Decluttering your worklife

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays many people take time out to consider if their career is going in the right direction and vow to make a change. Then they return to work, find their ‘inbox’ is full and just get on with the old job! So how can you avoid making the same mistake again this year?

In Kensington High Street, London serious and minor traffic injuries dropped by 60% in one year. “Wow” you might think, “that is some improvement: what miraculous road safety improvements did they install”? In fact, what they did was remove the previously installed road safety improvements, including 95% of the traffic signs and the guard rails along the pavement. The fall in injuries was due to drivers being less distracted and paying more attention to other road users, whilst pedestrians were more cautious before charging across the road. In other words, by decluttering their world, drivers and pedestrians alike had become more focused on the real risks and concentrate on key issues . Is there a parallel for this in our work lives?

Hans Monderman, a Dutch traffic engineer was famous for his hatred of traffic signs. Referring to a traffic sign that indicated a bridge ahead on a flat road, Monderman asked why it was needed , “…when you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like that,” he said. Are we in danger of letting distractions turn us into idiots? Often, we make the same type of mistake at work – we create ‘messy’ environments that distract us from the important tasks.
Management thinkers around the world are noticing that some businesses and some business people are thriving in the recession, while others are merely striving. Why? In many cases the ‘thrivers’ are ridding themselves of all the paraphernalia of distraction and focusing on what matters. Managers need to focus on the job that needs to be done, not on the clutter.

At Birmingham Airport recently I was observing a salesman I knew well. He was what some people call a “a Blackberry Tart” i.e. someone who is a slave to their mobile technology. He arrived into the departures lounge where he immediately took out his Blackberry and fiddled with it for five minutes, trying to make a connection. Then, agonizingly, he worked his way through reading long e-mail messages and ‘typing’ replies using a stylus, before rushing to switch everything off in time to board the plane. Had he not been so distracted by this gadget he might have noticed that one of the biggest buyers in his industry was sitting right next to him in the lounge – a unique networking opportunity to say hello to a large customer had been missed and, what is more, the customer had noticed. Perhaps the man would have been better off if he decluttered his briefcase, left his Blackberry alone and focused on the real task of winning customers.

In the current economic downturn many clients haves asked us to advise them on how they can declutter not just their job, but their whole career. A significant number of people are changing from fast-track to slow-track careers; others are taking a year’s sabbatical; yet more are taking a year off to travel. Several of our clients are returning to full-time or part-time study. With little prospect of a growth in the economy in the short-term this may be a good time to consider taking a year out to redirect your career. The important thing is, not to declutter too much, to hold on to the important things and build on them while letting go of the excess baggage.