Is clutter stifling your creativity?
October 27, 2008 by Becky Scott
Do you consider yourself a creative person? If you’re a small business owner, you are. You had to come up with a business concept and sell it. You need to find solutions to all kinds of problems to make sure your customers get your product. And you routinely think of new ways to save money or grow your business.
That’s creativity at work. But it’s easy to get bogged down in all of the mundane things. The day-to-day business of running your company. The endless mail. Paperwork. Phone calls. Clutter. Oh, the clutter. It could be paper. Or products. Things. Even mind clutter can bring you down.
So you need to find ways to reduce that clutter. Capture your ideas on paper so you can decide if they’re worth pursuing. Get things in order so you can find “stuff” when you need it.
Because when you don’t, your ability to problem solve creatively can suffer. You can miss a great new idea or awesome solution to a jam when you’re distracted by physical or mental clutter. Let’s start today, get back on track, and let the ideas start flowing again. Don’t let clutter bring you down.
How is clutter interrupting your work right now? What are you doing to tame it?
The simple answer to the headline is: YES. I think the solution is not to keep so much paper “just in case.” I never get asked to review things again, so after a week or two of the project’s completion, I should throw away most of the paper and move on to the next thing. (Any other ideas?)
Karen, I started answering and my response got very long, so I’m writing a separate post to answer your question: http://www.myorganizedbiz.com/more-clutter-and-creativity/