January home office detox
After Christmas and New Year most people are in the mood for less food and drink, less socialising and less activity.
We look ahead over a new, blank year and plan how to cultivate better habits and fulfill our dreams.
Why not spend a little time at the start of the year slimming down your home office too? These activities will clear out the rubbish and put you in good shape for the home working year ahead:
1. Go through your filing cabinet and drawers and clear out files and paperwork. How many years’ accounts are you hanging on to? Check with your accountant or the tax authorities how many you are legally obliged to keep and shred the rest. It might sound tedious, but once you’ve started, you’ll find it wonderfully freeing!
2. Check all that ‘useful’ information you’ve accumulated – cuttings from newspapers and magazines, scribbled notes, brochures, business cards etc. Do you even remember why you kept it? How much of it is already outdated or will be before you ever need to use it? Most can probably be recycled – just about everything you could ever want to know is available online anyway.
3. Buy a year planner and spend a few happy hours imagining your ideal year. Put in holidays and breaks first, followed by the business activities that bring you the most value. When are the high profile events and conferences in your industry? Put them in so you can attend, or even better, is there a chance you might be invited to speak?
4. Trawl through your diary and make a list of all the significant events of last year and the interesting people I’ve encountered. Try it and I guarantee the list will be longer than you anticipate! On a day-to-day basis it’s easy to overlook how much progress you’re making and once the year has ended it’s a good time to take stock.
5. Decide who you’d like to get to know this year and make a note in your new diary to call them, attend an event they are likely to be at, or ask someone for an introduction.
Flushing out the home working toxins you accumulated last year and introducing an intake of new, fresh people and ideas in January is a great way to start the new year feeling positive and excited about the possibilities ahead.
This post was first published on www.workshifting.com, the site for people who work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and their homes every bit as much as the office.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Great post Jude. Clearing out the physical clutter works wonders on a mental level, often freeing us up from repeating limiting patterns of the past and getting the clutter clear out of the way early Jan for me at least means it doesn’t become a procrastination tool later in the year :). Taking a moment to vision for the future and commit it to paper on the calendar makes good things in the year ahead much more likely to materialise. Looking forward to more posts soon x
Thanks, Elizabeth, and what a good point about getting rid of stuff so you don’t use it as an excuse later! How’s the writing by the way? 😉
on a style note……why is office equipment so awful-looking. Your filing cabinet suddenly turns a homely and attractive environment into something you would count the hours to hometime in! This should be attached to the offer of a home to an empty grey filing cabinet. Well done for emptying it though….Mx
You can get much nicer home office furniture now, from Ikea for example. But better a boring grey piece of metal than stuff all over the floor!
of course you’re right. Mx