Too Many Keys

With keys comes responsibility. Today I'm going to tell you how organizing, purging and delegating will reduce stress, increase your energy, and free you up to do more stuff. I'll never forget when I got my first set of keys, it was to this old van that cost me $400. I got that set of keys when I was 15 years old, and with that key came a lot of responsibility.

I was responsible for maintenance. I was responsible to get to and from school. I was responsible for bringing my brothers and sisters on errands, and I was responsible for the safety of any passenger I let get in the van. You get it? But but here's the deal. First it was an old van. Then it was a nicer car.

Then it was an apartment. And his life went on. More things started to pile up. This key chain got a whole lot bigger. Their homes, rental property, storage unit offices. As life is going on, my keychain is grown. The number of keys have grown tremendously. Along with that, the pressures of the responsibility has gone up to, like I said upfront, with keys comes responsibility and all of that responsibility can become overwhelming.

So what am I suggesting? Throw away all your keys. We can't do that. Here's what I do suggest. Take a look at your keyring. It probably looks a lot like mine. What you'll probably find is a lot of keys that you don't even recognize. You have no idea what they go to. The next thing is get rid of the ones you don't need, the ones you never use, You don't know where they go to.

And at least at a minimum, put them off in a drawer where they can just sit there in case you have to go back and find it. My next suggestion is to compartmentalize as you recognize the keys and you have some responsibility with them. Take them off and label them and set them off to the side. This is a set of keys to my mother's house, Let me tell you, That's a great responsibility.

If anything ever goes on with my mother or she's locked out or she needs me to help her, I have to grab these keys and go over there and help her out. By doing this. It lightens your load, both literally and figuratively. You are mean this with just keys or is this a metaphor for the other parts of your life?

Let's say you did the same thing with your email manager. I'm telling you, there are a lot of emails in your email box that you're never going to read. You don't want to hear from them anymore, and it just muddies the water. What about activities that are sucking in your time and your attention? Social media websites? I guarantee there are parts of your life and parts of your day that you're allowing a ton of different activities to confuse what you really, really have to be doing.

And there are likely many parts of your business that are confusing and are adding a lot of complexity to your day, your employees days, and your customers days. I'd like you to take one hour a week and get some quiet time in your office and think about the things that are cluttering your business, whether it's your email box, whether it's social media that you're spending way too much time and that time you could use in your business, serving your customers, serving your team members think about those things keys, email, websites, any distraction and declutter it.

As I said at the beginning, Organize, purge and delegate. Get everything organized, make some folders in your email box, separate your keys. Just take a media diet. Look at all the time you're spending on websites, whether it's social media or the media and listening to news and consider reducing that or purging some of the stuff where I'm just not going to watch that anymore.

I'm not going to spend more time getting sucked down these rabbit holes of the media and then also delegate there are people in your office that you're paying that could be doing so many of the activities that you're doing today. So organize, purge, delegate and remember, as you grow, your company grows.  Keep growing!