Productive people, by and large, are clean, tidy and well organized. Do I mean you have to be perfect and be anal about everything and have all your T shirts aligned? and color coding? No. I could be messy. Sometimes I might leave a towel on the floor, not hanging up something properly.

But when it comes to my work, and frankly, most of my house and other things, I try to have a plan. I try to have a system I try to have organization Now there are a million different ways of organizing things. But the least effective way is to have scattered junk everywhere. And it's true you'll see the occasional mad scientist or brilliant film directors offices, a huge chaotic mess. By and large, that just isn't how it works with the most productive people. Here's why.

It simply takes too much time to find stuff. If everything is all over the place, if it's chaos, if your desk is covered, it wastes time finding stuff. And that's the real advantage to being tidy. I'm not saying you have to dust every day dust isn't gonna hurt you, most likely, but not having lots of clutter. It's important for two reasons. Number one, you save so much time finding stuff.

Number two, it's just less stressful on the brain. If your eyes are not looking at a chaotic mess. If you see chaos, it's harder for your brain to organize. I certainly find that to be true. If I do let my desk get messy. And I don't typically it's harder for me to sit down and bang out an important document important proposal, because there's just sort of mess inside my brain that's mirroring the mess around me.

My advice is to always try to save yourself time, the way to do that is put something away once you know where it is, eliminate clutter so you don't have to sift through things. The easiest way to get rid of clutter is to not have clutter in the first place. Don't print out documents that you don't need to if it's on your computer screen. It's not just an environmental issue. Although it is bad for the environment. It just puts more clutter around.

I try not to print things out. Unless it is a document I have to sign and I can't do the auto signature on my computer and act to scan a contract to send back to someone. The only other exception I make is frankly if I'm doing a course like this, I'll have script notes. And this way I can be glancing down in between the different takes of the Making the courses. But try not to have lots and lots of extra paper util date. The biggest way not to have clutter in your life is to just not buy stuff so often.

Now, again, I'm not trying to teach you to subscribe to some theory of minimalism. I don't want you to be a monk who abstains from all worldly possessions. That's not my goal. But my goal is to help you be productive to get the most you can out of life. To many of us, especially in western countries, and in prosperous countries. We feel like we have to shop we have to buy stuff more and more stuff can be for the office could be for home could be for the home office get more and more stuff.

You got to put that stuff somewhere. You got to take the boxes out, you gotta put the manual somewhere, you got to throw the boxes away. It's more and more stuff. productive people may have big mansions and private jets and all that. But when it comes to their workspace, where they spend their time creating, they try to eliminate distractions. Easiest way to do that is to not have stuff there you don't need.

If you were to see my office now you'd say, Hmm, not much there I have a computer. I do have one filing cabinet way back in the corner, but I actually try to keep the desk clean, because I keep most things on the cloud in an organized fashion. Here, I'm in my TV studio. It's a rather sparse TV studio. You see the white backdrop, no distractions. I have carpeted walls, five lights, and a computer in front of me.

And really just a few other things. So I would ask that you think about how can you be one Do you like the word tidy? The word neat, the word clean, well organized. How can you eliminate junk and distractions, from your workspace in your eyes when you're trying to be productive? That's really what it comes down to. And there are differing ways of doing that.

But too many people who are unproductive or unproductive because they have an unproductive work environment. If there's clutter junk, a sandwich from last week, all of that is sending you a direct message and the subliminal message that and we're okay just be in sort of chaotic junk. That's not the way to produce. There is an extraordinarily famous author Marie condos written a book that she's sort of become the main guru of keeping your house clean and your office clean. I do recommend her but I'm not getting any commissions. I'm an affiliate of Amazon, but she has this great principle.

And it applies to stuff in your home, but also in your office in your workspace. And she says, pick it up, look at it and say, have I used this in the last year? Does this thing give me joy? If you can't say yes to both, throw it away. Now in the past, I was guilty, I would keep some video camera or some audio digital recorder that I haven't used in four years because oh, I paid money for that it's valuable. You got to let it go.

So things like that I sell on eBay, I give away I throw away if it no longer works and it just reduces clutter in my workspace. Even though I have plenty of other storage space just knowing it's gone. gives me a sense of empowerment that I am in control of my environment and I can have a clean Focused environment to be more productive, I urge you to do the same. Take a minute, think, what do you have in your office, home office or outside office that takes up space that you haven't used in the last year? And are you willing to throw it away? Give it away or do something to get it away.

Post that right now and I'm hoping to share act of thinking about it. writing it down will motivate you today or tomorrow to throw it away or give it away.