How to save your stuff
Don’t save things you don’t need. And if you do save, save well.
“Do I need this? It could be useful…”
It was one of those make-or-break decisions. You know, deciding whether or not to keep that hand cream you’ve brought along on three moves — and still haven’t opened.
Moving has a way of reacquainting you with your stuff. You pull out everything you own from the nooks, closets, cabinets, and gaps you’d stuck it in. Sometimes you even surprise yourself: “I forgot this was here!”
With every sroonch-smack of the packing tape and scribble of the Sharpie, you make the commitment to move it all to a new place, unpack it, and put it away again.
We do the same things as businesses. We save that backdrop we made for a conference four years ago because well, we paid for it, and hey, it could be useful. Maybe.
Technology makes saving our digital stuff so friction-free, we save everything. We’ve got emails, Slack messages, user activity, draft 1, draft 4, and the final FINAL draft wedged in Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and inboxes.
If we had to haul around all our digital stuff in cardboard boxes, we’d be more conscious of just how much stuff we have. Alas, bits and bites can easily go unnoticed.
There are those companies realizing the value of subtraction, like Google who announced it will be deleting inactive accounts. If you haven’t used that Gmail account in three years, you probably aren’t going to use it — just like the hand cream I decided to trash.
Your business has things stuck in crevices that aren’t worth saving. There’s the obvious dead weight — the marketing materials with the old branding you didn’t even like — and the things so long stored you’ve forgotten they’re even there.
Then there are the things that might be useful again. But only if you save them in a way that you can find them when they’ll add value.
I’m talking about all those bits and bites, particularly the ones that contain knowledge.
There are so many things you create each day. Emails you could save and reuse as templates. A plan to run a workshop or off-site retreat. The meeting notes that contain the discussions and decisions that keep your team moving forward.
Despite having all this stuff, we’ll start fresh on a plan for the off-site retreat rather than starting with the document we used last year. Sometimes it’s because we see what we create as a one-time effort. Sometimes it’s simply because we can’t find the damn document.
Shift from thinking of your stuff as things to have to tools that can be used. Ask yourself questions like, “Could I use this again in whole or in part? If so, how? When will I go to look for it? Will someone else need to find it?” These questions provide clarity on what to keep and how to keep it.
Develop some simple (simple!) criteria for your team so they know what and when to ditch, as well as how and where to save. Even something as simple as a file name can make the difference between finding something useful and scrolling right past it.
Happy Monday,
Katie
Your Friendly Weekly Writer
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