Habits in your personal life could be hurting you professionally. To Clear the Path of some outdated practices, let me take you into my bedroom closet.
A quick inspection made me realize that I have a problem. I can admit that I have too many shoes and their sheer number is causing me problems.
The surprising thing is that I’m not a shoe person. I wear them but I don’t have anything that could be close to called a collection.
My problem goes back to a old habit. Whenever I buy new shoes, I always keep the old pair just in case it’s a rainy or muddy day outside. It’s something I picked up years ago and have kept doing.
I now know that there’s a flaw in my master footwear plan: I don’t have a system for throwing out the old, old pair of shoes. So when I add pairs, I’m not getting rid of any. And these old pairs are on their last legs. They are not suitable for donation.
With all due respect to the Mayan calendar, I am preparing for a rain and mud event that is likely to never happen.
What’s wrong with being over prepared? When I do need to grab one of these emergency pairs of shoes, they’re all mixed together because I don’t have enough storage space. So time is lost making sure that I don’t mismatch.
I also realized that I keep buying dress shoelaces, to replace broken ones, even though there are several pairs laced through shoes collecting dust in my closet.
While the shoe overpopulation problem was quickly solved with a garbage bag, it’s a good reminder that the habits we have at home are likely the same ones we take to work.
Are you wasting time trying to find things? Then you have too much stuff, things you no longer need, or a poor storage system. There is a price to being unorganized.
And before you buy something, look around to see if you may already have it. Office closets often become warehouses of forgotten stuff. In a time of tight budgets you may be able to stretch your dollars with a little reconnaissance.
Productivity is something that has to be tended to on a daily basis, much like a closet.
