A declutter your life checklist is truly the easiest, most efficient, and quick way to gain back control over your life. You wouldn’t be here, if you didn’t feel the need to get control over the mess your life currently is.
Don’t worry, I am here to help. This checklist will bring order back into your chaos.
This post exists, because a fan (Ethan Koopman) asked me about this topic. Great question! Naturally, I deliver info on what you guys need!
Why is a declutter of your life so damn important?
Before we start with the checklist, we need to make clear why we’re doing this at all. And it’s actually quite simple. Think about it as a saving of your energy.
When we get up in the morning, depending on how well we slept, we start with a set up for that day. A certain amount of energy we can spend. We can increase that with proper food, exercise, and not masturbating. But at some point, no matter what, we will be depleted.
The issue is, a lot of clutter, chaos, and unorder in your life steal your energy.
If you have a broken toaster, that’s been standing in the corner of your kitchen for 4 weeks now. This toaster has been stealing energy from you, every day.
Each day, you walk past it, being reminded that it needs fixing, and is currently useless, collecting dust. So your brain reacts and thinks about when and how you are going to fix it. Only to ditch that thought right away, because you have other things to do.
This mental energy, you just used up for these thoughts is gone. And instead, could’ve been used for other, more important things.
Instead, you were thinking about a broken toaster.
Chaos compounds over time
Remember. You never know what happens. Life can throw a curveball at you at any given moment. This second, you were thinking about that toaster, the next minute a close one dies, and you need a ton of energy to cope with that and be a force to other people.
As the captain of your life, relationship, and business, you have a ton of things to worry about. Lots of thoughts race through my head all day. Business, my own development, leadership, relationship, etc. This is not about overthinking in general, this is about the fact you only have so much energy to think about stuff.
A damn broken toaster is the least of your issues. Still, every time you walk past it, it’s annoying and steals energy.
To preserve this, we have the declutter checklist for your life. This helps reduce all these taxing things on your mind, so you’re free to focus on the important stuff and have energy left whenever something bad happens.
How do I know I need to declutter my life?
Maybe you will find yourself or your thoughts in the following list:
- You want to do something, but end up doing something else
- You never know where to start
- You have no idea what’s the most important task in your day
- You were going to do one thing, but ended up watching Youtube instead
- Going into your office, home, whatever feels taxing on your mind
- You’re constantly like, “Oh damn, I forgot to do this”
All of these or even one of these thoughts are signs of a cluttered life. You have a tough time focusing on important tasks, you don’t know where to start because there is so much to do.
Or you want to do something, but end up doing nothing instead. I know there are memes of this, but that is a real issue. If it is so overwhelming to go through it all, the brain shuts off. So you rather do something easy on your brain. Only to feel very bad afterward, because you didn’t do what you were supposed to do.
Again.
The declutter your life checklist
The biggest issue is that we always try to do too many things at once. Which is why this list isn’t a one-time do and done. It is an everyday list. But don’t worry, overall it takes about 15 minutes. You can do that each day.
Especially since it will free your mind, so you can finally actually get your shit done, instead of mourning yourself for not being able to manage it again.
1. Make your bed and bedroom
I know this sounds trivial or even irrelevant. But if you start your day already in a mess, how do you think the rest of it will go?
After you get up. Make your bed immediately. Remove any clothes lying on the floor. Fold them, or put them in the wash if you don’t need them anymore.
Leave your bedroom clean and in order. This is the first mental set up for the day.
2. Plan your day with a list and tasks
Number 2 of the declutter your life checklist is having clean tasks and goals before the day even starts. Now, some people say you should do this the day before, and I get it. Personally, I like to do this in the morning. When I get up, after I drank my water, and am now sipping my coffee, I write down the following things:
- 6-month goals
- 1-month goals
- Weekly goals
- Dreams
- Today’s tasks
I got this list from Jon Anthony from masculinedevelopment.com. Great lad and this one helped me greatly.
Because it sets your mind up for the day some more.
If you just wake up and do whatever comes by, there is no structure. No set goal. No point where you know if you managed what you wanted to do that day or not.
And it is intentionally so granular because big goals seem impossible to reach. You need to break them down into smaller goals. For this, you make it into timeframes.
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Also, be aware of the amount. Choose one, maybe two big tasks for the day, and 2-3 smaller ones. That’s it! Don’t clutter your todo list! Keep it clean and straight.
Have a ton of tasks to do? Distribute them throughout the week.
How does this declutter my life? Repeating the same goals over and over?
With this structure, you keep repeating the same goals for 6 months, 1 month, etc. Yes. That’s the point. You want structure in your life over the long-term. You write down your 6-month goal each and every day. Through that hand-writing, you bring your thought into existence.
It materializes in real-life.
That is way different than just writing it on your computer. And by repeating it each day, it gets into your subconscious. It’s a sort of subliminal messaging you do to your mind.
Your subconscious drives 95% of your decisions as explained here. So if you train your subconscious to focus on your goals by writing it down each day, you will automatically make the right decisions over time.
And this way, you brought order into your long-term plan for your life. You decluttered the mere chaos you go through by just living and randomly making decisions. Now, your life has a plan. At least for 6 months.
Which is why there are also the dreams written down. This is your ultimate end-goal. You gotta keep that in mind!
3. Remove commitments from your day and life
You might be surprised how much random commitments you have throughout your day. They just pass by unnoticed, but they still steal your energy and clutter your day.
Work, school, friends, family.
Do people just randomly call you, and you jump right away? Do co-workers come into your office all day? Do you go smoking every hour, dragging you out of your thought process?
Each day, make a list of commitments you have and had throughout said day. Write down, every time someone interrupted your work, or you did it yourself.
At the end of the day, you will be surprised how much time you waste on seemingly irrelevant stuff.
Now, I am not saying to cut ties with every person. Just be aware of it each day through this list, and then try to reduce it as much as possible.
Also, don’t confuse struggle with stress. Big difference.
4. Declutter a small pile each day
Let’s finally declutter reality on this checklist. Right after you’ve set your tasks for the day, go about actual decluttering. This might mean decluttering your desk. Remove anything you don’t need. Lot’s of envelopes and bills lying around? Put them on a pile with bills, and work through this pile another time.
Make sure you don’t work on this daily decluttering for more than a maximum of 10 minutes. Otherwise, you will be busy all day, doing nothing else.
This consistent, incremental decluttering will yield great results over time. If you are on my blog for a while now, you should now that consistency trumps anything.
Be also aware of other piles and cluttered things that might evade your vision, like:
- Open browser tabs
- Cluttered folders on your computer
- Cluttered email Inbox
- A closet which is a total mess
- Each and every drawer you have in your house
- The garage
- Your bookshelf
All these things might be a straight mess, and you don’t even realize it. But they are in your peripheral view, and subconsciously, your mind recognizes it as work and uses energy to think about it.
5. Disable notifications, or don’t keep your phone around you
A big part of decluttering your life just means not losing focus.
The reason you don’t get shit done is that you cannot concentrate on it for longer than 5 minutes. And one of the biggest reasons for that inability is constant notifications on your phone.
I have turned off most of my notifications altogether. But even if you don’t want that, at least put the phone in airplane mode while you work, or have it in another room.
This will bring focus and clearness in your work and current task.
6. Fix one thing that has been annoying you for a while now
Remember the toaster from the beginning of this post? Yeah, fix that shit! Each day, fix one of these little, but side stabbing issues you have at home.
Make a decision on that toaster today! Use energy today, so it doesn’t steal energy tomorrow and the next two weeks.
Do you need to keep it? Go to a shop and have it repaired.
Not necessary? Throw it out.
Just get it over with.
This doesn’t have to be right in the morning. You can do this whenever throughout your day. Just make sure you check it on your list each day. If there isn’t anything broken today, good. But be honest with yourself. You might just try to avoid the energy needed to fix something.
Is it too much for one day? Split it up in smaller tasks. Can’t do it? Turn it into a project for one day instead of making it part of this list.
7. Meditate
Meditation is decluttering your mind. That’s all it is.
Yes, you can manage to leave this realm of reality and all of that, and I actually managed that once. But you don’t need that. Meditation is literally just sitting there, doing nothing, breathing slowly, and observing your mind.
Imagine your mind like an email Inbox. All-day, you receive new emails. They pile up in your head. Meditation is then the process of sifting through the email, deleting the trash, memorizing the important ones.
5-10 minutes a day is enough. In the evening, morning, mid-day. Doesn’t matter. You can use an app like BrainFM, I wrote an article about that (including a free trial). They have guided and unguided meditation. I meditate with that app every day.
But if that’s not up your sleeve, you can just sit there in silence, doing nothing. A few days or weeks in and your mind will be way clearer.
I am actually at this point, where I get irritated when I can’t meditate one day. And even if it is already 10 pm. I will go out of my day and meditate. Don’t underestimate how strong that is!
Doesn’t this all take a lot of time?
Not really. The list itself, including your goals and task list, probably takes 15 minutes a day, plus meditation, plus the time you need to fix that one fucking thing. So maybe half an hour.
And I can already see you steaming, “I am already overwhelmed! How am I supposed to make time for that?”
Calm your tits!
This list will free up time by using it. The great paradox. Because you will be spending time better on your tasks, thus more time for other stuff will be freed.
Right now you’re running in circles, trying this and that at once. Instead of doing one thing right, you’re doing 5 things badly. Stop that, and see how your life improves.
And your feeling towards it. Because you have clarity, goals, and precise actions to take.
Want even more precise goals?
Check out my POWERFUL PURPOSE Course here.
