's actually not a priority or it's not the thing that's going to move the needle for me right now.

And so our mind is the number one space that we have to learn how to declutter.

We have to we have to learn how to start choosing thoughts or managing the thoughts that are coming up so that we can stay committed to the things that we plan to do.

Two: Your Schedule

So the second space that we need to declutter is our schedule.

We need to identify what we choose to do when we are feeling like overwhelmed or feeling stressed. So in that previous example, it's like I'm working on something, I start to feel discouraged, I start to feel overwhelmed, suddenly, I'm doing something totally different than what's on my schedule. Those actions, they clutter our time, because I've decided that I really want to focus on writing these emails, but I'm actually spending my time in another way.

So for me personally, a lot of times when I start to get overwhelmed, my cluttered action can be like going out to eat. Like, suddenly, I'm like, so hungry. I'm like, "Oh, I gotta get out of the house. I need to go get some food". Sometimes while I'm out of the house, I start like driving around, and like, "oh, maybe I should just clear my head". Then I find myself like driving around just driving. I'm just out here driving like gas ins't expensive. I throw myself maybe into other work, I start overthinking things. 

These actions are actually cluttering my time.

As someone who's managing a business, and also managing the life, I have to start to recognize, what does it look like for me to clutter my time? How do I know when I'm going out to eat because I truly like want to go try a new restaurant and when I'm using that restaurant, that meal, that opportunity, you know, to kind of escape how I'm feeling or what I'm feeling.

And the thing about clutter in our schedule is that sometimes it can continue for an extended amount of time. So it may not be like just tonight that I was stressing it could be when I look back like wow, I've actually been like just stress eating all week orr it's been like, two weeks that I've been in this funk. And so then I started to realize like, this is where my time is going.

Entrepreneurs often feel like they are running out of time. While I don't believe that we have to always be productive or perfectly manage our time, I do think that a lot of us sometimes don't know or don't recognize how we are actually using our time. This is why focusing on planners and focusing on time management tools is that like a good start, but we have to go one step further.

I could say, "this is what I want to do", but then it's like, how did I actually use my time?
Do I know what was actually cluttering my time?

Three: Your Home

The last way that clutter shows up is in what we have. This is the most common form of clutter that we hear about that we think about.

Every room in your home is tied to a different aspect of your life.

For example:
Your office is tied directly to time and money management.
Your bedroom is tied to your mental clarity.
Your kitchen is tied to discipline.

So we need to dig deeper than "I'm struggling to manage my time" if we want to identify where to declutter our home. 

Our home is a great place for us to declutter because our home holds a lot of the feelings and emotions that can get us off track. When your home is cluttered, it feels there's like a weight to it. Like, sometimes it can feel heavy and that heaviness makes it hard for us to show up for ourselves the way that we want.

When you are thinking about decluttering your home, the impact there is it's going to create a lightness, it's going to feel like you've lifted a burden, in a sense. You'll feel much more comfortable navigating your calendar because there won't be all of these things that you're looking around at to trigger these negative emotions.

Four: Your Business

And then the last space that we have is your business.

And this, I think is like something that I just think doesn't really come up a lot.

Just like if I was going to work, my job is an environment in itself and the way that that environment is managed or crafted, can directly impact how I show up how I utilize my time.

Your business works in that very same way. What we want to think about specifically, is we want to think about our offers and our marketing.

When our business is cluttered, what we find is that we may be spending our time on things that are not helping us to create our most fulfilling life and business. 

For example, what I've realized is that I have cluttered my business with offers that I thought I had to have. I thought I had to have like self paced courses. I thought I had to have group programs. I don't think there's anything wrong with those things, but the question is, is this really how I want it to be spending my time? Are those the offers that I really want it to be invested in? Is that the kind of business that I really want to build?

What the impact of decluttering these spaces?

When we start decluttering those spaces, they will start to have certain impacts.

Decluttering my mind is going to give me a sense of clarity and a sense of focus.
Decluttering my time will improve my discipline.
Decluttering my home will increase my confidence.
Decluttering my business will increase my efficiency and effectiveness.

And because of that, we spend less time over-working.

We spend more time living our lives.

We create a life and business that fulfill us.

Learn how to improve your time management.

Not sure how to declutter these different aspects of your life?

Join the 'Achieve Any Goal' email community to learn more about our upcoming workshops that will teach you how to use this concept to declutter your time so you can launch and scale the business you want without dropping the ball in your life.

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