Randy Dean explains why dedicating an occasional day to small tasks like watering the yard, organizing your office, and clearing your inbox can boost momentum. Physical motion lifts your mood and clears mental clutter, letting you refocus on bigger work.
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Alright, hi everybody. I just wanted to throw together a really quick little video blog today on a topic that you don't hear too many time management and productivity gurus talk about, and that's the benefits of what I like to call a little stuff day. See, a lot of the time management and productivity gurus, including many that I follow regularly, talk about how you want to keep your focus on your most important bigger picture stuff and always be putting your effort toward the most important stuff, which I fully agree with. And one of the things, though, that I think you may want to also put in your toolkit, because I think there's just a whole range of possible tools on how to be more effective and more productive, is what I would like to call the benefits of a little stuff day. Now let me explain to you what the occasional little stuff day is. It's a day where you just basically dedicate taking care of all the quick little things and clutter that has built up over a period of time. Now see, I just got through a section of life where we moved my daughter off to college, we had another daughter start high school and went back to dance. Uh, I have been traveling to some client events, um, just— we had a big holiday recently, stuff accumulated, and it's starting to feel a little bit unwieldy. And the clutter has become a bit of a distraction for long frame productivity. And so one of the things that I had decided— I just got up today, I had an open day on my calendar, no client events happening. I've got a lot on my task list to get done. But I started the day by actually going out and watering the backyard, of all things. And not only watering the backyard, but, you know, organizing the patio. And once I got started in this process, I was like, yeah, let's keep going. I felt the energy. And so I continued on and I unpacked from my trip from yesterday. I Then started cleaning up the other side of the basement, the recreation area. I did a little bit of reorganization of my office here. I played around with the lighting to set up this video. I planned this video blog. I organized my task list. I cleaned up my inbox. And I did all of this before 11 AM. I got going. I felt it and I jumped in and I started attacking little stuff. Now, what I'm planning to do for the rest of the day is, you know, I had the client trips. I got a bunch of receipts I need to organize and some expense reports I need to submit. I also have some mail I need to go through. And like I said, I want to make sure now that I've got my inbox clear that I handle all the little tasks that are on my task list for today. I'm not going to worry too much about the big stuff, but I do have some contracts I want to get together and get out. But that doesn't take me that much time. I just want to get as much stuff done as I can, as much stuff organized as I can, as much clutter handled as I can on this day. And I want to ride this way. I'm also going to take my pups for a walk to get some exercise, and I'm probably going to go do a little bit of landscaping work out front. It's time to start planting some grass before it gets too late in the season. And now I want to share a little something about that piece. I already mentioned that I've been doing some fairly physical work. I've been reorganizing in the basement. I've been reorganizing here in my office. I set up all patio furniture out back and watered the plants. That's physical motion. And the interesting thing about a day like this is that it should have quite a bit of physical motion involved. And I once read a very interesting quote which said, "Positive motion often leads to positive emotion." And that's one of the benefits of a day like this. You get going, you're using your body, you're balancing your body with your mind, and you see immediate positive feedback. That's the other thing about a Little Stuff Day. You're getting so much done, you're seeing the benefits of your actions right now. And so it sort of becomes addictive. Most people don't want to do a day like this when they think about it up front. They sort of, ah, I don't want to get organized, I don't want to clean up. But here's the interesting thing. Once you get started and you start seeing that positive benefit coming out of it, it becomes almost addictive and you can't stop because it gets rolling. And if you ever get on that wave, ride that wave and get as much done as you can on that Little Stuff Day. And if you're in the office, just declare it to everybody. Say, today's a Little Stuff Day. I'm getting a bunch of little stuff done. And what's interesting is if you do that, it might become infectious and you'll see some other people do the same thing, too. And the real benefit of this day, though, I want to make sure that you understand, I don't want to disparage the thought leaders that are talking about keeping your focus on your most important stuff. Here's how I see this falling into place with that. It'll clear your plate. It'll clear your plate of all this little stuff— mental, physical, emotional, and electronic clutter— which will then allow you to return your focus to your bigger picture stuff because you got so much of the stuff out of the way. See, if you're letting that stuff stack up on you, it's going to become mental and emotional and even physical clutter., and the clutter will become a distraction in and of itself. But if you can clear out a whole bunch of the clutter and reestablish sort of control of your mental and physical surroundings, then you can put your effort back with full focus on your most important stuff. All right, so put this in your toolkit. It's just one more tool in your toolkit for being more productive. I'm Randy Dean, the Email Sanity Expert. Uh, on this video, I just filmed it with my phone, so I'm not putting in my formal stuff, but I will remind you that if you'd like to find out more, go visit my website, randalldean.com. That's R-A-N-D-A-L-L-D-E-A-N dot com. And if you'd like to get a whole series of bonus little PDFs on time management, email management, Outlook and 365 usage, Google Suite usage, smartphone and tablet usage, as well as actually a cheat sheet to my YouTube channel where you're seeing this video right now, just send me an email, put in the subject line YouTube PDFs to randy@randalldean.com and I'll send you a whole bunch of stuff to do your self-studying and add even more stuff to your toolkit for extended long frame productivity and time management. Thanks. Bye.
