Transcripts
1. Introduction: In this course, we're
going to declutter. Decluttering can have
compounding effects on many parts of your life. For me, it saves time
in multiple ways. I spend less time
looking for things. I'll spend more time and focus more in what
really matters. Think about it, if
you appear organized, your friends and coworkers, people would just see
you in a better light. If your boss views you as an organized and capable person, it gives you more
self-esteem and motivation and the confidence to perform better in your job. All of this becomes a
positive feedback loop. But most importantly, I found
that decluttering helps me realign myself with my work, my life, and my
overall happiness. For me, an organized
workspace motivates me to get more work done and inspires
me to to enjoy the process. In this video, I'm
going to be going over a method that I use to help me declutter my digital
and my physical workspace. We're going to be cleaning
up our computers, laptops, phones, email calendars,
to do list desk, office, pretty much
do a full makeover. We'll make it even
more convenient by syncing up all
of our files and data across all of our
workspaces. Let's get started.
2. Digital Decluttering: Over the years, I've tried a lot of different
productivity methods. I borrowed my favorite bits and pieces from some of
my favorite authors. I've remixed these ingredients into a method that works for me and I'll put links to their resources for further
reading if you're interested. Pretty much there are
two frameworks that I use to guide my system. For organization,
I use something I like to call the RIP method, which stands for records, inbox, and projects. Records contains the
majority of my files. Inbox is where I dump
all my new files, which I can then
categorize later, and then projects are the current ones that I'm
working on at the moment. I have subfolders
in my records for all the areas of my
life, for example, I have a folder for school, a folder for medical,
finance, family, etc. Whenever I'm working on a specific project within
one of these areas, I move that project into
the projects folder. When I'm done with it, I
move it back to the records. Whenever new files
come into my system, I immediately put
them into the inbox, whether it's downloads or files from my co-workers
or family photos, anything that comes in goes
straight to the inbox. As you can see, I like
to use my inbox as a gatekeeper to
my entire system. Because I don't want to be
constantly distracted by random files coming in
at all times of the day. What I do is I schedule time either at the end of the day or even sometimes at the end of the week where I specifically dedicate that
time to going through and clearing my inbox by either
categorizing it into records or putting into projects or just putting
it in the trash. The goal by the end of
this course is to have the same three
folders, the R, I, and P. Within your
records folders, you'll have the same subfolders
across all your devices. The second framework I use
is for processing my inbox. This framework helps
me decide what I need and don't need to keep. When I'm trying to decide
whether or not I should keep or throw away
an item or a file, I'll ask myself these
three questions. First is, will this
help me do my work? Work meaning professional work. Second is, will this
make my life easier? This includes non-work
life friends, family, community, life goals, ambitions,
that sort of stuff. Finally, will this
make me happy? Notice how all the questions
use the word will, like will this make me happy? The question isn't, did
this make me happy? I use the word will
because some of my items may have made
me happy in the past, but going forward, will
this still make me happy? If I can't answer yes to any
of those three questions, then I throw that item out. The way that I like to remember
these three questions is the phrase work,
life, happiness. That was a general overview of my method for
digital decluttering. Let's put them to action
in the next chapter, starting with our computers.
3. Class Project: By the end of this course, we will have decluttered
our digital workspace and transformed it into a cozy ecosystem that
motivates and inspires us. As we go through
each of the phases, take a photo of your
before and after and post them here to inspire
your fellow classmates.
4. Decluttering your computer: [MUSIC] In this chapter,
we're going to start by decluttering our computers or laptops or whatever your primary electronic
device happens to be. If you don't use a computer then feel free to skip this chapter and move
on the next one. For this course I'm going to be using Canva to
demonstrate the steps. In real-life, I use a Mac but to avoid confusion
with those of you using Windows or Android or Linux
or any other operating system I'm just going to keep it simple and use these graphics
to represent everything. Here is a reminder of the
RIP method that we'll be using to organize all
of our workspaces. First take a screenshot or
a photo of your desktop in its current state so
that we can compare it as a before and after by
the end of the chapter. To start the RIP method you can make a brand
new folder for each of these three just
right here on your desktop. I'm going to now open the records folder and
create my subfolders. These are my subfolders. You can borrow what I
use if you'd like or feel free to make your
own personalized to you. Remember that the goal by the end of this
course is that you'll have the same subfolders
across all your devices. Now that that's done let's start by decluttering the desktop. What we're going to do is
drag everything we see on the desktop and put it
into the inbox folder. There we have it. Your desktop
is completely decluttered and we are done and I will
see you in the next chapter. Just kidding. But now
comes the hard part. We're going to use the three big questions
to process our inbox. I'm going to go through each of these files one by
one and asked myself, will this help me with work? Will this make my life easier? Or will this make me happy? Let's start with this
pretends document. Let's say that it's
a medical record of all the vaccinations
that I've ever gotten. Let's go ahead and ask
the three big questions. Will this help me
do my work better? Probably not. Will this
make my life easier? Probably because it's nice to have your medical records
handy in case you need it for your doctor or any
other job application. Then finally, will this make
me happy? Probably not. But right off the
bat we see that I've already answered
yes to one of the three questions
and that means that I'm going to be
keeping this documents. Let's move it into the appropriate subfolder
within the records folder. Let's brainstorm some
more ideas here. This is an employment contract
will it help me with work? Yes. So I'll put it
into my work subfolder. These are photos we took
on our last vacation, will it help me with work? Probably not. Will it
help me with life? I don't know maybe not
but looking at it, it makes me happy so I'll put it into my family subfolder. Then this is an instruction
manual for a bookshelf. It doesn't answer any of the three questions so that
will go into the trash. I don't know how cluttered
your desktop is, it might take you a
few minutes to do, it might take you a few days, but go at your own pace
but for now let's move on. I'm going to move the
records folder and put it away in my documents. Basically I just want to
take it off the desktop. As the name implies
they are records so I'm probably not going to be accessing them all that often. The two folders that I like
to keep my desktop are the inbox and the
projects folder. The projects folder will contain all the projects that I'm
working on at the moment. Let's say I'm currently editing this video for my
YouTube channel. It's nice to have handy but
when I'm done with it I'll move this project to its appropriate subfolder
in the records. I'm currently working on this video course
so it'd be nice to have it easily accessible
on my desktop as well. The flow goes like this. Whenever a new file
or document enters my computer it goes
straight into the inbox, that way I know where it
is and I don't have to immediately deal with
it at that very moment. I can make some
time at the end of the day or at the end of the week to process my inbox and put everything
where it belongs. If I spent a little
time here and there throughout the
day as things come in to reorganize my inbox
it's just really distracting. A quick tip that I found
helpful is that I changed the location of my Internet
downloads to my inbox folder. You can do this by going
to the settings in your browser and changing
the folder destination. That way you don't have a downloads folder
that's just building up to critical mass over
time without you knowing. Another tip that
I've found useful is to have Cloud storage. I edit videos, so
I need a lot of storage space especially
for 4K footage. Maddie and I use G
Suite for our business. We get unlimited storage
and the best part is that our files are on the Cloud and can be summed
across all of our devices. Our iPads, phones, laptops they all have
the same three folders, records, inbox projects, and having everything seemed just makes it so much
more convenient. We've just finished the
decluttering our computers. When you're done
take a picture of your desktop and post a
before and after shots so that other students can
marvel at your amazing work and in the next chapter we'll move on to decluttering
our email.
5. Decluttering your email: In this chapter will
be decluttering our email and it doesn't matter how many email
addresses you have, because I have quite a few. You can use the same system
across all the emails. I'm going to make the
three folders according to the RIP method again. But notice that I don't actually need to
make a folder for the inbox because all emails
come with a built-in inbox. Again, within my records folder, you'll see that I have
the same sub folders that I had from my computer and I also
have my projects folder. Anything that
requires an action, or a reply soon, I'll put it in my
projects folder. Also, anything that I'm
waiting on from someone else, or any order confirmations, or receipts for things
I haven't received yet, they'll all be in
the projects folder and once I'm done with them, I'll either trash them, or move them into records. I don't use my inbox
for storage space, you can easily mix
up your email that way so I urge you to go through emails in your inbox and ask the three questions
and sort them all out. But before you start doing that, just quickly take a picture of how many emails you have
built up in your inbox. Some of you might
have thousands of emails and it may take
days, or even weeks. If you feel overwhelmed
by the idea of organizing all your emails, what you can do is create a new folder and just
call it old inbox, and then move everything
there and then slowly just chip at that
folder over time. If you need anything, you can always search your
old inbox too, but clear out your current
inbox and start a fresh. A quick tip is as you're
sorting through your inbox, you might notice that you're subscribed to a lot of
different newsletters, or company mailing lists, or promotions so ask yourself the three questions about all the mailing lists that you're subscribed to and unsubscribe from
all the ones that no longer fulfill
the three questions. Another tip I found useful is to only go through
your email once, or twice a day unless you're waiting on some super
urgent important email, or something, most days you don't need to check your
email more than that. As I mentioned before, I like to block out some
time at the end of the day, sometimes at the
end of the week, process my email inbox and
categorize all my emails. We've just finished
decluttering our emails, once you've brought your
inbox down to zero, go ahead and take
a picture and show all the other students just how long it took for you
to get this organized. It can definitely be
motivating to see. In the next chapter will be decluttering our calendar
so, see you there.
6. Decluttering your calendar: In this chapter, we're going
to declutter our calendars. The photo for this
one is optional, you don't have to
show other students what you have planned
on your calendar. Just like how you
can waste a lot of time on email and social media, you can definitely
waste a lot of time in meetings and events. You might find that you're constantly attending
to the needs of others or trying to
make time for others, but really decluttering
your calendar is all about making
time for yourself. For all your current
calendar events and all events moving forward, you want to always ask the three big questions before you put it
on your calendar. If an event doesn't
answer any of the three questions and
you can get out of it, then get out of it. Cancel the event,
but I wouldn't go around canceling left and right and taking back promises that you've already
made to other people, that's probably not
going to go very well. A quick tip, I found that when I was just starting
out with something, I had to automatically say
yes to literally everything because I wanted to open as many doors as
possible in life, but once I figured out which
doors I wanted to take, I had to change my mindset to automatically say
no to everything. If it's really that important then the other person will
come back to you again and again and you can then decide at that time whether or
not you want to say yes or no to their requests. But now getting
into the mindset of just initially saying no to everyone else is really just saying yes to everything
that you want to do. From here on out,
whenever anyone or anything makes a demand
on your calendar, ask yourself the three
questions, work, life, happiness, and see if it deserves a slot
on your calendar. If it does deserve a slot
to be on your calendar, then either put it directly on your calendar
if you know the date and time or if you don't and you still need to work
out the scheduling, then you can put it
on your to-do list, so that you don't forget
to schedule it later. With that said, let's
go ahead and wrap up this chapter and in
the next chapter, we'll talk about
decluttering our to-do list.
7. Decluttering your to-do list: In this chapter, we're going to declutter our to-do lists. Before we start, take a picture of your current
daily to-do lists. Let's look at the
RIP method again. I have a list called inbox, and I have a list
called projects, but my records list is really just a combination of my
daily list and my calendar. The to-do lists in many ways is an extension
of your calendar. Whatever you have on
your calendar for that day goes onto
your daily to-do list, but there are a lot of
tasks and projects that don't have an exact
date and time. For example, if
you're waiting on a response from
another team member for a current project, or if your friend randomly
sent you a video or something and you told them that you'd watch
on your free time, these are the tasks that can be put into your project's list. Then you can check these
at the end of the day. I find that an inbox
list is really helpful for eliminating
distracting thoughts. For example, when I'm working and I have a distracting
thought like, Oh crap, my mom's
birthday is coming up and I need to
get her a present, or a thought like a new idea for a YouTube video or a blog post and I don't
want to forget it, I'll immediately write it
down onto my inbox list. If a thought pops into my head, I will never remember it, if I don't write it down. I've lost so many good
ideas before just trying to hold on to
thoughts in my memory, but when I do this, I'm basically occupying
the space in my memory. This prevents me from truly focusing on the task
right in front of me. The inbox list is great for
storing fleeting ideas. I can always go through
my inbox list at the end of the day or
at the end of the week. At that time, I'll ask the three big
questions, work, life, happiness, for each of the
things on my inbox list. If it meets any of
the three questions, then it's worthy of being
scheduled on to my calendar. We are now done
with decluttering our to-do lists,
taken after photo. Go ahead and post it to see how your before and
after have changed. In the next chapter, we will be decluttering
our phones.
8. Decluttering your phone: In this chapter,
we're going to be decluttering our phones, which is possibly the
workspace that's filled with the most distractions compared to all the previous
other workspaces. To start, you can
take a screenshot of your phone's home screen
for the before picture. Let's get to it. My phone is just a ticking bomb full of notifications
and messages and emails, ready to go off at any time. The more apps I have installed, the more notifications
I'm going to get. The first thing
we're going to do is go through each and every one of our apps and ask
the three big questions. If the app passes the test, then you keep it. If not, delete it. The RIP method doesn't
really apply well here, but if you want, you can organize your
apps into groups that reflect your records
sub folders. So quick tip; if
you want to save time and you're brave
enough to do this, you could try deleting all the apps on your
phone all at once, like right in the
very beginning. Then you only re-install
the ones that you use. A lot of us still have apps on our phones that haven't
been touched for years and they're
just sitting there collecting dust and
taking up storage. Another quick tip is
whenever you download a new app and you've used
it for about a week or so, after that week, ask yourself the three big questions to
see if it's worth keeping. I just say a week,
it could be a month. What I mean is use the app until the free trial runs out, and after that, reassess the value of that app by
asking three questions. Now that you've
declared your phone, take a photo of
what it looks like afterwards and show us
the before and after. Similar to our computer desktop, our phone home screen can be one of the first workspaces
that we see in the morning. Having a motivational wallpaper or organized layouts can
really make a difference. In the next chapter,
we're going to tackle the final workspace, which is decluttering our desk.
9. Decluttering your desk: [MUSIC] In this chapter,
we're going to be decluttering our
desk and our office. The physical workspace
is connected to our digital workspace
because any clutter that you have in one area can easily overflow into the
other and vice versa. The before and after photos for this phase are going to
be really fun to see, so make sure that you
take a nice picture of your desk setup while
it's still really messy. The RIP method can and should be applied to your
desk and your office. Your inbox should be an
actual physical inbox. I like having a tray on my desk and some people
also like having a tray on their office door to receive mail and documents
when the door is closed. For your records and projects, I'd recommend
getting an organizer or making more space
in your drawers. Some people also have bookshelves
to hold book records. Let's start with all the
books and documents first. Go ahead and gather up
all the books and papers, and one-by-one, go through each of them and ask the
three big questions. If a document doesn't make
the cut, then recycle it. If a book doesn't make the cut, then consider gifting it to someone else who might find it useful or donate
it or recycle it. Basically you should
only be left with the books and documents
that you need. Go ahead and organize your
books onto a bookshelf, and organize your documents
into sub-folders. You can go ahead and label
those sub-folders similar to the ones that you did across
all your electronic devices. Quick tip here is that you
can now take the time to take photos of all your documents
to electronically save them. Next is the most time-consuming
part of the process. We're going to go through
and declutter all the stuff. I'm talking about
office supplies, personal care products, food, tools, and
sentimental items. Go ahead and gather
up all your items and one-by-one go through and
ask the three big questions. While you're doing this, your drawers and cabinets
are going to be cleared out. Take this opportunity to reassess how are you
going to use them? For example, I had a drawer full of ketchup
packets and napkins, and I never really used them, so I was able to repurpose it to store handy cables and chargers. A quick tip here, sentimental things can
be very hard to let go, even when you know it's
time for them to go. Sometimes we hold onto things that did bring us happiness at some point in the past but they've since then
lost some of that power. You can take a
photo of your item and store it on your
phone or your computer, and this can make it
easier to let go. Another tip I found helpful for Marie Kondo to help let go of sentimental things is
by showing gratitude. You don't want to
just randomly be throwing items away
and left and right, you want to take
some time and thank the item for serving you well up to this
point in your life, then after that
you can let it go. In the end, the
items that you're left with are only the ones that clearly reflect the values that are important to you now. Once you've finished
decluttering your desk and your office, go ahead and take
an after photo. Before and after photos in this chapter are going
to be really fun to look at and some of them might
be drastically different, so don't be afraid
to share them. Join me in the next chapter, we're going to be wrapping up with some
final thoughts. [MUSIC]
10. Wrap-up: Congrats for making it to
the end of this course. Decluttering can be a
time-consuming process, but it can also create
more free time for you going forward now that
you've organized your life. At this point, hopefully
you've applied the RIP method across all your workspaces and
have everything synced up. Over time, you can adjust your subfolders to the season
of life that you're in and you can always modify your current system with anything new that
you've learned. If you do learn new things, please take a moment to
share it with us too, because we are
always looking for ways to improve our system. If you want to read more
about all the people that inspired my
decluttering process, I'll leave a list of references
in the class resources. Thanks for watching
and stay productive.